President Trump spent the morning leading up to his critical meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders railing against his critics and skeptics who have questioned his approach to ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump posted multiple times on Truth Social bemoaning that he was not getting proper credit for his ability to settle conflicts and suggesting nothing he did would ever satisfy his opponents.
“I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, ‘We give up, we concede, we surrender, we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles, the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country,’” Trump wrote in one post.
In a subsequent post, Trump complained that The Wall Street Journal and others were not taking into account his track record in mediating conflicts during his second term so far.
“I’ve settled 6 Wars in 6 months, one of them a possible Nuclear disaster, and yet I have to read & listen to the Wall Street Journal, and many other who truly don’t have a clue, tell me everything that I am doing wrong on the Russia/Ukraine MESS, that is Sleepy Joe Biden’s war, not mine,” Trump posted.
“I’m only here to stop it, not to prosecute it any further. It would have NEVER happened if I was President,” Trump continued.
“I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them,” Trump continued. “They are ‘STUPID’ people, with no common sense, intelligence, or understanding, and they only make the current R/U disaster more difficult to FIX. Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done — I always do!!!”
The president is set to host Zelensky at 1 p.m. in the Oval Office. It will be the first time Zelensky has been at the White House since a disastrous February meeting with Trump and Vice President Vance accused the Ukrainian leader of being ungrateful for U.S. support.
After that meeting, Trump and Zelensky will meet with a group of European leaders who made the trip to Washington to discuss the path forward on ending the war in Ukraine, which has been raging since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.
Monday’s high-stakes talks come after Trump met Friday in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That meeting ended with both leaders citing progress, but without any concrete commitments.
Trump’s critics have argued the president handed Putin a win by hosting him for a summit on U.S. soil and by appearing to move away from language calling for a cease-fire before any larger negotiated peace agreement.
Trump late Sunday also shut down the idea that Ukraine would gain membership in NATO or reclaim Crimea, which was seized by Russia in 2014.
The president has been involved in a number of peace deals during his second term, including agreements between Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan and India and Pakistan. But a deal to end the war in Ukraine, which Trump claimed on the campaign trail he would accomplish before even taking office, has proved elusive.
