Team Trump Has a Ukraine Plan—and It’s a Total Nightmare

Donald Trump’s advisers have revealed their new plan for resolving the war between Russia and Ukraine—and it involves Ukraine’s immediate submission.

The plan effectively promises an increase in U.S. weapons aid to Ukraine so long as it shows up for peace talks with Russia, reported Reuters. And while that deal may not sound so bad, the writing between the lines isn’t so simple. Trump’s advisers envision that the peace talks—which Trump would facilitate should he win the November election—would also quietly include Ukraine ceding part of its territory that is currently occupied by Russian forces.

The concept was drawn up by retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, both former chiefs of staff on Trump’s National Security Council. Trump did not immediately sign on to “every word” of the plan, but Fleitz told Reuters that they were “pleased to get the feedback we did.”

The Kremlin told Reuters that Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to peace talks, but that any proposal by a possible future Trump administration would have to reflect the “reality on the ground.”

When pressed on the details of the plan, Fleitz explained that Ukraine would not formally need to relinquish its land to Russian forces. He did concede, however, that Ukraine was unlikely to regain control of all of its territory in the near future.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that ending the war on the borders of its current front lines—where Russia has gained a foothold in the southeast portion of Ukraine—would be “strange,” pointing to the fact that Russia had violated international law by invading it in the first place.

“Ukraine has an absolutely clear understanding and it is spelled out in the peace formula proposed by President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy, it is clearly stated there—peace can only be fair and peace can only be based on international law,” Podolyak told Reuters.

The plan’s promise to send more military aid to Ukraine only if it admits defeat and ends the war seems a bit counterintuitive—and disingenuous, considering that Trump and his advisers have done practically everything within their power to undermine sending more military aid to the embattled nation since the beginning of the year. And the plan’s obvious benefit to Russia also raises further concerns over Trump’s notoriously cushy—and sometimes subservient—relationship with Putin.

Beneath his usual bluster, Donald Trump is “concerned” about his debate with President Joe Biden on Thursday, according to former RNC spokesperson Tim Miller.

Miller pointed to Trump’s suggestion that Biden has been using performance-enhancing drugs to get “jacked up” before campaign events and his insistence that Biden take a drug test before Thursday as proof that the former president is worried about Biden’s attacks on him at the debate.

“I do think that what we can see publicly is that Donald Trump is concerned about how this debate is being framed up as you lead into the debate. That is why he’s doing all the weird stuff about Joe Biden being on drugs. It’s worth reminding everybody that he tried this exact same playbook in 2020.… But he already tried this ‘Joe Biden is on drugs’ thing. It didn’t work then,” Miller said on MSNBC.

Indeed, analysts agreed that Trump handed Biden an easy win in the first debate in 2020 by lowering expectations, attacking Biden as a feeble basement dweller, only to appear unhinged beside Biden’s relative composure. This year, not only Trump but the entire Republican apparatus may be setting itself up for a similar blunder. The RNC has made Biden’s age, depicted in selectively edited videos of gaffes by Biden on the campaign trail, a centerpiece of its campaign strategy.

Trump isn’t alone in calling for Biden to take a drug test; Texas GOP Representative Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician freshly accused of ethics violations, also accused Biden of taking performance enhancers and demanded that he submit to a pre-debate test. If Miller is right, a strong showing by Biden at the debate could be disastrous for Trump and a Republican messaging machine that seems pot committed to depicting Biden as senile.

Charlie Kirk has been a GOP bombshell since he founded Turning Point USA in 2012. He has raised millions of dollars for conservative causes and gotten thousands of young people to turn out and vote down ballot for the Republican Party. But 14 years on, Kirk’s biggest critics aren’t leftists—they’re fellow conservatives, who claim that the 30-year-old’s vision is wilting and dragging their campaigns down with it.

A brutal report published Tuesday in The Guardian notes the growing discontent with Kirk.

Tudor Dixon, a Republican candidate who lost Michigan’s 2022 gubernatorial race, has publicly vented that Turning Point’s backing meant practically nothing when it came to the ballot box.

“As a candidate who didn’t win, and who was promised that Turning Point would have a big influence in Michigan, it makes you crazy,” Dixon said on her podcast in February. “I gave up a salary for 18 months, sold my car, did everything I could to run for office. And people like [Kirk] are the reason we are not winning.”

Even in Arizona, where Turning Point has transformed the state legislature into a cohort of Trump acolytes and former Turning Point employees, Republicans have lost faith in Kirk’s approach, slamming his rhetoric as “toxic” without “winning messages.”

“Turning Point has become toxic in Arizona,” Tyler Montague, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, told The Guardian. “They’ve helped to cement an extreme worldview, creating anger that in turn generates political energy that they harness. That’s their game.”

And Kirk’s white-supremacist ideals on race have made even far-right-aligned Black communities question Trump’s values for keeping Kirk so close by. One Black pastor in Cleveland who has been close to Trump for more than a decade accused Kirk of trying to raise the next generation of Hitler Youth and claimed that Trump was only hurting his chances of winning over people of color by keeping Kirk—who has disparaged George Floyd as a “scumbag” and claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. was “not a good person”—so close by during this election season.

