The Eagle in the Copier - How Trump Gifted Putin in Alaska, Embarrassed Himself and Forgot Secret Papers in the Printer

There are symbols that are as American as baseball, Coca-Cola and "God Bless America" at every halfway patriotic barbecue. The bald eagle belongs to them. That is exactly what Donald Trump wanted to give his Russian guest Vladimir Putin at the Alaska summit - cast in bronze, as an "American Bald Eagle Desk Statue." But the eagle never even fluttered to the czar’s table. It landed first in the printer room of the "Hotel Captain Cook" in Anchorage.

There, where business travelers usually print their boarding passes, the public printer spat out eight pages that would have been better kept in a steel safe in the Pentagon: schedules, room names, phone numbers, name lists, even phonetic aids for pronouncing Russian titles. "Mr. President POO-tihn" was written there in black and white, as if it were a reminder for kindergarten staff.

That guests of a four-star hotel found the documents between coffee capsules and the daily newspaper seems like a scene from Veep or Yes, Minister - only without the saving punchline. Instead, it is the bitter reality of an administration that takes secrecy as seriously as a campaign slogan on a baseball cap.

The documents revealed not only that Trump wanted to bribe Putin with an eagle, but also how the protocol envisioned the great "Dinner for One" of world politics. Filet mignon, halibut olympia, crème brûlée - "in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin." One could almost expect a red phone to be served for dessert. The seating plan shows Trump like a Sun King, surrounded by Rubio, Hegseth, Wiles, Bessent, Lutnick and Witkoff. Putin next to Lavrov and Ushakov - a KGB watercolor in pure form.

The best part: the planned banquet was canceled. Maybe because the crème brûlée tasted too much like appeasement. Maybe also because the world outside was busy with real fires - Russian rockets struck Ukrainian cities at the same time.

The White House reacted predictably: mockery instead of clarification. A spokeswoman called the documents a "multi-page lunch menu." As if phone numbers of diplomats and the exact room plan of a summit would become harmless with the word "dessert." This administration probably also considers a nuclear code to be a sudoku block.

But the Alaska affair is only one chapter in the handbook of unprofessionalism. ICE officers inviting strangers into fugitive chats. Security staffs accidentally informing journalists about airstrikes. One slowly wonders whether the greatest threat to the United States does not sit in Moscow or Beijing, but in the printer rooms of their own hotels.

Law professor Jon Michaels from UCLA put it soberly: "You just don’t leave things in printers. It is that simple." But simple is not in this administration’s nature. It lives off spectacle - and off the chaos it produces. In the end there is a grotesque picture: Trump wanted to give Putin an eagle, but instead delivered an invaluable blueprint from the business center. The bird that was supposed to symbolize America’s strength was already weakened before it even came out of the packaging. And so the question remains: Was it really a gift for Putin - or simply an invitation to the world to laugh at the state of American statecraft?

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