No one cries louder than a bully. Trust me, I punched more than a few as a kid. Confirming my bias, “ungrateful” attitude.
Blasting everything from Zelynskyy’s wardrobe to bizarrely claiming he was a “dictator,” the meeting devolved into a one-way shouting match. Zelenskyy departed while Trump and Vance were still red in the face over their manufactured outrage — leaving average Americans equally red with embarrassment.
The aggressive exchange prompted the White House to ask Zelenskyy to leave, something the Ukrainian president did without pushback. Now, days later, Trump wants Zelenskyy to come crawling back, and he’s insisting on a dramatic public apology. Until Zelenskyy bends the knee on live television, Trump promises to effectively hold American aid hostage while Ukrainian lives hang in the balance.
“He’s gotta say, ‘I want to make peace,’” Trump said to reporters after the meeting. “He doesn’t have to stand there and say about — Putin this, Putin that — all negative things.” Just for context, most leaders under siege have zero nice things to say about the invaders. Winston Churchill once said that Hitler was a “Monster of wickedness” and “a bloodthirsty guttersnipe.”
Perhaps worse were Trump’s final words, “His people are dying. He doesn’t have the cards — just so you understand that, OK?” Trump understands just how dire the situation is, but his pride matters more to him than anything else. If Zelenskyy apologizes, Trump’s temper tantrum was justified, and at the end of the day, Ukraine has more to lose by not giving in.
Despite knowing what’s at stake, White House correspondent Peter Doocy told Fox News that the president is standing firm in his demands. Trump is planning on withholding all additional assistance and refusing to parley any new deals with Ukraine until Zelenskyy apologizes “in front of cameras for “the way that he behaved himself.”
Doocy continued, “Zelensky is out there now saying that he thinks he can still get this minerals deal without saying sorry. Well, good luck because there is still a desire by Republicans in D.C. to end the war in Ukraine and to make a deal with Ukraine on the way forward.”
“But after Friday’s Oval Office dust-up, Republicans don’t care if peace happens with Zelensky in charge or somebody else.” Though he added no one had an idea on who could replace the Ukrainian president, the audacity to suggest trading out the leader of another country is shocking.
I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 4, 2025
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under…
For his part, Zelenskyy is sticking to his guns. He took to X to write out his hopes for future peace negotiations, showing the kind of grace expected of the president of a nation. You know, Churchill said something else during that 1941 address that turned out to be horrifyingly true.
“The terrible military machine which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing – this machine cannot stand idle, lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions.”
Just four years later we would come to find out just how right Churchill was.
Published: Mar 4, 2025 05:01 pm