“Kirk talked all this negative shit about Black people, and his proximity to President Trump caused people to wonder: Is that what Trump is thinking too? I have publicly refuted Kirk because every vote counts,” Scott told The Guardian.

Donald Trump provided a small window into his preparation strategy for Thursday night’s debate hosted by CNN, and it seems like the former president is in deep, deep trouble. 

Before Trump’s rally in Philadelphia Saturday night, Trump stopped for an interview with conservative radio talk show host Chris Stigall, during which they discussed the former president’s approach to the upcoming presidential debate.

Stigall asked how Trump was feeling about CNN’s debate terms, including mutable mics and the lack of live audience, suggesting that the terms to which the former president readily agreed suddenly present an unfair burden. 

“It’s probably a one-on-three,” Trump said, referring to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the two CNN anchors tapped to host. Amid all of his whining about an event he fully opted into, Trump confirmed that his actual debate prep is nonexistent.

“People say, ‘How are you preparing?’ I’m preparing by taking questions from you and others, if you think about it,” said Trump.

It’s difficult to imagine how being interviewed by a fan could possibly prepare Trump for the difficult questions that are likely to come his way on Thursday night. Trump will likely face questions about his role in the January 6 insurrection, the millions of dollars he owes author E. Jean Carroll, or the additional millions he owes in penalties from the Trump Organization’s civil fraud case in New York. He’ll likely also face questions about his recent conviction on 34 felony charges in his hush-money trial, allegations that he stole classified documents and obstructed their retrieval, and his racketeering indictment in Georgia for a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election election. 

Trump will likely field questions about his whole range of unsavory, in many cases illegal, deeds and dangerous proclamations, which conservative pundits would never deign to ask him about. 

“So, uh, I’m preparing by dealing with you. You’re tougher than all of them, right?” Trump said, grinning crookedly. 

Stigall burst into laughter, appearing overjoyed. Trump then shook Stigall’s hand, and thanked him for being a “good friend.” Stigall promptly changed his profile picture on X, formerly Twitter, to a photo of him shaking hands with the former president. 

This is hardly on par with the “hostile environment” Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described during her Monday interview on CNN, which was ultimately cut short. Leavitt said her candidate was wading into dangerous waters so that he could reach the broadest possible audience—admitting that the debate will be the furthest thing possible from these softball interviews with his own supporters.  

But appearances like Leavitt’s, which devolved into airing grievances about Tapper’s coverage of the former president, are Trump’s real debate prep, and it started weeks ago. Through escalating conspiracy theories alleging Joe Biden will be on performance-enhancing drugs, whining about biased moderators and the weaponization of mutually agreed-upon debate terms, Trump’s spin campaign and his debate prep are really one and the same: a battle plan that demands no real strategy because it discounts the outcome before the fight even takes place. 

It’s not dissimilar from Trump’s election strategy. If you can’t beat ’em, there was no race, right? But for someone obsessed with not being a loser, it’s shocking how blatantly Trump telegraphs his inability to win. If his comments are anything to go by, Thursday night will be a fiasco.

It’s common for politicians on the campaign trail to make a show of sampling the local cuisine to look more like an “everyman.” So when Donald Trump was in Philadelphia, of course, he got a cheesesteak. But then, he did something unusual.

Trump had stopped by Tony and Nick’s Steaks Saturday to grab one of Philly’s famous sandwiches. An interviewer asked him about it, and the convicted felon contradicted himself in his answer.

“Ohhh, that was good,” Trump said. “I haven’t sampled it yet, but I will.”

Why would Trump answer the question in that way? Clearly, he wouldn’t know the sandwich was “good” unless he had tried some, but maybe he just loved the experience of having his order taken. And why not eat a hot, melty sandwich right away? It doesn’t taste as good when it’s cold.

But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has always been weird about food. He loves eating fast food such as McDonald’s because he reportedly has a fear of being poisoned and thinks those places are “safer.” He’s posted staged photos that call into question whether he eats fried chicken with a knife and fork, or even at all. In 2011, he was famously called out by Jon Stewart for eating chain-store pizza with a knife and fork. Maybe Trump didn’t want to make a mess by eating a hot, melty cheesesteak.

Or maybe he forgot if he ate it or not. Trump has shown numerous signs of cognitive decline in recent months, whether it’s fumbling through speeches at rallies, ranting about boats and sharks, or making bizarre, nonsensical claims about migrants. He continues to brag about acing a cognitive test, but he changes the details every time he relates the story. MeidasTouch even made a supercut of several of his gaffes, including him mixing up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley.

Maybe Trump ought to be a little more careful taking shots at Joe Biden and claiming he’ll be on drugs at Thursday’s presidential debate. After all, Biden’s pretty clear about what he enjoys eating.