Trump's frayed relationships with Putin and Netanyahu are impeding his foreign agenda
'Very disappointed,' Trump said of his last conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose war in Ukraine is only escalating, despite Trump's efforts to end it.
'It was sort of disappointing,' Trump said Friday of a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war in Gaza continues amid a dire humanitarian crisis.
With those two conflicts so far unresolved — impeding his chances for a Nobel Peace Prize — Trump is discovering the limitations of his complicated personal ties with Putin and Netanyahu, whose respective wars Trump once insisted he could quickly resolve. And he's clearly grown frustrated he can't seem to solve the crises any better than former President Joe Biden, who he regards as a failure on foreign policy in particular.
In Trump's telling, Putin tells him one thing, then does another. The Kremlin leader, whose relationship with Trump has been the subject of fascination for a decade, has gone 'absolutely crazy' in his relentless waves of missile and drone attacks in Ukraine, Trump insists.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has tested Trump's patience with airstrikes in Syria and Gaza, where images of starving children have led to international outcry and new divisions within Trump's own party about how much to support Israel. The two men share a tumultuous history, with their relationship running hot and cold as Trump seeks an end to the war.
Trump's challenges in leveraging his relationships extend beyond Russia and Israel. He has found a tough trade negotiator in his friend Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite once being Modi's guest of honor at a 125,000-person rally in Gujarat. And his onetime North Korean pen-pal Kim Jong Un is not currently responding to Trump's overtures; though Kim's sister said this week their relationship was 'not bad,' she said Pyongyang would never abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Trump has always applied a uniquely personal approach to foreign affairs, handing out his cell phone number and encouraging his counterparts to call or text outside the usual diplomatic channels. That has resulted, often, in improved relationships that many diplomats say can yield real results, including Trump's success in boosting NATO members' defense spending.
Yet the approach also has its limits.
From Nobel prize to starvation crisis
At the start of this month, Netanyahu dramatically presented Trump with a letter over dinner in the White House Blue Room nominating him for the Nobel prize. Trump seemed momentarily speechless.
By the end of July, however, Netanyahu's actions in Gaza and Syria — including the bombing of a Catholic Church and the targeting of government buildings — were testing Trump's patience. And this week, Trump openly broke with Netanyahu, who has claimed there was no starvation in Gaza, after seeing images of the crisis on television.
Palestinian civil defense try to extinguish a fire at a building hit by an Israeli strike in Gaza City in the central Gaza Strip, on July 2 amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group.
Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images
'I think everybody, unless they're pretty cold-hearted — or worse than that, nuts — there's nothing you can say other than it's terrible when you see the kids,' the president said in Scotland, where he was visiting his golf properties.
On the evening before he departed for Scotland, Trump was watching the footage of starving children in Gaza, telling aides he wanted to discuss the horrifying images with Netanyahu and asking what the US could do to help, two White House officials told CNN.
'It had already been on his mind before he left,' one of the officials said, adding Trump was deeply disturbed by the images he saw.
Trump has previously been spurred to action by images of human devastation, and seeing the suffering of the children captured in photos helped motivate him to boost US aid efforts, the officials said.
First lady Melania Trump was particularly affected by the images, they told CNN, and played a key role in Trump's shifting rhetoric. Trump acknowledged as much when speaking with reporters on Air Force One on his trip back to Washington from Scotland on Tuesday.
It's not the first time the first lady has factored into Trump's views of the two intractable conflicts he's so far been unable to end. Trump has also cited his wife when lamenting what he says is Putin's duplicity about the war in Ukraine.
'I go home, I tell the first lady, 'I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation.' And she says, 'Oh really, another city was just hit,'' Trump said this month in the Oval Office.
The Trump-Putin connection
Trump's exasperation with Putin has been building for months, fueled in part by the US president's inability to leverage what he once believed to be a positive relationship into a successful peace deal.
'We got along very well. And I never, you know, I never really thought this would happen,' Trump said this week. 'I thought we would be able to negotiate something, and maybe that'll still happen. But it's very late down the process. So I'm disappointed.'
