Serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio has a variety of functions in the second Trump administration. But one thing Rubio is staying away from, according to Financial Times' Edward Luce, is Jared Kushner and U.S. envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff's attempts at a Russia/Ukraine deal.

"There is a reason why Marco Rubio runs from the sound of gunfire," Luce writes in Financial Times. "Though he is America's secretary of state and national security adviser — the first to combine those roles since Henry Kissinger — Rubio can sense a losing bet or three. Whether that is trying to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine, nuclear talks with Iran or fixing Gaza, he lacks the real estate background that President Donald Trump wants in his negotiators. Politicians typically crave the limelight. That Rubio is unbothered by being out of it tells us quite a lot."

Luce continues, "Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff do know real estate — and they are both billionaires who mix business with politics. This gives them credibility in speaking for Trump. That is partly why both (Russian President) Vladimir Putin and (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelensky treated them with such respect on their fruitless trip to Moscow and Kyiv last weekend. They come with tote bags of promised 'win-win' investment booms that will flow from any deal. But their eyes might be bigger than their stomachs. Hammering out a deal that will stick is hard enough. If their true goal is dessert, however, they are likely to mess up the main course."

A "core Kushner-Witkoff tactic," according to Luce, is "to seduce their interlocutors with the lure of post-war bonanzas."

"Why should Ukrainians and Russians keep killing each other when they could be partnering with the U.S. to dig up critical minerals and build AI data centers?" Luce argues. "This misreads both men. Though estimates vary, Putin is worth a lot more than either of Trump's envoys, as well as Trump himself. Putin wants something that imagined post-ceasefire deals cannot buy, which is to reabsorb Ukraine into his cherished Russian motherland, in full or in part. Dessert is also not at the forefront of Zelensky's mind. His job is to defend Ukraine from Russia."

Luce adds, "In practice, business prospects keep Trump and his envoys in the game, not the other way round. Fixation on downstream benefits pushes them further from El Dorado."

Vladimir Putin might be President Donald Trump's favorite dictator, but according to a new piece from The i Paper, the Russian leader is "making a fool of Trump again," and this time, it is primed to help him and the GOP crumble in the midterms.

Longtime Washington, D.C., correspondent Simon Marks published a new analysis for the outlet on Sunday, detailing how overboard Trump's special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff went with his "gushing" praise of Putin during a recent visit.

"Thank you so much for having us," Witkoff said, placing a hand to his heart. "When we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all."

Later in the visit, Putin said that the "situation is difficult," which Marks said could have potentially referred to either his war with Ukraine, which Witkoff and Jared Kushner were ostensibly there to help negotiate an end to, or to the upcoming U.S. midterms, which are widely expected to go poorly for Trump and the GOP.

"Perhaps the Russian leader meant both, knowing that he and America’s voters are equally likely to give Trump short shrift in the days and weeks ahead," Marks wrote, later adding, "Nothing emerged publicly from Saturday’s meeting to suggest any kind of breakthrough, even though the White House described the talks with Putin as making 'substantive plans for next steps' that will only be revealed in 'coming weeks.' That suggests no effort by Putin to provide Trump with the immediate lifeboat he is seeking to end the Ukraine war in time for America’s midterms. With the US war on Iran also unresolved, Trump and his fellow Republicans remain set to traverse the election campaign without any significant achievements to trumpet regarding either conflict."

Putin, he explained further, has been playing Trump, Witkoff and Kushner "like a violin" throughout these negotiations, "raising hopes of some kind of possible breakthrough, and then gleefully dashing them sometimes hours later." Trump claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that, if reelected, he would be able to bring an end to the war in Ukraine within a matter of days, citing his good relationship with Putin, but the reality has been wildly different since then. The Russian leader has proven unwilling to give any edge to his enemies through diplomatic compromises, continuing to demand the surrender of Ukrainian territories to Russia in order to cease the conflict.

Between this quagmire and the one in Iran, Trump and the GOP have been left with little or nothing to tout to voters on his promise to end costly foreign wars.

"'Incredible stories and incredible memories' will indeed abound," Marks concluded. "But most of them may be told by the Russians, as they explain to their friends and loved ones how they toyed with Trump and his representatives like a cat with a mouse, and kept slaughtering Ukrainians with impunity."

Early Tuesday morning, a U.S. C-17A landed in Moscow after originating from Washington.

A Brussels-based photographer commented, "I thought it a bit odd this morning, when my flight took off from Riga, that I saw a business jet A319 (not 100 percent sure), with no official markings, or at least I did not see any, facing this C-17, and in the back there were, four or five cars with red diplomatic plates."

