What did Donald Trump do today?

He was kept out of the loop on a major development in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This morning, Ukraine launched a daring and meticulously-planned drone attack against five Russian military airfields. In a remarkable twist on this new form of aerial warfare, the drones were smuggled into Russia and launched from trucks, apparently without the knowledge of the drivers transporting them. The attack had been planned for over a year and Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is said to have personally overseen it.

Many of the targets were Russia's aging Soviet-era fleet of bombers, which the Putin regime has used to devastating effect against Ukraine. They are also the backbone of the aerial portion of Russia's nuclear triad, meaning that the attack has, at least to some extent, put the Putin regime on a more defensive posture with respect to its nuclear arsenal.

Initial reports assumed that the United States military—and hence Trump—had been informed in advance of the attack, as would normally be done for a major operation like this. However, the Ukrainian military said after the conclusion of the attacks that Trump had not been informed.

Given the substantial geopolitical implications of an attack on Russia's nuclear bomber fleet, the clear implication is that Ukraine did not trust Trump not to warn Putin, with whom he has a much warmer relationship—notwithstanding the fact that the United States is, at least in theory, still supporting Ukraine. 

The Trump administration has a terrible reputation for its ability to keep secrets. During his first term, Trump was captivated by the idea of a joint US-Russia cybersecurity program—or, in other words, giving the United States' main adversary in cyberwarfare a free look at American defenses. He carelessly burned an Israeli confidential source in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, infuriating Israel. Trump took dozens of boxes of highly classified information as souvenirs of his first term and leave them in an unsecured Mar-a-Lago bathroom. And, most recently, his National Security Advisor accidentally added a journalist to a group chat on a compromised commercial platform that was planning a military operation—and that was not the only time something like that happened.

It's not clear when Trump found out about the Ukrainian strike. He was once again completely out of the public eye at his private golf resort today and yesterday. The White House did not offer any comment on it, nor did it respond to requests for an explanation as to why Trump posted a conspiracy theory that former President Joe Biden was killed in 2020 and replaced by a robot (that then beat Trump in an election).

Why does this matter?

• It hurts American national security if the rest of the world thinks the President of the United States is an incompetent clown with his own agenda.