Don Surber
All we are saying, is give Trump a chance
Trump is mixing The Art of War with The Art of the Deal.
Trump on a magazine cover 40 years ago.
There he goes, making peace again. Donald Trump cannot help himself. He just has to shut down another perfectly good opportunity for World War 3. What good is a Department of Defense if you cannot have a war, blow through a trillion dollars in defense contracts, give billions of dollars worth in missiles to our allies and leave billions of dollars in equipment to the enemy when you bug out?
Trump is saving millions of lives just to win a Nobel Peace Prize because Bombardier Barack got one.
Sorry about that. I channeled my old mainstream media roots for a moment.
Fresh off ending the Hamas War (or as I prefer, the FAFO War) and turning Iran’s nuclear ambitions into rubble, The Donald is turning his attention once again on the Ukraine War that he inherited from Biden.
Today, Trump will meet with Zelensky again in the Oval Office. If Little Z behaves himself this time, maybe he will be invited to lunch with the Big Guy.
Next week, Trump will meet with Putin again, this time in Budapest, which should be quite colorful this time of year. Politico reported:
[Today’s meeting comes] after Trump and Zelensky in a phone call discussed the possibility of Kyiv acquiring Tomahawk missiles to strike more forcefully into Russia. It’s an idea the president had previously pushed back on, wary of further escalation in the three-and-a-half-year conflict.
The pair’s relationship has warmed significantly since an icy Oval Office confrontation in February, in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance slammed Zelenskyy publicly for, as they saw it, failing to adequately thank the U.S. for its support of Ukraine.
Trump has since abandoned his strategy of coddling Vladimir Putin to push Russia to the negotiating table. He declared in a Truth Social post in September that Ukraine could win back its territory, saying Russia looked like a “paper tiger.” Also in September, Trump for the first time called Russia the “aggressor” in the war.
In an interview Sunday on Fox News, Zelensky signaled that Trump’s success in negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza gave him yet more confidence that peace could be reached between Russia and Ukraine.
Thursday, Trump announced meeting Putin in Hungary.
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Axios reported:
After his call with Putin, Trump spoke on the phone with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and discussed the planned summit.
- “Preparations for the USA-Russia peace summit are underway. Hungary is the island of PEACE!” Orbán wrote on his X account.
Driving the news: Trump said on Truth Social that he believes “great progress was made” in his call with Putin.
- He said there their top advisers would meet next week to discuss the situation in Ukraine, with the U.S. represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- “President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary,” he said.
- Trump also wrote that Putin congratulated him on the deal to end the war in Gaza.
The other side: Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters that it was Trump who proposed holding the summit in Budapest, and stressed Putin agreed immediately.
- Ushakov added that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would speak to Rubio in the coming days to start working on the summit.
- Putin raised the issue of possible supply of Tomahawks to Ukraine in his call with Trump on Thursday, Ushakov told reporters.
- He stressed that Putin told Trump the Tomahawks would not change the situation on the battlefield, but would harm U.S.-Russian relations and the chance to move forward in the peace process.
What to watch: Trump said last week that he told Zelensky he might give Putin a new ultimatum: either Russia holds serious peace talks or Ukraine gets Tomahawks.
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Being scalped by Tomahawks is not the only thing Putin fears. AP reported:
India says it is looking to step up purchases of crude oil and natural gas from the U.S. as it diversifies its energy supplies and confronts criticism by U.S. President Donald Trump over its imports of discounted Russian oil.
Trump said Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally assured him his country would stop buying Russian oil, in a move that might add to pressure on Moscow to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
“There will be no oil. He’s not buying oil,” Trump said. The change won’t take immediately, he said, but “within a short period of time.”
India is the second biggest buyer of Russian oil after China. Trump cited its purchases from Moscow when he announced 50% tariffs on imports from India in August.
Trump is mixing The Art of War with The Art of the Deal.
He also sizes up people well. His abuse of Zelensky, Justin Trudeau and Keir Starmer show he does not suffer weak men well.
But Putin has confused Trump treating him as a peer with weakness on a Dubya level. Russia’s KGB leader is learning that Trump can and will play hardball.
Who does Putin have on his side? Xi and Kim Jong Un. He may have Modi depending on which way the wind blows on any particular day.
Trump has NATO, the oil barons in turbans in Arabia and the reformers in Latin America. He has restored the American president’s place as the leader of the free world through actions that speak louder than his words—which are really very good.
Success begets more success. Persistence also matters. Trump does not accept failure as anything but a delay. He is determined to get Zelensky and Putin to lay their arms and drones down.
Donna Reed used to say, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”
Trump is making the world healthy again, by ending one war at a time. |
