President Donald Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine “before I get to office on Jan. 20.” It was his most discussed campaign promise.
Nearly 100 days into his presidency, Trump told Time magazine it “was said in jest.”
“Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration,” Trump told Time. “Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”
Many of Trump’s most loyal Republicans started this narrative early on in his tenure, saying that ending the conflict by Day 1 wasn’t what he meant. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told NOTUS that she didn’t think “the media pressing Day 1 is specifically ‘Day 1.’”
But this public acknowledgement that the war isn’t coming to a close as fast as Trump might have liked and the idea that he would joke about finishing it may come as a blow to Ukraine.
Already, Trump’s dueling posts on his own Truth Social platform have caused public backlash, as the president posted a 250-word chastisement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before posting a short 30-word plea to Russian President Vladimir Putin the next day.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” Trump wrote.
Trump’s interview with Time was published just hours before a meeting between Putin and White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Russia. Witkoff has now met with the Russian president four times since Trump took office.
Both Trump’s remarks and the meeting with Witkoff come after a multilateral meeting in London on Tuesday aimed at ending the war in Ukraine was abandoned by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Instead, the White House sent Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and a member of the White House team seen less and less publicly in negotiations.
“In this particular instance, while the meetings in London are still occurring, he will not be attending. But that is not a statement regarding the meetings. It’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters.
Rubio has questioned publicly if the U.S. will continue its efforts toward peace negotiations, saying that the U.S. needs to “move on” if progress isn’t made soon.
After a meeting with France, Great Britain and Ukraine last week that Rubio called “positive,” he told reporters that significant progress needed to be made by both sides in the Ukraine conflict for the U.S. to remain involved in negotiations.
“So if they’re serious about peace, either side or both, we want to help. If it’s just not gonna happen, then we’re just gonna move on,” Rubio told reporters before boarding a plane to leave the Paris meeting.
Trump, though, seems more patient with the process.
“Look, I got here three months ago. This war has been going on for three years,” he told Time when asked why the war is taking so long to draw to a close. “The war has been raging for three years. I just got here, and you say, what’s taken so long?”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.