The dust hasn’t yet settled from the Trump-Vance-Zelensky near-brawl in the Oval Office. The nation is still sort of evaluating what to even make of the situation. One truth that simply cannot be avoided is that everyone agrees that it is nearly impossible to imagine Trump and Vance dressing Vladimir Putin down in a similar situation. Of course, this is a problem because the United States president better damn well be able to toss Putin aside as a play thing. There is also the fact that it just happens to be Putin who invaded Ukraine, starting the war, not ending the war, occupying certain portions of Ukraine, refusing to leave those portions of Ukraine, all while seemingly counting on Trump to parrot the Kremlin’s talking points. No wonder people are upset. If you haven’t seen it, the video of the press conference is below.
The episode has been embarrassing for all parties save for Zelensky who was mostly railroaded. Vance is the instigator in my opinion. The meeting had gone okay until Vance jumped in. If Zelensky did anything wrong, it might have been not asking Trump to clear the room of the media before letting fly at the Americans. Of course, again – see Vance, who was very self-righteous and hypocritical.
But what the fight has done is chase a few of the remaining anti-Russian conservative outlets into the spotlight. It turns out, there are some on the right who don’t want to carry Putin’s water and are not afraid to accuse Trump of the same. The very conservative National Review wasted no time putting forth an editorial in which they took the White House to task. As reported by Rawstory:
“They belittled his country’s position in the war, called him an ingrate, and made open threats about abandoning his country,” the conservative board, comprised of the Review’s senior editorial staff, told readers. “This was shocking behavior, especially when it is unimaginable that they’d ever dare treat Vladimir Putin in a similar fashion.”
“One hopes that this doesn’t represent a fundamental breach in U.S.-Ukrainian relations,” the board concluded, adding that with “President Trump, blowups can happen quickly, but so can reconciliations.”
True. Trump is known to have a very short memory and attention span. Today’s enemy can be tomorrow’s hero, usually wholly dependent on how that person is treating Trump personally. The problem is that Zelensky doesn’t seem to have a short term memory and knows exactly what happened today and what it means going into the future. The editorial goes on:
“Regardless, the episode is a disturbing reflection of the resentment the president feels toward a partner whose fundamental offense is wanting to defend itself and regain its sovereign territory.
Yeah. Amazing how people just keep going back to that. Ukraine was sitting there, hanging out, mostly upset that Russia annexed the Crimea in 2014 – but certainly not wanting war with Russia. If Ukraine wanted a war with Russia it would’ve fought in 2014 over their territory. They didn’t and thus it never happened. This time, Russia invaded and was on the way to Kyiv – they had to fight. It really isn’t on Zelensky to end this unless and until Russia backs off. There is a meme out there that Zelensky’s peace plan begins with “Get the fck out of our country” which sounds like the starting point of any negotiations.
It will be worth watching as to whether some of the Anti-Russian hawks on the right start to put real pressure on Trump and the pass he continues to give Putin. Many don’t seem real comfortable with what went on in the White House.
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“Reconciliations” with Trumpler only occur if his opponent comes ass-kissing afterwards. President Zelensky will not do that. Nor, now, will any other free nation. Trump has shown his true colors (yet again) and this time, there will be no going back to a normalcy he’s destroyed.
Well said Jarvis. I come from the north American Ukraine. We know this bat-crap nothing of a president would LOVE to invade us and I assure you, there is not a single Canadian, no matter how much they like Trump’s anti-Liberal positions (we have plenty of very conservative people up here) would tolerate him invading to steal our water and other natural resources. Because we don’t scream like Americans “We’re the greatest country in the world” all the time, he probably thinks we’re not patriotic and wouldn’t stand up for our country, but boy is he ever wrong (shocking, Trump wrong??)!!! As far as I’m concerned, NATO should put US membership in abeyance until that country gets an actual president, and move to make Ukraine a permanent member NOW!!!! I am certain all three people who stand to be Prime Minister before the end of this year would agree to this.
Zelensky is a warrior. Trump is a punk. Vance is the punk’s hand puppet. My money is on the warrior.
“If Ukraine wanted a war with Russia it would’ve fought in 2014 over their territory. They didn’t and thus it never happened.”
Well, there’s a little more to it as I recall. About a week before Russia invaded and occupied Crimea, Ukraine had a veritable Putin lapdog as its President (Viktor Yanukovych) who was deposed by the Ukrainian Parliament for reneging on a plan to develop closer ties to Europe. And guess where that lapdog fled after being deposed? Yep. Back to Papa Putin and Russia.
Ukraine’s government since then has made efforts to negotiate the return but has largely acceded to the de facto occupation (referring to Crimea as “occupied territory”) because it’s known it is in no real condition to force the issue (figuratively as well as literally). Russia’s “justification” was that the occupation was as a “response to the coup in Kyiv” (ie, deposing their lapdog, Yanukovych) and a “fear” that the new “anti-Russian government” would renege on the recent agreements allowing the continued use of the naval base on Crimea. But, as is Putin’s SOP, he chose a military option that would benefit him rather than work towards a peaceful resolution.
You have remember trump us very good at razzle dazzle. A lot of fridays ordeal may have just been a smoke screen to get people to stop looking at the illegal things that musk and doush are doing.
Zelensky was not disrespectful. If anything, he was restrained. Vance lectured him, and it was patently obvious that JD knows zilch. about what happened and what’s going on. He hasn’t been to Ukraine and he gets his info. from. Fox News. Last I.heard it was PUTIN having trouble getting volunteers for his war, so has instituted conscription, to.the point where young Russian men were fleeing into Estonia,Latvia, and Lithuania and Poland.
This was planned. It gives Trump an excuse to.side with Putin. If he had been serious about negotiating, the press would not have been there and some of the CIA’s experts would have been, along with the Secretary of State.
Silly me. I.thought Republicans hated communists.
The Russians invaded the Donbas in April 2014 and the Ukrainians were unprepared for war and didn’t even have a president at the time,although they elected Poroshenko the following month. In July Ukrainians did fight back in Donbas and had some success, though it was pretty small scale. In September some kind of peacewasbrokered, but in 2016-17 fighting resumed.