Trump’s October Surprise
I t rained most of Sunday in Washington, as the remnants of Hurricane Isaias washed over the East Coast.
Unable to golf, and stuck inside the White House, President Trump spent part of his morning on social media touting the size of his rallies and defending Christopher Columbus.
He also declared that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt strikes against each other’s energy infrastructures.
Except that he hadn’t first confirmed that with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—and Russia spent the hours that followed bombarding Ukraine with missiles and drones, hitting a Kharkiv power plant.
Trump’s inability to bring the Iran war to a close has left him incensed but also oddly paralyzed, two people close to him told us.
One of them, an adviser, said that Trump “is used to snapping his fingers and having the whole world—Republicans, world leaders, the media—come to attention, and he is losing his mind that Iran won’t listen.” Iran has resumed menacing oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and the average price of diesel in the United States has crossed the $6-a-gallon mark, raising the cost of goods that travel the nation’s highways on trucks.
Republicans are panicked that those high energy prices could help Democrats take control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections that are now only three weeks away.
Trump has been searching for a scapegoat, and appears to have settled on Ukraine.
Although blaming a European country that’s fighting for its existence for the rise in global oil prices might seem implausible, Trump seems to prefer that to accepting responsibility for his decision to attack Iran.
His broadsides against Ukraine, moreover, are consistent with his decade-long deference to Vladimir Putin.
With rare exceptions, Trump has aligned with Moscow over Kyiv throughout the four-and-a-half-year war.
He wants Ukraine to end the fighting—and has pressured the country to agree to terms that Zelensky finds unacceptable.
A U.S. president siding with the Kremlin is quite an October surprise .
But in just the past few days, Trump appears to have fully turned against Ukraine.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.theatlantic.com — the content belongs to The Atlantic.
