It went well enough for the first 23 minutes, a polite if stiff meeting between a US president and a foreign leader. Then their differences started to be aired, unmistakably though not too contentiously. Then after 39 minutes, it really came off the rails.
The verbal brawl in the Oval Office on Friday between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy startled Washington, unnerved Europe, outraged Ukraine and delighted Russia. By the end, the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington had her head in her hands in dismay.
But what really seemed to get under Trump’s skin during the discussion-turned-donnybrook were Zelenskiy’s harsh words about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump, who had nothing but good things to say about the master of the Kremlin, seemed offended on his behalf and scolded Zelenskiy for hostility toward the man who had invaded his country.
“He hates us,” Zelenskiy told Trump, trying to explain that Putin was the aggressor, not the victim. “It’s not about me. He hates Ukrainians. He thinks we are not a nation.” While Trump last week falsely said that Ukraine “started” the war, Zelenskiy made clear that Trump had that exactly wrong. “Putin began this war,” Zelenskiy said.
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Trump did not concur, and proceeded to chide Zelenskiy for being mean. “It’s wonderful to speak badly about somebody else,” said Trump, scorn in his voice, “but I want to get it solved.”
Trump, who has been known to speak badly about plenty of somebody-elses, including Zelenskiy, whom he called a “dictator” just last week, offered no sympathy for the Ukrainian view.
“This is not a love match,” he said, making clear he considered Zelenskiy to blame. “This is why you’re in this situation.”
A few moments later, Zelenskiy again cited Putin’s role in the war and suggested that Trump was listening to the Russian leader too much. In response to Trump’s comment that Ukrainian cities were destroyed, Zelenskiy said no, they had survived despite Russian bombardment.
“Maybe it’s Putin who’s sharing this disinformation that he destroyed us,” Zelenskiy said.
Trump came to Putin’s defence. “He had to suffer through the Russia hoax,” he said, referring to the investigation during his first term into Russian interference on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 election. “I think that he wants to make a deal and he’d like to see an end.”
In fact, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller was no hoax and concluded definitively that Putin ordered an intelligence operation to tilt the election eight years ago to Trump. Although Mueller said in his final report in 2019 that “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges,” he made clear that Trump’s campaign benefited from Russian assistance.
The Oval Office meeting Friday soon degenerated into a virtual showdown as vice-president JD Vance dispensed with any formalities and accused Zelenskiy of being “disrespectful” by offering the Ukrainian view of the war and what would be required for peace in the Oval Office with news cameras present. From there, Vance and Trump pummelled Zelenskiy for being insufficiently grateful, while he tried to get a word in.
Never in at least the past few decades has a president engaged in such an angry, scathing attack on a visiting foreign leader in the Oval Office. Their argument culminated with a threat that if Zelenskiy did not accept whatever peace deal Trump brokered with Russia, the United States would abandon Ukraine. The fracas led Trump to kick Zelenskiy out of the White House. The schism upended plans to sign a deal giving the United States rights to Ukrainian rare minerals, a concession Trump had demanded as payback for help with the war.
Trump often exhibits anger in public in ways other presidents have rarely done, particularly at rallies or in interviews. Just the other day, he snapped at the governor of Maine about transgender athletes. But he has never appeared so enraged and combative with a foreign visitor, especially a putative ally in the middle of a war for his country’s survival.
The closest analogy might be a few meetings he had with congressional Democrats during his first term when he quarrelled with Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader. At one of them, in fact, Pelosi famously stood, pointed a finger at him and snapped, “All roads with you lead to Putin.”
Even so, that meeting was not on camera and those sessions never blew up quite like this one did, especially with so much at stake.
To be sure, Zelenskiy is not always a suave diplomatic player. He often irritated president Joe Biden and his team, who similarly chafed that the Ukrainian kept pushing them for more weapons without being grateful enough in their view for what they had done.
Zelenskiy does not have the defer-and-flatter gene that leads counterparts such as French president Emmanuel Macron and UK prime minister Keir Starmer to play to the volatile Trump’s ego and minimise their differences, as both did at the White House in separate meetings this week. Zelenskiy, leading a country that has been under attack for 11 years, even before the 2022 full-scale invasion, has little patience or instinct for diplomatic niceties.
But what was particularly striking in their exchange was how much Trump seemed insulted on Putin’s behalf. He has long been an open admirer of Putin’s and has rarely offered any criticism of his own. Just this week, he called Putin “smart” and “cunning,” and declined to call him a dictator even after calling Zelenskiy that.
“You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?’” Trump told Zelenskiy on Friday. “It doesn’t work that way.”
He did not explain why it was okay to say terrible things to Zelenskiy while pursuing a deal. Instead, he portrayed the Ukrainian leader as unreasonably distrustful of Putin, who has broken multiple agreements guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty and calling for ceasefires and now faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes.
“You see the hatred he’s got for Putin,” Trump said with a tone of indignation as cameras recorded the exchange. “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He’s got tremendous hatred. And I understand that. But I can tell you the other side’s not exactly in love with him either.”
He came back to Putin and the Russia investigation again near the end of the session, describing the Russian leader as if they had bonded through a shared ordeal. “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said. “He went through a phoney witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.”
The affront to Putin seemed to stick with Trump. By evening, hours after tossing Zelenskiy out of the White House, Trump stopped to talk to reporters as he left for a weekend in Florida and again outlined his grievance with the Ukrainian president.
“He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace,’” Trump said. “He doesn’t have to stand there and say about, ‘Putin this, Putin that,’ all negative things. He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace’.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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