The latest person to gain President Donald Trump’s attention on foreign policy would be an unlikely character for any other president. Michael McCune, a 62-year-old DJ and karate teacher in Arizona, made a social media post that caught Trump’s eye, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
On Sunday, Trump shared McCune’s 586-word Facebook post — which is about his contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — on Truth Social, where he has 9 million followers. In doing so, Trump made something of a “fresh declaration of U.S. policy,” according to the Post.
“Trump’s elevation of the Facebook post showed just how easy it can be for someone like McCune to become part of the president’s unusual media diet — and appear to influence U.S. policy,” write Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Birnbaum.
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“Trump played both sides like a master chess player,” McCune wrote in a local Facebook group. “In the end, Zelenskyy will have no choice but to concede, because without U.S. support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia. And once U.S. companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences.”
The post quickly began going viral, and then Trump found it.
Experts had been unsure as to whether Trump was still interested in negotiating a deal to gain access to minerals in Ukraine. “Continuing to pursue the deal… would suggest a continued interest in salvaging relations with Kyiv — and, potentially, continued support for the country in its war against Russia,” Sanchez and Birnbaum write.
“McCune was clearly on board with the plan, and Trump’s decision to quote him hinted that he still was, too," they ad. "By endorsing McCune’s viewpoint, Trump was essentially making a fresh declaration of U.S. policy — in the voice of a small-town karate instructor.”
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Trump is “connected with the minds and the hearts of the American people,” McCune told the Post. “Instead of looking at me like, ‘Hey, this guy’s a nobody,’ or whatever, he took it for what it was and said, ‘Hey, I like the words here.’ Maybe he felt like it captured the strategy.”
McCune was previously a Democrat, and he voted for former President Barack Obama. It was Trump’s first campaign that convinced him to switch parties. He said his experience as a “lifelong practitioner of martial arts, strategy, and philosophy” informed his Facebook post.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “I feel honored, actually, that he would share some of the philosophies and what I saw… I can’t tell you what it is he saw or how he resonated with it, but obviously he felt it was something and worthy enough to share. And so, I’m honored.”