It was a sickening spectacle: the person who tried to upend democracy bullying the person who’s combating for democracy.
The air appeared to show flame pink because the TV stars-turned-pols sat facet by facet in elegant yellow armchairs and had the wildest dust-up ever televised from the Oval Workplace.
“That is going to be nice tv — I’ll say that,” President Trump famous. The Ukrainian ambassador, Oksana Markarova, hung her head in her fingers.
It regarded like a setup. Vice President JD Vance, a malign presence who has stated he doesn’t care a fig about Ukraine, chided Volodymyr Zelensky for not being grateful sufficient to America, i.e. Trump.
“Have you ever stated, ‘Thanks’ as soon as this whole assembly?” Vance pressed Zelensky, who has thanked America time and again.
Trump barked at Zelensky, “You’re playing with World Battle III” and wagged a finger at him: “You’ve acquired to be extra grateful as a result of, let me inform you, you don’t have the playing cards. With us, you’ve the playing cards, however with out us, you don’t have any playing cards.”
Fairly wealthy for a draft dodger to lecture a person whose title has develop into synonymous with wartime bravery. (Trump as soon as stated that avoiding sexually transmitted illnesses was his private “Vietnam.”)
When a reporter requested what would occur if Russia broke the cease-fire once more, Trump snapped, “What if something? What if a bomb drops in your head proper now?”
The bust of Churchill so beloved by Trump watched over the three males as they sparred. Are you able to think about F.D.R. petulantly ordering Churchill to be extra grateful? Are you able to think about Churchill’s chilly disdain for Trump’s protection-racket demand for Ukraine’s minerals?
As if this weren’t sufficient humiliation, a member of the president’s new handpicked press pool, Brian Glenn of the right-wing Actual America’s Voice, requested Zelensky, “Why don’t you put on a swimsuit?” After which, “Do you personal a swimsuit?”
(He was echoing Trump, who mocked Zelensky when he arrived, saying “Ooh, you’re all dressed up.” The Ukrainian president had on black pants, high and boots, just like what Elon Musk wears on the White Home.)
Regardless that we needs to be used to it by now, it was nonetheless surprising to see Trump parrot the view of Vladimir Putin, a murderous tyrant who desires to swallow Ukraine in a match of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Trump insisted that they had been fellow victims.
“Let me inform you, Putin went by means of a hell of so much with me,” Trump stated, as if they had been Military buddies. “He went by means of a phony witch hunt the place they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.” U.S. intelligence businesses discovered that Russia meddled within the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
“You see the hatred he’s acquired for Putin,” Trump stated of Zelensky. “It’s very powerful for me to make a cope with that sort of hate.”
The president doesn’t perceive why Zelensky isn’t pleased with Putin for invading the smaller nation and beating the bejesus out of it, for decimating a technology of younger Ukrainian troopers, for breaking cease-fires and committing battle crimes.
Zelensky deserves our thanks. He has endured a lot, maintaining the David versus Goliath dream alive, exposing the weak spot of the Russian army and principally taking it on the chin for the remainder of Europe to maintain Putin from gobbling up extra territory.
However as an alternative of being gracious, Trump booted Zelensky out of the White Home, leaving the hero’s lunch on a tray within the corridor, torpedoing his existential combat to save lots of his battered nation and Ukrainian lives.
Republican lickspittles like Lindsey Graham and Jim Banks praised Trump and trashed Zelensky whereas Russian leaders rejoiced. “The insolent pig lastly acquired a correct slap down within the Oval Workplace,” stated Dmitri Medvedev, the previous Russian president and Putin toady.
A cascade of gobsmacked Western leaders wrapped Zelensky in a heat on-line embrace. “As we speak, it grew to become clear that the free world wants a brand new chief,” stated Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high diplomat. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, posted, “Il y a un agresseur: la Russie.”
European leaders had tried to information Trump within the days earlier than Zelensky arrived, however Trump is wedded to his demented dream of a troika of strongmen — himself, Putin and Xi Jinping — astride the world.
Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain got here to Washington, humoring Trump. Starmer grandly delivered a cream envelope with an “unprecedented” invitation from King Charles III for a second state go to, maybe to Balmoral.
An actual king soothing the ego of a hooligan who thinks he’s a king.
All of the flattery didn’t soften up Trump. It puffed him up. Everyone seems to be so obsequious round Trump that he now will get huffy at least pushback. He could make any declare, irrespective of how outrageous — that Ukraine began the battle with Russia, that Zelensky is a “dictator.” But when anybody factors out that he’s flawed, he blows a gasket.
After Trump flew off to Mar-a-Lago, Zelensky did an interview with Bret Baier on Fox Information. He didn’t apologize when Baier requested him if he ought to. “I can’t, you realize, change our Ukrainian angle to Russia,” he stated, including that Putin desires to “kill us.”
He stated the assembly got here a cropper as a result of he talked truthfully in regards to the want for safety ensures. “We simply need to acknowledge the fact, the true scenario.” He added that everyone is “afraid that Putin will come again tomorrow.”
Trump doesn’t do properly with actuality; he tries to impose his personal on the remainder of us.
Zelensky stated that Trump instructed him he needed to be in “the center” of the negotiations. However the Ukrainian president demurred: “I would like actually him to be extra at our facet” as a result of “the battle started when Russia introduced this battle to our nation.” About Ukrainians, he stated: “They simply need to hear that America on our facet and America will stick with us, not with Russians.”
Appears easy. Except Trump’s artwork of the deal is all about truckling to Putin.
