The Zelenskyy meeting
I had planned to write this week about the looming budget crisis in the US. The two Republican-dominated houses of Congress need to pass legislation to keep the government open. That will require an increase in the debt ceiling – a tough task for many MAGA fiscal hawks. It will also increase pressure to lay out budget priorities that may threaten popular large social services programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There is all kinds of risk facing the US economy already and plenty of political risk in cutting those programs.
These are consequential matters. These are precisely the kinds of things Not A Tech Bro likes to think about!
Then Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President, was berated and chastised this afternoon in an Oval Office meeting by President Trump and Vice President Vance. You can watch the painful exchange for yourself:
I will cede this week's editorial calendar to my boiling sense of fury, and talk about honor today instead of economics.
Russia under Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupying Crimea. Candidate Trump in 2016 didn't know about that, and President Trump in 2025 contradicted Zelenskyy on the date, then blithely conceded the point when corrected by someone else in the room.
In 2022, Russia massed troops on its border with the country, and launched a further invasion on February 24 of that year. For three years and four days since, the Ukrainian people have fought bravely to defend their homeland from aggression and to preserve their sovereignty. The world responded by sanctioning Russia's trade and finances. With Biden's leadership, NATO provided money, intelligence and material support to Ukraine. A battle that Putin predicted would be over in three days is now in its fourth year, with the Russian military depleted and humiliated.
Even a nativist, convinced that America should attend only to matters inside its territorial borders, must feel respect and pride for the men and women of a small country who have fought so valiantly against a much larger aggressor to maintain their freedom. Freedom-loving people everywhere can acknowledge the justice in supporting that country.
In the Oval Office meeting, Trump insists on the moral parity of Putin the aggressor and Zelenskyy the defender. He dismisses the "hatred" that Zelenskyy feels toward his enemy. "I'd be tougher than any human being you've ever seen," he says, sitting next to a seriously tough human being whose courage he refuses even to acknowledge.
And then JD Vance seized the floor to lay the problem of the war on the Biden administration. Vance insisted that Trump diplomacy would win the day.
Zelenskyy responded with the full timeline of the conflict, pointing out that it began under Obama, festered under Trump 1, turned into a shooting war under Biden and continues to this day. He recapitulated past efforts of diplomacy with a feckless partner in Putin, who agreed to prisoner exchanges and ceasefires that he never honored.
At that point, things go seriously off the rails. Vance insults Zelenskyy, calling him disrespectful and demanding that he tell President Trump "thank you." Trump piles on, echoing the claim that Zelenskyy was disrespectful and casting the effort he leads as a commercial transaction, an exchange of value.
Trump ignores the dignity, honor and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people.
Zelenskyy left the White House abruptly after the meeting. Further discussions had been planned, but the Administration let the wheels come off in front of the cameras and there was no point to later pleasantries.
This was an unforced error, epic incompetence by the President and his staff. That public photo opportunity should have been brief, no questions asked or answered. Certainly Trump and Vance should never have insulted the Ukrainian people in front of their President. Substantive discussion should only have happened in private, between the parties, without the glare of camera lights that so predictably mesmerize President Trump.
Trump has proposed that Ukraine share its mineral wealth with the US as a condition of our support for its freedom and continued survival. It was a tawdry proposition when he first made it. Today, after his shameful treatment of a hero and real leader, it is a self-humiliating demand that makes it clear there is no moral core to this Administration.
During the shame session, Trump claimed he'd delivered missiles to Ukraine, while Obama merely delivered bedsheets. But of course that's not true. The Congress delivered those weapons. Trump withheld them, corruptly demanding a sham investigation of his election opponent. It's what led to his first impeachment. Zelenskyy did the right thing then, just as he did today.
Trump diminished America, I am sure, in the eyes of many of our former friends and present adversaries around the world by his behavior today. He certainly did so in mine.