The Leader of the Free World?
The postwar era may have ended yesterday.
Yesterday’s Oval Office meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky was supposed to result in a deal giving the United States rights to vital Ukrainian minerals in exchange for some modest security guarantees. Instead, it became a made-for-TV spectacle.
The NYT has a transcription of the most contentious bits (“Excerpts From the Fiery Exchange Between Trump and Zelensky at the White House“) but even the excerpts are too long to post here. The analysis is all over the place, but none of it positive.
David Sanger (“Behind the Collision: Trump Jettisons Ukraine on His Way to a Larger Goal“):
After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America’s traditional sources of power — its alliances among like-minded democracies — and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?
The remarkable showdown that played out in front of the cameras early Friday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer.
As Mr. Trump admonished President Volodymyr Zelensky and warned him that “you don’t have the cards” to deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and as Vice President JD Vance dressed down the Ukrainian leader as being “disrespectful” and ungrateful, it was clear that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kyiv was shattered.
Whether it can be repaired, and whether a deal to provide the United States revenue from Ukrainian minerals that was the ostensible reason for the visit can be pieced back together, remains to be seen.
But the larger truth is that the venomous exchanges — broadcast not only to an astounded audience of Americans and Europeans who had never seen such open attacks on each other, but to Mr. Putin and his Kremlin aides — made evident that Mr. Trump regards Ukraine as an obstacle to what he sees as a far more vital project.
What Mr. Trump really wants, one senior European official said this week before the blowup, is a normalization of the relationship with Russia. If that means rewriting the history of Moscow’s illegal invasion three years ago, dropping investigations of Russian war crimes or refusing to offer Ukraine long-lasting security guarantees, then Mr. Trump, in this assessment of his intentions, is willing to make that deal.
To anyone listening carefully, that goal was bubbling just beneath the surface as Mr. Zelensky headed to Washington for his disastrous visit.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio — once a defender of Ukraine and its territorial sovereignty, now a convert to the Trump power plays — made clear in an interview with Breitbart News that it was time to move beyond the war in the interest of establishing a triangular relationship between the United States, Russia and China.
[…]
Mr. Trump makes no secret of his view that the post-World War II system, created by Washington, ate away at American power.
Above all else, that system prized relationships with allies committed to democratic capitalism, even maintaining those alliances that came with a cost to American consumers. It was a system that sought to avoid power grabs by making the observance of international law, and respect for established international boundaries, a goal unto itself.
To Mr. Trump, such a system gave smaller and less powerful countries leverage over the United States, leaving Americans to pick up far too much of the tab for defending allies and promoting their prosperity.
While his predecessors — both Democrats and Republicans — insisted that alliances in Europe and Asia were America’s greatest force multiplier, keeping the peace and allowing trade to flourish, Mr. Trump viewed them as a bleeding wound. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly asked why America should defend countries running trade surpluses with the United States.
In the five weeks since his second inauguration, Mr. Trump has begun exercising a plan to destroy that system. It explains his demand that Denmark cede control of Greenland to the United States, and that Panama return a canal that Americans built. When asked how he could seize sovereign territory in Gaza for redevelopment in his plan for a “Riviera of the Middle East,” he shot back, “Under the U.S. authority.”
[…]
Of course, it is far easier to repeat Mr. Trump’s favorite slogan, and to blow up an existing world order, than to create a new one. It took decades to assemble the post-World War II rules of global engagement, and for all its faults, the system succeeded at its primary objectives: avoiding great power war and encouraging economic interdependence.
Mr. Trump has never articulated at any length what he would replace those rules with, other than that he would use America’s military and economic power to strike deals — essentially an argument that keeping the peace is as simple as weaving together minerals agreements and trade pacts, maybe with a few real estate transactions thrown in.
There is little precedent to suggest that approach alone works, especially in dealing with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, who take a long view in dealing with democracies that they view as lacking the sustained will necessary to achieve difficult objectives.
But judging by Friday’s display in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump seems convinced that as long as he is at the helm, the world will order itself as he commands.
His colleague Shawn McCreesh (“‘This Is Going to Be Great Television’: Trump Sums Up His Zelensky Showdown“) sees something different going on:
One of the most surreal moments of Friday’s Oval Office showdown between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine came at the very end.
After all the shouting and the saber-rattling and the lecturing and the pleading and the politicking had ceased, the American president shifted a little in his seat and shared an observation.
“This is going to be great television,” he remarked. “I will say that.”
It was a conclusion as startling as it was fundamentally Trumpian.
This was not a season finale boardroom scene of “The Apprentice” that had just taken place. It was the highest of high-stakes talks — one that could determine the fate of millions, the existence of a sovereign nation and the security of a continent — going wildly off the rails.
But for Mr. Trump, one thing that was on his mind, as always, was the ratings. He sounded almost excited by the drama of the spectacle, as though he could feel the front pages of the world’s newspapers being written in real time.
This is a man who spent years yelling at people on TV as a way to make a living. He is wired to think about things in terms of “great television.” He is a highly conscious performer. But playacting as a tough guy on NBC on Thursday nights between 9 and 10 p.m. is not the same thing as bossing around an ally before the eyes of the world, even if Mr. Trump uses the same language to describe one performance as he would the other.
Still, how one postures before the cameras is of paramount importance in this White House.
After the meeting, the president did an imitation of Mr. Zelensky in front of the cameras and said: “All of a sudden, he’s a big shot.” Where Mr. Trump is involved, there is usually room enough for one big shot.
