GOP increasingly says Trump has been played by Putin
President Donald Trump’s attempts to give peace a chance with Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be going predictably poorly.
Since their meeting in Alaska last month, Putin has shown little interest in the direct peace talks with Ukraine that Trump tried to secure.
Russia has attacked an American-owned business in Ukraine. It has continued bombing civilians. And most recently, it sent drones into Poland’s airspace in an apparently unprecedented event that has NATO spooked about a much-wider war.
“What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones?” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday. “Here we go!” he added, without elaborating.
The president has previously mused that Putin may be “tapping me along,” but he’s done little to act on that sentiment, repeatedly blowing past the “two-week” deadlines he’s given the Russian leader to make peace.
But even as Trump’s [JB - sic] appeared highly reluctant to come to the conclusion that Putin is playing him, Republican lawmakers have been doing it for him.
They’ll often dress it up in order to avoid alienating Trump, but they’re painting a picture of a US president who’s been had.
“President Trump wants to make sure that he is giving every opportunity for peace to get this war resolved. But Putin is playing him right now,” Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said Wednesday, before adding: “And I think the president understands that.”
Sen. Thom Tillis made similar comments.
“I think Russia is playing – they’re really playing us like a piano right now,” the North Carolina Republican said, while claiming Trump wasn’t “being naïve.”
Neither senator is running for reelection next year, allowing them to be more candid in their assessments of Trump’s handling of foreign policy. But it’s not just departing Republicans going there.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi also gestured in this direction during a floor speech Monday before the developments in Poland.
He said Trump “has given Vladimir Putin every chance,” but that the Russian president has “mocked the peace process” and “played games with peace talks.”
Even a member of Trump’s Cabinet, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has cast the Alaska meeting with Putin as bearing no fruit.
“President Putin, since the historic meeting in Anchorage … has done the opposite of following through on what he indicated he wanted to do,” Bessent told Fox News last week.
These comments also follow some key world leaders’ remarks to this effect. French President Emmanuel Macron said in late August that Putin’s failure to agree to a meeting with Ukraine would mean “that once again President Putin played President Trump.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who’s been chummy with Trump on the world stage this year, cautioned those pushing for a peace deal that “we should not be naïve” – without invoking the American president specifically.
While this narrative is building on the GOP side, it’s not totally new.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wagered as far back as April that Putin was just playing the US government.
“President Trump pls put the toughest of sanctions on Putin,” he posted on X. “[You] ought to [see] from clear evidence that he is playing America as a patsy.”
And Ernst [Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa] actually said what she said this week before. Back in July, she said that Putin was “playing the United States. And President Trump realizes that.”
“He’s always wanting to give the benefit of the doubt and give peace a chance,” the Iowa Republican said at the time (before announcing she’s not seeking reelection). “But Putin’s not cooperating.”
The fact that Ernst has now said this twice, two months apart, gives away the game.
She has said each time that Trump actually understands what’s happening. But does he really? If he understood he was being played back in July, as Ernst said, why go through with a meeting with Putin in Alaska and bill it as a significant development? Why has Trump continued to blow his own deadlines for making final decisions on sanctions and other harsher measures? If Trump has understood he’s been played, he’s had a funny way of showing it.
Trump did impose steep tariffs on India as punishment for buying Russia oil — and he signaled on Sunday he’s ready to move to a second phase of sanctions on Moscow — but he’s pretty much ignored the legislative push for sanctions led by his friend, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, that has widespread bipartisan support.
The latest strategy from Republicans appears to be an acknowledgement that softer attempts to get Trump to be more hawkish on Russia haven’t worked. Trump has treated Putin conspicuously gently for years, in ways that have tested the Russia hawks in the party. Now they seem to be losing patience and warning Trump that clinging to hope for a deal risks making him look like a fool.
Rep. Don Bacon summed it up nicely on Monday.
“We’ve tried to be – hoping the president would get to the right spot on Russia and Ukraine, and he’s not,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju. The Nebraska Republican, who’s hanging up his hat in Congress next year, added: “The administration’s policy towards Russia is weak and vacillating, and Putin is taking advantage of it.”
These other Republicans aren’t saying it in so many words. But they’re basically agreeing.
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