Donald Trump doesn’t seem altogether sure of how many wars, exactly, he’s ended, but the president is confident that it’s “a lot.” In recent weeks, he’s boasted about having ended five wars, six wars and, most recently, seven wars.
Evidently, inflation doesn’t just apply to grocery prices; it also applies to Trump’s made-up foreign policy successes.
As part of his White House discussions with European leaders about Russia’s war in Ukraine, the American president added a new wrinkle to his dubious boasts. During an Oval Office event alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for example, Trump declared, “I don’t think you need a ceasefire. If you look at the six deals that I settled this year they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”
Soon after, as part of a larger discussion with European leaders, he pushed the same line: “In the six wars that I’ve settled, we haven’t had a ceasefire.”
The motivation behind the rhetoric was obvious: Trump spent months demanding that Russia and Ukraine agree to a ceasefire, right up until the Republican sat down with Vladimir Putin, at which point Trump abandoned his own priority. As part of an apparent effort to justify this embarrassing reversal, the American president began suggesting this week that ceasefires aren’t that great after all.
But the pitiful nature of the rhetoric isn’t the only problem.
The White House has never released a formal list of the five, six or seven wars that Trump has ostensibly ended, but the president did use his social media platform over the weekend to highlight a list put together by Roger Stone, a longtime GOP operative and Trump ally. It claimed that the president “has achieved peace” between:
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Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
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Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon (Abraham Accords)
Right off the bat, we can put aside the Abraham Accords and the record of hostilities between Serbia and Kosovo, since these developments happened during Trump’s first term, and the president has emphasized of late that his focus is on second-term successes.
What’s more, while Armenia and Azerbaijan recently reached a peace deal, it’s worth emphasizing that those diplomatic efforts were years in the making and pre-date Trump’s second inaugural. For that matter, according to India, Trump wasn’t responsible for easing tensions between India and Pakistan.
But while those details are relevant, let’s not overlook the specific nature of the Republican’s boast, “In the six wars that I’ve settled, we haven’t had a ceasefire.”
In reality, when tensions eased between India and Pakistan, that was a ceasefire. When Thailand and Cambodia stopped firing at one another, that was also a ceasefire. When Israel and Iran stopped trading shots, that, too, was a ceasefire.
In other words, Trump not only can’t keep track of his own dubious claim, and not only can he not back it up with specifics, he’s also flubbing the details of his own boast in ways he really ought to understand.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
