On August 15, US president Donald Trump met with Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin in Alaska. On August 18, Trump met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a collection of European politicians in Washington. The goal of both meetings: Bringing an end to the Russia-Ukraine war now well into its fourth year.

Media coverage of both events centered more on Trump than on the other participants, and more on Trump’s motives and competence than on either the desired outcome or how that outcome might transpire.

Trump, we’re told, got rolled — used and humiliated — by Putin in Alaska.

Trump, we’re told, played the Emperor in his new clothes to a fawning Zelenskyy et al., hiding his cankles and flaunting his crackpottery.

And in both cases, we’re told, Trump’s motives are impure: He’s just after a Nobel Peace Prize and sees ending the war, on any terms, as a way to get it.

I can’t think of any way to sufficiently emphasize my opinion on those speculations, so let’s just go with all caps and too many periods:

I. DON’T. CARE.

I don’t care if Trump’s an easy mark for Putin.

I don’t care if Trump’s mad as a hatter or if other world “leaders” try to placate him by pretending otherwise.

I don’t care if Trump’s obsessed with cadging yet another participation trophy for his mantel.

Nor do I care whether the Moscow gang or the Kyiv gang gets to treat the people damaged and displaced by this war as livestock at best, slaves as the norm, and meat for their mutual slaughterhouse project at worst.

The ideal answer is “neither, and none,” and the second-best answer is “let those people decide for themselves,” but the only thing on the table at the moment seems to be shutting down the slaughterhouse part.

If Trump can help make that happen, award him all the ribbons, plaques, and trophies he craves and let him babble nonsense to his heart’s content on whatever subject he pleases.

Two important things to remember:

First, millions of people have been killed, injured, abducted, detained, enslaved, displaced, or some combination of those things, over the last 42 months. That needs to stop.

Second, we’ve gone 42 months with no one else succeeding in stopping it.

So how about just letting Trump take his best shot at getting the job  done, instead of quibbling over the details (which we can’t even know from moment to moment), or over his supposed motives or inadequacies?

It’s not like there’s any shortage of things to complain about when it comes to Trump. Why turn this into one of those things?

If Trump can help end this war, he has my support and should have yours.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY