Trump’s Peace Plan, Parade Dreams, and Robo-Fantasy Rides

From forgetting Ukraine peace talks already started to letting cartel families waltz in while staging a $45M military birthday bash, it’s cosplay with consequences

Good morning! As Ukraine bleeds and allies brace for a summer of escalated war, President Donald Trump has finally found a way to broker peace: by forgetting it was already happening. In a now-infamous call with President Zelensky and European leaders, Trump proudly announced that Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin ceasefire negotiations, only for Zelensky to gently point out that, actually, the first round had already taken place in Istanbul days earlier. Sources say the line went quiet, possibly from the weight of international disbelief. Trump, unfazed, offered no reply.

It gets worse. That call, and Trump’s subsequent tête-à-tête with Putin, effectively gutted U.S. support for an immediate ceasefire and torpedoed plans for joint U.S.-EU sanctions against Moscow. Instead of pressing Putin, Trump nodded along as the Kremlin proposed a drawn-out “memorandum” process with no time frame, no binding commitments, and plenty of room for fresh Russian offensives. European officials were left scrambling to apply pressure on their own, with one diplomat noting that Putin “got everything he wanted, time, leverage, and no consequences, without giving up a damn thing.”

It’s a strategy, if you can call it that, of peace through profound ignorance. And it’s all the more astonishing given Trump’s campaign promise to end the war “on Day One.” We're now past Day 120. No peace, no plan, just a Vatican mediator being floated like it’s 1534 and war is a confessional away from resolution.

But what’s foreign policy blundering without a homefront distraction? Enter Trump’s $45 million taxpayer-funded military parade-slash-birthday party. Billed as a patriotic celebration of the Army’s 250th anniversary but conveniently scheduled for June 14, Trump’s birthday, the parade will flood the streets of Washington with tanks, jets, and likely some choreographed pageantry featuring flags, fists, and “Q” merch. The city previously rejected the idea due to road damage costs. But under Trump 2.0, the budget and the Constitution are both just props for the spectacle.

If that weren’t dystopian enough, there’s the latest DOJ stunt: charging freshman Congresswoman LaMonica McIver with assaulting federal agents after she tried to conduct a lawful oversight visit to Newark’s new ICE jail alongside Mayor Ras Baraka and two fellow Democrats. Video footage shows McIver being shoved by agents while protesting Baraka’s arrest. But U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, yes, Trump’s former personal attorney now improbably in charge of federal prosecutions, decided to drop Baraka’s charges and pin the blame on McIver. Welcome to authoritarian theater, where congressional oversight is recast as criminal interference and the people wearing badges are never the ones charged with misconduct.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ashiba has had it in Japan. Between Trump’s extortionate tariffs, his lies about phantom trade deals, and a collapsing security relationship, Ashiba has warned that Japan may invoke the nuclear financial option: dumping its trillion-dollar holdings in U.S. Treasury bonds. Japan’s economy is wobbling, public trust in the U.S. has fallen to China’s level, and Tokyo openly asks why it should stick around in a partnership that treats allies like chew toys. Trump may be running foreign policy on instinct, but his instincts are radioactive.

Back home, the country’s other great technocrat, Elon Musk, is preparing to launch his long-promised robo-taxi fleet in Austin, Texas. “Launch,” however, is doing a lot of work here. The fleet will consist of 10 to 20 Model Ys, not the sleek “cyber cab” prototype Musk once wheeled out in a staged movie lot showcase. The kicker? The cars will be teleoperated by humans. That’s right: “Full Self-Driving” now comes with training wheels and a guy in a warehouse ready to grab the controls. Even Morgan Stanley, normally a cheerleader in a Tesla varsity jacket, admits the rollout is a tightly scripted demo for influencers, not a technological revolution. Meanwhile, Waymo is operating real, fully autonomous rides in multiple cities (and soon Tokyo), without the stage lighting and Hollywood extras.

And just when you thought the Trump administration couldn’t get more surreal, it turns out that in addition to dismantling the U.S. Institute of Peace, they tried to steal it. A federal judge ruled this week that Trump’s mass firing of the USIP board was unlawful, nullifying the administration’s attempt to transfer its assets to the Department of Government Efficiency. The ruling restores both the board and its mission, at least until the next executive order declares “peace” to be a hostile ideology.

Finally, the most quietly damning development of the week: the Trump administration has now formally admitted that it struck a deal to allow 17 relatives of cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán López (son of El Chapo) to enter the U.S. with zero transparency and no consultation with Mexican officials. Among those entering: El Chapo’s ex-wife and daughter. Trump has long used violent rhetoric to smear immigrants as cartel-linked invaders. Now he’s cutting side deals with their families. America First, unless your last name is Guzmán.