The other European leaders who had come to Washington over the past few weeks to reason with him about Russia understood this. They knew how to play their parts in the Oval Office while the cameras were rolling. President Emmanuel Macron of France literally held Mr. Trump’s hand at one point. Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer presented a letter from King Charles III to Mr. Trump for all to see. It went over so well that Mr. Trump brought the letter out to wave around again a little while later at their joint news conference.
The Atlantic‘s Jonathan Chait (“The Real Reason Trump Berated Zelensky“) offers yet another take:
Of the many bizarre and uncomfortable moments during today’s Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky—during which Trump finally shattered the American alliance with Ukraine—one was particularly revealing: What, a reporter asked, would happen if the cease-fire Trump is trying to negotiate were to be violated by Russia? “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now?” Trump spat back, as if Russia violating a neighbor’s sovereignty were the wildest and most unlikely possibility, rather than a frequently recurring event.
Then Trump explained just why he deemed such an event so unlikely. “They respect me,” he thundered. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt, where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, you ever hear of that deal? … It was a phony Democrat scam. He had to go through it. And he did go through it.”
Trump seems to genuinely feel that he and Vladimir Putin forged a personal bond through the shared trauma of being persecuted by the Democratic Party. Trump is known for his cold-eyed, transactional approach, and yet here he was, displaying affection and loyalty. (At another point, Trump complained that Zelensky has “tremendous hatred” toward Putin and insisted, “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.”) He was not explaining why a deal with Russia would advance America’s interests, or why honoring it would advance Russia’s. He was defending Russia’s integrity by vouching for Putin’s character.
In recent years, the kinship between Trump and Putin has become somewhat unfashionable to point out. After Robert Mueller disappointed liberals by failing to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, conventional wisdom on much of the center and left of the political spectrum came to treat the scandal as overblown. But even the facts Mueller was able to produce, despite noncooperation from Trump’s top lieutenants, were astonishing. Putin dangled a Moscow building deal in front of the Trump Organization worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Trump lied about it, giving Putin leverage over him. Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was in business with a Russian intelligence officer. Russia published hacked Democratic emails at a time when they were maximally useful to Trump’s campaign, and made another hacking attempt after he asked it on television to find missing emails from Hillary Clinton. The pattern of cooperation between Trump and Putin may not have been provably criminal, but it was extraordinarily damning.
Conservatives have invested even more heavily in denying any basis for the Trump-Russia scandal. A handful of MAGA devotees have openly endorsed Russian propaganda, but more Republicans have explained away Trump’s behavior as reflecting some motivation other than outright sympathy for Moscow: He is transactional, he is a nationalist, he admires strength and holds weakness in contempt.
And it is all true: Trump does admire dictators. He does instinctively side with bullies over victims. He does lack any values-based framework for American foreign policy. But many Republicans who acknowledged these traits nonetheless believed that Trump could be persuaded to stay in Ukraine’s corner. They were wrong. The reason they were wrong is that, in addition to his generalized amorality, Trump exhibits a particular affection for Putin and Russia.
His colleague Tom Nichols (“It Was an Ambush“) agrees but more forcefully:
Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation fighting for its very existence.
Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence during the meeting.
[…]
Today’s meeting and America’s shameful vote in the United Nations on Monday confirmed that the United States is now aligned with Russia and against Ukraine, Europe, and most of the planet. I felt physically sick watching the president of the United States yell at a brave ally, fulminating in the Oval Office as if he were an addled old man shaking his fist at a television. Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life, in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot imagine.
[…]
But no matter how disgusted anyone might be at Trump and Vance’s behavior, the strategic reality is that this meeting is a catastrophe for the United States and the free world. America’s alliances are now in danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago. The entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes. (Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House, Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, posted on X: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)
Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with confidence and think: one of us.
Thomas Friedman (“This Never Happened With an American President Before“) is beside himself:
What happened in the Oval Office on Friday — the obviously planned ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.
[…]
It is hard to express what a break this is in American foreign policy. We stood on the side of liberty and those fighting for it around the world. There are times the isolationist forces in our population have held us back and had to be persuaded. There have been times when — in support of the larger cause of liberty — against dangerous foes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, we had to align ourselves temporarily with dictators.
But I can’t think of a single time when an American president declared that the democratically elected leader of a country preserving liberty was a “dictator” who started the war with his neighbor — when it was the vicious neighboring dictator who actually started the war.
If you listen to Trump, everything we have done for Ukraine is pure altruism. We have no actual interests at stake ourselves in its fate or the triumph of liberty there. We have no actual interest in the fact that Ukraine is protecting the European Union — a giant, pro-American alliance of free markets and free people. It doesn’t matter a whit to Trump what happens to the E.U. or Ukraine. All that matters is that Zelensky says “thank you” louder for our altruism and that, in the middle of his war of survival, sign over a generation of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to us.
This is a total perversion of U.S. foreign policy practiced by every president since World War I. My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.
Even the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (“Putin Wins the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office Spectacle“) is shocked:
Toward the end of his on-camera, Oval Office brawl with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, President Trump quipped that it was “great television.” He’s right about that. But the point of the meeting was supposed to be progress toward an honorable peace for Ukraine, and in the event the winner was Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
[…]
It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength. The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot. That core interest hasn’t changed, but berating Ukraine in front of the entire world will make it harder to achieve.
Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to. Ukraine has enough weapons support to last until sometime this summer. But as the war stands, Mr. Putin sees little reason to make any concessions as his forces gain ground inch by bloody inch in Ukraine’s east.
