Every 25 Seconds

Trump fills his gaggles with falsehoods, blames Zelenskyy for a fuel crisis his own war created, and thanks Putin for the diesel. Europe has noticed.

Good morning! Saturday was a full day in the Trump information economy. There was a South Lawn send-off, nearly a hundred minutes onstage at the F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville, Tennessee, and an eight-minute exchange with reporters at Joint Base Andrews after his return. The two press gaggles were the parts worth timing.

Across those exchanges, about thirteen and a half minutes altogether, my working tally flagged 33 assertions that were false, misleading, unsupported, or impossible to establish from the available evidence. That’s roughly one every 25 seconds. They weren’t all demonstrable falsehoods. Some relied on numbers that didn’t hold up. Others were claims about private negotiations, imagined histories in which wars never started, and conflicts Trump insists he prevented without explaining how.

Two examples tell the story. The first is Iran. In Clarksville, Trump told the crowd the war had prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon “for all time.” The 18 Americans he said had died, he assured them, did not die in vain. Hours later, a reporter at Andrews asked the obvious question: if the job is done, why not declare victory and bring the troops home? His answer: “We could leave right now, but we have to guarantee that they can’t have it in the future.”

So between Tennessee and Andrews, “for all time” became a guarantee still to be negotiated. The war is in its eighth month, and Trump has been predicting its imminent conclusion since March.

Even his casualty figures were out of date. On Friday, the Pentagon raised its official count to 21 service-member deaths associated with operations against Iran, including noncombat fatalities, and 865 wounded. Just a month earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a Washington Post report that the military had undercounted its casualties “a complete lie.” By Saturday, the Pentagon had corrected its numbers. The president was still using the old ones.

Much of the Clarksville rally was familiar material: crowd-size boasts, transgender weightlifting anecdotes, and another celebration of the federally renamed Lake Ontario. Trump also repeated his promise to give every adult citizen $5,000 if Republicans retain Congress, supposedly financed by tariff revenues that fall far short of the roughly $1.2 trillion such a payment would require.

But the second example takes us somewhere more consequential.

Explaining why Volodymyr Zelenskyy should have accepted a peace agreement long ago, Trump said Russia had “millions more soldiers” than Ukraine. Russia’s authorized military strength is approximately 1.55 million, compared with roughly one million Ukrainian personnel, and only a portion of either force is deployed along the front. There aren’t millions more Russian soldiers. The number is an exaggeration, deployed to support Trump’s argument that Ukraine should have accepted a settlement on terms he never specified.

This time, the assertions were accompanied by an actual government decision. Washington had just authorized transactions involving Russian diesel, and Trump was publicly demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries.

Back at Joint Base Andrews, Trump found something kind to say about a world leader. Asked what Vladimir Putin told him on their call, the president said Putin “would like to see a settlement strongly,” then added an endorsement: “He’s freeing up a lot of oil for the world. Okay. A good thing. And by the way, at a very low price.”

The arrangement concerns Russian diesel, not a newly announced supply of crude oil, and Trump has provided no evidence for his claim that it will be sold at a bargain price. But on the day he called for Ukraine’s elected president to be replaced, the Russian president got a thank-you and a price review.

Trump’s case against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made on the South Lawn Saturday morning, goes like this. The United States told Ukraine it could hit Russia anywhere it liked except the refineries, because a global diesel shortage was hurting “our farmers, our ranchers.” Zelenskyy hit the refineries anyway. So “he’d better damn well stop,” and while he’s at it, Ukraine should find “a new leader who can make a deal.”

The disagreement is over what Russia would have to do in exchange for Ukrainian restraint. The White House says it repeatedly asked Zelenskyy to leave the refineries alone, and an official told Axios those requests went unanswered half a dozen times. Zelenskyy has offered to stop attacking Russian refineries if Russia stops attacking Ukraine’s power plants. But an American official told Axios that Trump wanted Ukraine to stop unilaterally and did not regard the two countries’ strikes on energy infrastructure as equivalent. Kyiv was expected to leave Russian refineries alone whether or not Moscow stopped attacking Ukraine’s electrical grid. Not exactly the reciprocal arrangement Ukraine had proposed.

Trump’s economic justification has a dating problem. Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian refineries was already in full swing by August 2025, when U.S. diesel averaged about $3.70 a gallon. Prices held near that level until late February, when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. Within weeks, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, Gulf energy shipments were disrupted, and diesel prices started climbing. The Energy Information Administration recorded an all-time high of $6.53 late last month.

The volumes point the same way. A Kyiv School of Economics analysis estimated that diesel and gasoil exports from the Persian Gulf fell by 152 million barrels between March and August, while Russian exports fell by 68 million. The Gulf supply shock was more than twice as large as the decline in Russian exports. An Atlantic Council energy fellow attributed “almost all” of the price spike to the Iran war.

Ukraine’s strikes aren’t irrelevant. Russian diesel exports are down by about a third, a decline equivalent to roughly 4 percent of global seaborne diesel and gasoil trade. But Trump is blaming the smaller disruption while largely ignoring the bigger one, which followed the war he launched against Iran.

There was another possible avenue for relief. In late September, Iran offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week as part of a broader agreement involving sanctions relief, an end to the American blockade, and a ceasefire. Trump rejected the proposal. There was no guarantee that negotiations would succeed or that fuel prices would quickly fall. But two weeks later, with diesel still painfully expensive and the midterms approaching, Trump found a different negotiating partner in Moscow and assigned much of the blame to Kyiv.

He backed the indictment with numbers that don’t hold up. “You’ve lost 30% of your country,” Trump told Ukraine. Russia occupies about 20 percent. “Over two million people killed,” he said, a figure closer to estimates of combined military casualties, including killed, wounded and missing, on both sides. The dead are a fraction of that total.

The country being lectured has paid in real casualties. Trump has conscripted them to make a campaign point.

On Friday, Trump announced on Truth Social that Russia would “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace,” then 500,000 tons in November and a million after that. Another three million tons, he added, would follow “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries.” The Treasury Department issued a general license authorizing certain transactions involving Russian diesel through April 7, 2027.

Three weeks earlier, Trump had signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, intended to restrict revenues financing Putin’s war. The law remains in force. Treasury has nevertheless opened a temporary exception for Russian diesel under existing sanctions regulations.

The fine print reveals an awkward dependency. Trump conditioned the largest promised shipment on the state of Russia’s refineries, the same facilities he’s demanding Ukraine stop attacking. Whatever else motivated his warning, protecting those refineries would also protect a potential supply of diesel he’s counting on to ease American prices. Read that way, “he’d better damn well stop” sounds rather different from a plea on behalf of American ranchers.

Zelenskyy called the deal an investment in the war. He told Axios it was “not fair and not honest,” a sign of weakness, and a birthday present for Putin, who turned 74 on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians continued. On Saturday morning, hours before Trump told reporters Ukraine needed a new president, Russian glide bombs struck residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia. By Sunday, the death toll had risen to 23, including four children, with more than 30 wounded. Kyiv also came under attack Saturday afternoon. “Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports,” Zelenskyy wrote, “by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia.”

Some Republicans are objecting. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania says he will introduce the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act, bipartisan legislation intended to block purchases of Russian oil, and use a discharge petition to force a House vote. Six senators, including four Republicans, have urged the administration to reverse the diesel decision. That requires 218 signatures just to get around House leadership. The bill would still need Senate approval, and Trump could veto it. Overriding him would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers.

The House isn’t scheduled to resume voting until after the November 3 election. For now, Congress has not blocked the arrangement. Treasury’s authorization is already in effect, even if the promised diesel shipments have yet to materialize.

On Sunday, Trump announced another accomplishment. “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” he wrote. “Both parties have agreed.” Moscow hadn’t confirmed any agreement. Zelenskyy said Ukraine supported a reciprocal halt but was still awaiting details from Washington. The White House offered no clarification. He made the same announcement in September. It wasn’t true then either. Whether the agreement existed remains an open question, but the announcement was real.

