He really does not understand Putin like he thinks he does.
He doesn’t understand Ukraine at all.
He thought he could deliver enough of Ukraine to Putin to get him to stop. He can’t. There will never be enough.
He thought he could pressure Ukraine into surrendering its territory. He can’t. They know there is no amount of territory they could surrender that will guarantee peace.
Sure sounds like that’s something someone in a CIA report team should have told him about. They typically give the president a “world report” every morning. He shouldn’t have been surprised by that question.
But you got to admit, by presidential standards, he isn’t a deeply informed individual.
Like I think back to his first administration where he totally canceled morning reports. Which isn’t that weird; Clinton and Reagan didn’t sit in on one every morning either. But those two always made sure to have an advisor participate and give them a summary report later in the morning.
Also, there’s certain things he’s talked about where I know he’s never researched it beyond a Wikipedia summary. Like there’s been reports on his firm term where he was asking really stupid questions about nuclear weapons and I got kind of appalled about it. Because he would have known better had he just read any basic book about nuclear history.