After Donald Trump held two back-to-back summits, in an effort to get a quick ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine, not much of anything has actually changed. Unless you count the rest of the world either laughing at America's president or gingerly trying to not bruise his all-too-fragile ego. Both of those things have increased, sadly.

The whole kid-gloves treatment of Donald Trump, in an effort not to provoke a toddler-level tantrum, is just downright pathetic. What other U.S. leader has ever needed coddling and effusive false praise in order to even have a conversation with other world leaders? What other president would force a foreign leader to admire his collection of campaign hats, for that matter? Trump's narcissism knows no bounds, though.

Here is how people are talking about this sad situation:

European leaders don't believe Vladimir Putin is sincere about a peace deal -- so their strategy is to humor and praise Donald Trump until he finally reaches the same conclusion and realizes he will need to get tougher on the Kremlin.

The concerns go beyond just sucking up to Trump as well:

"There are some reasons for optimism," said one senior official from a European country who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. "But there is also concern that [Donald Trump] still isn't appreciating how hard this is and that if it doesn't come together as fast as he wants it to, he'll just get bored and lose interest."

Seems like an eminently valid concern.

We are not normally big fans of Thomas Friedman (since his track record of getting things right is so abysmal), but we had to agree with his scathing take on things this week (referencing Trump, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy):

I am really trying to be fair in analyzing the Trump-Putin-Zelensky-Europe drama that has been playing out the past few weeks. I am trying to balance President Trump's commendable desire to end the murderous war in Ukraine with the utterly personalized, seat-of-the-pants, often farcical way he is going about it -- including the energy that everyone involved has to expend feeding his ego and avoiding his wrath, before they even get to the hellish compromises needed to make peace.

For now, the whole thing leaves me deeply uncomfortable.

I have covered a lot of diplomatic negotiations since becoming a journalist in 1978, but I have never seen one where one of the leaders -- in this case Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky -- felt the need to thank our president about 15 times in the roughly four and a half minutes he addressed him with the press in the room. Not to mention the flattery that our other European allies felt they needed to heap on him as well.

When our allies have to devote this much energy just to keep the peace with our president, before they even begin to figure out how to make peace with Vladimir Putin; when they have to constantly look over their shoulder to make sure that Trump is not shooting them in the back with a social media post, before Putin shoots them in the front with a missile; and when our president doesn't understand that when Putin says to Ukraine, in effect "Marry me or I'll kill you," Zelensky needs more than just an American marriage counselor, it all leads me to ask: How is this ever going to work?

Good question. So far, the answer seems to be: "It's not." This is reflected in the headlines the summits generated, including: "The Existential Meets The Absurd In Latest Ukraine Talks," and: "Putin Is 'Laughing' After Trump's Peace Efforts, Says EU's Top Diplomat."

The whole thing has been Amateur Hour from the start. Putin offered to meet with Trump to avoid a Trump-imposed deadline, so Trump invited him to American soil and literally had American military members down on their knees to roll out a red carpet for this war criminal. Trump consulted no actual experts on either Russia or foreign policy, mostly because he had already fired them all.

Before the meeting, Trump was playing Mr. Tough Guy in interviews, stating that he was looking for an "immediate ceasefire," and there would be "very severe consequences" if Putin didn't agree to one. After meeting with Putin, Trump had been talked into abandoning any notion of a ceasefire at all, and hasn't said a peep since about tariffs or sanctions or any other pressure to get Putin to act. In a word, Trump got rolled by Putin. The headlines reflected this as well: "Trump Bows To Putin's Approach On Ukraine: No Cease-Fire, Deadlines Or Sanctions."

Putin is a master at such manipulation, and he even tossed a red herring across Trump's path ("mail-in voting is bad") which Trump gleefully chased after. Oh, and secret papers were also left on a hotel printer in the midst of the meeting and subsequently handed over to the media. The whole thing was such a fiasco that the ultimate insult (for him) was used against Trump: the whole thing was bad television.

Trump and his minions desperately tried to paint a rosy picture, claiming that Putin had agreed to two big things. The first was that Ukraine could have some security guarantees, which were described as "Article 5-like" -- Ukraine wouldn't be officially allowed to join NATO, but would get the same "if you are attacked, we all have been attacked" guarantee from them. European soldiers would be based in Ukraine to make sure that Putin knew if he ever attacked again he'd be facing all of NATO and not just Ukraine. That was what was hinted at, with that "Article 5-like" description, at least.

