From Newsgroup: alt.law-enforcement

The Real Reason Trump Berated Zelensky
He simply likes Vladimir Putin better.
By Jonathan Chait
Photo-illustration of a cutout black-and-white image of Volodymyr Zelensky (left) and Donald Trump (right) sitting next to each other, seemingly mid- argument.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty.
February 28, 2025
Of the many bizarre and uncomfortable moments during todayAs Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelenskyuduring
which Trump finally shattered the American alliance with Ukraineuone was particularly revealing: What, a reporter asked, would happen if the cease-
fire Trump is trying to negotiate were to be violated by Russia? oWhat if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now?o Trump spat back, as
if Russia violating a neighborAs 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. oThey respect me,o he thundered. oLet 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? a It was a
phony Democrat scam. He had to go through it. And he did go through it.o
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 otremendous hatredo toward Putin and insisted, oItAs very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.o) He was not explaining why a deal with Russia would advance AmericaAs interests, or why honoring
it would advance RussiaAs. He was defending RussiaAs integrity by vouching
for PutinAs 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 TrumpAs 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. TrumpAs 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 TrumpAs 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 TrumpAs
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 UkraineAs 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.
Immediately after Zelensky left the Oval Office, Trump posted to Truth
Social, oI have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace
if America is involved.o The clear implication is that the United States
will cut off its support for the Ukrainian war effort. TrumpAs allies have already tried to foist the blame for that momentous decision onto Zelensky. Trump ofelt disrespectedo by the Ukrainian leaderAs body language and argumentative manner, White House officials told Fox News. oZelensky was in
a terrible position,o National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry
acknowledged on X, obut he never should have gotten sucked into making argumentative points.o And, he added, ohe should have worn a suit.o
All of this ignores the much more plausible explanation of what happened today: It was a setup. Trump and Vance appear to have entered the meeting
with the intention of berating Zelensky and drawing him into an argument as
a pretext for the diplomatic break. Why should anyone have expected
anything different? Trump has been regurgitating Russian propaganda, not
only regarding Ukraine, since before Zelensky even assumed office. In 2018, the year preceding ZelenskyAs election, he defended RussiaAs seizure of Crimea; he has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Russian guilt for various murders; and he has even stuck to Russian talking points on such
idiosyncratic topics as the SovietsA supposedly defensive rationale for invading Afghanistan in 1979 and their fear that an oaggressiveo Montenegro would attack Russia, dragging NATO into war.
In the past few weeks, Trump has made very little effort to conceal his pro-Russian tilt. He called Zelensky a dictator, and when asked if he would say the same about Putin, refused, insisting, oI donAt use those words lightly.o (No president in American history has used words more lightly
than Trump.) He said Ukraine omay be Russian somedayo and blamed Ukraine
for starting the war. The U.S. even joined Russia, North Korea, and a tiny bloc of Russian allies to vote against a United Nations resolution
condemning RussiaAs invasion of Ukraine.
The less damning explanations for TrumpAs pattern of pro-Russia positions
have all collapsed in the face of evidence. One line of defense, hauled out
by Republican hawks to explain away TrumpAs consistent efforts to undermine NATO, is that Trump actually wants to prod Europe into spending more on its own defense. Like a tough football coach, he is merely berating his team to become the best version of itself.
Except when European countries declared themselves ready to increase their defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, the level Trump claimed to have
wanted, he upped the demand to 5 percent. More recently, he advocated for
the election of the right-wing, pro-Russian, anti-NATO AfD party in
Germany. That is a strange thing to do if your goal is to push allies to
stand up for themselves against Russia, but a perfectly sensible position
if your goal is to undermine the anti-Russia alliance.
Republican Russia-hawks hoped they could bring Trump around by getting
Ukraine to sign a deal handing over a portion of its mineral wealth to the United States. Instead, Trump announced that the mineral deal was dead.
This, too, would be a strange move if his motives were purely
transactional, but a very understandable one if his motives were to abandon Ukraine to PutinAs tender mercies.
Even today, TrumpAs bullying commenced well before Zelensky had opened his mouth. Trump greeted his counterpart on the White House driveway with condescending mockery, pointing at him and telling onlookers, oHeAs all dressed up today,o like Bill Batts in Goodfellas belittling Joe PesciAs character. (oHey, Tommy, all dressed up!o) ZelenskyAs attireuthe Ukrainian president wears military attire, not a suit, to remind the world that his country is at waruhas been a fixation on the right, and conservatives have seized upon it as a pretext to blame him for TrumpAs anger. Oddly, they did not seem to mind that Elon Musk showed up at the White House this week in a T-shirt and baseball cap.
Might Zelensky have gotten a different outcome by taking TrumpAs abuse and stream of lies with more self-abasement? Sure, itAs possible; if you reason backwards from a bad outcome, any different strategy is almost
axiomatically smarter. Zelensky had no good options at the White House. He walked into an ambush with a president who empathizes with the dictator who wants to seize UkraineAs territory. Everyone who spent years warning about TrumpAs unseemly affinity for Putin had exactly this kind of disastrous outcome in mind.
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