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IT WAS AN AMBUSH  
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Tom Nichols
February 28, 2025
The Atlantic
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_ Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American
diplomacy. _

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, President Trump and Vice
President JD Vance at the White House on Friday.Credit..., Doug
Mills/The New York Times

 

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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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“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._

_Tom Nichols [[link removed]] is a
staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to
the Atlantic Daily newsletter
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* white house
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* Volodymyr Zelensky
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* Donald Trump
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* Sneak Attack
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