Trump just showed how he’d approach the war in Ukraine

Donald Trump got two chances from ABC moderator David Muir on Tuesday night to say whether he wants Ukraine to defeat Russia.

But Trump didn’t take them.

Instead, the former president said he would seek a negotiated end to the conflict. And he would not wait until his second term begins — he’d try to cut a deal between Ukraine and nuclear-armed Russia immediately after the election.

“That is a war that’s dying to be settled,” he said.

Giving Trump a chance to reply “yes” when asked if he wanted to see Ukraine victorious was the presidential debate equivalent of a layup, if Trump wanted it. After all, even most Republican critics of the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine would offer boilerplate support for the country’s sovereignty.

And in declining to directly answer the question, Trump actually gave a strikingly direct picture of how he’d approach the war in Ukraine. His comments pointed to something of a coherent worldview on the Ukraine situation — and a potential window into a Trumpian version of realpolitik that might govern a second term, if he were elected. That could mean a Trump administration far less willing to challenge an expansionist Russia and more inclined to cut deals.

Vice President Kamala Harris seized on the answer to present Trump as a stooge of Vladimir Putin — “a dictator who would eat you for lunch,” she said — and a friend of autocrats. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” she said.

“Donald Trump won’t say he wants Ukraine to win the war? I thought he would at least pretend….” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posted on X.

But Trump gave no ground in his refusal to explicitly cheer for Ukraine’s success, intent on his argument that a settlement is the best way to end the war.

The moment underscored, again, how Trump in a second term might take the Republican approach to foreign policy even further from its Reaganite roots. And it was all the more striking given how accusations of collusion with Russia dogged Trump’s term in the Oval Office.

His Ukraine comments stood in some contrast to his foggier, false or meandering answers on other topics. On his theory of the case on Ukraine, Trump seemed to make good on a promise he made early in Tuesday’s debate: “Everybody knows I’m an open book.”

Muir asked the question plainly: “You have said you would solve this war in 24 hours. You said so just before the break tonight. How exactly would you do that? And I want to ask you a very simple question tonight: Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”

As always, Trump’s answer — “I want the war to stop” — centered around his perception of his own negotiating skills — and his contention that he would have prevented a war to begin with. “I know [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. And they respect your president. OK? They respect me. They don’t respect Biden. How would you respect him? Why? For what reason? He hasn’t even made a phone call in two years to Putin,” Trump said.

“I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I’m president-elect, and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together,” Trump continued.

Muir asked again: “Just to clarify the question, do you believe it’s in the U.S. best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?”

And Trump doubled down: “I think it’s in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. All right. Negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed.”

Trump was also exceedingly direct about something Biden and most U.S. leaders dance around — Russia’s nuclear deterrence — and signaled that in his assessment, it’s not worth cornering Putin.

“He’s got a thing that other people don’t have. He’s got nuclear weapons. They don’t ever talk about that. He’s got nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “Nobody ever thinks about that. And eventually, uh, maybe he’ll use them. Maybe he hasn’t been that threatening. But he does have that. Something we don’t even like to talk about. Nobody likes to talk about it.”

And for all of Harris and Biden’s public support for Ukraine, Trump is saying loudly something that at least some members of the current administration say softly: that a negotiated end to the war may ultimately be in all sides’ interest.