To understand the timing, look at the polls. An October 2–4 Financial Times/Focaldata survey put Trump’s approval at 34 percent. Only a quarter approved of his handling of the economy, about a fifth of inflation, and fewer than a quarter of Iran. More than two-thirds said the economy was headed in the wrong direction, and nearly as many wanted an agreement to end the Iran war. Forty-five percent thought Trump was making it harder for Republican candidates to win.

The erosion has reached his own voters. Among those who backed him in 2024, approval fell from 80 percent in May to under 70. A POLITICO poll found only 43 percent believed he could lower gas prices by a dollar before Election Day. As one Republican operative put it, “the ship has sailed.”

Against those numbers, the diesel deal looks very much like a campaign move. Facing mounting pressure over fuel prices driven sharply higher by the Iran war, Trump needed more diesel and someone to blame. Moscow promised the first. Kyiv got the second.

Kyiv answered first. “He has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote. “Statements from abroad only confirm that he is doing his job well.”

London followed. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, three months in the job, reaffirmed Britain’s complete solidarity with Zelenskyy and pledged stronger sanctions against Russia. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting was equally clear about responsibility for the war: “We are in no doubt that the aggressor here was Vladimir Putin. He is the person who chose to start this war. He is the person who could end this war tomorrow, and he chooses not to.” Britain stood with Ukraine and its president, he said, while emphasizing the importance of maintaining Western unity.

On LBC, Britain’s talk-radio giant, a presenter turned Trump’s words around: “It’s time for the US to get a new president, not Ukraine.” He also reminded listeners that Washington, London, and Moscow signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, committing to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and existing borders. Those were security assurances, not a promise of automatic military intervention, but Russia’s invasion violated the central commitment.

The criticism wasn’t limited to the left. Tobias Ellwood, a former Conservative defence minister and chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said America had “lost its moral compass” and described its relationship with Europe as “completely transactional.” He warned that Washington might again cut off satellite intelligence to Ukraine. There is precedent. After the Oval Office confrontation in March 2025, the Trump administration briefly suspended intelligence sharing, including access to American-funded satellite imagery. Ellwood believes Britain and Europe need contingency plans for a future in which Washington can no longer be counted on as a dependable security partner.

On France 24, the anchor described Zelenskyy as the fall guy for Trump’s war in Iran. Her guest, Pyotr Kurzin, host of The Global Gambit, questioned Trump’s renewed demand for Ukrainian elections. Zelenskyy answered the demand himself on Sunday. Give Ukraine 60 days of a complete ceasefire, he told ABC, and he would organize elections. Ukrainian law currently prohibits voting under martial law, and arranging an election while millions are displaced, territory is occupied, and cities are under bombardment would require extraordinary security and logistical preparations. Britain, incidentally, held no general election between 1935 and 1945. Churchill governed through most of the Second World War without one. When Britain finally voted after Germany’s defeat, he lost.

Despite their differences over how Europe should respond, Kyiv and London agreed on the immediate issue: Ukraine’s leadership belongs to Ukrainians to decide, not to the American president who has just made an energy deal with their invader. Ellwood was warning that Europe might need to prepare for life without it. Kurzin argued that Europe must reduce its dependence on American decisions. Kyiv and London agreed on the immediate issue: Ukraine’s leadership belongs to Ukrainians to decide, not to the American president who has just made an energy deal with their invader.

Earlier this week, inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg, an eight-and-a-half-foot copper Donald Trump sat naked and covered in 23-carat gold leaf, perched on the back of an emaciated man sinking beneath his weight. Danish artist Jens Galschiøt calls the sculpture The Orange Plague, also known as King of Injustice. Danish MEP Per Clausen sponsored its exhibition, and miniature 3D-printed versions are being distributed. “Trump likes gold,” Galschiøt explained. “In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.”

Galschiøt originally created the work as a warning about Trump’s climate policies and his disregard for the international order. This week, it acquired another meaning. It could have been made for the diesel deal.

The inscription echoes something Leo Tolstoy wrote in 1886: “I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means, except by getting off his back.”

Trump says he wants the war over. He wants American farmers to pay less for diesel, Ukrainians to stop suffering, and everyone to agree he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

But in the arrangement he has just announced, Russia gets a new opening to sell its fuel. Ukraine is told to stop attacking the refineries that produce it. Someone else is still carrying the weight.