Dr. Jekyll and Mr. President

By Noah Rothman

Friday, February 28, 2025

 

Because it was only ten days ago, you probably remember when the president called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and implied that his presidency was illegitimate because he had deferred to Ukraine’s democratically ratified constitutional mechanisms. He seemed to mean it. After all, Trump refused to back off that wildly inaccurate characterization for days. Moreover, that rhetorical exercise dovetailed with an administration-wide effort to issue concession after concession to Moscow in a bid to lure the Kremlin to the negotiating table. It all seemed considered and deliberate, albeit ill conceived. Well, the joke’s on us.

 

You might remember all that, but the president doesn’t. At least, that’s what he claimed on Thursday when he was asked to explain himself ahead of Zelensky’s visit to Washington today. “Did I say that?” Trump asked when confronted with his accusations against Zelensky. “I can’t believe I said that.” Seated alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the Oval Office, Trump softened not just his rhetoric on Ukraine but also his position on U.S. security guarantees for Kyiv as part of a negotiated cease-fire.

 

That’s quite the turnaround, and supporters of Ukraine’s defense in Russia’s expansionist war will be tempted to take the win. But this moment should not pass from the scene without recognizing the degree to which the president’s words matter. In the days that followed this presidency’s attacks on Zelensky’s legitimacy, the Russian stock market surged amid global anticipation that Russian markets would soon be open again to foreign investment. The flood of capital could be considered a form of sanctions relief, undermining Western efforts to isolate the Kremlin and starve it of capital.

 

European capitals were similarly rocked by a sudden sense that the Atlantic Alliance’s primus inter pares was no longer a reliable partner – a phenomenon most apparent in the rhetoric of incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a “passionate Atlanticist” who transformed himself overnight into a Eurocentric security hawk. Proponents of a European security architecture must temper their enthusiasm for that outcome if it is accompanied by attenuated U.S. influence over its European partners — at least, among those who do not labor under the delusion that America can slink back behind its oceans without leaving dangerous power vacuums in its wake.

 

All that movement, it seems, was unnecessary. But foreign powers and international investors do not have the luxury of taking the American president either seriously or literally, depending on which outlook is most politically advantageous for Trump at any given moment. And this isn’t the first time the president has detracted from his credibility with loose talk. Indeed, he is prone to say and write things that he doesn’t actually mean.

 

“He is somebody that I would consider, sure,” the president told Bloomberg’s reporters when asked if he might nominate JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon for secretary of the Treasury. “I have a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon.” And yet, in revisiting these remarks on the U.S. president’s proprietary social media platform, Trump acted as if anyone who heard him say without much equivocation that he would nominate Dimon to a Cabinet post had lost their minds. “I don’t know who said it, or where it came from, perhaps the Radical Left, but I never discussed, or thought of, Jamie Dimon or [BlackRock Chairman and CEO] Larry Fink for Secretary of the Treasury,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

 

Likewise, during an idle February chinwag, the president floated his intention to impose unilateral tariffs on the country’s North American trading partners — an outcome that was inevitable and that there was “nothing” they could do to avert. Of course, both Mexico and Canada could and did forestall those tariffs by providing Trump with a variety of fig leaves. But the mercurial president’s threat to make U.S. imports more expensive by fiat has compelled individuals and firms across the continent to factor that uncertainty into their forecasting and spending.

 

Industries that are reliant on manufacturing inputs from Canada and Mexico are pushing economic activity forward — which will put downward pressure on aggregate demand later on — or delayed projects indefinitely. The ever-present threat of a North American trade war is putting downward pressure on the stock market, hitting U.S. investors in their pockets. Geopolitics, too, is shaped by Trump’s rhetoric. The president’s unnecessary antagonism toward Canada has inadvertently revitalized the Canadian Left, a moribund institution when it was led by Justin Trudeau only weeks ago. Trump’s tough talk may cost Canadian conservatives an election that was theirs to lose. It should have been foreseeable that the campaign of deliberate provocations directed at America’s northern neighbor could produce a rally-round-the-flag effect for the targets of Trump’s criticism. Politics happens in other countries, too.

 

If Trump’s reflexive defenders didn’t anticipate that, it is because they’ve internalized the rationalization that Trump can say whatever he wants without incurring any adverse consequences. The president’s words matter, whether this president recognizes it or not.