What did Donald Trump do today?

He confirmed that Putin had either scared or bamboozled him back onto Russia's side in its war against Ukraine.

Several outlets are reporting new details today about Trump's Friday meeting with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Sources within the Trump administration now say that it became a shouting match, with Trump yelling that Putin would "destroy" Ukraine. Trump reportedly flew into a rage at seeing maps of occupied Ukrainian territory, sweeping them off the table and complaining that he couldn't understand them because he'd never been to the places they showed.

The takeaway message from Friday's meeting, the sources said, was clear: Ukraine should simply let Russia take at the negotiating table even more territory than it has been able to win on the battlefield—specifically, the heavily fortified region that is all that prevents the Putin regime from launching another invasion against Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine. Trump cited Russian talking points in what appears to have been a last-ditch effort to get Zelenskyy to simply give up.

In an interview that aired this morning, Trump confirmed the reporting, saying that Putin was "gonna take something. I mean, they fought and, he, uh, he has a lot of property. I mean, you know, he's won certain property," before making a derogatory comment about the United States' lack of interest in wars of conquest.

On one level, this does look like the latest in a series of flip-flops as Trump tries desperately to claim a "peace" deal that neither side is interested in. But while Trump's rhetoric has changed almost weekly, the bizarre underlying situation has remained largely unchanged: the United States' posture is that Ukraine is an ally that must be defended, and Donald Trump's position is the opposite.

It's quite likely that Putin himself is the author of Trump's sudden belief in the hopelessness of Ukraine's position. They spoke last Thursday, just before the meeting with Zelenskyy. 

In reality, Ukraine's battlefield situation is not nearly so grim as Trump now appears to think it is, and would be much less so if Trump approved adequate military aid including Tomahawk missiles. Trump insisted today that the United States needed every last one of its supply, which is greater than 1,000, even though Ukraine is asking for at most 50, and there is literally no other theater of war in which the US might need to deploy offensive long-range missiles.

Why does this matter?

• No one this easily manipulated by a hostile foreign nation is fit to be president. 

• Neither is the person who throws a tantrum over maps he can't make himself understand. 

• If Trump isn't acting on Russia's behalf, then the only other explanation is that Putin can scare him so easily with a single phone call that he just gives up.