The world has come to Donald Trump this past week, with heads of state flying in to negotiate a possible peace deal for Ukraine. Rich and Co., on today’s edition of The Editors, discuss the sway the president seems to have with certain leaders, and how this could impact the future of Ukraine.

“The rest of Europe’s leaders and Zelensky have figured out how to play the Trump game, how to ingratiate themselves. . . . The Venn diagram of their shared interests overlaps a lot, much more than it does with Putin,” says Jim. “I came away from the Alaska summit feeling like, ‘Well, that wasn’t the worst way it possibly could have been if Trump had signed on to whatever Putin had suggested. No deal was better than a bad deal, but it still had gone pretty lousy.”

He continues: “But then, really, yesterday’s meeting, the more we saw people talking in the aftermath, the better it looked. And a big part, obviously [was] it was very clear that Trump and Zelensky were getting along better. Smiling, shaking hands, kind of joking around with each other. It was a completely different tone than the last [meeting].”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.