In First 100 Days, Trump Struggles To Make Good On Promises To Quickly End Ukraine And Gaza Wars

Ahead of his second go-around in the White House, President Donald Trump spoke with certainty about ending Russia's war in Ukraine in the first 24 hours of his new administration and finding lasting peace from the devastating 18-month conflict in Gaza.

But as the Republican president nears the 100th day of his second term, he's struggling to make good on two of his biggest foreign policy campaign promises and is not taking well to suggestions that he's falling short. And after criticizing President Joe Biden during last year's campaign for preventing Israel from carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump now finds himself giving diplomacy a chance as he tries to curb Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program.

"The war has been raging for three years. I just got here, and you say, 'What's taken so long?'" Trump bristled, when asked about the Ukraine war in a Time magazine interview about his first 100 days. As for the Gaza conflict, he insisted the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in 2023 that triggered the war "would have never happened. Ever. You then say, 'What's taking so long?'"

Measuring a U.S. president by his first 100 days in office is an arbitrary, albeit time-honored, tradition in Washington. And brokering peace deals between intractable warring parties is typically the work of years, not weeks.

But no other president has promised to do as much out of the gate as Trump, who is pursuing a seismic makeover of America's approach to friends and foes during his second turn in the White House.