An X account that calls itself the "Open Source Intelligence Monitor" explained, "The C-40B is operated by the 89th Airlift Wing and is used to transport senior U.S. government officials, including Cabinet-level officials and senior military commanders, on official business," the account said. "Vehicles displaying diplomatic license plates were also observed near the aircraft in Riga. This suggests a senior U.S. government official may have been aboard the C-40B and could now be in Moscow, although the identities of any passengers and the purpose of the trip have not been confirmed."

CBS News reporter Jennifer Jacobs then uncovered that the top official for President Donald Trump was CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

The White House hasn't released who Ratcliffe is meeting with or what his purpose is in meeting with Russian officials.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin claimed it had "no information" about the visit.

"The last direct flight of a U.S. registered jet to Russia from Europe took place in January, carrying special envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner for peace talks with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine," claimed the Moscow Times.

Moscow also said that it isn't clear when the next meeting with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff will take place. The two men have been part of the negotiation team for ending the Iran war.

Ratcliffe was a prominent congressional critic of the FBI’s Russia investigation during Trump's first term. In 2025, as CIA director, he ordered a review criticizing the process behind the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence operation to help Trump in 2016. The review questioned trade craft and procedure, but did not disprove the core conclusion, his own agency said.

Trump’s Russia connection is best described as a long-running mix of business history, campaign contacts and policy conduct; it was never investigated whether Trump was personally conspiring with Russia.

Critics allege Trump has downplayed Russian election interference. Trump denies any wrongdoing and says his approach seeks leverage and peace.

President Donald Trump is traveling considerably less in his second term than he did in his previous one between 2017 and 2021. It was assumed the 80-year-old was slowing down or couldn't hack it with the rigorous schedule he once kept. But it appears there might be another reason, Maggie Haberman teased on Friday.

Speaking to CNN's Audie Cornish, Haberman, co-author of the new book Regime Change, explained that the administration is scared.

Reports are unfolding about the shocking revelations that the reason Trump swapped planes in Turkey to fly part of the way back to the U.S. is there were credible threats of a possible attack on Trump's plane.

"This is a president who has survived assassination attempts," Cornish noted. "Does this kind of concern loom large for him?"

Haberman said that those attempts "really radicalized" him and his team.

"The assassination attempts that he faced, in particular Butler, happened around the time that someone had been charged with being part of a murder for hire plot involving or set up by Iranian officials. Allegedly," she said. "And in his mind and in the campaign's mind at the time, it all became one thing."

It's for that reason, Haberman said, Trump and his team saw the new threats from Iran as serious and concerning. These kinds of threats are part of why Trump isn't seen out and about as much.

"You are already seeing a president who does not travel outside the White House that much. Part of it is that, you know, he would tell aides at the beginning of the of the term, 'I'm done campaigning,' but part of it is legitimate security concerns," said Haberman.

Haberman noted that another challenge she sees for Trump is that he is not surrounded by top experts and experienced professionals. For example, she added, those negotiating with Iran aren't well-schooled in nuclear weapons, much less in diplomatic negotiation. It's Trump's son-in-law and his catch-all "envoy for everything," Steve Witkoff.

The group of influencers is also kept extremely small, meaning if someone like Witkoff isn't in the room, they have no clue what is going on. One of the more significant things that happened as a result of that is that Witkoff felt he was close to a deal with Iran, but Trump decided to bomb them out of the blue. The lack of expertise meant that Trump wasn't properly prepared for what he'd face and never crafted an exit strategy.

"It became very clear that foreign policy — as someone said, and we quote them anonymously in the book, is 'whatever Trump says at any given moment,'" said Haberman.

During his first administration, Trump was rushed to the presidential bunker out of fear as a crowd grew near the White House protesting the police death of George Floyd. In his second term, a major project for Trump has been rebuilding the same bunker beneath a giant ballroom.

New York Magazine writer Jonah Shepp says President Donald Trump considers himself very intelligent — but that intelligence apparently didn’t extend to the definition of “quagmire.”

The U.S. and Iran are back at war again, less than a month after agreeing to a cease-fire deal and Trump’s frustration is visible.

“This is a very unpopular war that Trump reportedly thought would be over in days, then claimed would be over in four to six weeks, then insisted was actually over and fully won when anyone could tell that it wasn’t,” said Shepp. “Five months later, amid an alarming escalation, there’s still no end in sight. From everything Trump has said over the past few weeks, he’s apparently still under the impression that the war is under his control, the U.S. is winning and Iran is overwhelmed and desperate to negotiate, and the costs are not only bearable for Americans, but negligible.”

Worse, Trump’s original war goals, from the threat of a nuclear Iran to the Israeli regime-change scheme he bought into have come and gone, replaced by … nobody’s really sure. These days it’s about the state of the Strait of Hormuz—which Trump himself caused by unilaterally committing war on Iran.

“Welcome to a forever war, in other words,” said Shepp.