WaPo (“Tears and shock in Ukraine and Europe after heated Zelensky-Trump meeting“) notes the angry reaction of America’s erstwhile allies:
European officials, meanwhile, rallied around Zelensky on Friday night, with several lawmakers and diplomats expressing shock and dismay. European leaders, including in Spain, Lithuania, Moldova, Sweden, Latvia and Norway, among others, all posted messages in solidarity with Zelensky.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X: “Dear Zelensky, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.”
French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his support for Ukraine in remarks to reporters Friday evening: “I think we were all right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia three years ago and to continue to do so. And when I say we, it’s the United States of America, the Europeans, the Canadians, the Japanese and many others.”
“We must thank all those who helped and respect those who have been fighting from the start because they are fighting for their dignity, their independence, for their children and for the security of Europe,” he added. “These are simple things, but they are good to recall at this moment.”
German election winner Friedrich Merz, probably the country’s new chancellor, wrote to Zelensky: “We stand with Ukraine in good and in testing times.” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said his country continues to support Ukraine, “especially now.”
Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a Trump ally, said that “division would not suit anyone” in a statement calling for leaders in Ukraine, Europe and the United States to meet to discuss “today’s great challenges, starting with Ukraine.” Meloni’s statement did not directly reference Trump, Zelensky, or Friday’s Oval Office meeting, only obliquely referring to those outside of the West “who would like to see the decline of our civilization.”
There was one prominent exception to the chorus of supporting voices among European leaders: Moscow-friendly Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who commended Trump on Friday, saying he “stood bravely for peace.”
“Strong men make peace, weak men make war,” he said.
The combative exchange was also met with shock, and in many cases fury, across the political spectrum in the United Kingdom. The White House fireworks came one day after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s own meeting with Trump. The meeting highlighted mutual good feelings with the mercurial president that were greeted as at least tentatively hopeful signs that Washington could be brought along in support not just for U.S.-U.K. relations but for Ukraine, as well.
That optimism was quickly swept away as news of the Oval Office shouting match spread. A Conservative Party member described Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s treatment of Zelensky “stomach churning.” Several members of parliament called on Starmer to revoke the invitation for a visit with King Charles that he had extended to Trump a day earlier.
Senior Conservative Party leader Robert Jenrick said in a post on X that he was “sickened by that degrading spectacle.”
“And to think the bust of Winston Churchill was in the same room as it unfolded,” Jenrick posted. “He would be turning in his grave if he saw that happen. Ukraine’s people, led by President Zelensky, have fought bravely to hold off Putin.”
Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Party, posted on X: “This is thuggery from Trump and Vance, plain and simple. They are bullying the brave true patriot Zelensky into accepting a deal which effectively hands victory to Russia. Unless the UK and Europe step up, we are facing a betrayal of Ukraine.”
To the extent there’s a rational American foreign policy goal here, it’s to get European nations to pick up a larger share of the burden of defending Ukraine and containing Russia so that our resources can be allocated to the threat in the Indo-Pacific. And that might in fact happen as a result of all of this.
The Guardian (“‘Free world needs a new leader’, says EU foreign chief after Trump Zelenskyy row“):
The EU foreign policy chief has declared that “the free world needs a new leader”, as European leaders threw their support behind Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after the stunning White House confrontation between him and Donald Trump.
Leaders from across Europe expressed their solidarity with the Ukrainian leader after the fractious exchange with JD Vance, the US vice-president, and Trump, who claimed he was not “ready for peace” and accused him of “gambling with world war three”.
Although in general the European leaders did not name the US president, their comments late on Friday laid bare the gaping rift between the US and its traditional allies in Europe over the war in Ukraine.
In a social media post Kaja Kallas, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, wrote: “Ukraine is Europe! We stand by Ukraine. We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the aggressor.
“Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
Addressing Zelenskyy directly, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, wrote: “Your dignity honors the bravery of the Ukrainian people. Be strong, be brave, be fearless. You are never alone.”
She added: “We will continue working with you for a just and lasting peace.”
Like Friedman and Nichols, my strong bias is toward American leadership in a values-based alliance. A purely transactional foreign policy might well generate short-term gains, given our significant power advantage. In the longer term, though, I fear this will undermine our ability to lead. Further, I fear that we will never be able to recover our reputation.
Unfortunately, the felon has yet to annunciate a FP vision, only attack what he’s against. The rest comes from observers who. are trying to define the details and from sycophants that are pursuing agendas. The only thing the felon appears to cherish is a return to great power structure of pre WWI and an economic system reminiscent of Gilded Age. Neither will make america great again, forget about reducing the price of eggs.
Shame on you for trying to sanewash the US siding with a genocidal dictator.
If you fear for your job, better to stay quiet than to legitimize this outrage.
That ship has obviously sailed.
Yes, the postwar era unambiguously ended yesterday. Who would trust the United States after that? It’s not just the obscenity of Trump and Musk on display yesterday, but the millions of Americans who voted for them, with clear eyes. As David Frum said yesterday:
For a more in depth discussion, see the dialgoue between Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman.
The repercussions are huge. Unfortunately, the post-DOGE federal government will be too crippled to deal with them.
I just sent this off to my congressmen, for all the good it does:
It is not exactly calm, analytical, and reasoned as is my usual written preferred communication but I am totally pissed and ashamed at our country. I didn’t spend 40 years in service to my country to have these totally unqualified (fill in the blank) ruin it.
“To the extent there’s a rational American foreign policy goal here, it’s to get European nations to pick up a larger share of the burden of defending Ukraine and containing Russia so that our resources can be allocated to the threat in the Indo-Pacific.”
I think you misspelled “the pockets of Trump and Musk” there.
