For weeks, President Donald Trump and his aides have assured he was never actually fooled by Vladimir Putin.
When Trump – after years of saying warm things about the Russian president — finally did recently turn on the longtime US adversary, it had to be because Putin had somehow changed.
And now despite all those attempts to rewrite history, Trump walks into his most high-profile Putin meeting at risk of again looking like a dupe.
Granting Putin an audience on US soil was already a risk, if history was any guide, and the stakes have only risen since the announcement of the Alaska summit just a week ago – thanks to Trump himself.
Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Trump and the White House were initially careful to manage expectations. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt likened it to a mere “listening exercise.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed. Trump said this was just the first meeting – suggesting a second meeting (possibly including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky) would have to be earned.
But by Thursday, that quickly gave way to Trump’s penchant for promising the world.
He twice assured he felt a deal was impending.
“I think (Putin) does want the whole thing, and I think he has wanted the whole thing,” Trump said of Ukraine on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show. “But because of a certain relationship that he has with me running this country, I believe now he’s convinced that he’s going to make a deal. He’s going to make a deal. I think he’s going to.”
Trump added in the Oval Office later in the day: “I think President Putin will make peace.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Trump predicted much the same thing six months ago.
“I mean, I know him very well,” Trump said in February. “Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn’t. … I trust him on this subject.”
But Putin clearly didn’t want peace at that juncture, as the last six months have shown. And those types of comments became a problem when Trump suddenly decided to start criticizing the Russian president, apparently in frustration over his reluctance to help deliver Trump’s much-promised peace deal.
How could the US president really have believed Putin wanted peace – so much so that he would publicly vouch for him in that manner?
If you look closely at how Trump has described his turnabout on his Russian counterpart, it looks a lot like tacit acknowledgement that he had indeed succumbed to his flattery and misjudged him.
Trump repeatedly talked about how Putin said nice things but then didn’t back it up with action. He at one point called it “bullshit.”
Trump’s also spoken openly about how he thought a peace deal in Ukraine would be easier. “I thought the easiest one would be this one,” he said Thursday.
And in perhaps the most telling instance, Trump last month recalled talking to first lady Melania Trump about a “wonderful” conversation with Putin – right before she told him about Putin bombing yet another city.
It sounded a lot like the president admitting Putin had dazzled him, only to quickly get a reality check.
At the very least, Trump has taken very little care to avoid the perception that Putin has pulled the wool over his eyes, over many years.
Which brings us to Friday.
It’s possible Trump has good reason to believe Putin is ready to deal; we’re not privy to the behind-the-scenes machinations and we still don’t know what precisely prompted this meeting. But by Trump’s new standards for dealing with Putin, words aren’t supposed to be trusted; it’s action to back it up that’s required.
Beyond that, new reporting adds to the evidence that Trump might not really know what he’s dealing with. Early Thursday morning, CNN reported that Trump has been asking White House officials and Europeans what’s changed about his counterpart.
“Many around Trump are now trying to give him the idea that Putin changed so he has a reason to say that he wasn’t wrong in his initial impression coming into office that Putin is a good guy,” a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
It’s easy to see why this would be an attractive narrative to Trump. But the idea that he might actually buy into it wouldn’t exactly speak well of his ability to read Putin and process the intricacies of diplomacy – especially given people have been trying to tell Trump for a very long time that Putin is the bad guy.
Lots of Americans seem to see these same problems in their president’s approach to Putin.
Despite Trump’s much-cultivated reputation as deal-maker, Americans have very little confidence in his ability to strike a good one here. A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday showed 59% of Americans had little or no confidence in Trump to make wise decisions about the war in Ukraine, compared to just 16% who were “very” confident. (The rest – 24% – were only “somewhat” confident.)
When Americans were asked whether Trump favored one side or another too much, about half who offered opinions said he sided with Russia too much. (The rest were mostly Republicans who said Trump had been evenhanded.)
Previous polling has also shown that many Americans fear that even a potential deal with Russia will prove too favorable to Putin.
Friday could be Trump’s chance to prove those people wrong – that he can actually forge a deal, and a good one at that.
But one could be forgiven for fearing a repeat of the mistakes of the past.