"Vladimir, STOP!"

When Messrs Trump and Vance scolded the president of Ukraine in Our Cherished Oval Office last month, I complained that they sounded like angry schoolteachers berating a wayward fifth-grader. Now Mr Trump is at it again, only this time scolding the Russian dictator. "Vladimir, STOP!" he writes with his rhetorical all-caps. He's talking about Putin's salvo of 215 missiles and suicide drones upon Kyiv, the capital and largest city of an independent European country. (At least one of the missiles was manufactured in North Korea by another of Mr Trump's pals.) The Kyiv Independent counts the toll so far: twelve people killed and ninety injured in yesterday's raid. The wounded included six children and Donald Trump's pride.

Mr Trump boasted that he could end the war in 24 hours if he were president. Wednesday will mark his 100th day in Our Cherished Oval Office. To his credit, he's actually been in the office more diligently than his predecessor, but he still hasn't stopped the killing, despite preemptively surrendering to Putin's demands. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, another of the CRINKs is setting up a test of American resolve: the Chinese Coast Guard has been circling Kinmen, a Taiwanese island two miles off the Chinese coast. American special forces soldiers are stationed on Kinmen. No doubt Xi Jinpeng is wondering what Mr Trump would do if China demanded that the island be demilitarized. It must seem like a small ask, given what the American president has already conceded in Europe.