By Todd Davis
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV
In a twist of irony, the president who promised to ‘end the war in a day’ is now presiding over the same Ukraine quagmire he once condemned. Do you think presidential candidate Trump ever imagined back in fall 2024 that he would be continuing the same Ukraine foreign policy as Joe Biden, the man he mocked and ridiculed? Presidential hopefuls are notorious for overpromising on campaign stops in Peoria and then underdelivering once they reach Washington. Even so, Trump’s repeated declaration that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one was such a staple, one of the greatest hits from the Trump catalogue, that his inability to deliver has left many in his base feeling betrayed.
No one expected Trump to end the war the day after he was inaugurated. That was never feasible. MAGA realized there was more than a little hyperbole in his boast. However, his base did expect a divergence from the failed Biden policy that led to a losing war with Russia that never had to be fought in the first place.
Did Trump Ever Have a Plan?
Trump isn’t Senator Elizabeth Warren. He doesn’t have a plan for everything. He might not have a plan for most things. Trump is intuitive, an Idea Man. He lays out the broad strokes and relies on subordinates to fill in the details. Beyond the vague concept of calling President Putin and talking about watches, energy prices, and geopolitical borders, it’s unlikely Trump had more than that. And even that was progress. You have to talk to Russia if you ever want the war to end, something Biden and his administration refused to do.
The problem with that strategy concerning Ukraine is that the subordinates under Trump all have a different agenda regarding Ukraine. Inevitably, because he had other things on his mind besides battlefield attrition around Pokrovsk, President Trump relied on Keith Kellogg as a special envoy to Ukraine, keeping the door open for rabid warhawks like Lindsey Graham to interpret what was happening in the war and how the US could secure the best deal possible.
The Trump Administration believes the front should be frozen, Russia gets to keep whatever it has, a ceasefire is enforced, and then NATO pours weapons into Ukraine, eventually fast-tracking Zelensky’s band of nationalists and Nazis into the alliance and under the nuclear umbrella.
Russia won’t agree to any of that. Because Russia is winning.
A Deal No One Wants
Russia has always been willing to talk about a way to end the war. On its terms. Russia is willing to negotiate a surrender. Russian terms were always going to make NATO choke. And after the failed Ukrainian offensive in the summer of 2023, this war was always going to end on Russian terms. Everything after that has been a long, drawn-out stage of how the West is going to come to terms with accepting the realities on the ground.
We don’t need to rehash what has transpired. Russia has overwhelming dominance on the battlefield and, more importantly, in production. NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte said Russia is outproducing NATO by a 4:1 margin in war materials. If he’s admitting to 4:1, it’s likely closer to 6:1. NATO has had years to close the gap, and it’s only grown larger. Suffice it to say, this trend isn’t going to reverse.
Ukraine is still dangerously unrealistic, unwilling to concede defeat. Major elements within Ukraine would prefer the country to be destroyed rather than accept defeat. You can’t sell a peace deal acknowledging defeat when you’ve lost a million men. It’s the WW1 dilemma; by 1916, everyone knew the war had gone on too long and it was too costly, but everyone had taken so many losses they were unable to reach a peace deal that was palatable to the home front. The Zelensky administration will not survive a peace deal on Russian terms.
Fine. And? President Trump’s job isn’t to prop up Zelensky’s regime. Zelensky isn’t going to remain in power regardless of what Trump does. If Ukraine fights on until it’s destroyed, Russia will replace Zelensky with someone else. Russia, for its part, is never going to accept a NATO-aligned Ukraine. It isn’t even going to tolerate a NATO-adjacent Ukraine.
War by Gaslight
It took Trump a few months to realize that. Here is where Trump bears additional responsibility. You can make a credible argument that Joe Biden had no idea what was going on in Ukraine. His failing mental capacity likely meant he was oblivious to the realities on the ground. The war was being run by Antony Blinken, or Jake Sullivan, or the Cigarette Smoking Man. Take your pick.
Trump doesn’t have that excuse. Trump knows the war is lost. He knows Ukraine can’t win, and he knows that there is nothing the United States can do about it. There aren’t any magic weapons to send that are going to change anything. And yet, he continues to traffic in blatant falsehoods, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense talking points, and outright propaganda.
Marco Rubio is running around claiming Russia has lost 100,000 men this year. Based on what? No one can ever say. Russia has a 12:1 artillery advantage. Drone superiority. Air superiority. Nearly twice as many men as Ukraine has now. But Ukraine is coming out ahead? How? Every casualty exchange is something along the lines of 26 Russians for 750 Ukrainians. Why does the Trump administration continue to push this fiction? Who are they gaslighting? Their base? Themselves?
