[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: An article from the Atlantic

Sat Mar 1 15:12:16 PST 2025

Thk you, Catherine.  Senator Mark Kelly also had some good things to say
about the Trump / Vance bullies.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2025/02/28/mark-kelly-calls-trump-argument-with-zelenskyy-a-gift-to-russia/80879470007/

I used to know America.  I've worked 30 years with American clients.  But
voting with Russia and N Korea?  I don't know this America.

Bill.

c 416-708-6677

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 4:20 PM Catherine Walther via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> From my American sister-in-law. Excellent article. Catherine
>
> This article was published today. It's about the meeting with zelensky and
> Trump.
>
> Friday, February 28, 2025
>
> Tom Nichols
> Staff writer
> Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.
>
>
>
> Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which
> President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian
> President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the
> spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an
> enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not
> obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of
> the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon
> make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation
> fighting for its very existence.
>
> Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting
> America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this
> shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in
> Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this
> meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking
> points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of
> it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and
> give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to
> do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end
> on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of
> all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence
> during the meeting.
>
> 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.
> (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon
> Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other
> Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top
> diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance
> pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
>
> Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated
> the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump.
> And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was
> “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate
> this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in
> front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were
> soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,”
> Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia
> boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he
> sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling
> with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a
> century was Zelensky’s idea.
>
> After the meeting, Trump dismissed the Ukrainian leader and then issued a
> statement that could only have pleased Moscow:
>
> I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if
> America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big
> advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He
> disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He
> can come back when he is ready for Peace.
>
> Trump might as well have dictated this post on Truth Social before the
> meeting, because Zelensky didn’t stand a chance of having an actual
> discussion at the White House. When he showed Trump pictures of brutalized
> Ukrainian soldiers, Trump shrugged. “That’s tough stuff,” he muttered.
> Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to
> images, but Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to have been determined to
> stay on message and pick a fight.
>
> Vance, for his part, fully inhabited the role of a smarmy talk-show
> sidekick, jumping in to make sure the star got the support he needed while
> slamming one of the guests. The vice president is an unserious man who
> tries to insert himself into serious moments, but this time the stakes were
> much higher than the usual dustups with the media or congressional
> Democrats. He chuckled as Brian Glenn, a journalist from the right-wing
> channel Real America’s Voice who is reportedly dating Representative
> Marjorie Taylor Greene, asked Zelensky the tough and incisive question of
> why he had not worn a suit in the Oval Office. (Perhaps he’ll ask Musk why
> he wore a hat and T-shirt to a Cabinet meeting, but I doubt it.)
>
> The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United
> States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but
> worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets
> instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either
> knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and
> capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to
> rebut the flood of falsehoods. No, the U.S. has not given Ukraine $350
> billion; yes, Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his thanks to America and
> to Trump; no, Zelensky was not attacking the administration. The Ukrainian
> leader did his best to stand up to the bullying, but Trump and Vance were
> playing to the cameras and the MAGA gallery at home.
>
> Vance showed how dedicated he was to point-scoring rather than policy
> making with an observation so shallow that he was lucky that Zelensky was
> too off-balance to call him out for it. To emphasize Ukraine’s perilous
> situation, Vance noted that Zelensky was sending conscripts to the front
> lines, as if this was an unprecedented policy that only the most desperate
> regime would dare enact. Zelensky said that all nations at war have
> problems, but he might have pointed out to Vance that Ukraine is fighting
> for its very existence, while the United States has dragged conscripts to
> places far from home—including Korea and Vietnam—to fight against troops
> supported by the Kremlin.
>
> Today’s meeting and America’s shameful vote in the United Nations on
> Monday confirmed that the United States is now aligned with Russia and
> against Ukraine, Europe, and most of the planet. I felt physically sick
> watching the president of the United States yell at a brave ally,
> fulminating in the Oval Office as if he were an addled old man shaking his
> fist at a television. Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life,
> in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot imagine. (Vance served as a
> public-relations officer in the most powerful military in the world; he has
> never had to huddle in a bunker during a Russian bombardment.) I am ashamed
> for my nation; even if Congress acts to support and aid Ukraine, it cannot
> restore the American honor lost today.
>
> But no matter how disgusted anyone might be at Trump and Vance’s behavior,
> the strategic reality is that this meeting is a catastrophe for the United
> States and the free world. America’s alliances are now in danger, and
> should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has
> tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago. The entire
> international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian
> autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward
> to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for
> their crimes. (Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House,
> Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, posted on X:
> “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)
>
> Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the
> grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster
> that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future
> of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of
> Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along
> with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with
> confidence and think: one of us.
> Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
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