CNN
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Donald Trump this week faces two challenges — one at home and the other abroad — that will test his self-crafted mythology as a master dealmaker and his capacity to achieve real and enduring change.
The president is heaping pressure on the brittle Republican House majority to overcome internal divides to pass the “big, beautiful bill” that contains his top domestic priorities. And his so-far failed effort to bring peace to Ukraine will reach a new pivot point during a telephone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has snubbed Trump’s initiative despite the administration’s deferential treatment.
Trump’s spending bill is his best chance to transform the country — at least using conventional and constitutional means — because changing the law will be more enduring than his blitz of executive orders. He means to cut taxes, fund his mass deportation plans and add tens of billions of dollars to defense spending.
But steep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance demanded by fiscal conservatives are alienating more moderate Republicans on whose seats the GOP majority depends. The fight therefore cuts right along the fault lines of the Trump coalition and could require a more forceful presidential intervention later this week.
It’s also a crunch time for a peace plan in Ukraine that promised everything but has so far delivered very little.
Even Trump has considered whether Putin is stringing him along in a peace effort that has so far consisted mainly of the new US administration squeezing the victim of the war — Ukraine — and choreographing the process to reward the aggressor.
After Putin snubbed a proposed summit in Turkey last week that Trump all but ordered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to attend, the US president declared that there’d be no progress until he personally sat down with the Russian leader, who launched an unprovoked and illegal invasion three years ago.
Monday’s planned call will therefore be the most serious examination of Trump’s credibility and sincerity in the Ukraine negotiations, as well as his willingness to impose even the slightest pressure on Russia.
There have been signs recently that the White House is growing frustrated.
Vice President JD Vance, who berated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February, met the Ukrainian leader in Rome over the weekend, days after warning that Russia is “asking for too much.”
Trump’s belief that only he can influence Putin — a trait he shares with several previous presidents — could be exposed if Moscow doesn’t budge.
“If he can’t do…
Read More: A double challenge is putting Trump’s credibility on the line
