Is Trump Out of the Loop, Again?

Why is aid to Ukraine being paused without the president’s sign-off?

Photo by the White House

When Donald Trump returned to office in January, one of the biggest policy questions on his desk was whether he would continue sending aid to Ukraine.

On the campaign trail, Trump seemed to scoff at the amount of support the U.S. was offering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends,” Trump said of Zelensky last June. During the transition, Trump told NBC News that Ukraine should “probably” prepare to receive less aid under his watch.

The new administration’s decision on this score had the power to shake up a global conflict and relations with several different countries. It was closely awaited in Kyiv, Moscow, Brussels, and Washington.

So it’s kind of weird that it was made without the president, right?

A week ago today, Politico reported that the U.S. had decided to withhold some aid promised to Ukraine during the Biden administration, including shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions. “Trump Pauses Some Weapons Transfers to Ukraine,” the New York Times soon followed, in a story that described the decision as one made personally by the commander-in-chief.

In case there was any remaining doubt, the Washington Post added, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly emailed a statement on the matter to various U.S. journalists. “This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe,” Kelly said.

The pause in aid was a notable development, as evidenced by the prominent coverage in some of America’s largest news outlets. And the fact that it was being confirmed by a leading presidential spokesperson seemed to suggest that the move was coming from the top, after a centralized and coordinated decision-making process.

But Politico and NBC News both reported later last week that the decision had come from inside the Pentagon, not the White House, and had blindsided several top Trump administration officials.

Then, yesterday, we learned that one of those Trump administration officials was Trump himself. In a phone call on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump told Zelensky that he had not been responsible (or, seemingly, even aware) for halting weapons shipments to Ukraine.

“Trump said that he had directed a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles after the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear sites last month but hadn’t ordered the department to freeze the arms deliveries,” the Journal reported.

Shortly after that story was published, Trump was asked by a reporter if he planned to send more weapons to Ukraine. “We’re gonna send some more weapons,” Trump replied. “We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.”

And shortly after that, the Defense Department announced that the pause on sending certain weapons to Kyiv had been lifted. “At President Trump's direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “Our framework for POTUS to evaluate military shipments across the globe remains in effect and is integral to our America First defense priorities.”

The strangest part about this whole saga is this isn’t even the first time this has happened.

Back in March, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. had paused military aid to Ukraine, only to restore the aid a week later.

Reuters later reported that the pause had come — you guessed it — from the Pentagon, not the president.

According to Reuters, the cancellation came after a January 30 meeting in the Oval Office with Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other officials. “During the meeting, the idea of stopping Ukraine aid came up, said two people with knowledge of the meeting, but the president issued no instruction to stop aid to Ukraine,” the report said.

When Hegseth left the meeting and ordered a halt on aid to Kyiv, Trump was “unaware,” Reuters added.

Per NBC News, Hegseth also suspended Ukraine aid in May “without apparent coordination with lawmakers on Capitol Hill or even within the administration,” a move that was also “reversed within days.”

A few months ago, I wrote a newsletter asking, “Is Donald Trump out of the loop?”, noting a pattern of Trump professing ignorance to reporters about key issues in his administration, from Signalgate to the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

Now that the Secretary of Defense has paused U.S. aid to one of the highest-profile conflicts in the world three times and been reversed once the president was made aware of it, the question is worth asking again.

Why isn’t Trump the one making the call on such an important, closely watched decision? And how is it that Hegseth feels comfortable going around the commander-in-chief?

In recent weeks, the phrase “TACO” — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — has gained prominence as an explanation for the president’s often frenzied decisionmaking. And it’s possible that this is the case here too. Perhaps the reporting has been wrong, and Trump and his aides are not telling the truth, and in fact the president really was aware that Ukraine aid was being paused those three three times he then un-paused it.

Maybe, as the TACO framework would suggest, Trump made the decision and then was pressured by people like Lindsey Graham into changing his mind.

Or maybe he made the decision and then, wanting to seem agreeable on the phone, opted to reverse himself in order to appease Zelensky. We know that Trump is often highly susceptible to adopting the position of the last person he spoke to. This isn’t chickening out, per see; after all, deciding to confront the world’s fifth-largest military, Russia, can hardly be classified as acting chicken. It would more suggest that Trump is flimsy and easily persuaded, bowing not really to pressure but just to simple conversation.

When I asked ChatGPT for a handy acronym to describe this behavior, it offered TUNA: Trump Usually Nods Along.

But there’s also a more concerning explanation: it’s not that Trump is changing his mind, it’s just that he’s not part of the decisionmaking process.

My original piece on Trump’s seeming disengagement from key policy questions came shortly before his scheduled “Liberation Day” tariff announcement. In the piece, I suggested that the announcement would be a good proxy for testing whether Trump is, in fact, in the loop.

We know that tariffs are one issue the president really does care about, I reasoned. If the “Liberation Day” tariffs ended up being as dramatic as he was promising, that would be a helpful sign that he’s the one steering the ship.

A few days later, I seemed to get my answer: the “Liberation Day” tariffs, as we know, were quite harsh indeed. But it wasn’t long before the answer became muddled, since Trump quickly bowed to outside pressure and paused the tariffs for 90 days. (This is the origin of TACO.) That 90-day clock runs out tomorrow, and Trump appears poised to offer another extension to several countries, until August 1.

This would seem to be a case of him chickening out — except, once again, there’s some evidence to suggest he isn’t fully aware of the move.

“Mr. President, do the tariff rates change at all on July 9 or do they change on August 1?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday.

“What are you talking about?” he responded.

“Tariff rates,” she repeated. “Do they change on July 9 or August 1?”

“They’re going to be tariffs,” he replied. “The tariffs are going to be the tariffs. I think we'll have most countries done by July 9, yeah. Either a letter or a deal.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was standing next to Trump, had to jump in to clarify. “But they go into effect on August 1,” Lutnick answered. “Tariffs go into effect August 1. But the president is setting the rates and the deals right now.”

Another piece of evidence came during negotiations over the One Big Beautiful Bill. According to NOTUS, on the day the House began voting on the package, Trump sat down with moderate GOP lawmakers and told them “there are three things Congress shouldn’t touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”

“But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one of the lawmakers stepped in to inform Trump.

We live in a big country, and the president can’t be kept abreast of everything. It’s normal for parts of an administration to hum along without him. But these examples touch on key issues — foreign aid, trade, and his signature piece of legislation — that are at central to Trump’s agenda.

They raise questions about the organization of the White House — it’s worth noting that decisions like the one on Ukraine aid would normally be coordinated by the national security adviser, a job Marco Rubio is holding in addition to being secretary of state — and about the president’s engagement.

After having set up a “team of rivals” on many issues (the Ukraine aid decision appears to have been made by a combination of Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, who make up the isolationist wing of Trump’s administration), it sometimes appears that the president isn’t really mediating disputes among different factions, but weighing in after they’ve already made decisions.

Maybe TACO and TUNA don’t get it right, after all. ChatGPT’s next suggestion? TOOL: Trump’s Out Of the Loop.