I will hold my regular Saturday morning livestream on Substack at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT. Open to everyone on the Substack App on your phone or tablet.

I am sending this short note on Friday evening to allow Jill and me time to celebrate our wedding anniversary with a quiet dinner at a favorite restaurant.

Trump’s failed “summit” in Alaska.

A convicted felon and fugitive war criminal met in Alaska on Friday to divvy up the sovereign nation of Ukraine. They failed miserably in their effort to negotiate the surrender of Ukraine to Russia, but both criminals got what they wanted: Putin was treated like royalty by a US president who, in turn, managed to create a 24-hour distraction from the intense media scrutiny into Trump’s decades-long friendship with a child rapist and sex trafficker.

The Russian media was giddy over Putin’s red-carpet treatment, writing that

The Western media [has been] in a state that can be described as insanity bordering on complete madness for three years [and has] been reporting on Russia’s isolation, but today they witnessed the red carpet that greeted the Russian President in the United States.

See ABC News, Russia boasts about red carpet treatment for Putin.

Apart from the distraction value of the meeting, Trump got nothing, as ably explained in Lucian Truscott’s Newsletter (on Substack), Impotent.

Truscott says the following about Trump:

He didn’t get peace in Ukraine.

He didn’t even get a ceasefire.

He didn’t get Putin to say a single word that would indicate that his war of aggression will not continue at its present level or even escalate.

Even a Fox “News” reporter said that the joint press conference was “stunning” and “did not feel good in the room” because it appeared that Putin “steamrolled” Trump by getting a photo opportunity and leaving without making any concessions. Ouch! The truth hurts.

The Fox reporter also noted that the press conference was quite unusual because Putin spoke first in Russian on US soil. Newsweek expanded on Putin’s dominance at the press conference as follows:

Putin seemed to control the appearance of the proceedings in front of the press. Typically at such summits, the host speaks first and welcomes the visiting leader. But when the two leaders stepped up to the twin lecterns, Trump put his hand out to indicate Putin should speak first.

Moreover, as the Fox journalist noted, reporters had been promised the opportunity to ask questions of the two leaders, but the press conference ended abruptly with no questions.

It is worth your time to watch the entire Fox “News” report, here: Fox News, A few ‘unusual’ things about the Trump-Putin presser . . . . Toward the end of the video clip, you will see the Fox “News” host attempt to claim that if anyone got “steamrolled,” it was Ukraine, not Trump, because Ukraine is fighting Russia. Huh?

In a separate Fox segment, Kellyanne Conway made the point that the joint press conference was a “victory” for Trump because “Putin is a foot shorter than Trump.” See Mediate, Kellyanne Conway, Jason Chaffetz Hail Trump’s ‘Huge Win’. (“Do you think Vladimir Putin wanted to stand in front of a banner on U.S. soil, a foot shorter than the U.S. president, in front of words, saying ‘Pursuing Peace’? That’s the goal here.”)

Fox is scraping the bottom of the barrel for positive spin by comparing the relative height of world leaders. We can be certain that if Fox had anything of substance to highlight, it would have done so. I am confident that Russian news media will soon be comparing the relative size of Putin’s and Trump’s hands—an equally irrelevant measure for determining the success of an international summit.

Before the meeting with Putin, Trump promised that there would be “very severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. There was no ceasefire announcement, and there were no consequences for Russia.

Instead, Trump rolled over like a whipped dog and agreed that the next humiliation, er, I mean, “summit” would be in Moscow. See Axios, “Next time in Moscow”: Putin extends Trump invitation as summit ends.

There is no joy in watching Trump fail in spectacular fashion as the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance. It is an embarrassment for America to watch its president be played for a fool by the leader of a failing state that remains relevant only because of its legacy nuclear arsenal. For the sake of Ukraine, Trump should have had an agreement in place before the meeting and should have followed through on his threat of severe consequences after Putin took the PR win and decamped post haste.

Concluding Thoughts

So, why does Trump’s botched performance in Alaska matter to us?

It is another failure by Trump to deliver on his campaign promises. As I noted yesterday, there is no Rubicon, no line in the sand, no single flashpoint that will mark the beginning of the end of Trump’s second term.

But the accumulated failures matter, piling upon one another like grains of sand in a dune approaching the angle of repose. No single particle of sand is responsible for the avalanche that occurs when the maximum slope is exceeded, but each contributes to the increasing instability of the dune.

We are nearing the political angle of repose, where interactions of thousands of broken promises, lies, and betrayals make it increasingly difficult for Trump’s most ardent supporters to deny that Trump is an imposter and a fraud. The slope of credulity becomes too steep, and even his most loyal followers begin to doubt their faith in Trump and his agenda.

At some point, the combined heft of Trump’s depravity and failure will overcome the stubborn friction of old grievances and new resentments. The dune will collapse, and the landscape will be transformed to reflect the new political reality. It will happen; it is only a matter of time and hard work on our part.

Trump’s approval ratings continue to drift slowly downward as Independents and persuadable Republicans finally acknowledge that Trump lied to them and played them for fools. He promised to end Russia’s war on Ukraine in 24 hours. On Friday, he demonstrated not only that he is incapable of ending the war but that his incompetence will prolong suffering in Ukraine and increase instability in Europe.

We cannot count on Trump to defeat himself and his party of enablers. But we should acknowledge the reality of his weakening grasp on an electorate waking to his incompetence and deceit.

Our job is to leverage that weakness and convert it into momentum for Democrats heading into 2026. We can do that. We are doing it. We must not relent. We have him on the run!

Talk to you tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

Brocchi’s Cluster is an asterism, a visual collection of stars that appears as a constellation in the night sky. Brocchi’s Cluster is not a true constellation, but a collection of unrelated stars that align by chance along a line of sight. Per Wikipedia, the cluster “was first described by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi in his Book of Fixed Stars in 964 C.E.” The major stars in the cluster range in distance from 235 light-years to 1,735 light-years from Earth.

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