The second big thing was that Trump said that Putin had agreed to meet with Zelenskyy. They would either have a bilateral summit meeting or perhaps Trump would join them, or perhaps they'd meet alone first and then a trilateral meeting would happen afterwards (more Amateur Hour stuff: Trump has been calling it a "trilat," which he perhaps thinks makes him sound like some gym guy working on an obscure set of muscles or something). These meetings would both happen in the next two weeks or so, and -- Hey presto! -- the war would end and peace would descend upon the countryside. Nobel committee, please take note!

The second summit was another grandiose fiasco. Zelenskyy, understandably wary about Trump's toddler tantrums, this time invited seven European leaders to accompany him (figuring "safety in numbers," no doubt). They all sat down for the cameras, and Trump forced everyone to heap some praise on him before the meeting started. About the best thing you can say for this egomaniacal embarrassment was that it wasn't quite as bad as one of Trump's cabinet meetings (where they all try to outdo each other with praise for their Dear Leader and the whole thing turns into one giant tongue-bath).

Trump was (as usual) optimistic about the meeting and his own ability to make a deal, saying: "I believe a peace agreement at the end of all of this is something that's very attainable, and it can be done in the near future.... We will come to a resolution today, I think, on almost everything." In the end, they came to a resolution on almost nothing. The key subjects of the talks (the security guarantees and the future summit meetings) were based on Trump either lying about what Putin had promised, or just proving how badly he got duped by Putin (take your pick...).

Since the dust has settled on the two summits, the Kremlin has been increasingly raining all over Trump's parade. The Russians explicitly stated that no NATO troops in Ukraine would ever be acceptable to them, and that there were no plans for Putin to hold a meeting with Zelenskyy -- at least not until he was willing to agree to all of Russia's demands ahead of time (which isn't going to happen). Putin hasn't budged an inch from where he stood before all the summitry happened.

The upshot is that Putin successfully stalled Trump, and now Trump isn't even talking about using any sort of leverage against Russia for refusing to even consider a ceasefire. So Putin gained, and Trump lost. That's the net result of everything. And we find ourselves agreeing with the European official who warned that Trump "still isn't appreciating how hard this is and that if it doesn't come together as fast as he wants it to, he'll just get bored and lose interest."

We are now one week into the "two weeks or so" vague deadline Trump now speaks of. In one or two more weeks, he's probably hoping that everyone just forgets about the whole thing. Which, considering the continuing firehose of distractions from Trump, might actually turn out to be the case, sad to say.

Speaking of which, today brought some news on another front, as the Justice Department is finally beginning to disgorge paperwork in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. They have now released the transcripts and audio recordings of their meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell (you can see the whole transcript for yourself if you're really that interested). Unsurprisingly, she painted Donald Trump as an absolute Boy Scout, which makes the fact that she was immediately whisked to a cushy country-club prison a lot more understandable. This is a woman who has already committed numerous acts of perjury, if anyone needs reminding.

The Justice Department has also sent over the first installment of the full Epstein files to the House committee that was forced to subpoena them just before their summer break. This reportedly includes "thousands" of pages, all of which will need to be carefully vetted to redact the names of victims and anything that fits the description of child pornography (due to the underage victims). So nothing will be released to the public quite yet, but at least the process has been started. The safe bet, though, seems to be that the first release won't contain much of anything that wasn't previously known, just perhaps in more detail. If anything either truly incriminating or truly shameful exists within the files, our guess is that stuff will be in the final tranche of documents -- or just conveniently get forgotten about.

What else? Washington D.C. is now an armed camp, patrolled by National Guard soldiers (well, the tourist areas are being patrolled, to be more accurate) from multiple states. This is yet another massive distraction from Trump, who is probably deeply hoping that at least a few of them get to shoot somebody on the streets (we certainly wouldn't put it past him). They haven't been carrying loaded weapons so far, but that is now going to change.

Meanwhile, the guy who threw a footlong submarine sandwich at some of the people patrolling D.C. has now become a viral meme. He's been charged with a serious felony, which will almost certainly get laughed out of court if the case is ever tried. JD Vance got heckled when he tried to visit the troops as well, including at least one person calling him an obscenity involving a couch. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has decided that he is now a "war hero," apparently. The absurdity just keeps right on climbing, folks....

In other news, the F.B.I. is going to loosen its recruiting standards, which is going to degrade the quality of the agency. It's already been degraded enough, as evidenced by today's raid on John Bolton's house (Bolton has been a frequent critic of Trump, which almost goes without saying).

