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The pancaked putz stuck together with a half a can of Aqua Net was never going to stop this war on day one, and he learned today that he's never going to stop it if he takes the side of Ukraine's enemy, Vladimir Putin.
The President of the United States is barking mad.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy got a full-face blast of how completely nuts Donald Trump is today when Trump started talking about Vladimir Putin like he was a friend and an ally with whom he shared a foxhole in war. Here is what Zelenskyy had to sit there and listen to from Donald Trump as the American media looked on:
“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia—Russia, Russia, Russia, you ever hear of that deal? That was a phony—that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam. And he had to go through that. And he did go through it and we didn’t end up in a war. He went through it—he was accused of all that stuff—he had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bedroom. It was disgusting. And then they said, ‘Oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia.’ The 51 agents, the whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. He was being accused of all that stuff.”
Forget the idea that Trump was engaged in what the media calls “airing grievances.” That wasn’t it. He wasn’t complaining about things that happened in the past. That stream of gibberish was just nuts, straight up empty-brain-pan babbling nonsense with no connection to reality.
The meeting today in the Oval Office between Trump and JD Vance and Zelenskyy didn’t end up being a precursor to the signing of an agreement on Ukraine’s rare metals that would have been meaningless as anything other than a photo op Trump could have called a “win.” Instead, Vance had been assigned as attack dog, so that’s the role he played. Vance couldn’t resist accusing Zelenskyy of going to Pennsylvania and “campaigning for the opposition in October,” which only succeeded in confirming, as if it was necessary, that Vance is as obsessed with holding grudges as Trump is.
Trump thought his job was to lecture a man about war whose country has been under attack for three years, whose army has suffered tens of thousands of casualties, whose citizens have been murdered wholesale and buried in mass graves by war criminals masquerading as Russian soldiers.
“Your country is in big trouble,” Trump said to Zelenskyy. When the Ukrainian president asked if he could answer Trump’s patently idiotic statement, Trump said, “No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.”
“I know,” Zelenskyy said sadly, realizing he was sitting in the room with the person who was causing him as much trouble as his enemy on the battlefield. Not long after Zelenskyy left—Trump’s hand-puppets made a point of saying that Trump had kicked him out—Trump, wearing a red MAGA hat, stopped to talk to the press on his way across the White House lawn to take his helicopter to Air Force One to fly down to Florida to go golfing for his 12th or 15th time since taking office.
“He overplayed his hand with a weak set of cards,” Trump told reporters. “Either we’re going to end it or let him fight it out. And if he fights it out, it’s not going to be pretty. Because without us, he doesn’t win.”
Speaking of Zelenskyy in reference to Vladimir Putin, the man who started the war that is now in its fourth year, Trump said, “He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace.’ He doesn’t have to stand there and say about Putin this, Putin that, all negative things. Putin wants to end it,” Trump said. “But Zelenskyy wants to get us signed up and keep fighting.”
It is apparently just occurring to Trump that he is dealing with the president of a country that isn’t going to give up. It’s too bad that Trump is so ignorant about the war in Vietnam that he succeeded in dodging as a young man. Throughout the so-called peace negotiations that began in the Johnson administration and went over into Nixon’s time in office, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, who Nixon kept claiming were losing the war on the ground, had one gigantic advantage. They knew they were never going to give up, and they never did. The United States agreed to cease combat operations in 1973, and two years later ignominiously pulled out of Vietnam altogether. If the US had not agreed to what amounted to a ceasefire and ended the war, North Vietnamese forces and the VC would have kept fighting.
Zelenskyy didn’t come right out and say it, but he made clear to Trump and Vance that his war against Russian aggression would not end until he, not them, says it ends. The two American nincompoops in suits apparently were not listening. Vance kept telling the Ukrainian president that he had to say thank you to Trump. Zelenskyy would not bend a knee, reminding Vance that he had thanked the American people for their support repeatedly. Vance pretended that he didn’t hear him, and told Zelenskyy he had to say thank you again.
I wish Zelenskyy had asked Trump and Vance how they would react if rockets and artillery started landing on 5th Ave. in Manhattan and in the state of Ohio. How do they think American citizens would react with Russian soldiers on their soil, bombing their homes into smoking husks and maternity hospitals into bloody hell holes?
Incredibly, Vance tried to begin their day of lectures and intimidation with this: “Do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”
Zelenskyy had made no such attack on the Trump administration, but he refused to take Vance’s bullshit lying down. “Let’s start from the beginning,” Zelenskyy answered.
“Sure,” chirped the arrogant Vance.
“First of all, during the war, everybody has problems,” Zelenskyy said without hesitation. “Even you, but you have nice ocean and don’t feel now, but you’ll feel it in the future.”
Trump exploded. “You don’t know that. You don’t know…don’t tell us what we’re gonna feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re gonna feel.”
“I’m not telling you, I’m answering on the question,” Zelenskyy said before being cut off by an indignant Vance, who shot back, “That’s exactly what you’re doing!”
“You’re in no position to dictate what we’re gonna feel, we’re going to feel very good. We’re going to feel very good and very strong,” thundered Trump, clearly expecting Zelenskyy to come to heel. “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”
“I’m not playing cards, Mr. President,” said the president of Ukraine calmly.
Zelenskyy has told Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and anybody else who was listening what’s going to happen in Ukraine. They’re going to keep fighting. They’ll fight with rockets and artillery if Europe keeps supplying them, and they’ll fight with F-16 jets if they can get the spare parts. They’ll keep building their own drones and putting them into the air, but if they run out, they will fight with rifles and pistols and anything else they can beg, borrow or steal.
The pancaked putz stuck together with a half a can of Aqua Net was never going to stop this war on day one, and he learned today that he’s never going to stop it if he takes the side of Ukraine’s enemy, Vladimir Putin. A man he has belittled as a moderately successful comedian taught him that.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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