Summary
Trump just presided over one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, with flared tempers, raised voices, and shredded protocol.
Never before has a U.S. president bullied and berated an adversary, never mind an ally, in such a public way.
During a tense Oval Office meeting, Trump and JD Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanding he accept a peace deal with Russia or lose U.S. support.
The conversation devolved into shouting, with Trump accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and “gambling with World War III.”
The meeting ended in chaos, with no agreement reached.
You seem to be one of the few people I’ve seen online that seems to have watched the whole video and came away with this take, so I would love a civil response.
I’m certainly not on Trump/Vance’s side, but when watching the whole video I can’t help but think that Zelenskyy truly failed at understanding the purpose of the meeting and has condemned many more of his countrymen to death. It seemed obvious from the get go that Trump wanted this to be a public deceleration of economic entanglements and that the security discussions would come later. I get Zelenskyy’s point that Russia has been impossible to deal with from a diplomatic standpoint and that he didn’t want to leave Washington without a security gaurentee, but by publicly shaming Russia from the ovel office he is making diplomacy impossible. My impression is that Zelenskyy wants the war to keep going, but I truly don’t understand why. His citizens are dying and they are losing territory. Russia has 10x the population and, historically, has had little reservations about sending their soldiers into the meat grinder. And let’s not forget that if Russia gets backed into a corner, they still have nukes that could escalate the situation to unfathomable destruction.
From my nonexpert opinion, if I was the leader of Ukrainian I would be trying to make as many economic deals as possible with foreign nations and look to stop the war asap. I truly can’t think of a better alternative than that given the current situation. So my question is, what should the US, EU, and Ukrainians be doing to stop the killing? What is the most realistic path to peace?
And just reiterate, I don’t agree with the wording and attitude of Trump/Vance during that meeting, but the general sentiment of economic entanglements seems like the best option at this point. No?
Zelenskyy was only interested in allowing the US to take their ‘rare earth’ if the US was also going to guarantee that it would help their defense against Russia’s advancements.
Trump claimed the deal had already been made, and tried to make the conference about how great he is and how bad the previous presidents were.
He praised questions that verbally sucked him off, and belittled those who asked genuine questions about the deal.
Then the two Americans bombarded Zelenskyy with questions and refused to allow him to answer.
They talked over him and got upset at him for not sucking their cocks the whole conference.
Zelenskyy was sent out because the babies in the Whitehouse couldn’t handle somebody who didn’t kiss their feet. He didn’t disagree with the deal, he just wanted more clarification and this was taken as a personal attack.
The world does not respect Trump or the US. We laugh at their incompetence and look forward to their ego getting checked.
This whole press conference made the US look like half-assed war profiteers, rather than the ‘freedom fighters’ they like to roleplay as.
The idea that any deal with Russia that wouldn’t include rock solid security guarantees would lead to stopping the killing, much less any sort of peace, is extremely naive. This issue is ongoing ever since Russia annexed Crimea, there have been many deals and all of them failed to stop Putin from breaking them. The issue is very simple - Trump can not (and absolutely doesn’t want to, from the looks of things) convince Putin to stop the war, because Putin doesn’t want the war to stop. It was shown time and time again that they aren’t willing to stop their invasion, and only thing that ever thwarted their progress was military opposition. There is no reason to believe that Russia wouldn’t just continue the invasion after the deal with USA is made. And Ukraine wouldn’t have any benefit from this kind of deal, so why would they go through with it?
Since you watched all of it, as unbearable to watch it was, you probably also heard the comments of Trump in the interview afterwards - that he organized and prolonged this discussion to show the world that Zelensky can not be negotiated with. Whatever you might believe in, it’s hard to imagine that as anything else other than admission that Trump never expected his “deal” to go through. They jumped and insulted the president of soverign country and blamed him for the war their close friend started. If your reaction to that is “he shouldn’t have reacted to the provocation”, then you’re missing the point of why they provoked him in the first place. This way, at the very least, he made sure the world despised Trump and that all other allies of Ukraine were sympathetic. His only choice is to weather this storm until the fascist bubble in USA bursts and there is some chance for diplomacy in the future.
As for the economic entanglements, they mean nothing in times when USA is incapable of diplomacy and Russia is unwilling of adhering to any deals. Speaking of any trades where Ukraine is giving up their minerals before USA promises to push Russia outside of Ukraine borders is meaningless, and Ukraine wouldn’t get anything out of that.
