A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
For more on the president's attempts to jump-start diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine, let's turn now to David Sanger. He's a longtime White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times and wrote this week about Trump's, quote, "strategic incoherence" over the past two weeks.
So, David, what do you think it is about President Trump that maybe he doesn't want to either understand or refuse to accept about Vladimir Putin's resolve when it comes to Ukraine?
DAVID SANGER: Well, I think the place where it starts is that the president says that Putin is seeking peace. He may ultimately want peace. But I don't think he wants peace necessarily on the same timeline that the president has in mind here because at this point, delay works to his advantage. He feels as if his troops were advancing, that there's no reason to give up now. But the strategic incoherence goes deeper than that. The fundamental problem is that the administration keeps changing the way it discusses the United States' role in this. Sometimes you hear President Trump and JD Vance, the vice president, talk about the U.S. as a mediator. In other words, they're first talking to Putin. Then they're talking to Zelenskyy.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
SANGER: Then they're trying to come up with some ideas in between - the sort of traditional diplomacy. At other moments, you hear the president say, well, the United States would join in the security arrangements for Ukraine or would continue some kind of military support for Ukraine, even if it's through the Europeans, in which case the U.S. is contributing to Ukraine's side. And at other moments, of course, we've heard the president repeat the Russian talking points.
MARTÍNEZ: So could it be that Vladimir Putin sees what the United States - or how they're handling it and saying, hey, they don't seem to have their act together, so I can wait this out?
SANGER: Or they don't really know what they want. They just want a solution that would get the president to his ultimate goal here, which he's declared is win a Nobel Peace Prize. And, you know, in the story, I said, you know, there's kind of a model here for the president. It's what Teddy Roosevelt did 120 years ago this week in the Russo-Japanese War, where he did in fact play mediator in that particular case, 'cause the U.S. didn't have the kind of interests it has right now in Ukraine and in Ukraine at least holding on as an independent state.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
SANGER: And he did win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, the next year.
MARTÍNEZ: David, you've written that Trump leans on leader-to-leader charm. Why do you think that doesn't seem to work with Vladimir Putin?
SANGER: Well, it's not just Putin it doesn't work with. And, you know, Putin's pretty good at this. An obviously former KGB agent - you've heard the whole bit - he knows how to go play President Trump and other leaders. But think back to the closest model in this in the first Trump term. It was President Trump's relationship with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who he continued to praise yesterday while sitting in the Oval Office with the president of South Korea, right? And he talked about what a great relationship he had with Kim Jong-un. Well, it's terrific that they've got a good relationship, but what did that alone get him? He went and met him in Singapore, said, we're on the way to disarming North Korea. Within six months, they would begin giving up nuclear weapons. They never gave up a single nuclear weapon.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
SANGER: And then they built more than they've ever had before.
MARTÍNEZ: That's David Sanger of The New York Times. David, thanks.
SANGER: Thank you.
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