Volodymyr Zelenskyy, The Anti-Trump, Sets The Perfect TRAP For Vladimir Putin

In This “Cliff’s Edge,” Amplification:

😁 My Column

👊 David Shuster’s Great video

🥃 NYT Pitchbot’s Hilarious Pitches

Zelinskyy with the body language Putin can’t buy from a cringe image shirtless on a horse

Donald Trump can still become pope if Mike Pence has the courage.

Cliff’s Note: The Zelenskyy Checkmate: The Crisis That Revealed a Titan

Some leaders are made by the moment. Most, as we’ve sadly learned, whine about dishwashers, flush toilets or windmills giving them cancer while taking Qatari bribes. They make a run for Cancun with a pot belly and a dream while their constituents are freezing to death because of their party’s corruption. Or run down the halls of Congress wetting their khakis, like an animated milksop mannequin, when an insurrection they started looks like it may smudge their pressed-Oxford-Blue shirt.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy—former comedian turned full-throttle wartime president—isn’t just meeting the moment; he’s defining it. Like Lincoln, who walked into office with a nation divided, Zelenskyy didn’t ask for war—but when Boris Badenov gave it to him, Zelenskyy answered the clarion call for fortitude with red, hot steel.

No, it wasn’t Trump promising infrastructure week: Part #432. Or Nancy Mace out hunting for her next election-whoring episode of trans demagoguery. Zelenskyy has displayed what greatness forged in unique, existential crisis looks like: clarity, courage and a command of messaging and warmth that has left most so-called leaders around the world looking like marionettes in a Sicilian Opera dei Pupi in comparison.

Meanwhile, he is the rare politician who doesn’t just say “freedom,” then hide and allow it to becomes Janis Joplin’s definition of “nothing left to lose.” He embodies it—lives it every damn day—with a Ukrainian flag draped over his shoulders, a target on his back and a combination of humility & courage not evident in 98.979% of the GOP, as its clown-fish President cleans Putin’s teeth. Zelenskyy’s “freedom” is simple. The opposite Joplin’s: It’s another word for everything left to win.