Hey thanks for the reply. I know this is an emotionally charged topic, so I appreciate the civility.
I have read a few books, but I would absolutely consider myself a novice on this topic. There is a deep history in that part of the world that I’m sure I will never fully appreciate. I think I am better understanding your point of view, but I still can’t wrap my head around it completely. If you’ll indulge me, let’s table all of the personalities. Forget about Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy, etc. Forget about exactly what words were used during that disastrous press conference and the various followup interviews.
How do we push back at Russia without further risking nuclear holocaust? From what I understand, it sounds like Ukrainian membership into NATO has always been a pipe dream and a complete non-starter. If the USA, Europe, or others put boots on the ground, surely that would spark a dramatic increase in hostilities from Russia.
To your point, I absolutely agree that Russia has reneged on various deals in the past and should not be trusted. I would imagine the only thing that we can trust Russia to do is to act in their own best interest…and honestly, I would say this about any country/corporation/person.
I would think Russia will only walk away from this war when they are able to point at something that looks like victory. So how do they get that while also ensuring the safety and stability of Ukraine? What is the path to peace if not economic entanglements?
Maybe I am being a bit naive about how the world works, but I would hope that if a private US or European company was in a particular region of Ukraine performing mining, logistics, or construction; maybe Russia would think twice before bombing or attempting to take the region over. No?
Russia invaded Ukraine under a very weak pretense of de-nazification, and buldozed over a lot of privately owned means of production, including foreign owned. They had some reputation to lose back then, now the worst that could happen would be Trump getting pissed at them and threatening them to escalate the war, but never doing so, because he’s still beholden to the capital interests, and this war has been extremely lucrative for the world’s main exporter of weapons. At best(for Putin) Trump would claim that Zelensky is using private contractors as human shields and that Zelensky broke the deal because the yield of the mining operations was lower than promised, and because of that USA will help Russia deal with the terrorists that overtook the land.
As for the nuclear war - billionaires that push this war forward for their profit aren’t interested in living in bunkers, they want to lie on beaches and be sucked off by sex trafficed slaves. The war will never escalate beyond the point where it would endanger their profits, and definitely not to the point where they might worry for their lifes. No major player in this conflict that’s capable of employing a nuclear armaments will ever do so for those reasons, not to mention the soft power they would lose if they did - not that Trump and Putin are very concerned with soft power…
Russia doesn’t mind continuing, USA doesn’t mind either, it’s just that Trump lied in his campaign promises that he did, and now he’s making a stink about it not being possible because Zelensky is a dictator. If they can cause an election in Ukraine and do a coup once Zelensky wins, or forge some different series of events that leads to Ukraine changing it’s president to one aligned with Russia, then it would be a preferable outcome for them, but it’s going to be difficult without losing a lot of influence and power, and Trump is already very unpopular, so I feel it’s unlikely they would try, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Trump antagonized both the world and his own citizens, and the backlash is growing to a degree where he might lack means to control it. Zelensky probably saw that as his most viable way out, so he chose to argue with Trump and J. D. Vance, and hoped that the backlash will limit their further meddling. Not that he had any good option there, but out of bad ones this one at least didn’t lock all Ukrainian cards in a bad deal. At this point Ukraine can try dealing with Europe, Turkey (was it Turkey? I think so) or even China, and they still have those tasty minerals that Trump helped advertise.
Europe in general has to rethink their means of defence, and if Ukraine has something valuable, a new military alliance with more hawkish stance against both Russia and USA, one that would include security assurances for Ukraine and other member states, is not out of question. If fascism in USA keep getting worse, then Europe will definitely need it. If the bubble bursts, they may include USA in this alliance in the future, though probably without as much sway as it had in NATO. Not saying that it will happen, just a wild shot in the dark, but there are more options for Ukraine now, than if Zelensky went along with the farce, and, I don’t know, apologized for being a dictator and promised to be a good boy.
Thank you for the well reasoned response. My fingers are crossed that your analysis is on point and a speedy resolution is found. 🤞
It doesnt matter who’s right, there’s a thing called decorum and controling your emotions. Trump got mad, and made a fool of himself.
Vance was only there to cause this.