That frustration boiled over earlier this week, when Trump abruptly announced he would be moving up the deadline he had given Russia earlier this month — initially 50 days — to either make a deal, or face what the president has characterized as strict secondary sanctions and tariffs. On Tuesday, Trump said Putin had 10 days left to negotiate a ceasefire, after previously sniping that there was 'no reason' to wait when he didn't 'see any progress being made.'
A White House official said Trump personally decided to ramp up pressure on Putin after the initial 50-day deadline failed to draw the Russian president back to the negotiating table. Trump decided a shortened timeline was a good negotiating tactic, they said.
The president's relationship with Putin has drawn intense scrutiny, particularly during Trump's first term when he appeared to side with Putin over US intelligence agencies on the subject of Moscow's meddling in the 2016 election.
Trump has suggested a certain kinship with the Russian leader after enduring investigations into the election interference efforts, saying in February Putin had been 'through a hell of a lot with me.' Trump's aides, including his foreign envoy Steve Witkoff, cited the two men's existing connection as a reason for optimism as he was seeking a negotiated settlement this spring.
While Trump has insisted he wasn't 'played' by the Russian president, he isn't the first US leader to find that working with Putin is easier said than done. George W. Bush once described gleaning 'a sense of his soul' after looking into Putin's eyes, finding him 'very straightforward and trustworthy' — seven years before Russia invaded Georgia. Barack Obama ordered up a 'reset' with Russia, complete with red prop button presented by his secretary of state to her counterpart, five years before Russia invaded Crimea.
Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffins of twelve Ukrainian servicemen and prisoners of war who died being held in Russian captivity during a funeral ceremony in Lviv, western Ukraine, on July 25.
Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images
Exerting pressure on Netanyahu
So, too, have Trump's predecessors discovered that personal ties to Netanyahu only go so far in shaping the longtime Israeli prime minister's approach to the region. Biden had known Netanyahu for four decades when he became president in 2021. By the start of his final year in office, Biden was complaining to advisers and others that the prime minister was ignoring his advice and obstructing efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Last fall, some Biden administration officials even believed Netanyahu was prolonging the Gaza conflict in the hopes Trump would win the election.
Trump did lift some restrictions on weapons transfers to Israel when he entered office. But his attempts to pressure Netanyahu and Hamas into a permanent ceasefire have so far fallen short. And a relationship that has seen its ups and downs — including a falling-out over Netanyahu's acceptance of Biden's victory in 2020 that Trump has never fully forgotten — has been tested.
Just this summer, Trump heaped praise on Netanyahu, calling for Israeli authorities to drop corruption charges against the prime minister after the US and Israel joined together to strike targets in Iran.
'Bibi and I just went through HELL together,' Trump wrote, echoing his description of the experience he shared with Putin.
But it was only a matter of weeks until Trump was on the phone with Netanyahu to demand an explanation for the church bombing in Gaza and the targeting of sites in Damascus, which caught Trump by surprise, according to the White House.
This weekend, Trump's ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee denied any rift between the men, saying on Fox News the relationship was 'stronger than it's ever been.'
Some of Trump's other counterparts hold out hope he may employ his leverage on Netanyahu to do more to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose decision to fly to Scotland and meet directly with Trump this weekend was largely due to the unfolding humanitarian crisis, worked to persuade Trump to use his influence to help, including calling on the president to apply pressure on Netanyahu, sources familiar with the discussions said.
Trump said Monday he had spoken directly with the Israeli prime minister regarding the issue, adding that he told Netanyahu he may need to approach the war 'in a different way.' White House officials did not divulge the substance of their call, but told CNN the president is dedicated to working with Israel to help solve the famine.
Over the weekend, Israel's military said it began 'humanitarian pauses' in densely populated parts of the enclave and opened corridors for UN convoys to make aid deliveries. However, it said fighting would continue elsewhere.
While the president's comments condemning the lack of resources being made available to the people of Gaza served as a major break with Netanyahu — who stated over the weekend that there 'is no starvation in Gaza' — one White House official told CNN that the divisions between the two leaders are being 'far overblown' by the media.
'I don't think having POTUS acknowledge that children are clearly starving represents some major break with Bibi,' they said, adding that Trump is still committed to fully supporting Israel in their efforts to end their war with Hamas.
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