The Dictatorship
Team Trump lowered expectations before the Putin summit. Now we may know why.
Last week, the White House blew past its own deadline of imposing sanctions on Russia for continuing its three-year invasion of Ukraine, and then, in a misguided effort to clean up that mistake, President Donald Trump gifted Russian President Vladimir Putin a one-on-one meeting in Alaska. It was impossible to make sense of what Trump expected to gain by doing so. It’s not even clear what Trump wants, other than a Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump said he and Putin had decided not to try for a ceasefire at all, “which often times do not hold up.”
It’s even less apparent now what Trump wanted and expected. But after Trump and Putin met for more than two hours Friday, and then praised each other to the media for about 12 minutes, it was clear that Trump, in his rush to meet with Putin, not only risked whatever was left of his image as a dealmaker-in-chief, but he also may have damaged the United States’ image as a global champion for democracy.
Did the meeting bring us any closer to a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine? Trump said the two countries “haven’t quite gotten there” but “made some headway” and then landed on the tried-and-true holding statement that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
He said, “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate. And I’ll, of course, call up President Zelenskyy and tell him about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”
Then, early on Saturday, a few more details were released. Trump said he and Putin had decided not to try for a ceasefire at all, “which often times do not hold up,” but instead work directly on a peace agreement. Zelenskyy confirmed he would visit Trump in Washington to discuss that possibility on Monday. But the end result of Friday’s meeting remains unchanged.
Notably, before the summit, Trump had upset Zelenskyy and Europe when he said, with no input from Ukraine, that in a ceasefire deal “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.” Russia elaborated that it anticipated getting control of all of eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the Trump team planned to move ahead with revoking the legal statuses of more than 200,000 Ukrainian refugees living in the United States.
While even anodyne meetings between friendly heads of state are typically highly choreographed, with goals and discussion boundaries outlined well in advance by other officials, Trump’s freewheeling style and misplaced confidence that he has a personal relationship with Putin, a former KGB officer, created an unnecessary level of unpredictability to the proceedings in the days leading up to the so-called “Pursuing Peace” event.
“If you roll into the meeting not prepped, you can get jammed by Putin,” Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration, said last week. “Summits are to achieve an objective that advances American national interests. They’re the means to end, and I sometimes feel that Trump feels the meeting is an end in itself.”
Trump’s misplaced confidence that he has a personal relationship with Putin, a former KGB officer, created an unnecessary level of unpredictability to the proceedings.
When it appeared that Trump was going to walk into that meeting with Putin and offer him part of Ukraine on a platter, other countries took up the pro-democracy mantle the U.S. had dropped. The European Union objected to the concept of appeasing invaders who ignore national boundaries, an experience Europeans are keen to avoid after the infamous 1938 meeting that preceded World War II. Also, after a virtual meeting with Trump and other leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed that “the territorial issue relating to Ukraine cannot and will not be negotiated by anyone but the Ukrainian president.” But Macron maintained that something needed to come out of this meeting, such as a ceasefire and a return of kidnapped Ukrainian children.
The pressure on Trump to actually consider the details and impacts of his statements worked — at least to a degree. The White House dramatically lowered the expectations that any ceasefire or peace settlement would be reached by referring to the summit as “a listening session,” during which Trump would simply tell Putin, “You’ve got to end this war.” Shortly before the meeting began, Trump also stated he is “open to the possibility of security guarantees” for Ukraine, though how that can be managed without membership in NATO — the multinational entity holding the line against Russian aggression — remains to be seen.
At the beginning of the meeting, there was a palpable sigh of relief from European allies as the real-time decision was made for Trump and Putin to meet alongside their senior diplomats. This at least guaranteed that there’d be some level of note-taking, that American officials would have basic insight into the discussions and that the world would not be left to rely solely on the Russian spin of the events. The idea of Trump meeting Putin without those parameters in place wouldn’t have been a worry if Trump hadn’t had secret meetings with Putin in the past where no one else knows what really happened.
But Russia clearly felt like it could flex its muscle even heading into this meeting. The Russian foreign minister arrived in the U.S. wearing a CCCP sweatshirt, something he has not done before. Russian officials began telling media outlets they anticipated getting mineral rights in Alaska.
While the Russian energy sector and economy is suffering, the truth is Putin didn’t need anything more than a photo of him on the same military base the U.S. once used to counter the Soviets. Trump legitimized Putin as the leader of a superpower that must be dealt with directly and not a rogue state kicked out of the G8. Trump completely ignored U.S. sanctions and the international arrest warrant for Putin, essentially siding with Putin against the democratic world order. He again illustrated how potentially easy it is for him to be manipulated into playing second fiddle to Putin’s imperial ambitions, gaining nothing for himself or the U.S. in return.
The Russian foreign minister arrived in the U.S. wearing a CCCP sweatshirt.
