Trump Pressures Ukraine as Voters Pay for Power Games

Ukraine wasn’t invited to a proposed meeting about the war being fought on its territory. A Kremlin official said Vladimir Putin had agreed to resume trilateral negotiations with Washington and Kyiv, but the meeting would proceed without Ukraine taking part. The people whose future is being negotiated remain outside the room.

In St. Petersburg, Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, presented Putin with a ceasefire proposal negotiated by the United States, Ukraine and European countries. A top Putin aide dismissed the proposal as containing “little of real value.” Instead, Putin offered to increase Russian fertilizer exports to U.S. farmers and said he hoped Trump would join him at a summit in China with Xi Jinping.

Fiona Hill, one of Trump’s former aides, said Trump wants a personal relationship with Putin and to change the U.S.-Russian relationship, with Ukraine “in the way.” “President Trump wants Zelensky to capitulate,” she said. Hill added: “This whole war is about Ukrainians wanting the right to determine their own future. It’s not Putin’s right or anyone else’s. It’s not Donald Trump’s to give away.”

Who Gets a Seat at the Table

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don't want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table. Great progress is being made.” The Los Angeles Times reported that signs of progress were hard to find. Trump has relaxed U.S. sanctions on Russia despite its continuing invasion of Ukraine and pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Putin’s territorial demands.

“If Trump and Witkoff were serious, they would give Putin 15 days to say yes to their ceasefire proposal — and if he doesn't, they would impose new and tougher sanctions,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Trump instead called Ukraine foolish for resisting Russia’s 2022 invasion: “Russia is a massive country. Even if it loses a million soldiers, it still has a million more. Ukraine doesn't have that kind of manpower.”

U.S. military help to Ukraine’s army was interrupted in three forms: Starlink, used to guide anti-drone missiles; U.S.-provided early radar warnings of Russian missile attacks; and supplies of Patriot anti-missile weapons. U.S. officials said the incidents weren’t deliberate. Ukrainians saw them as a warning.

Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department official under then-President George W. Bush, wrote: “The Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of being an honest broker. It has gone all in on Russia's side.” The Times reported that Trump has sought business deals in Moscow for about 30 years. In 2008, his son Donald Jr. said Russians had provided the Trump Organization “a lot of our assets.”

Campaigns, Cash and the Cost of Living

Trump was also campaigning ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with a rally planned in Corinth, Mississippi, for Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate GOP leadership, reserved $1.3 million in airtime for an attack ad against Democratic challenger Scott Colom, matching the amount spent by Senate Majority PAC, a group tied to Democratic leadership. The Senate Democrats’ top super PAC had announced a $1.2 million ad campaign for Colom the previous week. Candidates and aligned political committees are offering voters rival ads; the records show the price of entry is measured in millions.

The household bills behind those campaign scripts are harder to ignore. A basic Ford F-150 cost about $100 to fill, $30 more than a year earlier; mortgage rates had risen to levels that depressed home sales; and consumer prices had increased faster than paychecks over the previous 12 months. Inflation stood at 3% when Trump took office and reached 3.7% the previous month. Trump had pledged, “With your vote in this election, I will end inflation,” but later called “affordability” “a con job by the Democrats.”

Misty Reeder, 48, of Easley, South Carolina, receives disability payments and said rent had risen by hundreds of dollars over the six years she and her husband had rented their home. “Something's gotta give,” she said. “It's like a dam — the pressure's too much, and it's going to break.” Beti Rosales, 47, said higher prices for limes, avocados and plumbing had hurt her family’s Mexican restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania. After giving Trump and Republicans a chance in 2024, she said: “The reality now is that it actually didn't get better. It actually got worse.”

Trump authorized buying diesel fuel from Russia in a bid to lower prices and improve Republican prospects before the midterm elections. Diesel prices rose slightly after the decision. Record-high diesel prices had also raised shipping and farming costs, creating problems for Republicans in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said: “The costs of things are absolutely the first thing people talk about, but also it's their pay not keeping up with the cost. It's a double whammy.”

The Money Behind the Political Show

Republican campaigns and political action committees had spent nearly $3 million at Trump businesses since he returned to office, according to a Washington Post analysis based on federal campaign finance records. Trump spoke at a MAGA Inc. dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Oct. 16. The analysis described campaign spending shifting to Palm Beach after Trump’s former D.C. hotel was gone.

The New York Post reported that U.S. national debt exceeded $40 trillion in August and yearly interest payments topped $1 trillion the previous year, exceeding a U.S. defense budget that fell just short of $1 trillion. Ken Fisher, founder and executive chairman of Fisher Investments, argued that debt should be judged relative to the size of the economy: worldwide government, corporate and household liabilities amounted to 246% of global GDP, down from a 285% peak in 2020. Fisher said U.S. federal debt-to-GDP was about 100%, excluding debt one federal agency owed another, and warned against what he called “debt doomerism.”

The parties keep asking voters to choose who will manage the apparatus. Household costs remain. Campaign cash and decisions about Ukraine sit in the same account of who gets to decide—and who is left to absorb the consequences.