@drj: @Moosebreath: If you look at the analyses I compiled and excerpted, there is reason to believe that the motivations here are manifold. Getting the Europeans to shoulder a greater burden is clearly one of them, and has been since the 2015 campaign. And, to some extent, it has been successful. Further, things like the nomination of Bridge Colby as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy clearly signal a laser focus on China, to the exclusion of Russia and pretty much everything else, in the administration’s foreign policy.
Are there other factors here besides foreign policy goals? Almost certainly.
Will it greatly burden China if the felon’s America takes care of propping up its client Russia?
TV spectacle is what the Trump administration planned. Trump is always obsessed with staging TV performances, that is why there were video cameras present at these “negotiations.”
@James Joyner:
Utter nonsense, James. Trump’s demands on Europe are a pretext for leaving NATO and supporting Putin.
I agree with @drj: . I have great sympathy for your position in this world, but let Steven or Matt talk FP and don’t embarrass yourself.
BTW, look for a US/Israeli strike on Iran between now and the State of the Union.
I’ve disagreed with my country. I’ve criticized my country. I’ve rolled my eyes at my country. This was probably the first time I was ever ashamed. Zelensky tried to correct the record on the lies they’ve been spewing and ask what guarantees his people will have against further aggression. And they reacted like petulant children. And they’re on Musk’s propaganda engine right now *boasting* about their obscene behavior.
I was naive enough to expect better of Vance or Rubio. Not again.
Anyone who has the misfortune of having to deal with boomers on a regular basis recognizes this “bring up a completely unrelated topic like it’s some amazing rhetorical counter” style of argument
Putin seems to be Trump’s role model. But Trump’s too dumb to do it right. Putin went to a lot of trouble to keep the oligarchs under his thumb. I read that the original round of oligarchs who grabbed something of value in the breakup of the USSR have been supplanted by oligarchs dependent on Putin for their positions. Vance is Peter Thiel’s sock puppet and Trump seems to have farmed out day to day operations to Musk.
We talk about Trump surrounding himself with toadies who are dependent on him, and that’s true of many of his appointments. But Thiel and Musk have their own ba$es of power. May one hope for infighting?
@James:
You are giving way too much credit here. First, Trump treats defense expenditures like dues (which, for anyone who needs to know, they aren’t). Second, I simply do not believe he understands or thinks about Indo-Pacific pivots.
I don’t think he deserves even accidental credit for strategic thinking.
He has long told us he admires authoritarian strongmen and that he seeks to emulate them. And he has a simpleton’s view of “American First.”
Any other outcomes are accidental at best.
Indeed, these actions all complicate Indo-Pacific security because of the clear signals being sent to China and Taiwan.
@James Joyner:
I think you are giving way too much credit to strategic thinking here.
And, as I noted the other day (and I know you agree with), we don’t have to wreck NATO to put more resources into Asia.
We don’t have to vote with Putin in the UN to laser in on China.
And at the end of the day, I expect that Trump will treat Xi with more respect than he does our allies in the region.
@Stormy Dragon: Watch who you’re calling a boomer. And what if you got old all of a sudden. /s
@Hal_10000: As Kingdaddy noted to me in private, Abu Ghraib was truly embarrassing and shameful (as was the whole torture business).
But yes, this was the most embarrassed and ashamed I have been of a president and an administration at this macro a level (although it started with that UN vote).
Whatever it is Putin has on Trump, it must be really horrifying.
@Steven L. Taylor:
“I don’t think he deserves even accidental credit for strategic thinking.”
Trump is more professional pitchman than ideas man.If Daddy hadn’t had money DJT would have had a career trajectory aligned more with the ShamWow guy.
One of our trolls yesterday blamed Zelensky for setting this up as a trap. Zelensky schedules Oval Office meetings and press availability?
This was a setup, by Trump. A trap to show Zelensky ungrateful for the non-deal Trump so generously negotiated for him. It was done to justify abandoning Ukraine. Glancing at comments on conservative sites, it worked.
@James Joyner:
I believe the sole intent of Trump&Comrades in orchestrating the White House spectacle, was to force public humiliation on Zelensky, under the pretext of honest “negotiation.”
Trump lured Zelensky before his seat of power, where both he and JDV tag-teamed calling him out on the carpet. Trump consistently plays the odds of offering deals people “can’t refuse” against the opportunity to abuse and humiliate them.
Such motive is more aligned with both Trump’s long observed abusive temperament towards people who thwart his desires, and his demonstrated absolute lack of interest in Ukraine’s plight, or any shred of moral construct.
His “mouthiness” over Europe’s contributions to NATO are less about any financial inequitablity, and more about shifting alliance away from liberal democracies, and solidifying a relationship with Putin’s Russia.
All this animus towards the EU collectively, is at odds with Trump&Movement ideological Euro-centric chauvinism. They like the idea of being able to claim ethnic pre-eminence, in our society, based on their white European familial roots, but hate the implications of the evolved democratic relationship attached to that lineage. They want their “white” neat and unencumbered by European egalitarianism.
Meanwhile, Trump&Comrades seek to align our country with this kind of throwback “purity”:
Agreed.
The Cold War ended yesterday. Russia won.
Our only hope at this point is that Ukraine moves forward without American restraints on their tactics. EU will provide the funding, Ukraine will eliminate Putin.
Trump will be left isolated, trivialized.
@CSK:
My understanding of the mechanics of Russian kompromat is that you don’t tell the subject exactly what you’ve got on him. You encourage him to assume the worst. Whatever Trump thinks they may have on him must be truly awful.
@gVOR10:
And apparently, Zelensky also must have arranged for a TASS staff member (I can’t bring myself to say “reporter”) to wander into the Oval Office. What an evil genius!
With all due respect to our host, nonsense.
