Over the time since, I've found comparisons (coming from the same corner) of Trump to Vladimir Putin to generally be real stretches and often outright fantasies.
But Daniel Larison's column at Eunomia this morning strikes me as an apt comparison -- other than that he doesn't make the comparison, just lays out a basis for it:
If the reported details [of Trump's 15-point proposal] are correct, the so-called plan includes many of the same unrealistic and maximalist demands that the administration has been making for the last year. It was based on the U.S. proposal from 2025 before the June war. It is hard to see why Iran would agree to such terms now when their government has more leverage than it had before.
Which, apart from the April 2022 "Istanbul draft" (despite rumors you may have heard about Boris Johnson "killing" it, it was amended by Zelenskyy for Ukraine, then publicly rejected by Lavrov on behalf of Russia before Johnson even arrived in Kyiv), very resembles Putin's proposals for ending the war in Ukraine:
"Give me everything I want, but have utterly failed to get with military force, and I pinky promise to stop trying to take things with miitary force!"
To the extent that it's a similarity, though, I don't think Trump is copying Putin. He seems to be copying ... Trump. He has a long record of failing, then trying to crybully the world into pretending he succeeded.
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