Trump Accidentally Admits His Ukraine Peace Deal Is Crumbling

Russia has apparently not agreed to a ceasefire, according to Donald Trump.

The U.S. president told reporters Sunday that Ukraine’s near-term peace prospects with Russia did not include an end to the violence.

“Did [Russian President Vladimir] Putin agree to a ceasefire to allow a referendum to take place?” a journalist asked Trump Sunday evening during a Palm Beach press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“Not a ceasefire, and that’s one of the points that we’re working on right now,” Trump said. “He feels that look, you know, they’re fighting and to stop—and then if they have to start again, which is a possibility, he doesn’t want to be in that position. I understand that position. The president feels strongly about that, or something.”

“You know you have to understand the other side,” Trump insisted, speaking of the Russian dictator while just steps away from Zelenskiy. “I’m on the side of peace, I’m on the side of stopping the war.”

The detail adds to a growing pile of evidence that Russia isn’t negotiating in good faith to end its assault on Ukraine. The hostile foreign power has offered virtually nothing—not even temporary peace—to resolve the nearly four-year conflict. Yet it has been gifted unprecedented capitulations from the Trump administration, upending longstanding U.S. policy in the process.

Last month, the Trump administration unveiled a 28-point peace plan that catered to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand Moscow Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.

Still, Ukraine is pushing toward a resolution. In the weeks since Trump unveiled his plan, Zelenskiy and his team have drafted their own version of a peace plan, which he told reporters Sunday was “90 percent agreed to,” noting that the U.S.-Ukraine security guarantees were “100 percent agreed” to.

The sensitive issue of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia, however, was still up in the air.

“I would not say agreed, but we’re getting closer to an agreement on that, and that’s a big issue. Certainly, that’s one of the big issues, and … it’s unresolved,” Trump said Sunday.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June. Last week, Russia bombed Kyiv, devastating portions of Ukraine’s war-torn capital and killing at least one person while injuring 27.

Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would end the war on his first day in office, but still the conflict has dragged on, in large part due to Moscow’s tireless and ever-shifting demands. On Sunday, Trump told reporters that he has “no deadline” to resolve the war.

By Monday morning, Russian officials suggested that Moscow’s position could change yet again as they accused Ukrainian forces of attempting to attack Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.

President Trump is claiming to have successfully bombed a “big facility” in Venezuela in yet another act of aggression and sign of the administration’s interventionist goals in the region. 

“We just knocked out—I don’t know if you read or you saw—they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told GOP donor John Catsimatidis on his Friday radio show.

A staffer close to the situation later described the target as a “drug facility.” And while details remain virtually nonexistent (how do we know this even happened?), the attack does align with the administration’s unsubstantiated narrative that the Venezuelan government is directly supporting drug traffickers. 

This is a major, violent escalation against Venezuela with absolutely zero explanation or justification to the American people. The so-called  “peace president” has bombed ships full of fishermen, stolen an oil tanker, threatened Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with regime change, and even given the CIA the greenlight to meddle there.

The Venezuelan government has yet to respond. 

Trump was later asked to shed more light on the apparent bombing while taking questions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. 

“Can you say anything more about the explosion in Venezuela that you mentioned in a radio interview?” a reporter asked. “Did the military do that?”

“Well it doesn’t matter, but there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump replied. “They load the boats up with drugs. We hit all the boats, and now we hit the area.... It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement … and that is no longer around.” 

He also refused to confirm whether the attack was performed by the CIA, but said that he knew “exactly who it was” but didn’t “want to say who it was.”

This story has been updated.

Rogue MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says President Trump told her not to identify Jeffrey Epstein’s client list because his “friends” would be upset.

“My friends will get hurt,” the president told Greene, according to a New York Times Magazine interview published Monday. Trump called up the Georgia representative after she promised to identify the abusers in a September congressional hearing. One of MTG’s staffers added that Trump yelled at the congresswoman so loud that everyone in her office could hear it.

Trump also attacked the victims Greene was fighting for, so she turned to fellow Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who were able to successfully force the administration to begin to release some heavily redacted files with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“How did all of this end up to a point where it was about releasing files about women who were raped, and not the serious things that I think truly matter about helping to get our economy stabilized again?” she said. “Help reduce the cost of living, fix the housing market, fix health insurance—for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these people?”

Greene has made her distaste with Trump’s policymaking known, from Epstein, to endless war, to affordability. Her split with Trump is just one of many rifts within the GOP that will likely evolve as this second term drags on.

The president had yet another strange mark on his hands over Christmas, once again raising concerns that his health is not what he has claimed it to be.

Donald Trump—the oldest person to ever be elected president—was photographed with what appeared to be another bruise on Christmas Eve, this time marring his left hand.

The 79-year-old has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body.

Trump’s health has been a topic of concern since he was on the campaign trail, when reports circulated that he couldn’t remember the contents of cognitive exams he claimed to ace. Since then, the president has regularly been spotted with odd discolorations on his right hand.

He also routinely appears discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders. Over the course of the last year, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times during critical public appearances. It’s happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the Pope’s funeral.

Concern only continued to grow when Trump appeared for 9/11 ceremonies in September with a sagging mouth and drooping expression, which some onlookers suggested could be a result of a stroke.

The following month, the president received MRI scans at Walter Reed Medical Center. Those tests are used by doctors to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. At least one former White House physician questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Nonetheless, Trump said the tests came back “perfect.”

Virtually no other topic—besides the Epstein files—irks Trump more, according to his advisers. Earlier this month, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s public appeal for the release of Trump’s medical records incited a wave of fury from the president. After Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that it was “OK with me” to release the MRI results, he took to Truth Social to accuse the one-time vice presidential candidate of being “incompetent.”

The MRI results, according to the White House physician, allegedly illustrated that Trump is “perfectly normal.”

Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown—whose 2018 reporting essentially reopened the Jeffrey Epstein case—wants to know why her flight information is in the Epstein files. 

“Does somebody at the DOJ want to tell me why my American Airlines booking information and flights in July 2019 are part of the Epstein files (attached to a grand jury subpoena)?” she wrote Sunday on X. “As the flight itinerary includes my maiden name (and I did book this flight) why was the DOJ monitoring me?”

“I expected my name to be in the Epstein files, since the Miami Herald published the series ‘Perversion of Justice,’” Brown continued on her Substack. “But what I didn’t expect to see was an American Airlines flight record from 2019 with my full name on them, including my maiden name, which I don’t use professionally. It’s an unusual name, so it’s clear it’s me.” 

The released flight logs occurred during the first Trump administration, around the time of Epstein’s arrest, which begs the question: Why were they following the reporter who was instrumental in putting Epstein’s crimes back in the public eye?

If there’s more to this, then Brown may have another book to write.