Since Donald Trump’s ill-fated summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska — at which the U.S. president teased a quick resolution to Russia's war on Ukraine that never came to pass — things have gone further south with the Russian president finding new ways to “thumb his nose” at his American counterpart.
That is the opinion of both MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist, as well as longtime Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who all pointed out on Tuesday that Trump is being bested on the world stage by Putin.
Then, over the weekend, Putin took part in a summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India that was hosted by President Xi Jinping of China.
According to the “Morning Joe” panel, it shows that Putin has Trump’s number.
‘’I mean you literally had Putin and Modi holding hands yesterday,” Geist observed. “Clearly, this meeting was a shot at President Trump who — by the way, the number of drone attacks since that summit in Anchorage between President Trump and President Putin has doubled. He's only stepped up the war, Putin, since that summit.”
“It's been absolutely savage,” Scarborough remarked, "and you wonder at what point the U.S. Senate steps in and says, ‘Enough, we're going to pass this bill, Mr. President, and we need you to come along with us on it.’ How long until the president says to the Senate, ‘All right, go ahead.’ I mean, it clearly, clearly, clearly, is Putin thumbing his nose at the United States of America.”
“I thought that the summit at Tianjin was a significant setback for the United States," Ignatius stated. “The image of Vladimir Putin holding hands with the leader of India, Narendra Modi, it was a sign that Putin is getting away with it. That is three years into this war he is now claiming this was the West's fault and he has an audience of prominent world leaders who agree with him, including somebody who was a key person in America's efforts to create a new kind of informal partnership to contain China, namely India.”
As for the Ukraine war, Ignatius suggested Trump may just throw up his hands and give up trying to end it.
"This is most likely: He's going to decide to walk away,'" Ignatius said. "'I tried, you know, I've done my best, that's it, I'm out of here,’ which would be a terrible embarrassment for him, not to say a real moral quandary for the United States, which is to help Ukraine resist this Russian aggression."
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