Impotent

Let’s discuss what Donald Trump didn’t get out of his wildly oversold and wholly unproductive and empty meeting with his friend, the Russian dictator and war criminal.

He’s not getting the Nobel Prize.

He didn’t get peace in Ukraine.

He didn’t even get a ceasefire.

He didn’t get Putin to say a single word that would indicate that his war of aggression will not continue at its present level or even escalate.

He didn’t get an agreement to what the media is calling a “tri-lateral” meeting that would include Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy. In fact, at the end of the press conference, when Trump indicated that there will be some kind of follow-up meeting, Putin called out, “In Moscow,” clearly surprising Trump. That rules out Zelenskyy, who would never agree to set foot in the capital city of the enemy.

He didn’t get any business deals. Trump indicated that “some great Russian businessmen” were present but said nothing of either their participation in the discussions or what the U.S. might get out of their presence.

He didn’t get much of a distraction from the news cycle that has been dominated by his relationship with the pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A flight to Alaska, a greeting on the tarmac, a two-hour meeting, and the opportunity to say “Russia- Russia-Russia” and “hoax” and the word “criminal” at least twice doesn’t amount to much of a distraction.

He didn’t even get the opportunity to bask in the glow of his superpower get-together. Putin didn’t engage in flowery praise of Trump, and Trump didn’t say anything about how powerful Putin is. There was no chemistry on that stage between the two men.

In the words of Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Trump didn’t come away from his big meeting with Putin with a single “deliverable,” the traditional way these meetings are measured. A deliverable is something a president can take back to the United States and say to his country, see what we got? We’re going to cooperate on cyber! Nothing like that.

What did Trump come away with? A statement from Putin that the war probably wouldn’t have happened if Trump had been president, which given Putin’s aim to subsume Ukraine into some kind of new greater Russia, means that had Trump been in the White House, Putin wouldn’t have had to go to war to achieve his goal.

Trump came away from his so-called press conference with Vladimir Putin looking weak, as if he had been on the receiving end of a lengthy Putin lecture on the “root causes” of his war against Ukraine. Putin even used the phrase “root causes” in his remarks after the meeting, a reference to his allegation that Ukraine has always and historically been part of Russia. That’s a loaded term in Russia, and it is considered a disgusting lie in Ukraine, but in the context of a meeting with the President of the United States, “root causes” has no meaning. Trump’s attention span doesn’t extend to discussing the reasons for anything other than his many fake victories in golf tournaments, the root cause of which is obviously what he considers as the brilliance of his game.

Trump looked impotent standing next to the Russian dictator who had shown the world his power to get a meeting on American soil with an easily manipulated putz of a president. The signage behind Trump and Putin at the press conference said “Pursuing Peace.”

Didn’t happen. Wasn’t the subject of the meeting. Wasn’t on Putin’s agenda. Wasn’t even on Trump’s. Like everything else done by this volcano of lies and misdirection, the backdrop, and the entire exercise was as fake as his tan and his hair.