President Trump is not “lashing out” at Putin, he is negotiating. The apparent denigrations directed at Putin are in fact a constructive criticism, which may or may not directly affect what Putin says or does, but have to be working at a subconscious level, triggering some alternate thought processes and scratching at different possible paths forward.
Donald J. Trump has gone through this cycle of talks before, with persons who have to have been near-equals with Putin, this is not his first rodeo. Hell, the man grew up in Queens, that is one of the toughest tests for developing negotiating skills anywhere.
Trump is negotiation his own surrender. He is still commander-in-chief of the armed forces... of the free world... NATO....
He thinks he is negotiating with Putin. He is not. The war is non negotiable.
The war presently is a win or lose situation
“The apparent denigrations directed at Putin are in fact a constructive criticism, which may or may not directly affect what Putin says or does, but have to be working at a subconscious level, triggering some alternate thought processes and scratching at different possible paths forward.”
I was thinking about the same thing, but it won’t work on the Russians. Either Putin sticks to his guns, or he’ll be replaced, no different than Zelensky, regarding the internal situations in their respective countries. However it is different in Russia, in one way, which is that Russia’s replacement of Putin will be much more hard-line and likely will take on the now-disarmed Europeans, once they launch another missile strike from Ukraine.