Putin Embarrasses Trump, Yet Again
Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine is winding down with minimal gains. But Trump’s threats of sanctions are going unheeded and the conflict still has no end in sight.
Lots of news on the 2026 Senate campaign front today: With Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst retiring, Rep. Ashley Hinson is already jumping into the race to replace her. The Maine Democratic Senate primary has another entrant in brewer Dan Kleban. In Mississippi, Democrats’ strongest long-shot candidate, Lowndes County DA Scott Colom, just threw his hat in the ring against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. And former New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu is eyeing another shot at his old seat with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen not seeking reelection. Happy Wednesday.
In Ukraine, the War Slogs On
by Cathy Young
Donald Trump is very disappointed in Vladimir Putin yet again, though there’s no word on what he plans to do now that the latest two-week deadline he gave the Kremlin autocrat to make peace is up. Meanwhile, most experts agree that Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine has been a bust. As Ukraine-based British journalist and Atlantic Council fellow Peter Dickinson sums it up: “The Russian army has been unable to secure any front line breakthroughs or capture a single major city, with overall Russian advances during the three summer months limited to an estimated 0.3 percent of Ukrainian territory. Crucially, key strategic objectives like Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine remain in Ukrainian hands.”
This isn’t what the Russians are being told, of course. On August 30, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, gave a triumphalist report on the Russian army’s summer successes. It was dismissed as dramatically inflated not only by the Institute for the Study of War, but even by Russia’s own war-hawk “milbloggers,” some of whom are sufficiently independent to sometimes question official lies. The milbloggers were especially baffled by Gerasimov’s claim that Russian troops had surrounded Kupiansk, a town in the Kharkiv region that the Russians have been trying to seize for nearly three years.
It’s hard to say if Gerasimov was lying or repeating the lies he was getting from lower-level commanders. One milblogger speculated, for instance, that his claim about the seizure of Kupiansk was based on video showing a Russian flag flying over a tower in Kupiansk; it’s reportedly common practice in the Russian army to go on an expedition to plant the flag on territory they don’t actually control.
The Russians are making small and very costly gains. That’s thanks largely to their superior numbers and their commanders’ cavalier attitude toward human lives. While the frontal “meat assaults” are now mostly out because of drone strikes, the new Russian tactic of having small groups of soldiers sneak through undermanned Ukrainian defense lines to try to take up positions in the rear still results in significant losses: On one such mission near Pokrovsk, according to captured Russian soldiers, only about eight people survived out of an initial team of fifty.
Obviously, even slow Russian progress is worrying for Ukrainians, who have their own problems with morale: recruitment still lags, and the manpower shortages are worsened by desertions (though many soldiers who go AWOL later return). Still, Ukrainian forces have successfully stopped Russian incursions and recaptured some territory. And Ukraine is already deploying a new, domestically produced, long-range missile, the Flamingo.
While Putin has to know that things aren’t going nearly as well as he would like, he clearly acts as if he’s winning. He may even believe it. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are determined not to lose. That peace deal Trump keeps talking about isn’t a mythical two weeks away. It’s very far off.
End of an Era
by William Kristol
Eighty years ago, on September 2, 1945, World War II ended. United States General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, accompanied by representatives of other Allied nations, formally accepted the surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
In a brief speech, MacArthur looked forward:
It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.
Later in the day, in a radio broadcast to his fellow Americans, MacArthur said this:
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. . . . The holy mission has been completed. We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.
The subsequent eighty years have, needless to say, fallen short of fulfilling all of mankind’s hopes for freedom, tolerance and justice, as MacArthur hoped. On the other hand, the greatest generation, having won the war, did succeed in devising a “greater and more equitable system” of global affairs. A better world did “emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.”
Over eight decades, American leadership has made possible a system under which we have averted Armageddon. American leadership has made possible a system which has mostly kept the peace among nations. American leadership has made possible a system that has produced far greater prosperity for mankind—and that sometimes, at least, has also fostered more freedom, more tolerance, and more justice.
Yesterday, Xi Jinping was joined by fellow dictators Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea as he held China’s largest-ever military parade commemorating the victory in World War II. The photo of the three dictators side-by-side, walking the red carpet in Tiananmen Square together ahead of the representatives of other nations, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, seemed to provide a bookend to the era MacArthur had ushered in eighty years before—an era in which United States leadership was central and in which the American people can take great pride.
But it’s not an achievement for which Donald Trump feels any pride, or for the continuation of which he wishes to take any responsibility. So, having haplessly rolled out our own red carpet for the war criminal Putin less than three weeks ago, the president of the United States was left to watch and whine on social media: “May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
At home and around the world, the irony fell flat. The bravado was hollow.
What a precipitous and unforced abdication of global leadership and responsibility Trump has pulled off in the last seven months. What a sad and vivid representation of the world America made coming to an end—with dictators parading in Beijing, and the president of the United States whimpering in Washington.
