The art of not making a deal

Strange that Trump has not pressed the “stop the war” button the Quincy Institute assured me that Joe Biden could have pushed but he didn’t. even. try:

Several days before President Trump and members of his administration said publicly that they were prepared to wash their hands of Russia-Ukraine diplomacy, Trump ranted in private about his frustrations that the negotiations were going nowhere.

Why it matters: After promising a deal within 24 hours of taking office, then kicking off weeks of negotiations, Trump said Friday that he was about ready to give up. He hasn’t set a deadline or said whether he would take any further action beyond walking away.

• If either side continues to block a deal, “we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump said Friday.

Behind the scenes: Trump made his frustrations clear a few days earlier in an impromptu conversation about the ceasefire push with several of his top advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff.

• That’s where Trump raised the idea that if a deal isn’t reached soon he could simply move on to other foreign policy issues, a U.S. official briefed on the issue said.

Driving the news: By Friday, Trump’s rant had turned into a public policy statement.

• Rubio said Trump had decided “he has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this, and there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that we need to be focused on.”
• “We need to figure out … within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term.  If it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” Rubio said.
• Later on Friday Rubio held a phone call with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and reiterated that “if a clear path to peace does not emerge soon, the United States will step back from efforts to broker peace,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

I’m sure he would have pushed the “no chaos” button before withdrawing from Afghanistan, though!

The idea that there was an easy diplomatic solution to the war that Biden just refused allow Ukraine to agree to was always an extremely implausible idea buttressed by no evidence, just like the idea that Donald Trump is “anti-war.”