Managing expectations on Trump keeping his promises

Gaza, Ukraine, DOGE and a lot of things

Remember this. President Joe Biden sounded the alarm that Vladimir Putin was going to invade Ukraine. Three days before the invasion, Biden began to issue executive orders, continuing right up to the time when Russian VDV paratroopers tried to take Hostomel Airport, to decapitate Kiev’s government. Right up to the time the U.S. offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because to Biden’s crew, the war was already lost. Zelensky famously replied: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Biden administration acted in fear of Russia. Less than a month after Russian troops got bogged down in an attempted encirclement of Kiev, Biden said during a speech in Poland: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The last reported direct conversation between Putin and Biden occurred on December 30, 2021. Biden’s White House staff, fearing Russian escalation, walked back the president’s remarks.

Under Biden, the United States embarked on giving Ukraine ammunition to fight its war, but not too much, lest Putin escalate the war. The fear of escalation was always palpable. Putin had little fear, except when his own people began to turn on him. Then they started dying by falling out of windows, or their airplanes fell from the sky.

Biden’s political people feared to stand too closely with Israel, lest the wing of the Democratic Party that believes in BDS (boycott, divestiture, sanctions against Israel) declare its opposition to him. For his part, Biden did his best to secure Israel’s back, with aircraft carriers and air power, intelligence and missile defense.

After February 24, 2022, nobody expected Ukraine to “win” against Russia. The fact that they’ve kept their country’s territory mostly intact in the face of crippling missile attacks on infrastructure, and not given in, is commendable. But the Biden administration’s expectations were born of fear.

After October 7, 2023, nobody expected Israel to sit and do nothing. Perhaps that would have been the better—more moral—course. But after 9/11, the U.S. exacted vengeance on a massive scale. Proportionality is not a strong suit when a mass casualty event is perpetrated by an implacable foe. The Biden administration’s expectations were born of fear: fear of escalation, fear of appearing too close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Seventeen days before Hamas slaughtered 1,195 people and took 251 hostages, Netanyahu visited the White House. Less than a month later, Biden visited Israel in the aftermath of that horrific day. Biden’s final in person meeting with Netanyahu was at the White House, on July 25, 2024, following Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, which was boycotted by many Democrats.

Donald Trump, as a candidate, promised to end the war in Ukraine even before he took the oath. A bombastic promise. He promised to end the war in Gaza.

Trump’s first foreign head of state to visit the White House was Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump floated the idea of the U.S. taking over Gaza, and moving the inhabitants elsewhere, to a “nice” place where they could live. It was such a radical idea that it really seemed silly.

Jordan had not taken in large numbers of Palestinians since the Six-Day War, with the exception of about a quarter of a million refugees who left Kuwait after the first Gulf War. But Jordanian King Abdullah II has agreed to take in 2,000 sick Gazan children. This is significant, because it sets a precedent that Arab nations are willing to do things publicly that fear had prevented them from doing before.

Egypt has sent over 40 tanks to reinforce its border with Gaza. Some are saying this is a violation of the peace treaty with Israel. I say nonsense: Egypt is doing this to preserve the peace treaty, which requires Egypt to keep the Sinai free of terrorists. Egypt knows that Israel, coordinating with (or at least following) Trump’s statements about hostage release, will indeed resume a full war posture with Gaza if there’s no release on Saturday. Hundreds of thousands of Hamas terrorists will try to flee to Egypt and the Sinai. Egypt says, no that’s not going to happen.

Despite the bombast, Trump is doing his best to keep his campaign promises.

In Ukraine, it’s basically impossible for that nation to retake the Donbas. The Russians, over the last three years, have heavily mined the no-man’s-land between Russian-held territory and Ukraine. Before any Ukrainian troops can break through those defensive lines, they have to clear a path through the mine fields, while under fire from massed Russian artillery and drone swarms. The scene is a 21st century version of WWI trench warfare. They fight over patches of blood-drenched ground of less than one square kilometer. The Russians take massive casualties and send more to the grinder. Ukraine cannot afford to do that.