Biden 2.0
Now, Trump finds himself stuck continuing the Ukraine policy of his much-hated predecessor. He’s in real danger of becoming Biden 2.0. Part of him knows this even as he allowed Lindsey Graham and John Thune to paint him into a corner with a Russian sanctions bill that would impose 100% tariffs on Russia itself and secondary tariffs of up to 500% on countries in BRICS that trade with Russia. Small countries. You know, countries like China, India, and Brazil. Nations on which the American economy quietly depends.
Trump isn’t stupid. Tariffs on Russia are pointless. We don’t trade with Russia for anything but Uranium, and we need their Uranium more than they need our dollars for it. He knows 500% tariffs on China and India would crater the American economy.
He should never have let this bill get so far and should have cut Graham’s legs out from under him. One assumes this was part of the compromise made to get the Big Beautiful Bill across the finish. If not, it was a major oversight by Trump.
To hold off the bill and the Senate full of neocons and neoliberals ready to vote yes on it, Trump announced a 50-day deadline for Putin to come up with a deal for Ukraine. This timeout does nothing but give Trump two months to ignore the issue. Russia is going to shrug and continue advancing into Ukraine. China has already played hardball with previous Trump tariffs and will not be bullied into breaking with Russia. If anything, it will dig in Chinese resolve.
The Fallout at Home and Abroad
The consequences of Trump’s drift toward the Biden-Globalist consensus on Ukraine are already beginning to manifest, some visible, others still forming beneath the surface. The most immediate fallout is political: Trump risks alienating the very base that sent him to Washington to dismantle the forever war machine, not become another gear in it.
MAGA voters didn’t expect miracles in Ukraine, but they expected a break from the bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxy that treats every faraway border dispute as America’s burden. Instead, they now see Trump signing off on escalatory sanctions, parroting inflated Ukrainian battlefield reports, and entertaining NATO expansion as if he were still in 2017, surrounded by McMasters and Mattises.
This erosion of trust among his core supporters may not show up in polling, but it’s corrosive long-term. Enthusiasm is the lifeblood of a populist campaign, and enthusiasm is built on authenticity. If Trump becomes just another manager of decline, offering familiar excuses from the same neocon playbook, he forfeits the outsider mantle, and with it, the political energy that made him a threat. The future of MAGA hangs in the balance over core issues about sustaining war against the will of the people in places like Ukraine.
Internationally, the consequences are more profound. Every month that the war drags on under Washington’s watch, Russia deepens its alliances with China, Iran, India, and the rest of the BRICS bloc. American leverage shrinks, sanctions backfire, and the illusion of Western unity starts to crumble. The longer Trump clings to a failed framework, the more he accelerates the very multipolar world he once claimed he could out-negotiate.
Trump said he would make America great again. Great powers don’t get dragged into wars they can’t win, prop up puppet regimes that won’t survive, or bluff with tools, like tariffs, they can’t actually use. If he doesn’t course-correct soon, he won’t just lose Ukraine. He’ll lose the narrative.
The Trap Springs Shut
Trump walked into the Oval Office thinking he could thread the geopolitical needle, appease the base with promises of peace, intimidate Russia with bluster, and outmaneuver the Washington foreign policy establishment. Instead, he’s been captured by the very machine he once ridiculed. The Ukraine war was never his war, but now it’s undeniably his problem.
And unlike in 2016, when Trump could position himself as the outsider torching failed policies from the sidelines, he now owns the policy, tariffs, sanctions, and all.
It’s hard to believe Trump is going to let the Ukraine war hang like a foreign landmine planted in an American First agenda over the entirety of his second term. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Every month the war drags on, the pressure to send more money, more weapons, more aid only grows. What happens when Ukraine runs out of ammunition again? When another city falls? When the Pentagon demands a supplemental aid package because “the stakes are too high to back down now”?
Trump, who once railed against Biden’s blank checks and endless war footing, now finds himself boxed in, forced to either break with his foreign policy promises or cave to the same establishment he once vowed to destroy. And if he gives in even once, he legitimizes the system he spent years calling a fraud. The war will become not just a foreign entanglement, but a running contradiction that undermines every other plank of his platform, from economic revival to draining the swamp.
The real trap isn’t Ukraine. It’s the illusion that the President of the United States can reverse a war already lost without first confronting the delusions in his administration. Trump has a narrow window to reclaim the initiative by abandoning the neocon remnants still whispering in his ear, rejecting the fantasy of Ukrainian victory, and striking a deal that reflects battlefield reality, not Beltway fiction.
If he fails, Trump will not only inherit Biden’s war, but he’ll continue it for him.
And the MAGA base, already wary, won’t forget who signed the last chapter.
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