US President Donald Trump could step away from efforts to broker peace in Ukraine, according to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, who said his father’s handling of the conflict remains deliberately unpredictable.
Speaking to journalist Yalda Hakim on Sunday at a Middle East conference in Qatar, Trump Jr suggested that the US President may abandon the peace process if he sees limited progress or domestic political value in continuing. Asked directly whether his father might walk away, Trump Jr replied: “I think he may.” He said Trump’s defining trait is that “you don’t know what he’s going to do” and that he rejects the conventional methods used by long-serving officials.
“The fact that he’s not predictable, he’s not following the playbook of every clown who’s, again, been a bureaucrat for decades, you don’t know,” Trump Jr added, portraying unpredictability as a strategic advantage rather than a liability.
Trump Jr also criticised how the war in Ukraine has been portrayed by US and international media, arguing that pre-war Ukraine was assessed by the US government as having a “far more corrupt” system than Russia. He claimed that since the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been elevated to near-sainthood, particularly by left-leaning political circles.
He said Zelenskyy was treated as a “borderline deity” and placed “beyond reproach” despite what he described as long-standing corruption issues. “Years of corruption, years of graft and theft, on a world stage that everyone in this room knew was happening, was totally absolved. And it’s ridiculous. We’re not dealing in reality,” Trump Jr said.
Addressing European fears that Ukraine could be abandoned by Washington, Trump Jr insisted that the United States has no intention of doing so. However, he downplayed the conflict’s significance for American voters, saying Ukraine does not rank high among domestic priorities, even within the Republican Party.
He said he frequently engages with Republican voters across the country and has found little enthusiasm for continued funding of the war. “I speak to Republicans all over the country every day… I surveyed people at every talk I did,” he said, adding that he had spoken to more than 200,000 Americans directly.
According to Trump Jr, when audiences were asked whether the Russia-Ukraine war ranked among their top three concerns, the response was uniform. “I’d be in a room like this, and I’d ask, is Russia-Ukraine a top-three issue for anyone in the room? Nothing.”
His remarks underscore growing uncertainty around the durability of US engagement in Ukraine, even as President Donald Trump has led recent attempts to secure a ceasefire.
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