The New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s reliably pro-Trump tabloid, is warning President Donald Trump that signing on to Vladimir Putin’s proposed “Yalta 2” summit with Xi Jinping could ignite a Republican revolt and even open a path to impeachment.
In an editorial posted Monday night, the paper’s board told the president in no uncertain terms what embracing the Russian leader’s gambit would cost him.
“If President Donald Trump wants a full-on riot within the Republican Party, going along with Vladimir Putin’s idea for a ‘Yalta 2’ summit with Xi Jinping is the way to do it,” the board wrote.
Putin floated the three-way meeting during an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported. The summit would be held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18 and 19, without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the table.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the idea had come up but said no substantive proposals had been made. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Uzbekistan that the president remains open to anything that might end the war.
But The Post editors weren't buying it, with the editorial likening cutting Ukraine out of a deal over its own territory to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which handed Nazi Germany part of Czechoslovakia and left Neville Chamberlain remembered as one of history’s “greatest chumps.”
The paper also warned Trump he would be the odd man out in any such room.
“Look: Yalta One was a meeting of allies — this new one would be Trump volunteering to be outnumbered by our determined foes,” the board wrote.
The editors added: "Simply announcing he means to do this would instantly prompt all-out rebellion by much of the GOP, further sinking the party’s chances in the midterms."
Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by roughly 8 points in the RealClearPolitics average heading into the Nov. 3 election.
The Post went further, warning that the move could be “such a gift to the Democrats that it might hand them 60 Senate seats — enough to end an impeachment process with conviction.” Conviction requires 67 votes, but the board suggested fed-up Republicans could make up that gap.
“Heck, it might outrage several GOP senators into going along,” the board warned.
Trump was impeached twice during his first term, but neither Senate trial produced the votes needed to convict. He is already bracing for a third impeachment, Axios reported, although Democrats remain divided over whether to pursue one. House Democrats are also preparing a sweeping oversight slate if they win the chamber.
Critics piled on the proposed summit. Kenneth Roth, the longtime former executive director of Human Rights Watch, mocked its lineup in a post on X: “Putin has the brilliant idea of negotiating an end to his Ukraine invasion in a meeting between him, Trump, and Xi Jinping -- that is, three people on his side, no one representing Ukraine. Yes, that should work well (for him).”
Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, reached for an even darker historical analogy on X.
“Will this summit happen in Moscow, the place where the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed? Or Yalta?” The 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union secretly divided Eastern Europe days before World War II began.
The Post’s delivered the president some cheeky advice.
“You say it nicely, Mr. President, but tell Vlad it’s a flat ‘no.’”
