What did Donald Trump do today?

He got called "emotional" by the Putin regime, and reacted emotionally.

Since Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine began in 2022, the Putin regime has needlessly killed people, to include civilians. Russia has fired missiles and used drone attacks against cities for no military purpose other than to create terror in civilian populations.

Yesterday, Trump seemed to notice for the first time, complaining that Putin "is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I'm not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever."

For context, when Putin began the very same campaign in February 2022, Trump reacted this way:

I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, "This is genius." Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word "independent" and "we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace." You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.

A Russian spokesperson responded by saying that Trump was having an "emotional reaction" and suffering from "emotional overload."

Trump has invested his personal pride in being able to end "in one day" the bitter conflict between the pro-Western Ukraine and the Putin regime. His attempts at doing so have mostly taken the form of "deals" where Russia keeps the Ukrainian territory it has occupied already and promises not to go any further. But neither side has any real reason to want this: for Ukraine it would be suicide, and for the Putin regime, it would be leaving the war half-finished, because without military support from the United States, Russia is likely to succeed in overrunning Ukraine entirely.

Trump has repeatedly signaled that the United States will stop military aid to Ukraine, and even his outbursts yesterday—which were indeed "emotional"—didn't suggest any change in that policy. In fact, his social media posts only reinforced the idea that he would withdraw the United States entirely—which is exactly what the "savvy" "genius" Vladimir Putin wants.

The Russian response calling Trump "emotional" came overnight, and was being reported on before 6:00 A.M. in the Eastern time zone. A little over an hour later, Trump posted this to his private microblogging site:

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Trump often uses holiday messages to lash out at his imagined enemies, but even by his standards, this Memorial Day "greeting" that never mentioned America's military dead was emotionally charged.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be this easy for a hostile foreign power to manipulate the President of the United States. 
  

• Nobody who had been paying attention to the war at any point over the last three years would be surprised by Russia's conduct over the last week or so.
  

• This is why it's a bad idea to seek the approval of dictators.