Trump’s only goal is to curry favor with Putin. NATO funding has never been anything more than an excuse, which is why he lies about UK/EU funding of this war and who instigated the war itself.
And when China moves on Taiwan, in the very near future, Trump will allow that, too.
@gVOR10:
I think it’s more about chronic lead exposure during childhood than age, and being gen x, it is something that I’m actually terrified of happening to me
@gVOR10:
What they have in common with Putin is vast wealth, which in Trump’s mind equates to status.
Trump is a kiss up kick down fellow, so he defers to them because, psychologically, he feels below them in the pecking order.
@CSK:
Nothing. There is no kompromat, Trump just feels comfortable sucking up to Putin. Plus, Trump has been in business with the Russians for many decades such as money laundering for the oligarchs.
@James Joyner: James, the longer smart, conservative-leaning people like yourself continue to hope that, somehow, there is a greater aim here– the longer his window to operate unopposed will stay open.
There are no geopolitical aims here other than what is personally enriching to Trump’s and his whale donors. Will there be some adjacent things that happen than we could say are beneficial for America? Certainly, but let’s acknowledge that those are pure happenstance. The Administration doesn’t care about a China Theat in the Pacific. They don’t care about Taiwan–unless Taiwan can offer something of ridiculous value to Trump for their security. And only a fool would thing their tribute would be honored when the rubber hit the road so no one is going to offer anything. It should be clear to all
they everyone is on their own.
It is unbelievable that we have a President like this and a Party that enables him–but we do. We must acknowledge this. And we shouldn’t self-medicate by thinking maybe, just maybe, there is a hidden aim to all this disorder. It keeps us from being fully committed to thinking of the best ways to undermine the credibility of the Administration with THEIR people.
There is no magic pill to convince people vote Democrat– but that shouldn’t be the goal. Trump’s Presidency has ALREADY FAILED. The goal is to drive him to react to the fallout of governance. I should see a deck of playing card with the pictures and names of children killed in Ukraine for sale and tossed around at the State of the Union Address (which will probably be the worst shit show in the historyof SOTUAs)
Our strategy must be to seed the people that voted for him (a people that are ready susceptible to conspiracy theories about double-crosses) that THEY have been double-crossed. That requires messaging outside of legacy media where these people consume their entertainment and news.
Get ready for the trolls. Outsidethebeltway.com showed up on Memeordandum.
@charontwo:
Betcha $1000 there is.
@gVOR10:
The felon w/o daddy’s money, would have been a character in Death of a Salesman.
@Sleeping Dog: Without daddy’s money he’d be selling sunglasses in a kiosk at the mall.
@charontwo:
Oh, I have no doubt Trump admires Putin, and certainly caters to him, but there’s a reason beyond that. Trump is completely transactional. Perhaps it has something to do with the money-laundering.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes.
I can find no legitimizing characterization of Trump’s attempt at policy and governance, but can only view it as a dangerous farce born out of an individual’s very real pathology.
@Stormy Dragon:
How dare you lump me in with a sclerotic, incontinent, amoral, fully corrupted Russian Asset Boomer like Trump? That said, your point is duly noted.
@Michael Reynolds: I’ll add $1,000 to your offer. There’s no payout until they prove there isn’t. An easy bet if there ever was one
Count me as one of those who thinks Trump has been losing for revenge since Zelensky didnt cooperate by giving him false info against Biden and he faced impeachment because of that. On a slightly different note, I was a bit disappointed in Zelensky. He should have known better and refused to have a joint TV conference or anything in front of journalists. It was 100% predictable that Trump or Vance would say something that he would want to correct and it would go downhill. Also, as English is not his first language and his fluency is far from perfect it hardly made for equal footing in any kind of argument.
Steve
So, he wants to form an alliance with Russia, which is much, much smaller (in GDP, which is what matters most) than half of the EU. Germany, France, UK, Italy and Canada all have larger GDPs than Russia.
Why on earth would we want to walk away from them and embrace Russia?
I would like to recommend this video, made by William Spaniel, who studies crisis negotiation. He covers this. He presents the reasons he thinks Trump is not walking away from NATO, and not trying to ally with Russia. He is big on “watch what they do, not what they say”. I think that is sound. At the least, he has provided me with facts I didn’t know before.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I really like this framing for Trump’s nationalism. I’m going to adopt it, though I will probably expand it to note Trump has a simpleton’s view of authoritarian strongmen as well.
I think we could be more unequivocal about calling out Trump as the fascist he is if we had any confidence he’d given any thought to any political ideology ever. It’s all the impulses of a very shallow, simple-minded man with this bum.
Just in passing: If Trump was so upset by the way Zelenskyy was dressed for the meeting, why wasn’t he equally perturbed by Musk showing up for the cabinet conclave in a t-shirt?
@CSK:
What would he have on him that we don’t already know? We know he’s a criminal. We know he assaults women. We know he felt to Epstein island. He’s openly corrupt. His supporters do not care. If the pee-pee tape came out tomorrow, they’d be talking about how awesome it was.
I realize that the difference between what Trump is doing and what he’d do if Putin owned him is negligible But Trump is not a complicated man. He’s not played 4-D chess. He admires dictators and hates democracies. He hates Zelensky specifically because of the first impeachment. That’s all you need.
@Hal_10000:
Lindsey Graham is still terrified of people finding out he’s gay, even though everyone already knows it
@James Joyner:
The irony and contradictions to Trump’s policy posturing alignment with Putin, is that Trump’s own hand is weakened, both with Putin and on the world stage.
