Look Out Below: We Will Pay for Trump’s Humiliation
Putin did not give Donald Trump what he needed in Alaska.
In Alaska today, the President of the United States was utterly humiliated by war criminal Vladimir Putin. It was a performance for the ages by Donald Trump, but not the kind you want to be remembered for. After a week of build-up by the regime, of touting all of Trump’s many alleged “peace deals” and practically begging Putin to deliver him a Nobel Prize, the meeting was a pathetic fiasco.
It started with an enormous, literal red carpet for Putin, which Trump theatrically took on a winding path to meet the Russian dictator. Here is the walk sped up 5X. He traverses a great deal of unnecessary distance, looking more like a guy coming out of a bar than a world leader.
Trump’s big surprise was a flyover, which included a B-2 stealth bomber. This was presumably meant to impress Putin with U.S. air power. Putin seemed amused, at best.
But Trump’s attempt to woo Putin didn’t stop there. Trump invited Putin to ride with him, alone, in the most sophisticated vehicle on earth, “The Beast.” Putin, and the huge amount of Russian press that traveled with him, were delighted.
When Putin and Trump arrived at the meeting, they sat briefly for a photo opportunity. This is the body language that encapsulated the whole affair. Trump, shrunken and beaten, protecting himself. Putin hamming it up for the cameras.
The meeting was supposed to last for six or seven hours, including a working lunch with all the assorted officials on both sides. Instead, 2 1/2 hours later, this “press conference” happened—12 minutes that made Trump in Helsinki 2018 look like FDR.
Putin spoke first, on American soil—a move which made everything else Trump said sound even weaker in comparison. Putin took the opportunity to give a long history lesson about why Alaska is really Russian after all and renewed his demand that the “primary roots” of the conflict with Ukraine be eliminated before any progress can be made. Those “primary roots” include the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
The only real “concession” Putin made was a line about how it was Joe Biden’s fault that Russia attacked Ukraine, and therefore he was happier to deal with Trump.
For Trump’s part, I’m not sure if I have seen a more broken man. He spoke for a few minutes in a husky, exhausted tone that betrayed someone absolutely at his wits end, someone who needed a win, and got nothing but more embarrassment and shame. As I have been reporting, the Epstein situation has started Trump down a steep road of collapse. This meeting will not stop it. It will accelerate it.
When a narcissist collapses, they will stop at nothing to save themselves, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. Today, Trump begged a war criminal to help, and the war criminal rejected him and embarrassed him in front the entire planet.
This will add a new deep cut to his deeply wounded ego, a cut that he will be forced to respond to through other means. Here are a few things he may do:
Reassert dominance through some other scapegoat. Trump’s narcissism will not allow him to stay in the position of “loser” for any length of time. He will, in short order, perform some other ritual of dominance against an easier target. It may be announcing the takeover of another city, or some new extreme executive order.
Reframing this humiliation as a win. Trump will never accept the idea that this meeting was a “failure” or somehow his fault. He will simply assert his success and demand that anyone who works for him characterize it that way too. And he will use Putin’s gift of blaming Biden as a way to project his own incompetence and corruption.
Purges or mass changes in his government. If Trump can’t successfully spin this as a victory with his own people, he will find scapegoats to blame in his administration. This could be used as an excuse for additional firings or other authoritarian power grabs against opponents.
Redirecting rage. Trump will want to humiliate someone to deflect his own rage and blow apart any doubts or cognitive dissonance in MAGA. He will need a target to show that he is still the alpha dog and give his base some red meat. If Trump cannot find any win with Putin, he may try stage another confrontation with a foreign adversary, certain that it was not his fault the negotiations failed.
Something really, really stupid. It is absolutely not out of the question that Trump could use this moment to stage some shock event that will shake everyone so badly we forget about Epstein and Putin. For example, he could take the opportunity to make military moves on Greenland, Canada, or Mexico.
The good news, I suppose, is that any attempt at portraying this “negotiation” as conclusive in the absence of Ukrainian involvement would be silly. While I grieve for the people being murdered in Ukraine in the absence of a ceasefire, had Trump even marginally succeeded at making it look like a “deal” was made, it would have made it harder to show just how empty this “summit” was—and harder for Zelenskyy to make his case.
When Trump humiliated Zelenskyy in the White House in February, Zelenskyy and Ukraine did not break. Now that Putin has humiliated Trump on his own turf, it’s unclear what direction Trump will take. But the world saw what happened today. We saw the weakest president in American history give up everything to a genocidal madman and get nothing but a smackdown in return. I can only hope the world sees this for what it is, and takes all necessary measures to defend Ukraine, reject Trump, and defend democracy—everywhere.
Slava Ukraini. Heroyam Slava.
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