What did Donald Trump do today?

He spoke with Vladimir Putin and apparently learned some things that were news to him.

Trump used his private microblogging site today to break the news that he had spoken with Vladimir Putin, and that Putin intended to launch a counterattack after Ukraine's devastating drone strike against the Russian bomber fleet.

Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since 2014, when the Putin regime invaded the Crimean peninsula, which is part of Ukraine, and in open warfare since Putin launched an attack against the remainder of the country in 2022. Under the circumstances, it is not exactly news that there would be further assaults by Russia.

What is notable, however, is Trump's matter-of-fact recounting of what Putin supposedly told him, and the absence of any indication that Trump tried to dissuade Putin. The United States is currently in a bizarre situation where its allegiances in this conflict are not clear even to itself: Trump's personal loyalties are and always have been with Putin, but the public and both parties in Congress overwhelmingly support Ukraine, to which the United States is still supplying some military aid. As recently as April, Trump was at least willing to use his social media posts to suggest that Russia could de-escalate, as he did in one much-mocked incident containing the memorable plea "Vladimir, STOP!"

Trump also revealed that he "believes" Putin is interested in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This, too, does not come as news to people other than Trump himself: Russia was one of the partners in the JCPOA that Trump pulled the United States out of during his first term. At essentially no point in history has any nuclear power not been opposed to proliferation to other countries.

Trump's own self-written readout of the call is the only one available to the American public at the moment, but that may change. Trump's personal and political debt to the Putin regime, and the problems that Americans finding out about it has caused him, means he often edits or conceals entirely his calls with Putin. As a result, the Russian state media—which makes no secret of the extent to which it sees Trump as a pawn of Putin—is often the first and most forthcoming with details of their conversations.

Why does this matter?

• At this point, the only reason not to speak of Trump as a de facto Russian agent is that it's too embarrassing to acknowledge it. 

• Presidents who can't remember how hostile nations with nuclear weapons feel about nuclear proliferation aren't mentally fit to serve.
  
  
• The security of the United States and its allies is more important than Donald Trump's personal loyalties.