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The big Trump-Zelenskyy blowup, briefly explained
What the Oval Office confrontation tells us about Trump — and the future of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Patrick Reis was the senior politics and ideas editor at Vox. He previously worked at Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, Politico, National Journal, and Seattle’s Real Change News. As a reporter and editor, he has worked on coverage of campaign politics, economic policy, the federal death penalty, climate change, financial regulation, and homelessness.
Welcome to The Logoff. Today I’m focusing on a disastrous meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The hostile conversation had immediate consequences for Ukraine’s war effort and revealed much about how Trump sees the US’s new global role.
What was supposed to happen? Zelenskyy went to Washington, DC, in the hopes of signing a rare-earth minerals deal with Trump, a rapprochement between the two leaders after Trump had called the Ukrainian president a “dictator” and falsely accused him of starting the war with Russia. Zelenskyy was hoping that by offering the US access to his country’s minerals deposits, he could secure a better deal for his country in Trump’s peace talks with Russia.
What happened instead? What began as a polite meeting devolved into a de facto ambush after Zelenskyy questioned what would happen if Russia’s Vladimir Putin were to break a ceasefire. With cameras rolling, Trump and Vance berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, accusing him of ingratitude for US support. After the meeting, Zelenskyy left the White House with the minerals deal unsigned, and Trump released a statement saying the Ukrainian could “come back when he is ready for Peace.”
What now? Trump says he’s still pursuing a peace deal, but after Friday, Ukraine seems likely to have even less leverage. Ukraine’s key ask is a security guarantee from the US — a request Putin opposes and Trump has resisted. Zelenskyy’s prospects are surely worse now than when he woke up this morning.
What’s the big picture? The meeting was a shocking display of Trump’s posture toward the world — and the radical break he represents from the US’s previous role in the global order. In a matter of a few highly charged minutes, he flouted the fragile US-Ukraine alliance, publicly humiliated a foreign leader, bound himself even more tightly to Putin, and summed it all up with: “This is gonna be great television — I will say that.”
And with that, it’s time to log off …
Watching that Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy video brought me perilously close to an anxiety-driven YouTube scroll session. I was rescued by Vox’s Today, Explained podcast, which has a fascinating episode about the Oscars’ foreign films category. Specifically, it’s about a “German” film that was actually (and secretly) filmed in Iran with Iranian actors and an Iranian director. I hope you get a chance to enjoy it.
Finally, thanks to everyone who signed up for our new Saturday “Good News” newsletter. If you missed it yesterday, it’s a weekly dose of hope for these troubled times. You can sign up here. Have a good weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.
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