Trump, in addition to being “the great pretender” is also history’s greatest “retreater,” now in the process of withdrawing the world’s most powerful nation (economically, militarily, currency-wise etc) from its advantageous position, by elective decision and not under threat. Unforced error. Self inflicted damage.
Trump the Retreater.
@Jim X 32: Yeah. So much.
Exactly. That woman from Michigan that saw on TikTok that Trump would make IVF free comes to mind. It has prompted me thinking how one gets a message on TikTok. The big money powers have already cracked the code and are raining down ads on social media that look like they came from “some guy” just talking to his phone. And there’s so much scamming garbage there.
We know that right wing influencers get some financing from right-wing groups. Where are the democracy supporters? Where are the left-wing groups? Why is it we keep complaining that Senator X doesn’t say things emphatically enough? Senator X doesn’t matter. The people we need to reach don’t listen to him. They listen to people on their TikTok saying Trump is gonna make IVF free.
We need a massive pivot in messaging and marketing. I don’t know where the money is gonna come from. I’d do it, but I would be a terrible influencer, I think.
@Scott F.: But is it a simpleton view of America First or a raging narcissist’s view of Trump First?
Again, the former view is way too kind and brushes over the very real pathology involved here.
@Scott: We pop up there regularly and have for years, although less of late. It doesn’t bring the trolls quite like you might think.
@Hal_10000: “If the pee-pee tape came out tomorrow, they’d be talking about how awesome it was.”
I believe this is true. He’s already known to have done worse things than what may be shown on a pee pee tape.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I think you’re giving too much credit here. We’ve long seen how Trump can be manipulated through a mixture of flattery and threats of “the other” for nearly any value of “the other”. He seems to believe whatever he has heard last.
He doesn’t need to think about Indo-Pacific pivots, or a stronger Europe that allows us to reduce our military, or whatever. He just needs someone in his orbit tombs thinking that way and explaining things with flattery and stoking fear.
“They’re saying you’re weak, sir. The same ones who twisted your perfect phone call with Zelenskyy into an attempt to strip you of office.”
ETA: A critique I’ve seen of the cabinet choices is that they’re all “yes men.” It’s worse. They’re horrible improv “yes, and…” men, adding their own special lunacy to the mix.
An interesting perspective from a Polish diplomat
From Powerline
For those who missed it, this rant came out of his mouth late in the meeting, with Zelensky sitting next to him, just looking out toward the audience. (Auto-generated transcript with no added punctuation)
So inappropriate, so much grievance, and so self-incriminating.
Steve M.’ take:
“NMMNB”
The rest of the piece expands a lot on the last paragraph in the quote above.
@gVOR10: @CSK: Or it could just be that Trump is a thug at heart and really admires the sort of pseudo leadership practiced by Kim, Putin, Duterte and other similar thug types. I sorta get that. It’s part of why Luddite and I are always advocating against electing people like us to leadership positions.
The people have really “screwed the pooch” this time. Bigly.
@Rob1: You two sound like evangelicals. “There’s no evidence, but WE KNOW WE’RE RIGHT!!!”
@Rob1:
Honestly, I don’t think it matters.
Trump is that smart-aleck guy at the end of the bar that the drunks in attendance think must be on to something because he speaks so loudly and with such confidence. I am much less interested in understanding what Trump’s true motivations or pathologies are so that I might judge him, than I am in understanding how his audience continues to fall for the act so that I might influence them.
As @Jim X 32 notes:
I’m coming to believe that the way out of this dysfunction we are living is not to go at Trump directly, but rather is to elbow those people aren’t getting what they thought Trump would deliver and whispering “yeah, that guy and his lickspittles lied to us. Don’t you resent them for that?”
@James Joyner:
That’s the narrative, or counter narrative Trumplandia has been pushing. Why give them traction on this, in anyway whatsoever?
Do you really believe that they believed there was a “steal” going on when they initiated the “Stop the Steal” b.s. propaganda campaign that led to a violent assault on Congress and calls for hanging VP Pence?
This is not American politics as usual. We are at war. The Trump movement was offered the promise of civil politics, and they chose war. Think about that single point.
Either we vigorously oppose this movement to demast this ship we all sail upon or we succumb.
Professor Joyner, your career(s) have provided you a vantage point unavailable to most American voters. You have seen and analyzed the arc of events taking pluralistic societies down the dark path to dictatorships. Many fledgling democracies quashed. Surely you recognize these sobering signs before us.
Modulation that seeks only rational explanation, serves to normalize a malignancy, to bring it into a framework of reasonableness and even acceptance. I’m quite certain that is something both your intellectual code and military code would not support.
@Scott F.: I thoroughly disagree. Pathology is different from blowhard ignorance. the personality brakes and modulators are different. To fail to make the distinction, sets one up for consistently underestimating the capacity of the threat. I’d rather go into hostage negotiations with an ignorant blowhard than a psychopath.
@just nutha: That’s because we are. In fact it’s in plain sight, just not in the form some find indicting.
@Rob1:
I won’t argue with that, of course. But, that is a differentiation on what motivates Trump and as I state, what drives Trump is less the question, than what drives those who are Trumpist adjacent. (One must grant that the Trump cultists are unreachable and not a target for influencing.)
You see Trump’s threat as a psychopath holding the US electorate hostage. Trump has the agency and the objective is to negotiate a release. I see Trump’s threat more as a scumbag luring children into the back of a car with offers of candy. The gettable voters have the agency and the objective is for them to see the man with the candy as dangerous. Whether the guy is a legit pedophile or just a deluded creep is beside the point.
WH Deputy Chief Of Staff Stephen Miller to Jesse Watters: “Millions of American hearts swelled with overflowing pride [yesterday] to watch President Trump put Zelenskyy in his place.”
