What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended to be "very angry" at Vladimir Putin.

In a Sunday morning call with NBC News, Trump proclaimed himself "very angry" with Vladimir Putin, and said he'd impose sanctions on Russia if negotiations to end the war on Ukraine didn't improve.

Sanctions against Russia are, of course, already in place from the Biden administration—and Trump has been eagerly making plans to lift them as recently as a few days ago. Under Trump, the United States has effectively switched sides in the conflict—or rather, the White House has. The American public still overwhelmingly supports Ukraine.

It is unlikely that Trump is "very angry" with Putin, or that Russia will think that he is. It's difficult to summarize the full extent of Trump's entanglement with—and, at times, submission to—the Putin regime over the years. Money from Russian oligarchs propped up Trump's collapsing real estate business. Russia under Putin illegally intervened, both covertly and openly, on Trump's behalf in all of the last three presidential elections. Russian state TV routinely brags about Trump's subservience to the Putin regime, and Trump has routinely repaid them with thrilling content—most recently, a surprise Oval Office attack on the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And Trump, for his part, has been open in his genuine admiration for Putin, all the more for his ruthless and dictatorial approach.

That loyalty has paid off handsomely for Putin even in having peace talks in the first place. Virtually every foreign policy expert agrees that Russia has succeeded in crippling Ukraine's bargaining position by having the United States—its most important ally—threaten to cut off support if it doesn't participate on whatever terms Trump and Putin deem acceptable. But while Russia is by itself vastly militarily stronger than Ukraine, the war has gone remarkably badly for Russia, and it is unlikely Putin could have forced Ukraine to the bargaining table without Trump's assistance.

Even in today's "angry" remarks, Trump talked about the attempt to end the war as a joint project between himself and Putin, with Ukraine and Zelenskyy simply the subject of a US-Russian negotiation. For example, Trump said he'd impose sanctions on Russia "if Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine."

If Trump is actually angry about anything, it may be that it is increasingly obvious that he cannot keep his campaign promise to, in effect, sit both sides down and hammer out a deal. This was never likely; hundreds of thousands have died, and Russia has committed atrocities including the torture and indiscriminate targeting of Ukrainian civilians. But that didn't stop Trump, who may actually believe he is the "dealmaker" described in his ghostwritten books, from claiming he'd have smoothed that over within the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if the President of the United States can't demonstrate any more personal independence from a hostile foreign power than this.

• The presidency is not a reality show.

• Diplomacy being harder than Donald Trump thought it would be is costing Ukrainian lives.