Trump is negotiating in a situation where someone on his side - Z - has gone off the rails. It doesn’t help when Putin is portrayed as going off the rails. Trump’s position is look I got this stay out of it. Z is being utterly unreasonable and his side needs to understand from my how bad it will be, from me, if he doesn’t start being reasonable. Putin being unreasonable just weakens that position.
Z has never been on Trump’ side. In fact, he is Trump’s enemy.
IMO, Zelenskyy is a rogue dictator whose actions cannot be predicted nor depended upon.
If I were the President, I’d make it known that the US will neither support continued fighting nor deal with peace negotiations until there have been free elections in Ukraine.
TIME TO WASH OUR HANDS OF THE WHOLE THING!