Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

At the abrupt end of an intended photo-op meeting, Trump noted, “This is going to be great television.”

Was there some irony in this statement? Both Trump and Zelensky became famous as TV actors; Zelensky played a fictitious president, and Trump played himself as a company president. Then, they shared the Oval Office in front of the world in a riveting one-act skit.

It was good television, but politics was bad for both. Trump lost his hoped-for victory celebration for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky lost an agreement tying American military support to investing in Ukraine.

During the meeting, Trump demanded that Zelensky talk only about achieving peace by rapidly ending the war and not raising doubts about Russia’s starting the war again. Zelensky pushed back, citing Russia’s past broken promises. As soon as the TV cameras went dead, their dinner was canceled, and Zelensky was ushered out of the White House.

Within a week, Trump cut off military support and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, saying they would only be reinstated if Zelensky followed Trump’s directive.

The transcript shows Trump criticized Zelensky first.

The exchange among Trump, Zelensky, and Vance reveals that Trump initiated deprecating statements about Zelensky when he responded to a reporter who asked how he saw himself aligning with both Zelensky and Putin. His response was if “I didn’t align myself with both of them, you’d never have a deal. You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?’”

Trump firmly stated he would not offend Putin. Then Trump attacked Zelensky as a person filled with hate, not reason. “He’s got tremendous hatred. You see, the hatred he’s [Zelensky] got for Putin, it’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.” Zelensky had not criticized Putin in the meeting before Trump made these accusations.

Vance also jumped to respond to this question, ‘The path to peace and prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.” Vance did acknowledge that “Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country.”

Zelensky replied to both of their comments by relating how Putin, from 2014 to 2022, during the terms of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, was killing Ukrainians, and nobody stopped him. “And God bless President Trump will stop him.”

He reminded them how Putin broke a signed ceasefire deal with Ukraine in 2019, which included an exchange of prisoners, which he did not complete. Exasperated, Zelensky asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you talking about?”

Zelensky put Vance on the spot and challenged him to recognize Putin’s past actions as casting doubt on his trustworthiness in promising not to invade Ukraine in the future. It was the kind of question that should have been dealt with in private, not televised.

Vance just jabbed back at Zelensky, accusing him of being disrespectful “to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

Then Vance did some litigation arguing that Ukraine had very big problems recruiting soldiers. Vance switched to asking Zelensky if he thought that it was “respectful to come to the Oval Office to........

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