AROUND THE BULWARK
DeSantis Declares War on Woke Sidewalk Chalk… He says it’s about safety. JONATHAN COHN has his doubts, in The Breakdown.
Say They’re Not Patriots… STUART STEVENS joins TIM MILLER—and pulls no punches on the Bulwark Podcast.
Mike Lee, Slop Addict… JOE PERTICONE on how the Utah senator with a broken brain spent his Labor Day weekend, plus how the Titanic sinking led to one of the great achievements of the U.S. Senate.
Quick Hits
POSSE COMITATUS: Fresh off his crime crackdown in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump has for weeks now been openly discussing his plans to send federal troops to other Democratic-run cities, with Chicago apparently top of his list. “We’re going in,” the president said of the Windy City yesterday, though he added, “I didn’t say when.”
But Trump might not have as easy a time of it as he did when he sent the National Guard to Los Angeles this year, with the purported aim of supporting local police and immigration enforcement operations. Yesterday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Trump had used troops too expansively during that deployment. In future deployments, the judge ruled, the federal government would be barred from using troops for “arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.”
The ruling will not take effect at once, and Trump is guaranteed to appeal. But it’s a brushback pitch against the White House’s preferred strategy when it comes to troop deployments: Finding a pretext to declare a crime “emergency,” sending in troops for a supposed auxiliary or support role, then parading them around high-traffic city areas in a show of force. We’ll see if it sticks.
THE EPSTEIN SHUFFLE: Six weeks ago, Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House of Representatives into recess early to dodge some uncomfortable votes about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. But the unfortunate thing about recess is you’ve got to return eventually—and with Congress back in session, the Epstein story is grinding ahead again.
This time around, though, Republicans have a strategy. Rather than try to squash calls for the release of the files, they’re offering at least some of them up via a controlled-release drip feed, with the Justice Department sending batches to the House Oversight Committee under the reliably partisan eye of Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.). Speaker Johnson scheduled a vote last night on a resolution endorsing the Comer-led process. The idea is to give GOP lawmakers an outlet to support some sort of transparency on Epstein—while dissuading them from casting a more explosive vote to force the full release of the files.
But many lawmakers remain unimpressed by that controlled process—particularly after the first batch of files released by the Oversight Committee yesterday afternoon contained more than 33,000 heavily redacted pages of documents with little that was not previously in the public record.
Meanwhile, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are wasting no time moving forward on their insurgent effort to force a House vote on a less restrictive release. They are currently collecting signatures for a so-called “discharge petition” to release the full files—a rare bottom-up maneuver that lets a group of at least 218 House members force a floor vote without any buy-in from leadership. They began collecting signatures yesterday afternoon; as of this morning, 134 lawmakers, including four Republicans, had already signed on.1
‘I KEEP SEEING THESE MEMES’: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, flush with cash after its massive budget expansion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, wants to hire 10,000 new agents this year. WaPo reports from a massive ICE job fair in Arlington, Texas, which is going about how you’d expect. Observe the future of our national immigration police force in applicants like Aaron Ely, on whom DHS’s full-court press of jingoistic “DEFEND THE HOMELAND” propaganda seems to be having its desired effect:
A former bantamweight MMA fighter who went by the ring name “The Cyborg,” Ely settled on an IT career after his hip gave out. He limped into the hiring expo last week hoping ICE could use his computer expertise. He said he felt he was no longer able to advance in the private sector because the market is crowded with candidates from India willing to do the work for less.
“I keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking our tech jobs,” said Ely, 36. “So I said, ‘Oh yeah? Well I’m going to work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.’”
Dark times ahead. Read the whole thing.
Cheap Shots
Other than Massie, the three GOP signatories are Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—and if you had the three of them breaking in a group to side with Democrats on a high-profile vote on your 2025 bingo card, you’re a better prognosticator than me.
Bill: "But it’s not an achievement for which Donald Trump feels any pride, or for the continuation of which he wishes to take any responsibility."
My wife and I toured USS Missouri back in April and stood where the Japanese formally surrendered. To stand where MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, and even John McCain's grandfather stood 80 years ago was certainly a moving, awe-inspiring experience. As were MacArthur's words on that day in Tokyo. It made me realize that for all Team Trump's bravado, they are weak, hollow people. So Bill's right about Trump lack of pride about America's role post-World War II. But let's not forget that the great and good American people don't take any pride in it, either. Sure, you'll see some jackhole driving a pickup truck with a "We The People" graphic on the rear window to show his "patriotism", but he's the same jackhole that wants Trump to turn the United States into something resembling what we defeated in World War II. We had everything and appreciated none of it.
RE: "In Ukraine, the War Slogs On"
They can hold, and they will hold on. Superior troop numbers aside, Putin turning an entire generation of Russian people into hamburger is going to eventually catch up to him. Slava Ukraini.