In legal news, "Alligator Alcatraz" has been ordered to shut down by a federal judge, spoiling all the cruel fun Ron DeSantis has been having. And Newsmax will have to pony up a whopping $67 million in damages to Dominion Voting Systems, for lying about them in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

And finally, a bit of cheerful news. Taylor Swift just recently appeared in a podcast with her football-star boyfriend, and by doing so smashed the record for "YouTube's most-watched podcast in its first hour." That record was previously held by Donald Trump. Apparently nobody's told him about this, since we haven't seen any nasty social media posts directed at Swift yet, but sooner or later he's bound to learn about it... and throw another toddler tantrum. It is indeed an absurd world we live in, folks.

 

Um... is South Park a Democrat? They certainly deserve some sort of appreciation, that's for sure, as their new season relentlessly ridicules the Trump administration.

Sherrod Brown raised a big pile of money right after his official announcement that's he's going to run for the Senate again next year.

But this week the choice was pretty obvious. California Governor Gavin Newsom got his redistricting plan passed by the state's legislature even before the Texas legislature was able to pass theirs. In Texas, once the governor signs it, it will go into effect (barring any court challenges), but in California the voters will have to weigh in on the plan in a special election this November.

We wrote about this yesterday, "more in sorrow than in anger," really. We have long supported the efforts at the state level to get rid of even the possibility of gerrymandering districts, but for the most part this has only succeeded in blue states (although there are exceptions). But it's tough to stand on a moral principle when the other side is trying to rig an election. So, as Newsom put it, we've got to fight fire with fire. We will be voting for the new redistricting maps in November, to put this another way, even if we despise the fact that they are necessary. We simply cannot unilaterally disarm in the battle of mid-decade redistricting.

Newsom caught our eye for an unrelated reason this week (this past couple of weeks, really), as he has been gleefully getting under Trump's skin by imitating Trump's childish social media style -- complete with random capitalizations, overuse of all-caps, snarky insults, and of course: "Thank you for your attention to this matter" at the end.

We've provided just one random example of these in the talking points, but suffice it to say Newsom's plan is working. MAGA commenters on rightwing media are going apoplectic over Newsom's posts, but their big problem is that they can't really insult Newsom's childish style because it is such a perfect parody of Trump's. Which is the whole point, of course.

Newsom is fighting Trump's fire with fire of his own in multiple ways, and his quick passage of the bills to put the new redistricting map on the ballot more than earned him this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

To Newsom, we say: "Thank you for your attention to this matter."

[Congratulate California Governor Gavin Newsom via his social media account (because, why not?), to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

This is a tough one, and it again is "more in sorrow than in anger."

This week, the Texas Democrats in the state legislature returned to the state.

This allowed the Republicans to finally have a quorum in the statehouse, and they quickly moved to pass the Texas redistricting plan. Which was, obviously, disappointing to a whole lot of Democrats.

But we do realize they didn't have a whole lot of choice. Serving in the Texas legislature is not a full-time job -- not by a longshot. They meet for a couple of months every two years, and they don't get paid much for doing so. This means they have to have another source of income -- a job or a business or whatever -- just to pay the bills and make ends meet.

This made it almost impossible for 50-plus of them to stay outside of Texas for an extended period of time. To defeat the redistricting completely, they would have had to stay out until the deadlines for candidacies passed on the state's calendar. Without checking, we're assuming this would have meant sometime next year. Which means the Democrats would have had to stay AWOL for over six months -- which is impossible for someone with a job and a family and/or other responsibilities.

So while they did shut down the first special session the governor called to redistrict the state, they reluctantly threw in the towel when he called another one and returned to the state this week.

So while we understand completely the reasons for them doing so, the return of the Texas Democrats this week was indeed a disappointment to Democrats both within Texas and everywhere else. So we are very reluctantly awarding them this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Contact Texas representatives via their official website, to let them know what you think of their actions.]

 

Volume 809 (8/22/25)

A very mixed bag this week, with a lot of other people's talking points (because they were so good). We begin with reactions to Trump's summitry efforts, move on to hitting Trump on the economy (which Democrats should really be doing on an unceasingly relentless basis), and then end with one final bit of Trumpian absurdity that is straight out of a George Orwell novel.

 

   No Nobel for that

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer got a little feisty on social media this week, in reaction to Trump's summit with Putin. Here is what he had to say in a series of tweets:

Looks like once again Trump is selling out Ukraine and bowing down to dictator Putin

No Nobel Peace Prize for that.

 

Today, Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for authoritarian thug Vladimir Putin. Instead of standing with Ukraine and our allies, Trump stood shoulder to shoulder with an autocrat that has terrorized the Ukrainian people and the globe for years.

