Fighter jets scream over the White House as the President welcomes the Polish leader he endorsed.

The President of Poland, who is named Karol Nawrocki, came to Washington on Wednesday for his first visit since taking office. The President of the United States hosted him in the Oval Office. The two men sat. The two men talked. The fighter jets, four F-16s, did a flyover above the South Lawn during the welcome.

Hon. The flyover is normal-ish. The Polish Air Force lost a pilot last month at an air show in Radom. The flyover honored him. That part I will give you.

The rest of it. The President of the United States, asked by reporters whether he had a message for Vladimir Putin, said I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand, and he’ll make a decision one way or the other.

Buddy. Look at that sentence. The man with the most leverage on the planet, hosting the leader of a country that shares a 144-mile border with the war, sitting on the same week that nineteen Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace, says he has no message for the man who ordered the drones. No message.

He also called the war “stupid” and said it would have been “much easier” for him to end. Three weeks ago he had Putin in Anchorage on a red carpet. There is no ceasefire. There is no deal. There is no agreement. There is, on the schedule, a flyover.

The Polish president he was hosting is a man the American president personally endorsed in the spring. He noted on camera that he does not endorse too many people. The math, charitably, is that not too many equals the small number of foreign leaders running for office during your second term. Charitably.

You ever notice how the people who say peace through strength mostly mean the strength part. The peace part is for somebody else’s calendar.

Funny how that works.