Trump dragged Iran and his own voters into war with “unclear, unrealistic objectives, lacking both an articulate theory of victory and an exit strategy,” said Shepp.

Projecting strength and avoiding the humiliation of defeat is tantamount to a guy like Trump, but the war’s unpopularity at home and abroad is putting the heat on Trump to cut and run—as if that would be possible without admitting defeat. Still, escalation doesn’t appear to be getting anywhere except in voters’ wallets.

“Passing over whether Trump is or is not the world-historic genius he perceives himself to be, he has yet to demonstrate a brilliant new strategy to prevent the Iran war from turning into an extended debacle,” said Shepp. “On the contrary, he disdains expertise and has put negotiations with Iran in the hands of two complete amateurs whom their Iranian counterparts don’t trust and whose only accomplishment so far has been a crappy deal for the U.S. that fell apart in weeks. Meanwhile, our armed forces are currently under the direction of a right-wing television personality and televangelist whose latest manosphere-inspired innovation is a policy to test U.S. soldiers for low testosterone.”

Worse, Shepp said that the U.S. diplomatic corps “has been hollowed out and politicized, Iran experts have been lost to budget cuts and ideological purges, and at this rate, Marco Rubio may soon be the only person left working at the State Department.”

“As Trump is now discovering, the U.S. didn’t get bogged down in past wars because his predecessors were ‘dumb,’ but rather because they suffered from historical, political, and ideological blind spots,” said Shepp.

U.S. President Donald Trump lauded the “very good relationship” he has developed with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8, 2026.

President Donald Trump has devised a new plan for the Iran war, though it looks remarkably similar to the old plan. It's an escalation that has even the biggest influencers in the MAGA movement "rattled."

Former State Department official Emily Horne spoke with The New Republic's Greg Sargent on the morning podcast about Trump's new strategy in Iran and just how clumsy it appears.

Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday as he arrived for the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). According to Sargent, "Many MAGA figures are upset about this, fearing that a meeting will push Trump into escalating, and they don’t want Trump to do Israel’s bidding."

He noted that far-right former Trump campaign leader Steve Bannon told Politico, “All of Trump’s most ardent non-Israel First supporters are furious.” He claimed that the war has been a "disaster" for the America First agenda.

Sargent also cited Curt Mills of "The American Conservative," who said they were at “DEFCON 1” assuming that Netanyahu will “argue for the essential logic of escalation."

At the same time, Trump is hemorrhaging support. While at first it was largely from independents, now, "new polling shows a large chunk of MAGA turning on the war," said Sargent.

Horne said that one important thing to note is that the attacks on Netanyahu are coming from the "strain of MAGA" that is "really virulent and ugly antisemitic." That group and the legitimate criticism of the Israeli government should be separated, she explained.

"But that aside, I think it’s really telling that there is not agreement within MAGA, within the Republican Party, on the best way out of this own goal that is Trump’s Iran war, his forever war, really," Horne continued. "And even Trump alluded to this himself in his Fox interview this [Tuesday morning], where he talked about how there are elements of the Republican Party that want this to be over and done with, as midterms are approaching and everyone’s aware of how wildly unpopular this war is — how, as members of Congress are going back to their districts for August recess, they’re going to be getting an earful about gas prices and forever wars and politicians who are focused on the wrong thing."

Then there is the hawkish wing of the GOP that supports the war continuing.

"Nobody knows what Trump’s endgame is or what the strategy is," said Horne. "They’re clearly just making it up as they go along. And the only answer that they have for 'the bombs haven’t worked so far' is more bombs."

Trump continues to boast that the Iranians desperately want a deal and that they want to end the war. It continues to prompt questions about why Trump is choosing not to make such a deal. But Sargent explained that none of it is real.

"In reality, the Iranians are not in any rush to talk to Trump at all," he said.

Horne said that in "bureaucratic terms" the "TLDR" is that the U.S. has no leverage anymore. Infamously, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first visited Trump for a contentious Oval Office meeting, Trump ranted, "you don't have the cards." In the Iran war, Trump is the one who has no cards.

While Iran has no problem passing the costs of the war onto its people, it's costing Trump and his party at the ballot box. Control of the Strait of Hormuz is handing Iran not only more power but also greater leverage in negotiations with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, Trump's "special envoy for peace missions" and "Special Envoy for the Middle East," respectively.

Iran continues to have a nuclear program, despite the bombing campaign. Horne says this in large part "because Trump walked away from the JCPOA in his first term." The JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was President Barack Obama's deal with Iran and allied countries, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany. It was successful in that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found they were complying with the agreement until Trump ended it in May 2018.

"So, no matter what Trump has said at various points in Trump II about obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, again, that is something that Iran has as a bargaining chip, and they have been very clear that they’re going to control the direction of the conversation moving forward," Horne explained.