Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Trump echoes Russian talking points

From Bloomberg:

"Trump Tells Americans What Putin Wants Them to Hear

By Bloomberg News

Donald Trump’s Russia policy has been sounding very familiar to the Kremlin.

Since Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin on Feb. 12, their first direct contact since Trump’s return to office, there’s been a shift in US rhetoric that has seen the president begin to echo specific Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine, according to a Bloomberg analysis of his public comments.

Bloomberg used a Large Language Model to scan more than 300 of Trump’s public comments between August 2024 and mid-March as well as more than 3,000 social media posts from the president and members of his administration since the start of 2025. The technique allows for comparing meaning across large volumes of text, even if the specific wording differs.

The results, which were reviewed by reporters, showed a correlation between Trump administration contacts with Putin and subsequent comments that echoed the Russian leader’s own positions on subjects including the occupation, Kyiv’s goal of joining NATO and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s political legitimacy...

“Trump parrots Putin,” said Fiona Hill, who served as the top Russia adviser on the US National Security Council in the president’s first term. “He wants to get close to Putin.”

Trump is seeking to unlock tens of billions of dollars in potential business deals by remaking the economic relationship between the US and Russia. And to do that he needs to resolve the war in Ukraine.

As a consequence, the US has made concession after concession to Putin, even offering to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, a Kremlin demand since it occupied the Black Sea peninsula in 2014 that successive administrations — including in Trump’s first term — have rejected...

Feb. 12, 2025 The First Phone Call

...A few days after Trump was sworn into office in January, Putin told a Russian state TV interviewer: “I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president, if his victory had not been stolen from him in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the Ukraine crisis that broke out in 2022.”...

“The media seemingly is advocating more death and more destruction in this unnecessary war that wouldn’t have started if President Trump was in office,” Hughes, the NSC spokesman, said. “Russia didn’t dare invade a neighbor during President Trump’s first term yet did so under Biden and Obama. President Trump is taking action to clean up their mistakes.”...

Trump and Putin spoke by phone for about 90 minutes on Feb. 12. The following day, Trump ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and said that Kyiv’s aspirations to join the alliance had caused the war.

Feb. 13, 2025 Trump on NATO and Ukraine

Remarks After Meeting with Narendra Modi

“They’ve said they cannot have Ukraine be in NATO. They said that very strongly. I actually think that that was the thing that caused the start of the war.”

...Putin’s demand that Ukraine never join NATO has been a central aim of his February 2022 invasion...

Feb. 18, 2025 Saudi Arabia Meeting

Witkoff, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio meet Russian officials to discuss how to end the war.

Feb. 18, 2025 Trump on Martial Law

Remarks After Executive Order Signing

“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Well, we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at four percent approval rating.”

Putin’s Position

“The Kiev regime does not allow the very idea of cessation of hostilities because in this case the pretext for extending martial law disappears. And if the martial law has to be cancelled, it means that the elections, which were not held on time, will have to be held.

...While Putin has repeatedly denied Zelenskiy’s legitimacy since the Ukrainian president’s term formally expired in May 2024, the analysis shows that Trump only began raising the issue after he’d spoken to the Russian leader.