President tells the French president, on a hot mic, that Putin 'wants to make a deal for me.'

The President hosted the President of Ukraine and seven European leaders at the White House on Monday for a multilateral meeting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Before the cameras went on for the formal portion of the program, the President leaned over to the President of France and was captured on a hot mic saying, of the Russian president, “I think he wants to make a deal. I think he wants to make a deal for me. You understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”

Hon. The microphone was hot. They are always hot. They are hot when you tap them. They are hot when you look at them. They are hot when you whisper to the man next to you about how the President of Russia, an indicted war criminal, wants to make a deal for you, personally. And then you yourself say as crazy as it sounds, and we are in a position where the President is on tape using the words as crazy as it sounds to describe his own theory of the situation.

There is a category of statement that is not a gaffe and is not a lie. It is a belief. The President believes Putin wants the deal for him. Not for Russia. Not for Ukraine. Not even for some abstract Russian-American detente. For him. Personal possession. The deal is a thing the Russian president would give him.

We are now negotiating the end of the largest land war in Europe since 1945 on the assumption that the foreign leader on the other side is doing the deal as a personal favor to the man at our podium. That is the working theory. It was said into a microphone the foreign leader could see, in a building that contains, on a normal day, between forty and seventy reporters, while the cameras were already rolling.

You ever notice how the very confident men keep accidentally telling on themselves.

Funny how that works.