After 20 minutes of speaking in Russian to the mostly American media, Putin, who speaks English well enough, closed out his time in Alaska by saying: “Next time, in Moscow.”
Trump said Putin’s remark would get him “a little heat,” but that he “could see it possibly happening.”
Putin naming Moscow as the site of a follow-up meeting is another way way of proclaiming that Russia is back in the great power game.
Thanks to the president who wants us to believe he’s the world’s best negotiator and maker of deals.
Nayyera Haq is an assistant dean at Syracuse Maxwell School of Public Affairs. She previously served as a senior director focusing on national security and economic policy at the White House, a senior adviser at the State Department and spokesperson at the U.S. Treasury, where she advised the country’s top leaders. She hosts conversations on SiriusXM talk radio and was an evening news anchor and chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Black News Channel.
The White House is pushing back against mounting criticism that President Donald Trump has not formally addressed the search for a missing American airman in Iran after the country shot down its first U.S. warplane since the raging conflict began.
The president has not made any public speeches or appearances regarding the search-and-rescue operation. His last public address was on Wednesday, when he gave a primetime speech in which he attempted to make a case for his war to the nation.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sought to quell questions from reporters and speculation swirling on social media by issuing a statement on X late Saturday afternoon. “There has never been a President who has worked harder for the American people than President Trump. On this Easter weekend, he has been working nonstop in the White House and Oval Office. God Bless him,” Cheung said.
Questions about Trump’s whereabouts came to a boil on Saturday as one freelance photographer who covers the White House sought to put a rest to a rash of guesswork — untethered to any evidence.
An hour later, Cheung issued his statement noting that Trump spent Saturday working at the White House.
MS NOW spotted a Marine sentry standing guard outside the West Wing a couple of times on Saturday, suggesting the president was working inside. Notably, Trump did not visit his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, outside Washington on Saturday as he usually does when he stays at the White House on weekends.
In an interview with NBC on FridayTrump said the downing of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet over Iran would not affect ongoing negotiations with the country. When asked by The Independent what he’d do if the pilot is harmed or captured by Iranians, Trump replied: “Well, I can’t comment on it because — we hope that’s not going to happen.”
But on Saturday, he issued a fresh threat to Iran on his 10-day deadline, which expires Monday, for the country to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
The president also posted about a “massive strike in Tehran” which allegedly killed “many of Iran’s Military Leaders,” though Trump did not provide additional details on the strike he cited. The White House did not respond to MS NOW’s inquiry on when the strike happened and whether any new military leaders were killed.
Emily Hung is an associate White House producer for MS NOW.
Like many Americans, President Donald Trump has become fixated on Alcatraz, the notorious, frequently fog-shrouded California island fortress in the San Francisco Bay.
But for Trump, the defunct prison is more than a pop-culture, literary and cinematic phenomenon reminiscent of an era when the federal government dealt with gangsters so dangerous they were jailed on a remote, maximum-security island. It’s an opportunity to build “a state-of-the-art secure prison facility.”
And the president wants to use at least $152 million worth of taxpayer dollars to turn the dilapidated facility — shuttered in 1963 because its remoteness made it too expensive to operate — into a functional federal prison.
The White House sent Congress an outline of Trump’s spending priorities for the upcoming fiscal year on Friday. In it was a $5 billion request for the Bureau of Prisons to renovate the country’s “crumbling detention facilities.” More than $150 million of that would be directed toward upholding “the president’s commitment to rebuild Alcatraz.”
The money would cover the first year of project costs, the White House said. But that number pales in comparison to the projected cost of fully restoring Alcatraz, which has not housed a prisoner since the early 1960s.
In its heyday, operations at Alcatraz cost three times more than the average federal prison, according to a 1959 report published by the General Services Administration that assessed the long-term viability of keeping the prison open. Jailing one inmate on the island cost $10 per day, compared to $3 in other prisons.
The prison was closed in the early 1960s because its remoteness and proximity to salt water corrosion ultimately made it too expensive to sustain. Everything from water to food and fuel had to be sent to the island by boat. The logistical challenges of holding inmates on the island long term won’t just disappear, critics argue.
California’s politicians have balked at Trump’s proposal, arguing it would erase an important part of American history and cut into San Francisco’s already struggling local economy. Alcatraz generates about $60 million in tourism revenue every year, according to the National Park Service, which operates the public museum on the island.
“Rebuilding Alcatraz into a modern prison is a stupid notion that would be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and California Democrat whose district encompasses swaths of San Francisco, said in a statement on X.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, dismissed the notion as unserious when Trump first began flirting with the idea last spring.
“If the federal government has billions of dollars to spend in San Francisco, we could use that funding to keep our streets safe and clean and help our economy recover,” Lurie wrote in a post on X after Trump deployed a delegation of federal officials — which included his now former Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Prisons Director William Marshall — to size up the prison last July.
