In recent weeks, as domestic energy prices reached new heights, the White House rolled out a talking point: Instead of blaming the unnecessary war Donald Trump launched on Iran, perhaps people should blame Ukraine.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent helped get the ball rolling earlier this month, arguing that fuel prices have climbed because Ukraine decided to “blow up Russian energy assets.” A few days later, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy echoed the claim, connecting diesel prices to Russia’s war in Ukraine. And earlier this week, the American president himself pushed the same line during his recent trip to Ireland.

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing,” Trump said, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.”

The obvious problem with the rhetoric was that Trump should’ve been lecturing Russia, not Ukraine. The less obvious problem is that the underlying claim about the cause of increased energy costs wasn’t even true.

But the day after Trump’s comments, he published an announcement of sorts to his social media platform.

“Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise!” he wrote. “The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.”

Again, the latter part of the missive was plainly incorrect (about a subject Trump really ought to understand by now), but the former part seemed encouraging. Regardless of the impact on the global market, any kind of diplomatic progress between Russia and Ukraine would be a step in the right direction, and an energy truce would offer new reason for hope.

Three days later, Bloomberg News reported, “Ukraine damaged a major Russian oil refinery less than 200 miles northeast of Moscow while Russian forces attacked Ukrainian infrastructure overnight, a fresh indication the sides haven’t agreed to an energy truce despite claims by US President Donald Trump.”

This followed a related report in The New York Times:

The Russian and Ukrainian governments made clear on Tuesday that neither had agreed to an energy cease-fire that President Trump presented as a done deal a day before. […]

Overnight, both Russia and Ukraine continued to conduct strikes against each other. Russian drones hit gas stations in Kyiv, while Ukraine said that its forces had attacked an oil refinery in central Russia and a drone factory in Taganrog, a city on the Sea of Azov in southwestern Russia.

I can appreciate why much of the political world has grown inured to circumstances like these, but consider the context: During the region’s biggest and most destabilizing war since World War II, which Trump falsely promised to end on the first day of his second term, he publicly boasted to the world about a major breakthrough that did not exist.

In the not-too-distant past, such a development would’ve been the basis for a major controversy, and the White House would be under pressure to explain how and why the president managed to get something like this so terribly wrong.

But because we’ve reached a point at which much of the world simply expects Trump to say things that aren’t true, as he struggles to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, missteps that should be costly and humiliating tend to get lost in the shuffle.

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