Trump a master negotiator no longer

[Canuck Conservative]

By Father Raymond J. de Souza
National Post (Mar. 1, 2025)
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/a-master-negotiator-no-longer

... Trump opened his Ukraine strategy by talking with Putin by phone and engaging Russian diplomats in Saudi Arabia.

This is all very familiar. When Trump wanted to get American forces out of Afghanistan, he began by committing himself to a hard deadline for same. In a master stroke of negotiating, he then found an opposing party that was only too eager to grant his demand.

It turned out that the Taliban were all too happy to drive a hard bargain on getting American forces to leave the country. So Trump went over the head of the actual Afghan government — which would have preferred American forces to keep the Taliban at bay — and cut a deal. The Taliban got what it wanted — Americans out — in exchange for granting Trump what he wanted — Americans out. The Taliban are accustomed to rather severe deportment, so it was not easy for them to keep from chuckling...

With Ukraine, Trump has committed himself to ending the war, to permanently ceding occupied Ukrainian territory to Russia, and to no NATO membership. Putin’s biggest challenge will be to conceal his glee, lest he puncture Trump’s inflated sense of diplomatic brilliance.

More than the concessions Trump has offered, the manner of the surrender is certainly maximally pleasing to Putin. In negotiating Ukraine’s fate without Ukrainian involvement, Trump has accepted the foundational premise of Putin’s invasion, that Ukraine is not real country, with no right to its own existence.

That was at the heart of the Oval Office shouting match on Friday, where Vice-President JD Vance — who campaigned for the Senate in 2022 saying, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine” — bitterly accused Zelenskyy of being insufficiently respectful and grateful. Zelenskyy has thanked the United States a thousand times, including last week, even after Trump called him a “dictator.”

What evidently rankled Vance was Zelenskyy’s unwillingness to sit quietly in the corner, meekly accepting his exclusion from determining the future of his own country. Vance considered it effrontery that the president of a country at war, which has sacrificed in blood, might choose to speak truths amidst the cataract of lies that Trump and Vance tell about Ukraine.

At the heart of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine is an existential claim, namely that Ukrainians are not a people, that its national identity is subordinate to Russia, and therefore its territory ought to be so also.

Thus in deciding to negotiate Ukraine’s future primarily with Moscow, and only bringing Zelenskyy in for a bit of coercive housekeeping on commercial matters, Trump has accepted Putin’s ethno-cultural and spiritual premise....

[Canuck Conservative]

Referring to the way Vance berated Zelinskiyy, somebody posted a picture of the Sopranos' Paulie Walnuts making a threat.

Perfect analogy - Team Trump is now looking more like a mob outfit than a than that of friendly country.

"Just sayin"

[Timber Rattler]

Pretty apparent now that both Trump and Vance are world class idiots.

 

[Canuck Conservative]

It's kind of ironic that Pres. Trump has a statue of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office ... because DT is doing everything to act like the opposite of the great RR!

Reagan stood up to the Russian lies and aggression ... while Trump repeats the Russian lies, and blames Russia's victims for any aggression

RR kept good relations with neighboring countries, because he understood that geo-politics was a team effort ... while Trump just threatens and insults his allies

RR won people over with persuasion and warmth ... Trump only has anger and threats

Pres. Trump should probably get rid of the RR bust, unless he wants to actually start living up to it ...

[Timber Rattler]

Ronald Reagan would be appalled and ashamed at what Trump and Vance are doing against Ukraine and Zelensky.  Reagan was an inveterate enemy of the Russians and their aspirations for global domination, and fought them tooth and nail without wavering.

It's tragic that so many have forgotten Reagan's stand with the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1981-1982, all the while being attacked by Ted Kennedy and Democrats for "provoking" the Soviets.  "Realism" was their watchword of the time.  Sound familiar?

Ted Kennedy Made Secret Overtures to Russia to Prevent Ronald Reagan’s Re-Election

https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/12/14/ted-kennedy-made-secret-overtures-to-russia-to-prevent-ronald-reagans-re-election/

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit

https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

Kennedy's message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign."

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. "The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few interviews on American television. "A direct appeal ... to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. ... If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. ... The senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side."

Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time--and that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.

Kennedy's motives? "Like other rational people," the memorandum explained, "[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations." But that high-minded concern represented only one of Kennedy's motives.

EXCERPT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Solidarity_with_Poland


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKVYjw1Ehc

[Right_in_Virginia]

Relax, little ones ---- Trump's still negotiating.   And, it looks like he's upped the ante.
 

Donald J Trump
@realDonaldTrump

"Know when to walk away from the table."   The Art of the Deal

2:25 PM · Jul 27, 2011
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/96284991041974273

[Timber Rattler]

Relax, little ones ---- Trump's still negotiating.   And he upped the ante.

Trump did nothing of the sort.  His vaunted "deals" all suck!

Get back to me when he actually demands concessions from Putin.

 

[Right_in_Virginia]

Trump did nothing of the sort.  His vaunted "deals" all suck!

Get back to me when he actually demands concessions from Putin.

Calm down, little one.  There are more players in these negotiations than bad, bad Putin and your cokeazoid, Zelensky.

[Timber Rattler]

Calm down, little one.  Not every step will be focused on your cokeazoid, Zelensky.

Trump's a short-sighted narcissistic thug, just like Tony Soprano.

[DB]

"The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is for good men to do noth­ing."

[Smokin Joe]

Trump's a businessman, first and always.

You don't come into the CEO's office, make demands and crap on his desk (on TV!) expecting to get what you want, especially after reneging on a supposedly settled deal.

Expect to be escorted from the building.

Z was advised (poorly) by a cadre of Democrat 'formers', who set him up for failure.
Maybe they are still getting kickbacks from the previous administration's deals, but they get no small credit for sinking the deal. That said, he abandoned all good sense listening to that lot, and assumed he could steamroll the current administration. Stupid mistake, especially for a head of state.

Hubris is a dangerous thing.

[libertybele]

Trump's a businessman, first and always.

You don't come into the CEO's office, make demands and crap on his desk (on TV!) expecting to get what you want, especially after reneging on a supposedly settled deal.

Expect to be escorted from the building.

Z was advised (poorly) by a cadre of Democrat 'formers', who set him up for failure.
Maybe they are still getting kickbacks from the previous administration's deals, but they get no small credit for sinking the deal. That said, he abandoned all good sense listening to that lot, and assumed he could steamroll the current administration. Stupid mistake, especially for a head of state.

Hubris is a dangerous thing.

Trump is the President of our United States of America and he did what was in the best interest of the American people; he called out Z for his disrespect and then showed him the door.  Well done, Mr. President, well done.