Really? Mine didn’t.
@JKB:
Are you serious?
Trump lied.
And you’re nothing but a toadie.
@CSK:
How does landing some playground taunts gain any benefit? A curious thing to take pride in.
@charontwo:
I suppose the MAGA cult would say that this is proof that Trump is a tough guy who fights for America.
The 90s called, they want their foreign policy back.
Obama destroyed Romney with that and Candy Crowley fact-checking Romney about President Obama’s claim about the evolution of the administration’s talking points about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
@Jay L Gischer: This is self medication for people that cannot believe we are here. There MUST BE a hidden angle that makes sense.
There is NOT. Instead of holding on to false hope, people like this need to make videos that undermine the Administrations credibility with respect to their own ‘America First’ objectives.
It puts me in mind of what Churchill said after Munich. “The government had to choose between war and dishonor. They choose dishonor. They will have war.”
I hope this will be a time where history neither repeats itself nor rhymes.
@Paul L.: Do you have anything that isn’t merely a 180deg flip of someone you heard a liberal say. Like, something you spent time thinking of with your own brain cells. Anything Tin Man?
@Scott F.:
But no, that should precisely be the point, how a malignancy of human personality can grow within community. I suspect future unpacking of what is now been happening to our society, will result in a deep interdisciplinary dive into the dynamics. And it should.
Observation shows that some of those who support Trump are clearly motivated by economic self interest. It appears to override any prior outwardly expressed moral leanings, patriotism, Christian affinity etc. Alliance with Trump has shifted personalities in a big way, even to the point of accepting and normalizing, long standing “moral transgressions” (e.g. the Tate brothers).
This kind of “facile” moral shift is a big deal. What is human society if not behavior defined by mores and laws?
And if this is not enough, part 2: another segment of Trump supporters appear to consist of similarly pathological personalities drawn by shared affinities and bigotries (e.g. Miller, Musk, Tarrio, Rhodes etc.). This should be truly alarming, and recognizable as similar to the assemblage of the Third Reich 80 years ago. (Sorry but that is a handy example). Pathology that feeds off of itself.
And thirdly (although not lastly) there are the MAGA devotees who have no economic interest in Trump nor evince any flagrant personality disorder. But they have shifted their worldview far from long established values to align with Trump in contradiction to those long socialized values. All of this goes against the grain of normative social process which Trump, and FOX, and Sinclair Broadcasting have blown apart. Big time.
We have got to look past the superficial explanation and look at all the moving parts, human social dynamics, and yes, individual personality order and disorder, including the neuro-biological basis of behavior including what happen when the human organism is subjected to long term stress.
So many parts. So many clues. For example there have been studies done on the dynamics of families dominated by a parent with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and similar studies on the impact of substance abuse on family dynamics. All of this speaks to how humans engage in maladaptive behavior and the resulting dynamics with in groups. There are scads of cult studies. There is a lot to consider, that must be considered, because this phenomenon is way bigger, way beyond the singular personality of Trump, and demands that we sharpen our pencils and understanding.
Political response to addressing this destructive social vector has failed, in part, because we don’t really understand what we are looking at. The compexity of humans, their resulting communal behavior but also because the intensely “personal” nature of looking “the hood” encourages superficial modeling that may go down well, but explain nothing. We are left without a blueprint for remediation.
@Hal_10000:
Sorry not to have replied to you sooner. I agree that Trump’s fans probably couldn’t be convinced of his awfulness by any forthcoming revelation. But Trump could fear that they might be by whatever it is Putin has on him, which suggests that it truly is appalling, or at the very least killingly humiliating.
Depends on who “they” are.
Think about it and refocus your statement.
@Jim X 32: Are some of us beginning to see how…
(I’m at a loss for words, must be getting old)
arguing in the vacuum is? From Paul L. to Fortune to Connor/Whoever he is today to “In fact it’s in plain sight, just not in the form some find indicting,”* are some of us seeing that we’re caught in some sort off a maelstrom of substance-free passion?
Asking for a friend.
*(Which would seem to argue that it’s not “in plain sight at all” but rather an article of faith. But as always, YMMV. 😉 )
@JKB: On Feb 19, Trump said Zelensky was a dictator and that Ukraine was responsible for the war.
Maybe you wouldn’t feel combative after that, but most people would. They continued this in the meeting. Baiting him with this kind of thing. “Tone” means nothing when your content is “you are a dictator and a warmonger”.
As the elected leader of Ukraine, he has to bear the message of the Ukranian people, which for me anyway, would be “we did NOT start this, and we support Zelensky”. Also, “We’re feeling a bit used by the Western powers and the US in particular.”
This meeting should not have been public. There should not have been cameras there. When have there ever been cameras there before a deal has been made? No, the cameras come after the deal has been made. Usually, the people don’t even show up without assurances that the deal has been made.
@Jay L Gischer:
The presence of cameras makes it clear this was never about making a deal, it was always about a deal as a pretext for a TV publicity stunt to make Ukraine look bad, at least to the gullibles like the MAGAs.
@charontwo:
Trump himself said it was going to be great television.
@charontwo: And it appears to have worked, too. Shameless Trusk apparatchiks signed on all over Murka.
Norway’s largest oil company says that it will no longer provide fueling services for US naval vessels due to Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy:
https://bsky.app/profile/briantylercohen.bsky.social/post/3ljdotbptbk23
I made the point yesterday, based on what I was listening to around the world, that allies of the US were going to start treating us as adversaries, and creating a new union to protect Ukraine and Europe.
Now today….