While we wait for critical details of what was discussed -- on first take it appears Trump handed Putin legitimacy, a global stage, zero accountability, and got nothing in return.

Our fear is that this wasn't diplomacy -- it was just theater.

 

   Putin got everything he wanted

Senator Chris Murphy was even more scathing, during an appearance on Meet The Press last weekend:

That meeting was a disaster. It was an embarrassment for the United States. It was a failure. [Vladimir] Putin got everything he wanted. I mean, first of all, he wanted that photo op, right? He wanted to be absolved of his war crimes in front of the world. He was invited to the United States.... war criminals are not normally invited to the United States of America.

[Putin] is intentionally murdering civilians, he's kidnapping children, and now he got to stand next to the president of the United States, legitimized in the view of the world....

[Putin] didn't have to give up anything. Nothing. Right? President Trump said he wanted a ceasefire. It appears the ceasefire wasn't even seriously discussed. And then, third, there's no consequences.

Trump said, "If I don't get a ceasefire, Putin is going to pay a price." And then he walked out of that meeting saying, "I didn't get a ceasefire. I didn't get a peace deal, and I'm not even considering sanctions."

You heard Secretary Rubio downplay sanctions. And so Putin walks away with his photo op with zero commitments made and zero consequences. What a great day for Russia.

 

   THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, is having all kinds of fun. He has been posting parodies of Trump's social media style on his own social media account, and it seems to be seriously getting under the MAGA crowd's skin, at the very least. Here is just one example, where Newsom pokes fun at the snowflake-like response some conservatives had to Cracker Barrel changing its logo (no, really!). As you read it, remember this is just a parody of the real thing:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CRACKER BARREL?? KEEP YOUR BEAUTIFUL LOGO!!! THE NEW ONE LOOKS LIKE CHEAP VELVEETA "CHEESE" FROM WALMART, THE PLACE FOR "GROCERIES" (AN OLD FASHIONED TERM)!!! "FIX IT" ASAP! WOKE IS DEAD!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. -- GCN.

 

   Still waiting on prices to come down

Democrats have to keep relentlessly beating this drum, because it is going to be the best attack line against Trump and the Republicans for a long time to come.

"Donald Trump got elected by promising he'd magically bring prices down. Here he is from the campaign trail: 'Starting on Day One, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.' Here's another quote: 'Prices will come down. You just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast.' Well, it's been over two hundred days now, and we're still waiting and watching, and prices keep going up. What exactly has Trump done to bring prices down? Nothing. In fact, he's busy driving prices up with all his tariffs -- which are nothing more than a tax you and I have to pay. Inflation is going up because prices are going up, and Trump does not care that he lied to everyone about bringing them down."

 

   Walmart prices going way up

Trump is out of touch on the issue, and everyone who shops knows it -- so point it out!

"Prices are going through the roof everywhere you look. The 'Trump tax' is hitting everyone hard. Price hikes at Walmart have gotten so steep that shocked employees have taken to posting pictures of them on social media -- a fishing reel that went from $57.37 to $83.26, a toy T-rex that jumped from $20.00 to $39.92 and then again to a whopping $55.00 -- an increase of 175 percent. As Trump hits more and more countries with higher and higher tariffs, American consumers are going to pay the price. Look for prices to continue to skyrocket as this new Trump tax works its way through the supply chain to the store shelves, folks."

 

   Where's the beef?

Use specifics to drive the point home.

"Americans are getting some sticker shock at the grocery store when they head to the meat counter to buy beef. Prices are up, and they're about to go even higher since Trump slapped a 50 percent tariff on a country that provides a whole lot of steaks and burgers to the American marketplace. Beef prices are now going up at nearly four times the official inflation rate. Gamers are now going to have to shell out an extra 50 bucks to by a Sony PlayStation console. And because Trump is waging a war on wind and solar power, electricity prices are also heading upward -- and it's only going to get worse, this winter. Donald Trump doesn't know how to run the U.S. economy, all he knows how to do is to make everything more expensive, period. Think about that the next time you see beef prices jump up."

 

   The wrong side of history

And finally, we have a quote from Tim Walz, who reacted to Trump's ideological purge of the Smithsonian -- to remove any mention of anyone in American history who was not White, male, and straight. What's notable is that Walz said this before Trump complained about the Smithsonian focusing on "how bad Slavery was" [sic]. Walz reacted with an absolutely brilliant response:

If you're trying to erase history, you're on the wrong side of it.

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground