"She Was 12 -- I Was 30"

Here's just another data point on the condition of the big guy's mind:

President Joe Biden surprised viewers Friday when pausing his speech to acknowledge a woman in the crowd he said he knew when she was 12.

“You gotta say hi to me,” Biden said during a speech at the National Education Association headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We go back a long way. She was 12 — I was 30. But anyway, this woman helped me get an awful lot done.”

Biden did not acknowledge how he knew the woman or what she did that helped him, but the remark caught viewers off guard.

Videos of the remarks show a remarkably animated Biden as he recalls whatever the episode might have been:

As opposed to his normal affectless. squint-eyed expression, he's flirty and even devilish as he alludes to some mutual memory that had to have been at least a bit naughty. A few commentators have noted that the audience, teachers' union members, giggled and tittered with the big guy. It's all a big in joke. (As I review the video, though, I note the women behind Biden are the ones who are yukkin' it up. Most of the men, who seem to be Latin, aren't even smiling, and they look uncomfortable. I think they actually see the same point the women do, but it isn't funny to them at all.)

This goes to the question I raised in my post about Biden's visit to the UN: he goes off script at will, often to his detriment, and at times when a normal adult would be expected to show restraint. It's a problem Barack Obama and his advisers recognized. The man seems to have no self-control, and this goes back at least to the photo at the top of this post, which is with his daugher, Ashley. She was born in 1981, so this must have been taken around the time of his first presidential run in 1987-88.

Somehow, some adult somewhere is able to sit on the guy and make him focus on the program, as he did at least for 20 minutes or so at the UN. Otherwise, he does exactly as he pleases, and he gets away with it. It looks as though he's been able to do this all his life, and I would guess that people who've known him for many years can recount episodes of him wandering aimlessly around a dais that go back a long way as well.

This isn't dementia, this is lifelong habit borne of entitlement.

What Is Colonel Reisner's Real Message?

After a two-month absence from YouTube, Austrian Col Reisner is back after only two weeks with another odd take on the Russo-Ukraine War. Let me preface this by saying yet again that I was thrown out of the ROTC after a year, and that's the full extent of my experience in the US or any other country's army. But here's my take on that war.

Russia, thought to be the second-ranked military power on the planet, managed to bungle its invasion of Ukraine from the start. Within days, US generals were commenting that the Russian army was simply failing to meet its initial objectives, and this was with Ukraine's army having no Western resupply and fighting almost entirely with its existing stock of hand-held anti-tank weapons and cheap drones.

Within months, still with hesitant Western support, Ukraine was able to force the Russians to retreat from their main line of attack, the effort to seize Kyiv. In the next phase of the war, Ukraine fought Russia to a stalemate with secondhand, obsolete Warsaw Pact weapons augmented with second-tier US artillery; this phase culminated in a repetition of the Kyiv rout, with the Russians forced out of almost all the Kharkiv region.

The current phase of the war has been characterized by the Russian recognition that its handling of the war has depleted its manpower, requiring a mobilization to replenish its army. While I'm an instinctive contrarian, there's a near consensus that the mobilization can accomplish little more than to send untrained and ill-equipped forces into confrontations that have no better prospects for success than the ones to date -- the pattern of stalemate punctuated by key Russian routs will continue until it can't.

The implications are dawning only slowly, but they're inevitable: Russia as a factor in geopolitics is simply disappearing as we watch. The one commentator who seems to be missing this is Col Reisner. His latest presentation is titled in English, Cognitive Warfare -- The Fight for your Heart and Mind. In German, it's Der Kampf um unsere Meinung.

Now, my German won't win any prizes, and the colonel's is quite good, but I did have a graduate-level course in how to translate German into English, and I don't like his English version of his German title. German Meinung is usually English "opinion", so the literal meaning of the German title would be "The Struggle for our Opinion". "Hearts and minds" is a mistranslation, since this is at best a US counterinsurgency term dating back to Lyndon Johnson's strategy to secure the loyalty of the Vietnamese against the Viet Cong -- but in subsequent years, it's also acquired a heavy irony, since the effort failed, and it carries a connotation of Johnsonian bombast. The colonel misses this. And unsere is "our", not "your"; that simply changes the meaning as well.

Why is the colonel, a sophisticated guy with a PhD, so obtuse? What I note about his three most recent YouTubes is that he focuses on the war from the Russian point of view, and even there, he omits almost any but the most optimistic takes. For instance, he focuses on the Russian threat to cut the natural gas supply and its potential for turning Western opinion against the war in the impending cold season. But this is simplistic; on one hand, this was thought to be a potential problem a few months ago, but more recently, things have leveled off:

Russia is a big player in world energy markets — not just in oil, but also natural gas and coal — with Europe being particularly vulnerable to changes in Russian energy supplies. Markets for oil and gas have been roiled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, contributing to rising prices and inflation around the world — although energy prices are now coming down after those initial shocks. . . . the softening of prices alongside the decline in export volumes spell trouble for Russia.

The colonel doesn't mention social media, or even much Western news commentary at all, but Ukraine has actually dominated social media, both with proxy channels on YouTube that effectively portray the official line without identifying themselves as such, with independent Ukrainian YouTubers who simply speak as citizens, and with independent military analysts in any number of third countries on their own YouTube channels. The reddit /r ukraine conflict threads have an enormous international following that's almost entirely pro-Ukrainian. In contrast, pro-Russian social media is derided as amateurish and heavy-handed. The colonel either misses this completely or chooses not to mention it.

Nor does he mention the pro-Russian milbloggers who are themselves highly critical of the war's conduct, even though the Institute for the Study of War has been following the implications of what they say closely for weeks. For instance, in just its most recent report,

The quality of Russian bureaucrats and military trainers are [sic] also raising fears among the Russian pro-war crowd that the partial mobilization effort may not succeed. Milbloggers noted that employees of the military enlistment centers are unmotivated and underpaid, reducing their enthusiasm to adhere to the envisioned mobilization plan. Milbloggers also pleaded with officers and commanders in charge of preparing mobilized men for war to train them before deployment.

US generals have noted in interviews, however, that such training will almost certainly not take place. But even beyond the colonel's misreading or omission of the evidence on social media, the problem for Russia is simply that legacy media reports of missile attacks on hospitals, mass graves in the forest, or civilians shot in the head with hands tied and left unburied on the streets are bad press and will only strengthen Western popular support for Ukraine. This is another factor in the information war that the colonel simply omits, even though reports of atrocities, real or fabricated, have been key to wartime propaganda for more than a century.

For whatever reason, Colonel Reisner wants to stick to wishful thinking on Russia's ability to sustain its standing as a world power. One explanation may be Austria's continued national policy of neutrality, a Cold War artifact that realpolitik has abandoned in much of Europe for a generation -- but it may be in the colonel's career interests to endorse it, at least in his current political envioronment.

But otherwise, it's harder and harder to take him seriously.

I'm Not Weeping For Scott Adams

So Scott Adams has inserted himself into the news:

“Dilbert” author Scott Adams, who has been drawing the comic since 1989, said the strip that pokes fun at office culture was wiped from nearly 77 newspapers.

Lee Enterprises, which owns nearly 100 newspaper companies in the US, terminated the contract with “Dilbert” for unknown reasons, reports Fox News.

“It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics, but why they decided what was in and what was out, that’s not known to anybody except them, I guess,” said Adams, who noted it coincidentally happened after he incorporated “wokeness” into the stories.

I've followed him long enough to recognize there's nothing new about this. In 2016, he supported Trump, and at the time, he complained that his speaking engagements fell to almost nothing -- and I think he recognized that Trump didn't sit well with the Silicon Valley types and tech workers who felt Adams was on their side. I watched his YouTube channel at the time, and he also noted that he was in print media, an industry where it was harder and harder to make a buck. The syndicates were cutting back then as well, and the reason was simply that there were more and more things they couldn't afford.

Nevertheless, he still gave us YouTubers tours of his brand new mansion. It suited him at the time to point out how well he was doing, notwithstanding he was already having his income cut. But according to Wikipedia, he just turned 65 in June. Wikipedia also says,

In 2020, Adams said: "For context, I expect my Dilbert income to largely disappear in the next year as newspapers close up forever. The coronavirus sped up that inevitable trend. Like many of you, I'm reinventing my life for a post-coronavirus world."

So he predicted what would happen to him this year two years ago, but now he's talking as if this is new and maybe a result of him criticizing wokeness. Beyhond that, he has an MBA and had at least an average MBA career before he hit the big time as a cartoonist in the early 1990s. He must be aware that comic strips have a shelf life; The Far Side was a cartoon series that lasted 15 years and ended with its creator, Gary Larson, retiring at age 44 in 1995. According to Wikipedia,

By late 1994, Larson thought the series was getting repetitive and did not want to enter what he called the "Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons." He retired the strip on January 1, 1995, when he was 44 years old. . . . For the most part, he has also retired from public view: "He refuses to have his picture taken and avoids being on TV", Time magazine wrote in 2003. To Larson, "cartoonists are expected to be anonymous."

That's not Scott Adams, huh? Seems like he's creating an ongoing public drama about how his income is going down and he's practically destitute. But out of curiosity, I went looking for his recent takes on wokeness in the Dilbert strip, and if the one at the top of the post here is any indication, I don't think they're all that funny. I would also hazard a guess that if you're going to go political in a comic strip, you'd better be smart, although Adams claims to have an IQ of 187. Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, had better moves:

Senator Joe McCarthy’s appearance in the strip in 1953, as a malicious wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey, was a particular “hot potato.” In October of 1954—just before the actual McCarthy would be censured by the Senate—Malarkey made another appearance. This time, the editor of the Providence Bulletin told Kelly that if Malarkey’s face appeared in the strip again, the paper would drop the strip.

Kelly finessed this by introducing a character from Providence, giving Malarkey the line “nobody from Providence should see me!” before he pulls an empty bait bag over his head. This had the double effect of getting rid of Malarkey’s face and making him look like a Klan member. “Now we find we are kidded” the Bulletin’s editor admitted, moving the strip to the op-ed page, where satire was evidently permitted.

What I'm seeing with Scott Adams is more that he's at least smart enough to have known that everything has a sell-by date, but he's having a hard time dealing with it. Even so, whatever his financial situation with the big mansion, he now has payments not to one ex-wife but two, having divorced his most recent one this past spring.

I guess that's what an IQ of 187 gets you

Biden At The UN

I'm convinced there's a latter-day George F Kennan now at the State Department who, like the one who wrote the Long Telegram, has the ear of some contemproary Averell Harriman, who in turn can tell important people what to do. Consider that the one area in which President Brandon has effectively recused himself in recent months has been Ukraine. Either Secretary Blinken, Secretary Austin, or Gen Milley articulates US Ukraine policy and says (or carefully omits to say) what weapons we are sending there. Early in the game, it seems the big guy contradicted Secretary Blinken on whether Ukraine would get third-party surplus Migs, but somehow the Migs happened anyhow, while the big guy effectively stopped talking about Ukraine. At all.

Biden's tendency to ramble and interfere has been fairly well documented, for instance:

The veteran Senator, as Obama saw it, had a tendency to “ramble, clearly loving every minute of it".

The would-be President is said to have confided in his advisor David Axelrod: “Joe Biden is a decent guy but man, that guy can just talk and talk. It's an incredible thing to see.”

In Condoleezza Rice’s confirmation hearing during George W.Bush’s presidency, Obama is alleged to have passed a staffer a note saying: 'Shoot. Me. Now,' as Biden addressed the hearing.

The book also claims, “The biggest insult to Biden was how little his input mattered to Obama's inner circle.

This tendency to go off script and run his mouth was displayed just this past weekend, when he variously declared in an interview that COVID was over, contradicting Dr Fauci, announced US troops would defend Taiwan, against established State Department policy, and gave a muddled and unconvincing reply to Putin's nuclear threats that discomfited the generals. Yet, since the business of the Migs, he's stayed out of Ukraine, pretty much except for yesterday, when he addressed the UN. But there was nothing freelance or prolix about that.

His address to the General Assembly was not, shall we say, vintage Joe Biden. He simply does not normally talk this way.

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, my fellow leaders, in the last year, our world has experienced great upheaval: a growing crisis in food insecurity; record heat, floods, and droughts; COVID-19; inflation; and a brutal, needless war — a war chosen by one man, to be very blunt.

Let us speak plainly. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map.

Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter — no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force.

Elevated diction. Parallel structure. Stately rhythm. Four-syllable words. And minimal stuttering and stumbling. This wasn't written by his normal handlers. It presumably came from the mandarins at State whose predecessors wrote the same material for John F Kennedy. Somebody not only got it written, but somebody else was able to tell the big guy to shut up, sit down, read this through more than once before you deliver it, and follow the teleprompter. You want to ramble and interfere? Tough. Do it the way we tell you.

And he did. It wasn't perfect, but the garbling and misspeaking were much more under control than usual. And I can only contrast this with his behavior only hours after the address:

Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, but the most disturbing part of his day happened afterward. The president took that stage at an event sponsored by The Global Fund, which does work regarding AIDS and other diseases, and things went off the rails. In this case, quite literally.

A video is circulating showing Biden appearing to be completely dazed and confused, fumbling around the stage as his handlers attempt to talk him down. Meanwhile, another man is speaking, trying to thank him for being there while the president appears to have no idea what’s happening.

Here's a version of the video:

There was nothing particularly new about this episode; he's become well known for wandering around the stage and shaking hands with people who aren't there. What's intriguing is that it came so soon after his performance at the General Assembly, where this sort of thing in fact did not happen. What was the difference? Donald Trump has suggested in the past that he gets some sort of shot before debates and other such events that keeps him alert and on the ball for some period of time. If so, it may have worn off by the time he spoke at the Global Fund. On the other hand, we have no direct evidence of anything like this.

But even if we stipulate that this is the explanation, we still have the question of who's able to make him get that shot, because he clearly doesn't get it before every appearance. Even if the shot is the explanation, someone decides when he absolutely has to take it. On the other hand, if there's no shot -- and so far, there's no real evidence there is one -- someone still seems able to sit him down, tell him to serious up, read this damn speech before you deliver it, and pay attention to the teleprompter. But Barack Obama himself was never able to do this, from informed accounts.

So, if it isn't Barack Obama, who is? And let's face it, our Ukraine policy has been about the wisest and best-executed of any, from any administration, probably since Reagan. Someone has been able to tell Biden to stay out of it and make that instruction stick. In that one area, no other.

Isn't that odd?

US Presidents And The N-Word

The N-word in this case is "narcissism". Last week I ran across this more or less typical piece of pop psychology:

Based on an analysis of the 19 presidents who served between 1897 and 2009 (from William McKinley to George W. Bush), the degree to which a commander in chief exhibited grandiose narcissistic personality traits is correlated with the duration of any wars they presided over.

. . . [Ohio State political scientist John P Harden] used data pulled from the Correlates of War database, which tracks conflicts involving at least 1,000 deaths in battle within a one-year period – so 11 operations for the US during the study period.

This was cross-referenced with previous research that analyzed the characters of US presidents, in part through their biographers. High levels of assertiveness and excitement-seeking, and low levels of modesty, compliance and straightforwardness were used to measure narcissistic tendencies.

US chiefs who scored lower on narcissism, including McKinley and Eisenhower, tended to put the interests of the state first. Wars were pursued only as a last resort, and were ended as quickly as possible – see Eisenhower's quick exit from the Korean War, for example.

Those presidents who ranked higher for narcissism, such as Roosevelt and Nixon, were less likely to separate personal and state interests, carrying on conflicts for longer. For example, Nixon inherited the Vietnam War, and continued it for another four years.

So I'm puzzled. McKinley, apparently thought not to be a narcissist, or at least not a big one, waged the Spanish-American War. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the most attention-seeking of US presidents, won the Nobel Peace Prize and pursued a foreign policy of mediating international disputes. No wars began during his administration. The same might be said of Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, even though Coolidge was a "highly visible president":

During his 67 months as President, he held 520 press conferences or an average of nearly eight each month, "bringing himself almost daily," wrote a reporter in 1927, "into the American home." He spoke on the radio at least monthly to national audiences. Coolidge also enjoyed having himself photographed. To the delight of cameramen, the President posed in old-fashioned overalls (when working on his father's farm), full Indian headdress (speaking to a crowd of ten thousand Sioux), and cowboy chaps and hat (on vacation in South Dakota). He was the first President to appear in a talking film--a recording of one of his speeches.

On the other hand, regarding his highly ambitious and self-satisfied successor,

Coolidge thought Hoover boastful and derided him as "Wonder Boy." "That man," he said, "has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad."

Yet neither started a war. Franklin Roosevelt had the Second World War effectively forced on him and followed policies aimed at shortening the war, such as aiding the Soviet Union against Hitler. He appears to have followed Eisenhower's advice of avoiding unnecessarily expensive maneuvers to secure Berlin, leaving that to the Soviets. His successor Truman, as much a publicity seeker as any other president, accepted the atomic bomb as a means of hastening Japanese surrender.

What can anyone say about Nixon? He's as much a nebbish or a neurotic as a narcissist. This goes to the problem that "narcissist" has become a meaningless term. I've been culling my bookshelves for books that are long out of fashion and that I'll never read again, and I came across two by the once-popular psychiatrist M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled and People of the Lie (out they went). Although Peck does use the term, he wrote before "narcissism" became the effective universal descriptor for nearly any personality trait.

In fact, just ten years ago, a young and ambitious "continuing Anglican" priest who had discovered Peck while in seminary (I can only think belatedly; People of the Lie was published in 1983) decided the problem with a more senior priest he wanted to edge out in the transition to the ordinariate was that the senior man was a person of the lie and denounced him in Peck's terms to all who would listen. It says something about the whole situation that he must not have understood the current expression should be "narcissist", not "person of the lie", and neither, apparently, did his listeners -- and it says something about the ordinariate that the older man was passed over in favor of the younger with those advanced ideas.

Getting rid of books I'll never open again is turning out to be a big job. So far, though, I haven't run into any books about narcissism.

The Pandemic Is Over!

As the saying goes, you don't have dementia if you forget your keys. You have dementia if you forget what your keys are for. President Brandon seems to have stepped all over not just his allies but his diplomatic advisers in Sunday's 60 Minutes interview , but I see no signs of dementia.

The reaction at the Daily Kos was predictable to his announcement that the pandemic is over: 'You’re counting votes.' We are 'counting bodies': Experts outraged at Biden deeming pandemic over. But nobody seems to dispute that he was aware of his surroundings, knew this was a television interview, and was more or less aware of the questions and giving answers that reflected the overall context.

The problem was that he basically hadn't done the prep. The public health establishment is at the very best deeply divided over what to do next with the pandemic; over the summer, it became clear that the public is fed up with vax and masks, and it quietly backed off on threats to reimpose indoor masking in LA County. On the other hand, the FDA has just authorized yet another set of COVID boosters, and the CDC is beginning the push for a new round of vax. From the redoubtable Dr Walensky:

“The updated COVID-19 boosters are formulated to better protect against the most recently circulating COVID-19 variant. They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants. This recommendation followed a comprehensive scientific evaluation and robust scientific discussion. If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster and I strongly encourage you to receive it.”

Think of the hit to Big Pharma's bottom line if COVID goes away! Nobody seems to have briefed the big guy about this, or if they did, he didn't listen, or he didn't think of it when it came up. He forgot the keys, but he didn't forget what the keys were for. The same applies to his remarks on Taiwan:

President Joe Biden in an interview that aired Sunday said US military personnel would defend Taiwan if the Chinese military were to launch an invasion of the democratically ruled island, in comments that yet again appear to venture beyond the longstanding US policy on the issue.

The comments on CBS’s “60 Minutes” reiterate a pledge to defend Taiwan that Biden has previously made, though Sunday he specified that “US men and women” would be involved in the effort.

In an interview, Biden was asked whether “US forces, US men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion,” a prospect US officials privately fear is becoming more likely.

“Yes,” Biden said.

It’s not the first time Biden has gone further in his public comments than the longstanding US approach of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to the defense of Taiwan. Most recently, during a visit to Tokyo in May, Biden said the US would intervene militarily if China attempts to take Taiwan by force.

The White House has been quick to downplay Biden’s previous comments on Taiwan, reiterating that US policy hasn’t changed, and on Sunday, “60 Minutes” reported receiving a similar response to Biden’s answers in their interview.

I would actually say that in both cases, Biden's remarks reflect sounder policy than the conventional wisdom with which he may have been briefed, and it's very likely in the interests of everyone but Beijing to have US policy on defending Taiwan a worrisome matter. And beyond any question, not only do we need to be done with COVID, but everything from the lab leak to the lockdowns needs to be thoroughly investigated to prevent it happening again, something on which Biden will never follow through.

None of the excitement, though, means there's any actual daylight between Biden and the public health or diplomaic elites. Biden isn't any sort of closet moderate. In a meeting with his handlers the next day, he'll be just as likely to insist the pandemic is raging on, and nobody with any sense would promise Taiwan will be defended with US troops. The problem is that Biden isn't much different from his vice president when it comes to reading his briefings, and when he gets out in public without his minders, he simply wings it. He's just unprepared. This applies as well to his warning to Putin about nukes:

", , , I wonder, Mr. President, what you would say to [Putin] if he is considering using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons."

"Don't. Don't. Don't. . . " Mr. Biden said.

"Don't. Don't. Don't," is what victims say just before they're shot. One of the talking-head retired generals, I forget which, remarked that it would have been much better if Biden had said nothing. But it was what it was.

I'm not sure if, on balance, Dubya was much smarter than Biden, but he was at least more diligent, he did his homework, and he listened to Dick Cheney, for whatever that was worth. Biden's problem is that he's dumb as a rock and lazy, and beyond that, he's entitled. He's all those, but none of them is a medical issue.

