By Mark Penn Fox News Published
President Trump should be commended for pursuing a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia that has cost over a million lives
The headlines were all over the news sites. Trump to push for concessions to the Russians. President Donald Trump got nothing from the Alaska Summit. Trump handing over a win to Putin. European leaders are coming to woo Trump. One headline after another dissing the president and his attempt to bring world powers together for peace in Ukraine. News analysts managed to find a negative angle to every single aspect of the attempted negotiations.
The reality is obviously different, and the headlines would have been different with just about any other president. Imagine if Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Barack Obama had pulled off meetings with all the combatants directly and in record time. The headlines would have been fawning in admiration, calling for a second Nobel Prize. But that’s not what happened. In fact, President Obama sat idly by while Russia rolled into Crimea in March 2014 – the real beginning of the problem. The Russian reset never happened. The red lines were crossed with impunity as the American deterrence withered.
As President Trump himself has said, these efforts may fail if Putin is unwilling to end the war, but the effort being undertaken at the highest levels is unprecedented. President Joe Biden could barely attend the G7 meetings and was caught wandering off into space during photo opportunities.
The previous president was not capable of the kind of top-to-top diplomacy needed to resolve complex world situations, and the U.S. was at serious risk because of that lapse and the reliance on aides instead. The real danger of the cover-up of the last president’s health was not in relation to domestic policy but the way it left the U.S. incapacitated when it came to foreign affairs.
Compare that to the country today. We see Trump taking meetings and initiating discussions that usually take months and years to set up. He’s pulled it off in days.
Diplomacy is about getting people to do things they do not want to do without shooting them. And in that vein, Trump is clearly practicing the fine art of diplomacy, and the press and the country should be rooting for his success, not trying to pick apart everything he does.
European leaders dropped whatever they were doing to show up at the White House on Monday to have the kind of allied meeting we have not seen, ever. And this is with all the talk that Trump had damaged the European alliance.
President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pose for a family photo amid negotiations to end the Russian war in Ukraine, at the White House in Washington, Aug. 18, 2025. (Alexander Drago/Reuters)
Yet the president has pulled off both a trade deal and pan-European negotiations in just a few months. When he got to a certain point, he simply called Putin on the phone in a scene that might have been out of “Dr. Strangelove.” Direct conversation, world leader to world leader.
Trump may or may not be successful here but he has all parties talking about how they could end a war that has been at a standstill for years – one that has cost over a million lives and counting. Rather than just throw money at the problem as was done by the last administration, Trump has put his presidency and America behind finding a solution outside the battlefield.
This is in the finest tradition of what America can and should do as the leader of the free world. America First should never mean allowing the world to spin out of control and become engulfed in endless conflicts.
I always say that diplomacy is about getting people to do things they do not want to do without shooting them. And in that vein, Trump is clearly practicing the fine art of diplomacy, and the press and the country should be rooting for his success, not trying to pick apart everything he does.
This is what is keeping our country more divided than it can or should be – when one side does something that is clearly good, like trying to solve the world’s biggest war, the headlines should reflect that effort, regardless of the party.
Keep in mind (as if it matters), Mark Penn is a Democrat…
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even people who are naive
The real naive people are those that continually believe the media narrative echo chamber which is often wrong but they eat it anyway. I’m surprised by you Sir Cap, you used to consider both sides because you love Ukraine. Now you appear to just eat from the trough.
With all due respect, Sir Red, I don’t eat from the same trough. I endeavor to listen to both sides and come to an opinion. Because I believe someone is naive does not cancel that individual’s opinion, it simply expresses my opinion on an individuals conclusions, which is based on listening to both sides.
Penn is not a Democrat. Hasn’t been for years.
He backed putlerite Ron DiSantis for president.
Trump’s plan is to destroy the Empire, but i will live longer than him. 😇
Is this guy a comedian? LOL.
“Trump to push for concessions to the Russians.”
Yes, he’s doing that.
“President Donald Trump got nothing from the Alaska Summit.”
Also true.
“Trump handing over a win to Putin.”
Three for three.
“pulled off meetings with all the combatants directly”
The combatants are ruSSia and Ukraine. And putler and President Zelenskyy haven’t met directly. So, the Alaska meeting accomplished nothing other than to bring shame.
“caught wandering off into space”
That’s been widely debunked. Dishonest right-wing media showed images cut to look like that, but you can see other video that clearly shows he was going over to give a “thumbs up” to one of the paratroopers who had just landed.
“European leaders dropped whatever they were doing to show up at the White House on Monday”
They were in a panic because they didn’t want trumpkov passing along the marching orders he had gotten from putler. So they dropped everything to come and support President Zelenskyy and try to get #DementiaDon back on the right track.