We're rapidly closing in on election day, which means it's once again time for Donald Trump to meet with his favorite international strongman, Russian President Vladimir Putin. NBC News cites multiple administration sources to report that Trump wants to meet with Putin in-person, possibly in New York, before the November elections.
What will it be about? The White House seems to be still working that out, based on Trump's desire to have a meeting for something. We can be absolutely assured that it won't consist of Trump asking about the bounties Russia put out on killing U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, because Trump has simply claimed he doesn't believe those reports. NBC says one idea is for Trump and Putin to meet to sign an agreement to try to pursue a future agreement to maybe renew the New START treaty, which expires next year—a quintessential case of a meeting that could have been an email.
The real motivation, reports NBC's sources, is that Trump "sees a summit as an opportunity to be presidential" and "wants to show his deal-maker abilities."
That's right, kids. President Dealz is back, and his big idea for maybe penning a deal with someone is to call in a sympathetic world strongman. The guy who keeps botching treaties with even close U.S. allies—and who was turned into a laughingstock by a North Korean dictator who gave Trump absolutely nothing, in exchange for Trump's feting of their dictatorship on the world stage—is going back to where he began, arranging for do-nothing meetings to announce do-nothing deals with "strong" authoritarian leaders.
It was either that or show a bare minimum level of competence in dealing with a national pandemic. But Trump got bored with the pandemic, so "deals" it is.
What isn't clear, in addition to the nebulous-sounding plans for what to actually discuss, is whether Putin will go along with his subordinate's election-eve plan. The Russian leader has generally treated Trump with not-particularly-veiled contempt; he seems content to use Trump's relentless incompetence as means of discrediting the United States, and has shown little interest in Trump's various self-promotional schemes.
If Trump wanted to showcase his alleged dealmaking capabilities after four years of spectacularly failing to sign any non-terrible international deals whatsoever, he might want to start off by mending relationships with, say, Canada? Baby steps, fella. Baby steps.