It Was an Ambush

Everyday is a new low for this administration, but today was an absolute disaster for America. Ashamed this is the America we live in now.

This was such a sad sham & shame.

The silver lining though is that one of the worst misdeeds was averted. The nominal purpose of this was to make Zelensky kiss the ring/feet. And to sign over mineral rights (for no concrete promises or assurances of support).

Ukraine avoided selling their mineral rights. They failed to suck up before doing so, and by virtue of a little bit of intolerable truth-telling (while being incessantly talked over) avoided selling out the nation to buy a fake worthless useless prospect of maybe having short term support continue.

(Tom Nichols definitely comes to mind as S-tier "awful person you know makes a good point". Incredibly blow hard, full of himself in high degree & actively censoring the world around him / blocking views he doesn't agree with. But at least as far as the premise goes, yes. He is correct here.)

Also worth emphasizing that Zelensky has shown enormous gratitude again and again to America. There's dozens upon dozens of tweets of thanks. The premise that he's ungrateful seems simply untrue.

I just don't have the words to express how ashamed I am of my country today.

Europe's reaction was telling: all (except Orban, of course) publicly expressed their support for Zelensky. The silver lining is that it might galvanize Europe to be more united, which would be a good thing.

But for anyone holding on to the idea that America is the "leader of the free world", that is most definitely no longer the case. For the EU foreign minister to state "we need a new leader" is a major shift.

This is one of those events that will be in the history books, to be sure.

Trump and Vance destroyed whatever credibility the US had. They handed the next century to China. China will now court Europe and if this continues, China's currency will probably replace the US Dollar as the world reserve currency.

When that happens, the US will face inflation similar to Germany in the 1920s and 30s.

Europe needs to step up now that it is absolutely crystal clear that America and by extension, Americans, don't give a rat's ass about Ukraine, her people and the threat posed by Russian.

Putin must be howling with laughter.

In a normal timeline, the way this was going to get hammered out was behind closed doors where very serious people from the State Department presented a spreadsheet of options for Ukraine's renewal of the Democracy Plus DLC and the ukies, through gritted teeth, chose a mortgage they could live with. This should not be a surprise.

(Absent, say, Europe committing more men or material.)

The US, absent anything else, needs to choose between direct military intervention, continuing sending over material (which is unpalatable long term), or cutting Ukraine loose. Again, none of that should be a surprise--if it _is_, you should get your head examined.

The problem today is that these conversations were had out in public, and in so doing we got to see the top two rungs of the US executive branch act excessively cruel on the one hand and like somebody completely ignorant of the stakes on the other--the "it'll make great TV" being perhaps the icing on the cake. Even worse, it'll probably work, because Zelensky seems to care more about his country than his ego.

Even to the extent that I agree with some of the realpolitick, I cannot abide by the odious behavior adjacent it. Kissinger was evil, but not impishly cruel.

(I also would caution people not to buy into the "Russia owns Trump" narrative when the more depressing--but probably accurate--explanation is simply that he wants the "Look at me, I ended a war I didn't even fight in!" merit badge.)

We are all used to Trumps loud rethoric and disgraceful diplomatic displays. This time is much worse than last, but still.

The silence of the broad American society, though, is deafening.

As the American left says: "Silence is complicity".

"Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to images".

This redneck has no empathy whatsoever and it's not fit to lick Zelenskyy boots.

What he should read is Vonnegut and especially a chapter from Cat's Cradle "Why Americans are hated". I've always thought that Vonnegut was too pesimistic about the US. Now I think he was too optimistic.

>Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration, with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics.

Trump 2.0, DOGE, and J.D. Vance were created and molded by the Silicon Valley investor class. Worth looking up the term "blowback" when it comes back to bite American techbros.

I am posting this comment anonymously because I don't think it's safe to publish my comment any more considering my situation. I am a Chinese living in north America now.

Considering that Trump is elected by American people, when I refer to Trump below I am referring to American people.

Trump has destroyed the rule based world and pushing the world to a more primeval one, like the one before world war 2. This will have long term consequences. This is a world where China and China Communist Party will adapt better than the US. If both sides play without allies, US is probably not an opponent of China. We should be able to see this play out in the next decades. China may not take over the US but the playground should be levelled faster than expected, and China does have another decades to play, there are still tens of millions Chinese entering adult age each year, and many of them are engineers.

Trump failed to negotiate anything with poutine and now thrown Zelenski under the bus. What a pathetic looser.