Trump, the foreign policy president?

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continued his excellent sartorial adventure at the White House, appearing in an elegantly cut black suit and shirt on Friday as he met with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room. But while they may have helped avoid any emanations of wrath from his host, his habiliments did not appear to prompt Trump to approve the dispatch of Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, a coveted item indeed. “We’d much rather not need Tomahawks,” Trump said. “We’d much rather get the war over. It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.” 

Back to square one, in other words. In August, Trump had claimed that his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin would lead to a breakthrough. It never happened. Instead, the Russian President made Trump look like a patsy. Now he’s trying to play the same game.  

Trump acknowledged that Putin might be trying to string him along once more. Was he concerned? “Yeah, I am, but I’ve been played all my life by the best of them,” he said. “I’m pretty good at this stuff. I think that he wants to make a deal.” So far, his optimism has proven unwarranted. 

For his part, Zelensky played his cards, the ones that Trump previously claimed he did not possess before reversing that judgment, very well. He did not provoke Trump. Instead, he said it was important to maintain pressure on Putin and ensure that Ukraine receives real security guarantees. Zelensky also held out the possibility of Ukrainian cooperation with America on advanced drone technology in exchange for long-range missiles. 

The question for Trump is simple: does he want to up the pressure on Putin before he enters negotiations in Budapest? Or does he want to try and placate the Russian tyrant in the coming weeks? Trump’s very avidity for a deal is what has made him such a pliant object in the hands of Putin, a former KGB agent who has a shrewd understanding of his counterparts. Few, if any, American presidents have been able to come out ahead in dealing with him, whether it was Bush, Obama or Biden. Instead, Putin has outmaneuvered them while steadily increasing his reach and power, both at home and abroad. A bad hombre, to use Trump’s phrase. 

The person that really seems to have incurred Trump’s ire is another dictator. “He doesn’t want to fuck with the US,” Trump announced during lunch with Zelensky. He was referring to Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro who has been a thorn in the side of Trump.  

In what he regards as his sphere of influence, Trump wants to dictate the terms of surrender to pesky fellows like Maduro. Elsewhere, he wants to preside over ceasefires and peace agreements. The main thing is that Trump, and Trump alone, is at the center of events. 

A summit in Budapest, where he is supposed to meet Putin, will once more allow Trump to seize the spotlight, at least for a few days. It may also provide a fillip to Trump’s ally, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who faces a tough election in April. The government shutdown in Washington may not have ended by then, but this prospect does not appear to trouble Trump unduly. He’s too busy becoming a foreign policy president to preoccupy himself with domestic matters.