Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on March 6, 2014 (Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock.com)
For several days, U.S. President Donald Trump managed to distract reporters from the Jeffrey Epstein controversy by meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday, August 15 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office on Monday, August 18.
Never Trump conservative George Will examines Trump's meeting with Putin in a biting August 18 column for the Washington Post, lamenting that Putin — not the U.S. president — came across as the stronger leader during their encounter.
"As flaccid as a boned fish, Donald Trump crumpled quicker than even Vladimir Putin probably anticipated," the 84-year-old columnist argues. "The former KGB agent currently indicted for war crimes felt no need to negotiate with the man-child. The president’s thunderous demands — a 50-day deadline, a 10-day deadline, 'severe consequences,' a ceasefire before negotiations — all were just noise."
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Will continues, "As Mark Twain said, thunder is impressive but lightning does the work. Into Trump's post-Alaska vagaries about progress and agreements on 'many points,' an old question intrudes: Can the phrase 'insipid beyond words' be applied to words?"
Trump went to Anchorage hoping that Putin would agree to a ceasefire in the Ukraine/Russia War. Instead, Russian forces' bombing of Ukraine continued after Trump and Putin departed Alaska.
"Alaska clarified what was unclear only to the obtuse: Putin wants to win the war, Trump wants to end it, and as George Orwell said, the quickest way to end a war is to lose it," Will argued. "Putin insolently did not suppress his smirk while on the red carpet that Trump rolled out for him. He almost certainly already had dangerous clarity about Trump. For a nation, more dangerous than an enemy’s hatred is his contempt, which makes him reckless and implacable. Speaking to some of his generals in August 1939, Hitler said, 'Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich.' And the war came days later."
Putin, Will warned, is "yearning to restore the supposed grandeur of the Soviet Union's decrepitude" — and Trump gave him the upper hand in Anchorage.
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"Eighty-five summers ago, the United States, which began as an emanation of Europe, was saluted by Britain's prime minister in the House of Commons," Will explains. "On a dark day, June 4, 1940, he anticipated the day when 'the New World, with all its power and might, steps forward to the rescue and the liberation of the old.' Now, it is the Old World's turn to rescue the United States."
The conservative columnist continues, "It needs to be liberated from the chimera that it has no substantial stake in the outcome of high-intensity, state-on-state violence inflicted by a nuclear power obedient to a man who has actual beliefs: crackpot, but real, and menacing."
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George Will's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).