Trump On Putin

Yesterday, I noted that prior to the first weeks of the Russo-Ukraine War, there was an effective consensus that Russia was the second-strongest military power and a near peer to the US and NATO. Trump has had a fair amount of criticism for remarks earlier this year that have been interpreted as "praising Putin", but I think if we take them in context of prevailing world opinion, they don't strike me as unusual. This piece at CNN lists some of Trump's remarks on Putin from last spring:

At a campaign rally in Georgia [March 26], the former President, again, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The smartest one gets to the top,” Trump told the crowd. “That didn’t work so well recently in our country. But they ask me, ‘Is Putin smart?’ Yes, Putin was smart. And I actually thought he was going to be negotiating. I said, ‘That’s a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 soldiers on the border.’”

Trump added that Putin made a “big mistake,” but that “it looked like a great negotiation.”

I find this hard to fault, given the assumptions pretty much everyone in public life had about Putin up to the failure of the February invasion. He had a powerful army. Ukraine had been in the news chiefly for Burisma and its $50,000 a month payments to Hunter Biden, which suggested the country was a hopelessly corrupt backwater in the Afghan league. Putin's demand on the face of it was simply that the West provide assurance that Ukraine would enter neither the EU nor NATO and continue to serve as a neutral buffer for Russia. Putin's stick would be that Russian tanks would roll into Kyiv, and any effort by the West to stop this would be an overextension.

Earlier in the war, this position was at least arguable. In May, Pope Francis said,

“NATO barking at Russia’s doors” may have raised alarms in the Kremlin about the Western European alliance’s intentions in Ukraine. “I can’t say if (Russia’s) anger was provoked,” he continued, “but facilitated, maybe yes.”

What permanently changed the consensus on Putin's intentions was the revelation of Russian atrocities in places like Bucha following its withdrawal from the Kyiv region in April, which showed that Putin didn't in practice want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer, but instead was willing to exterminate some large part of its population and pillage its modest wealth. Even Pope Francis's public statements have hardened toward Russia since that time. However, at the time of the invasion and its runup, nobody prominent in public life foresaw that outcome. In a February 22 interview, two days before the invasion on February 24, Trump said,

BUCK [SEXTON]: Mr. President, in the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this White House is stating that this is an “invasion.” That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. (sarcastic)

So, Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.

By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.

Trump at that stage, before any tanks had actually rolled in, was relying on Putin's public statements as an indication of his strategy, and it's worth noting that if that was all that happened -- Putin entered disputed regions exclusively as a "peacekeeping" force -- the situation would have been far less clear and Putin's position at least more sustainable. And Trump's later remarks quoted above a month later, March 26, support this view: Putin made a “big mistake” in an all-out invasion, but in the days immediately prior, “it looked like a great negotiation.” Later in the February 22 interview, Trump said,

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, even “Sleepy Eyes” Chuck Todd said this weekend during his show — I was watching it for a change and he said — (summarized), “How come there’s been no invasion during the period of time that the Trump administration was there but they did invade — very severely invade — with Obama and then they waited and then they invaded?”

This would never have happened if we were there. But he did. Chuck Todd asked that question. How come there was none of this happening during the Trump administration? I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he — and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country. He’s acting a little differently I think now.

This again is consistent with observations by other prominent figures like Condoleeza Rice that Putin has changed and is not the person they worked with. And Trump is saying this two days before the actual invasion, when the extent of Putin's miscalculation was completely unknown. Some of these remarks have been taken out of context, including by President Zelensky as recently as a week ago:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was surprised by former President Trump’s continued praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin even after Moscow invaded Ukraine, given how much information Trump was privy to about the fellow world leader.

“I believe he had enough time, plenty of time, to understand who Putin is,” Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview aired Sunday.

. . . “Ukraine in his eyes is too far away. But this war has no distances it could not cover, so I believe he needs to look at the situation without, as we say, pink glasses on,” Zelensky said, per CNN’s translation.

However, as of March 15, a little over two weeks after the invasion, Trump said,

“I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating,” Trump told the outlet in a phone interview. “I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.”

. . . “I figured he was going to make a good deal like everybody else does with the United States and the other people they tend to deal with — you know, like every trade deal. We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along,” Trump said. “And then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.”

As far as I can tell, these remarks are the bulk of what Trump has said since the invasion. I would guess that Zelensky has been shown only what Trump said in the February 22 interview, and that's the basis for his comments this month. We'll have to see what else Trump may eventually have to say about Ukraine in light of more recent developments, but from what we currently have, once he became more fully aware of the actual circumstances, his position has been that Putin has changed and is not the negotiating genius he once thought.