Trump walks back previous pause on Ukraine aid calls, calls out Putin for his "bullshit" and how focusing primarily on Ukraine's air defense is insufficient in dealing with Russia's missile barrage.

• It turns out (as was predicted in our last discussion of the matter), that not much senior White House clearance was given for the pause in the supply of weapons to Ukraine last week.

• To recall, these included crucial PAC-3 interceptor missiles for air defense, Hellfire missiles, AIM-7 missiles, artillery shells, etc.

• Apart from the PAC-3s, none of these weapons were going to affect any potential operational readiness in the future for the U.S. Some of these missiles, like the AIM-7, are even very old and are not likely to be used in any future conflict.

• The rationale was always weak to begin with, but as discussed, one of the biggest issues was that one person, Elbridge Colby, pushed for a policy that was contrary to the statements made by Trump himself just a week prior at The Hague summit of NATO - when he implicitly promised that the U.S. would be supplying more Patriot missiles to Ukraine.

• It also contradicted the will of Congress, which pushed for this support.

• It contradicted, overall, the GOP establishment—and the Democratic party establishment too.

• And overall, it contradicted the national will as well - since the majority of Americans still support arming Ukraine.

• But Elbridge Colby wanted this to happen in his role as Undersecretary for Policy at Pentagon, and he then got Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, to approve it.

• It now turns out that Hegseth did not seek approval from the White House, did not communicate this to the White House, and simply paused the shipment.

• This all came crashing down in the embarrassing cabinet meeting that was televised to the public—the very same meeting where Trump got personally offended that more questions were being asked about his administration’s refusal to give more details on the so-called “Epstein list.”

• And on Ukraine, his response to the reporter asking who then paused the shipment to Ukraine if Trump is in support of further aid was astonishing “I don’t know, you tell me who stopped the shipment to Ukraine.”

• What a shocking way to discuss what’s going on in his own government. The President of the United States—the leader of the free world—says he doesn’t know who paused the shipment to Ukraine.

• This is not exactly confidence-inspiring in his leadership, across the world and among allies.

• With that said, Trump, to his credit, did finally call Putin’s stalling tactics for what they are—"bullshit".

• This is by far the strongest language used by Trump against Putin.