Presidential historian Jon Meacham claimed Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump’s negotiation with Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “tragedy of history.”
Meacham said, “We are, interestingly in 2025, back to 1914. This is an interesting question, whether this is a pre World War I era that has reasserted itself at the end of what we all took, the lessons we all took from World War II and the Cold War? Which was an implacability, an unconditional surrender. You know, one of the reasons I think this conversation is uncomfortable for a lot of people conversant with American history, is that we don’t really talk, we didn’t really talk about negotiating in the middle of the 20th century. We didn’t talk about doing this after FDR announced unconditional surrender in the Second World War, somewhat surprising Churchill in Casablanca. We didn’t talk about it so much during Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy because we had made a stand. It’s a long twilight struggle, and we represented the West. As Ronald Reagan said, his view of the Cold War was we win, you lose. This is not that, right? This is something in between.”
He added, “I think it’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for me to think, okay, we’re going to we’re going to award this aggression. But yes, you get a collective security agreement. Okay but you wouldn’t need it if the aggression had not happened. So what is all that? That’s the tragedy of history. And so what we’re going to see today in Washington is a remarkable gathering of European leaders who are trying to find the best, worst option.”
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