Norway fuel giant ‘refuses to fill US submarines’ after Trump-Zelensky clash.
A petrol giant in Norway has announced a ban on fuel sales to all US forces following Donald Trump’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, it has been reported.
Norwegian firm Haltbakk Bunkers announced it will stop providing fuel to all American forces in Norway as it declared “No fuel to Americans!”. The firm posted on social media to declare its support for Zelensky as it dealt a hammer blow to US President Trump following the heated spat televised from the Oval Office.
Starmer pledges £2bn weapons loan to Zelensky and tells him: ‘you have UK’s full backing’
Estonian leaders call for stronger Europe amid US-Ukraine rift
My question remains… Who, in congress or in the media, will stand up when Trump offers Russia military aid once Ukraine gains the. upper hand, again?
I feel so utterly sick, and sad.
The United States of America that I honoured and respected, the alliance I always thought so solid, being ended in cowardly and petulant folly by a bunch of damned fools.
And Charles De Gaulle ending up right, after all.
@James Joyner:
And if said Europeans tell the US to take a long walk on a short pier when it comes to China?
Even UK hardcore Conservative Party Atlanticists are now thinking that the US may no longer be a viable ally.
And the possible need to revive WEU &/0r EDC.
And a UK/France deal to sustain the UK nuclear force separate from the US.
Trump has in a few weeks overturned the entire post-1945 basis of European and UK strategic and defence calculus.
@Rob1:
You’ve written a great deal and I’m not taking issue with any of it. I would just say that you clearly see the project ahead as a bigger, societal level problem than I do. I simply don’t believe the “remediation” we are seeking is at the scale of human society or the communal behaviors of complex humans for the whole of the United States. I simply don’t want to confer that much power to Trump, his enablers or the Trumpists.
Please consider this: if there had been a less than 4% shift in the overall vote in the general election in 2024, we would at this very moment be reflecting back on the first month of the first woman President of the United States. We would certainly not be talking about the postwar era coming to an end, as Zelensky would be having a friendly meeting with Tim Walz in Kyiv rather than an ambush at the White House with JD Vance. We would not be feeling ashamed as Americans.
With a shift in the vote of 4% – a margin easily attributed to global anti-incumbent sentiment and the US’s anti-majoritarian electoral college resting the whole election on seven swing states – our human society would be still be manifestly defined by laws and mores as Jack Smith’s cases continued to near certain conviction of civilian ex-President Donald J Trump. A SCOTUS that might exonerate Trump would be obviously revealed as partisan fueling renewed debate over the expansion of the court to 13. At the very least, Harris would be replacing Sotomayer and likely the aging Thomas.
At end, we shouldn’t be looking at remediating all three segments of Trump voters as you have correctly identified them. We only need to show the light to the approximately 4% of Trump voters who foolishly believed Trump would deliver cheap eggs and foolishly weren’t convinced that Trump was the immoral scumbag Harris/Walz et al told them he was.
@Jay L Gischer:
Because he is foolish enough to think Putin and Russia are strong.
His long-evidenced mafia-wannabe tendency
The problem with this is: mafias are about as strong as the governments concerned permit them to be.
Annoy the truly powerful sufficiently to awake them from their tendency to lethargy, and you get stomped.
Europe has power: it just has not realised it, or in large part, even wished to, for more than half a century.
” The Ents are going to wake up, and find that they are strong.”
@JKB:
And also keep in mind that Kuz is rather aligned with the PiS.
European politics: it’s a thing.
@charontwo:
All true. But Trump is allowing somebody with an ideological agenda to feed him his lines on foreign policy, and domestic issues as well.
@EddieInDR:
I posed that possibility further up the thread. And now extend your comment to include “what will the American people do” if Trump decides to send their tax dollars to Russia? And after generations of their families held the line against Russian aggression.
@EddieInDR:
@Stormy Dragon:
US former allies who wish to help Ukraine would do well to hit the administration Trump where it hurts. The Norway company denying US ships fuel is a start. Keep the administration scrambling for options. Although I prefer to see negotiation around intent before applying sanctions.
@Rob1:
@charontwo:
Trump has always seemed to me (insofar as he has any coherent thoughts at all) to have a lot of concepts based on old-style paleo-con semi-isolationist thinking.
The US dominates the Americas, and seeks opportunity in East Asia.
MacArthur , McCarthy, “Who lost China?”, yadda yadda.
Then you have the more recent neo-realist twerps who think (depending on which variety of idiot) either the US must confront China, or the US must divide the world with China.
Also, the “Christianist” ideologues who are convinced that that the US and Israel must stand ready to combat the Muslims who are taking over Europe.
And the silly tech-bro anarcho-capitalists who see modern Europe as a betrayal of their concept of what modern society must be.
Trump is just perfectly willing to accept all of this into his mental mush, mix it up with his mafia wannabe, and then express it as a “yay kayfabe baby” stance.
@Scott F.:
I absolutely do. We have achieved a degree of complexity in the organization of human affairs, and unretractable interdependencies that requires strong and deep analysis of our larger issues, like the path to governance. Rational process is the only way forward for a viable future. Get busy learning or get busy dying.
We didn’t get the 4% you mentioned to win. Rather, a dysfunctional personality aided by an assemblage of dysfunctional personalities hit the magic number. This after a massive accumulation of red flags and black marks that made not one whit of difference to a voter base inured to obvious lies, and who have begun to emulate Trump’s personality defects — on a mass basis. Yeah, we better put some brain power on this.
@EddieInDR: The Representative/Senator who lives in a district/state with no rich constituents that need/want tax breaks.
IOW, NOBODY!