Ukraine has had more success penetrating into Russia than it has taking back the Donbas. Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood in front of NATO members and told them their expectations were “unrealistic.” Ukraine was never going to be a NATO member—that was implied by the Minsk agreements that predated Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea and were renewed afterward in 2015. This fight goes back well over 10 years, and time is on Russia’s side.

Instead of withdrawing in fear of Putin, Trump called Putin. It’s likely the fighting will end, more likely than it has been since 2022. Does that make Trump a stooge of Putin? I don’t think so. This was never our fight to begin with, but we’ve been in the mix for a long time. President Barack Obama drew red lines in 2014, Putin crossed them, and he did nothing. President Joe Biden rang the alarm, Putin ignored it, and Biden sent money and weapons. NATO was strengthened. Now Pete Hegseth is getting them to publicly accept the reality of things.

The reality of things is that Trump’s campaign promises are likely to bear fruit. Those who don’t like Trump would rather eat glass than admit he kept some promises, or they’d attribute those things to other reasons. Fine, I’ll entertain that thought. Maybe Biden’s work gave Ukraine the space to negotiate with Putin. But we know that Biden slow-walked aid to Ukraine out of fear of Putin. We know that Putin knew he could hold out for more, threaten escalation and Biden would retreat from his position.

On Ukraine, and on Gaza, my advice is to take the win, for those who are alive and not dead. Trump will get his credit.

As for DOGE, it’s another campaign promise, and, as Jim Geraghty thinks, don’t count Elon Musk out. DOGE is real: it’s an office under the OMB, in the Executive Office of the President. DOGE is a pet name for an office originally created by Barack Obama, and its Special Government Employees, mostly unpaid, are real. They have IDs. They’ve gotten background checks. Some of them might not have their clearances fully issued, but that will happen. Maybe some of them don’t deserve to be there, but these people are going to gather financial information, which is in their purview. USAID, the Treasury Department, or any other agency has no right to refuse to give OMB access to government accounting records.

A bunch of Democrat state attorneys general went judge shopping and found a federal judge in Rhode Island to agree with them. The Trump administration is opposing the court order. It will rise through the federal court system. It’s not unreasonable to assert that the judge is overreaching. Another judge has lifted the pause on processing federal resignation buy-outs. Trump is fairly well getting his picks confirmed by the Senate—like them or not. Even RFK Jr. might get to run HHS.

Say what you want, the Trump administration is not acting completely lawlessly. They are proceeding in good order. Trump’s statements and bombast are just that: Trump being Trump. Don’t conflate Trump’s own behavior with what his administration is doing. The same people who forgave the old man before Trump for saying and doing things that his administration wasn’t on board with are taking the opposite tack with Trump. That’s politics.

The reality is that for nearly three years, the reality on the ground in Ukraine was ignored, while Republicans were blamed for any setbacks because they opposed giving money (a political stance, wrong as it is). The reality on the ground in Gaza was ignored in favor of political triangulation, as the Democratic coalition fell apart in its intersectional belief in the sainthood of victims who put babies in ovens.

The reality is that Biden pardoned all kinds of people who didn’t deserve it, and cut off justice and courts. Trump’s J6 pardons were mostly Pyrrhic, since just about all of the ones who were convicted served their sentences. It was Biden who said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, then did it anyway. Trump always said he would pardon the J6 convicts. Biden broke his promise, and Trump kept his. You may not agree with the promise, but it was kept.

Trump is setting expectations that he is keeping his promises, full stop. So far, he hasn’t publicly defied the Supreme Court, or acted against Congress. He’s done what other recent presidents have done: issued executive orders like they were royal edicts, and let the courts sort them out. Congress is doing what Congress does—Trump hasn’t gone out and put Kennedy in HHS without the Senate’s confirmation. That would be lawless. Doing things that courts and judges later overturn is not lawless, it’s politics and how POTUS’s find their limits.

My question to those shouting how Trump is a dictator: what are you going to say when the courts rule in the administration’s favor, Putin and Zelenskyy sign a peace treaty, and Hamas releases the hostages?

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