Letters from an American - August 17, 2025

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

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August 17, 2025, on the heels of President Donald J. Trump's Friday meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, Trump will meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky Monday afternoon at the White House. According to Barack Ravid of Axios, Trump called Zelensky from Air Force One on the way home from Alaska. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff were also on the hour-long call. The leaders of the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO,

and the United Kingdom, then joined the call for another half hour. In the call, Trump embraced Putin's view of the conflict, telling Zelensky and European leaders that Putin does not want a ceasefire. Trump indicated that he is abandoning his own demand for a ceasefire and adopting Putin's position that negotiations should take place without one. Zelensky insists on a ceasefire before negotiations. After the call, Trump posted on social media that it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine

is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere ceasefire agreement, which oftentimes do not hold up. All is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It appears to mean Putin, with the possible agreement now of Trump. Key unanswered questions from Friday's summit

were why it ended so abruptly, with the cancellation of a planned luncheon and more discussions, and why Trump immediately told Fox News channel personality, Sean Hannity. Because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about further sanctions on Russia now. I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don't have to think about that right now. The abrupt cancellation could mean that U.S. officials sent Putin packing without lunch because he would not agree to a ceasefire.

But it seems worth keeping on the table that Trump has recently exhibited both an inability to focus on any topic and a need to live in a carefully constructed world that ignores reality and assures him he is the best and the brightest. A high-stakes meeting with principles about a very real situation might have been too much for him to manage for a full day. At the press conference following the summit, NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander reported that what struck him was the looks on the faces of a lot of the American delegation here. Carolyn Levitt, Steve Whitkoff, who came into the room, then left quickly, then came back in. Levitt appeared to be a bit stressed out, anxious. Their eyes were wide, almost ashen at times. At 8.31 this morning, Trump posted one word, Bella, on his

social media account. California Governor Gavin Newsom's social media account, which has been trolling Trump by imitating his boastful, insulting, all-caps posts, wrote, We broke Donald Trump. As of Midday Sunday, there appeared to be no mention of the Alaska meeting on the State Department website, although it has been updated since Friday to acknowledge Indonesia Independence Day and the Gabonese Republic National Day. What is clear from the summit, though, is that Trump and Putin badly miscalculated, the nature of power in democracies. It has seemed since 2016 that Putin believed

that if he could drive a wedge between the U.S., NATO countries, and other allies, which together have defended a rules-based international order since 1949, he could break that order. Then, absent the system that worked to keep big countries from invading smaller ones, he could take over parts of Ukraine

and possibly other countries around Russia. Russia. Together, Putin and Trump have gone a long way toward aligning the U.S. government with Putin and other authoritarian. In his first term, Trump talked of leaving NATO, but those in his administration who understood the nature of power prevented him. Now he is operating without those professionals and has shifted the U.S. to a foreign policy that is fraying our relationships with other countries. But U.S. strength in international relations has always been in its relationships, and with the U.S. withdrawing from its traditional democratic alliances, others are strengthening their relationships without the U.S. Today, at a meeting with Zelensky

in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that international borders cannot be changed by force. She called for Ukraine to become a steel porcupine, indigestible for potential invaders. French president, Emmanuel Macron, said that Ukraine's borders must be honored, and that if we show weakness today in front of Russia, we are laying the ground for future conflict. These allies are standing together against Putin and, if necessary, against Trump. Vonderlion will accompany Zelensky to a meeting at the White House on Monday. So will French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney, German Chancellor Friedrich Mears, NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmur, and Finnish President

Alexander Stubb. National Security scholar Tom Nichols noted on social media that it suggests something went very wrong in Alaska if this many European leaders are coming to Washington on short notice. Trump has misunderstood the nature of power in a democracy at home, too. Rather than building domestic coalitions to support the government, he is overseeing the takeover of the government by a radical minority that seems to think the way to build power is for the government to attack its own people. The administration's defunding of scientific research, medical care,

environmental protection, food safety and security, and emergency management all threaten Americans' health, safety, and security. Its attacks on history and education, as well as its firing of women and racial and gender minorities, seem designed to drive wedges among Americans. Its incarceration and disappearing of undocumented migrants both creates an other for Trump loyalists to hate and provides a warning of what could happen to the regime's opponents. Now, under the guise of fighting crime, the administration has quite literally turned guns on the American people. On June 7th, Trump deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles and federalized 4,100 California National Guard personnel after scattered protests of immigration raids.

Administration officials argue that the troops were not engaged in law enforcement, but were simply protecting federal agents. California Governor Gavin Newsom sued the administration to limit the use of the military in Los Angeles. In the trial held last week, lawyers for the federal government said troops can protect federal agents wherever they go, effectively asserting that there are no limits to how a president can use troops domestically, despite the 1878 Possecomitatis Act saying the opposite. That deployment was so deeply unpopular that as Sean Hubler of the New York Times reported in July, of the 72 soldiers whose enlistment was set to expire during the deployment, two had already left and 55 said they

would not extend their service, a 21% retention rate when the normal retention rate is 60%. One told Hubler, this is not what the military of our country was designed to do at all. But if Trump's deployments of troops in states can be challenged under the Posse Comitatis Act, that's a harder call in Washington, D.C., which is overseen by Congress. There, the president controls the National Guard, in contrast to what Trump claimed in 2021, and so did not need additional authority. In addition, the 1973 Home Rule Act that established limited self-government in the city provided that the president could take control of the police department, Department there. Trump is the first to do so. On Monday, August 11th, Trump announced he was placing the Washington, D.C. Police Department under federal control and deploying National Guard troops there. He asserted that violent crime in the city is getting worse, and in an executive order claimed that crime is out of control in the city. This is a transparently manufactured excuse to enable the administration to take

take over a Democratic city with troops they control. In fact, crime in Washington, D.C. has been trending downward for decades, and violent crime is now, according to the Department of Justice's own statistics, at a 30-year low. There is also the sticky little problem of the fact that Trump pardoned about 1,500 of those convicted of crimes for their participation in the riot of January 6, 2021, and that under his direction the Department of Justice dismissed all pending cases against the remaining January 6th defendants many of those defendants attacked police officers more generally the administration seems to be encouraging violence rather than shunning it as Anna Merlin of Mother Jones reported on Friday the White House Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security joke on social media about cruelty and torture, suggesting it's fun to hurt people. They are sanitizing and popularizing state violence.

Trump's pardoning of drug trafficker Ross Albrecht, sentenced to life in prison, and is welcome to the U.S. of a man convicted of killing three people in Spain, suggests the president's support for law and order is cover for his own political ends. Maga's violent rhetoric is bearing fruit in the shooting of two prominent minorses,

Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses in early June, killing too. Then, on August 8th, a Georgia man who blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, fired more than 180 shots into the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killing police officer David Rose, a 33-year-old former Marine. Yesterday, the Republican governors of West Virginia, South Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio all said they would send National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to support Trump's takeover of the city. They will be funded by the federal government, that is, our tax dollars. Journalist Philip Bump illustrated that the true goal of the forces in the city has little to do with actual crime rates by running the numbers.

He showed that 43 cities in the state sending troops to Washington, D.C., have higher rates of violence. violent crime than the capital does. The Trump administration is launching a classic authoritarian project, attempting to take over a country through division and fear. But they badly misunderstand the nature of power. If they succeed, they will control

a badly diminished United States of America, one that has fallen to the level of a country like Russia. Far from the powerhouse it was when we recognized that the extraordinary strength of our nation always came not from force, but from alliances. There is one thing Trump's military deployments against the American people have accomplished, though. Media mentions of the Epstein files have plummeted. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced

at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.