Two foreign leaders have become more vexing to President Trump than he expected: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Each of them has complicated the political calculus for Trump on the world stage, owing not only to the suffering each of them has imposed on Ukrainians and Palestinians, respectively, but also to their reluctance to change course.
The president’s shift in attitude has been starkest in relation to Putin, who has resisted Trump’s urging to bring down the curtain on the war in Ukraine. Russia started the war by invading its neighbor in February 2022.
On Friday, Trump announced he had ordered two nuclear submarines to unspecified “appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative statements” from Moscow.
The backstory to that move lies in Trump’s declaration earlier in the week, during a trip to Scotland, that he was tightening his deadline for Russia to work toward a ceasefire. The president said he was bringing the time frame down to “10 or 12 days.”
Moscow responded with a shoulder shrug, however. A Kremlin spokesperson said the nation had developed “a certain immunity” to such threats.
The sequence of events — and the general tone toward Putin — is a massive difference from late February, when Trump and Vice President Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office for his supposed ingratitude over American assistance.
Several times earlier in the year, Trump appeared to blame Ukraine for starting the war. In April, he said of Zelensky: “When you start a war, you’ve got to know that you can win the war, right? You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”
The reason for the recent change in tone is straightforward. Trump wants to bring the war in Ukraine to an end and Putin is not playing ball.
Trump has seemed especially irritated about Putin’s propensity to have constructive or even friendly phone conversations with the president — only for Russia to launch ferocious bombardments against Ukrainian cities hours later.
“We get a lot of bulls‑‑‑ thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in early July. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
One reason for Trump’s ire, presumably, is that Putin’s recalcitrance places the president in a tough political spot.
During last year’s presidential campaign, he promised he would be able to bring the war in Ukraine to an end “within 24 hours.” That promise has proved hollow, and no breakthrough seems close at hand.
On the other hand, it seems highly unlikely that Trump will shrug off his long skepticism about U.S. aid to Ukraine entirely.
That leaves the president in a kind of uncomfortable limbo, neither ending the war nor shifting the tide in Ukraine’s favor.
The specifics are very different with Netanyahu. But in that case, too, there are reasons for political discomfort on Trump’s part.
Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu is in some ways even more turbulent than with Putin.
The president is extremely pro-Israeli in his overall outlook. In his first term, he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and came up with a “peace plan” so aligned with Israeli priorities that it was dismissed out of hand even by the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority.
But Trump also fell out with Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister recognized former President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. His annoyance then led him to air a complaint that the Israeli prime minister had allegedly backed out of what had been originally conceived as a joint operation to kill the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani. The U.S. went ahead alone, killing Soleimani in January 2020.
“Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” Trump said in late 2023.
Trump’s actual policies have remained staunchly pro-Israeli in the first six months of his second term, but his tone has pitched in wildly different directions.
He nudged the Israelis toward a ceasefire even before he took office — but seemed fairly unbothered when they broke it off in March, blocking all aid from getting into Gaza for more than two months.
Trump has talked up the idea of moving the Palestinians out of Gaza, even suggesting transforming one of the most benighted places on earth into some kind of coastal resort.
But he also broke early this week with Netanyahu’s insistence that there is no starvation in Gaza. Trump averred that he had seen footage of children who “look very hungry,” adding “you can’t fake that.”
On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited an aid distribution site in Gaza run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Witkoff said part of the purpose was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
Back at home, there have been signs that the traditionally staunch support Israel has received from the right is beginning to fray, further complicating the picture for Trump.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently became the first prominent Republican to call what Israel is doing in Gaza a “genocide.” Influential commentators within Trump’s base, from Tucker Carlson to podcasters like Theo Von and Joe Rogan, have become more inclined to criticize Israeli policies and their effects.
But none of that guarantees that the Israeli prime minister will shift.
Among the counterweights are Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that the war aim is not only the release of all hostages held by Hamas but “total victory”; his desire to keep together his governing coalition, which includes extremely hard-line figures from minor parties; and his presumed interest in continuing to delay his long-running corruption trial.
Trump could play hardball with Netanyahu more easily than with Putin, given the massive aid the U.S. gives to Israel. But whether he has the urge to do so is widely open to question.
For the moment, it seems likely that the Russian and Israeli leaders will cloud Trump’s political outlook for some time to come.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
