New Delhi, Aug. 1 -- WASHINGTON - A residential building in Kyiv lost its first and second floors to a ballistic missile strike early Saturday morning, trapping residents inside. Nine people were killed. Twenty-eight were wounded, four of them children. While rescue teams were still working through the rubble, the American president who had promised Ukraine the means to manufacture its own missile defenses was at Camp David explaining why he had changed his mind.

The two events did not arrive on different news cycles. They arrived on the same one.

On Friday, President Donald Trump told a Cabinet meeting at Camp David that the United States "has not agreed to" grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air defense systems, ABC News repor...