After the visit, Bondi teased the idea of using a renovated Alcatraz to imprison “illegal aliens.” And Trump suggested Alcatraz could serve as a model to counter former President Joe Biden’s border policies.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said last year it would issue a “leave no stone unturned” directive to “determine whether the iconic Alcatraz can, once again, serve as a fortress of law and order.” Congress would need to approve Trump’s request for funding the Alcatraz project.
Alcatraz was designated a National Historic Landmark in the 1980s, giving it legally protected status. It’s unclear how the White House would circumvent that designation to open a federal prison. The White House declined to comment to MS NOW’s request about its plan to navigate Alcatraz’s legal protections, referring questions to the Office of Management and Budget.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has focused on what he calls “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” which has included revamping the Smithsonian Institution and national parks in his image — including a planned 250-foot arch along the Potomac River — while demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for his new ballroom.
As those plans become legally imperiled, his Alcatraz proposal also stands to face a battle.
“Alcatraz is a historic museum that belongs to the public,” Pelosi said. “San Franciscans will not stand for Washington turning one of our most iconic landmarks into a political prop.”
Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
As the U.S. military searched Saturday for the missing crew member of an American F15-E fighter jet downed over Iran, critics slammed President Donald Trump for not speaking more forcefully about finding the airman and for overstating his war’s accomplishments.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who appeared on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” Saturday, decried Trump’s speech to the nation earlier this week in which she said he “bloviated and bragged about the destruction of Iran’s ability to compete in this war,” which she said “seemed like he was just going to incite such an attack on our military.”
“So I pray for the safe return of the other pilot of the F-15, and I pray for a swift end to this war,” Dean said.
With the U.S. military in a race against time to locate the missing American aviator, the president has said very little about the search.
“Number one, we haven’t obliterated Iran’s capability,” Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, appearing on the same MS NOW show, said, referring to Trump’s claim on March 16 that the U.S. had “literally obliterated” Iranian threats. “That’s, that’s ridiculous to say.”
He said the Trump administration should be “pulling out all stops” to find the missing airman. Instead, Hertling noted, Trump has tepidly said “he hopes we’re going to find the other crew member and he’s not going to comment on what we’re going to do if we don’t.”
“You move mountains to try and find that individual, get them back to safety,” he said.
Shortly after the military plane went down Friday, Trump touted the idea of seizing Iranian oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz. But he had yet to publicly condemn the attack. And on Saturday, the president remained mum on the missing service member, saying in a Truth Social post early reminding Iran of his imposed deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz: “Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!”
Later Saturday afternoon, Trump posted a one-minute video allegedly of a “massive strike in Tehran,” which he said killed “many of Iran’s Military Leaders.” The timing of the strike and the source of the video were not known. MS NOW reached out to the White House for clarification and additional information about the president’s post.
Iran’s successful targeting of the U.S. aircraft suggests a different wartime reality than the one Trump conveyed in his address to the nation on Wednesday: Iran still has the military capacity to strike U.S. service members and target critical infrastructure deep within its American-allied Gulf Arab neighbors.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday on MS NOW’s “Velshi” that Trump’s approach to the war overall is “problematic.”
“We’ve got an airman behind enemy lines trying to survive and trying to be rescued. And we should all think about him,” Smith said. “We should also think about the 13 service members who have been killed and the hundreds who have been wounded. So yes, that search is front of mind right now on the war in Iran.”
Bryan Stern, a U.S. military intelligence veteran who operates Grey Bull Rescue, a nonprofit organization that runs high-risk rescue missions in active war zones, said in an interview with MS NOW that “the life expectancy of a downed pilot behind enemy lines decreases exponentially every few hours.” And he said the Iranian regime Iran is “incentivized” to keep the U.S. service member alive for leverage in negotiations with the U.S. and Israel.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a staunch Trump ally, said after speaking with the president Saturday morning, “I am completely convinced that he will use overwhelming military force against the regime if they continue to impede the Strait of Hormuz and refuse a diplomatic solution to achieve our military objectives.” Graham did not mention the missing U.S. airman.
Trump claimed in his address that the “enemy suffered” clear and “devastating large-scale losses” in a matter of weeks. But less than three days after his prime-time speech, Tehran downed a two-seat fighter jet and struck at least two other American aircraft, including a Blackhawk helicopter involved in search efforts, injuring several of its crew members.
One crew member of the two-person F15-E jet was rescued by U.S. forces Friday. The second airman who is missing has been declared “DUSTWUN,” or “Duty Status, Whereabouts Unknown.”
Iran reportedly has offered a sizable reward to anyone who locates the missing U.S. military service member. The lone U.S. pilot of an A-10 Warthog attack jet that went down in Iran was rescued.
Trump declined to say what actions U.S. forces may take if the missing F-15E crew member is captured or harmed by the Iranians because “we hope that’s not going to happen,” he said in a phone interview with The Independent shortly after the jet went down Friday.
Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
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