President Donald Trump is spending the end of the year trying to cash in huge foreign policy bets on which thousands of lives may depend and that will define his attempt to wield decisive power far beyond American shores.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida has become a center of global diplomacy, with high-stakes talks Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to follow Monday.
The twin meetings mark significant attempts by Trump to cement a legacy as a global peacemaker. In Ukraine, he’s seeking to finally end a war he once said he could fix in a day but that is still raging nearly a year into his second term.
Trump also hopes to deliver a jolt to Gaza peace efforts to initiate the second phase of a deal that stopped widespread fighting in October between Israel and Hamas but that could fail without progress.
His intensified focus on Gaza and Ukraine came after Trump put his stamp on the holiday season by ordering US military action in the Middle East, Africa and the Western Hemisphere.
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