I will report about yesterday in a separate post later.
When I went to bed last night around 6 Pm, I knew that the Trump-Zelensky meeting had fallen apart. Not the greatest shock in the world. With friends like Trump, does Ukraine need enemies?
Then this morning, I watched the press conference on C-SPAN (thank you, YouTube). Most of the media event went well enough. The worst thing was Trump mangling of the English language. Then JD Vance spoke up and everything went downhill, with the Vice President and then the President treating the leader of a sovereign country as a child, a feudal supplicant. Arrogance and ignorance combined do not leave either Trump or Vance as convincing leaders of the free world.
Zelensky bristled at his berating by Trump and Vance. After three years of war, what did they expect?
When Trump later told him he had “no cards,” Zelensky replied: “I am not playing cards.” Ukrainians are not playing cards but dying in a rate less than the fantastical figures Trump keeps citing, though at an adequately horrific pace of hundreds a week, that they too want peace.
This is the gruesome gulf between the parties in the Oval Office. On one side, a country where the facts of war are personal as they involve relatives and friends who are never coming home, and homes that will never be returned to. On the other, America’s right flank feeling scorned because its aid – given to defeat a decades-long adversary at no cost of American life – had not been received with enough gratitude.
“You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing,” said Trump, as though the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives was not somehow a sign of appreciation.
Zelensky later said in an interview with Fox News he didn’t feel he owed Trump an apology, but he thought the relationship could be salvaged.
Trump and Vance talked about taking action - that Biden did nothing - when Biden sent Ukraine weapons to stay alive. Trump held up arms to get dirt on Biden from Zelensky. Sorry, Biden took action. All that Trump will get from Putin are empty words and gestures. Action? Trump refused security agreements to back up any cease-fire - that is just blather, not action.
I admire Steve Schmidt's vitirol in his February 28, 2025: a date that will live in infamy, even if I am left wondering if he does not go overboard in his belief of American dedication to freedom.
This video raises a question for me - what does the United States do when the world decides we are more dangerous than helpful? I think I am the least important person in the world asking that question right now: Zelensky’s nightmare in Washington.
Regardless of Zelensky’s own role in the debacle, it is now glaringly clear that Ukraine, and Europe, can no longer count on the US to come to their defence. For all the apparent bonhomie of this week’s meetings between Trump and Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer – with the latter’s theatrical flourish of a personal invitation from King Charles III flaunted as an “unprecedented” and “historic” honour – it could just as easily have been either leader being subjected to a dressing down by Trump and his fawning vice president. European leaders and US allies around the world should be under no illusions about the cruel and capricious nature of Trump’s administration and its willingness to turn on the country’s strategic partners, at their moment of greatest need, for a puerile display of chest-beating and a few minutes of “great television”. Flattering Trump and stroking his ego is not a sustainable strategy for European security.
There will presumably now be more calls for Zelensky to step down. Trump has taken up Putin’s mantra that Ukraine must hold elections (currently suspended because the country is at war and under martial law, much as in the UK throughout the Second World War, as Starmer has recently noted) in a barely concealed attempt by the Russian leader to get rid of the Ukrainian president in the hope that his democratically elected government will be replaced by a more Moscow-friendly regime. Starmer, Macron, the incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz, and every other allied leader who cares about defending liberal democracy, must now rally to Zelensky’s defence, and make urgent preparations to support Ukraine without the US. Keeping their heads down and hoping to placate him will not work. To paraphrase the famous remark often attributed, probably inaccurately, to Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: they must all hang together, or most assuredly they shall all hang separately.
"Cocaine Clown, Putin's Dirty Work": World Reacts To Trump vs Zelensky
World reacts to Zelenskiy-Trump Oval Office clash
All that was offered was the presence of US mining concerns in Ukraine. That would be enough to stop attacks, Mr Trump said.
“I am in the middle, I am for both Ukraine and Russia,” he added. “I want to get it solved.”
If Mr Trump was also focused on securing reserves of uranium and lithium, Mr Zelensky had to concentrate on securing a future for his people. He had signed a deal with Vladimir Putin in 2019, but that did not stop Russia invading in 2022.
In a statement, Mr Trump told him to come back when he was serious about peace. But containing Moscow’s empire-building needs more than words.
***
In a world without rules, power alone determines survival. Peace needs balance and justice – it is not sustainable where the winner takes it all.
For Trump, peace is like his concept of consent for his encounters with women: surrender to the aggressor, and just take it.
Nothing in that video about Putin stopping the killing.
Trump, Vance attack on Zelenskyy angers many. But Russians and (some) Republicans love it.
Trump supporters in Congress celebrated what they said was an assertion of an unapologetic “America First” worldview and negotiating style. Some saw it as justification for turning off the spigot of American aid to Kyiv.
“Not another penny,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), wrote atop a video of the exchange.
The fracas appeared to delight Moscow.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who often acts as a Kremlin attack dog, wrote on social media of Zelenskyy: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.” Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said on a live streamed broadcast: “Zelenskyy is biting the hand that fed him.”
I leave you with Rachel Maddow, who brings everything together with some very uncomfortable questions for Americans:
Trump yesterday kept repeating his putdown of the Russia hoax. But everything he did yesterday same to be for "Russia, Russia, Russia."
Since when did the US of A become a tool of a washed up power like Russia?
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