By the time world leaders appear together in front of the media on such trips, they are usually putting on a co-ordinated show, trying to show what they have accomplished and what great friends they are – and agreeing to push any differences under the carpet for now.
Trump first watched impassively and then launched into similar lines of argument against an embattled Zelensky. As Trump asked him who was “holding the cards” at the moment, the Ukrainian leader – whose countrymen and women were fighting and dying against Russian aggressors even as the meeting took place – was desperately trying to make the point that none of this is a game to him.
Europe running out of options as Trump dodges US backstop
Read MoreAll of which means the public degradation of Zelensky – the head of state of an allied nation, during a time of war – is simply without precedent in American history. Never before has an American president allowed an allied president to be spoken to in that room in that way as the world’s press watched, let alone joined in himself.
Allowing JD Vance to monster Ukraine’s President publicly, with a barrage of talking points familiar from both Kremlin media and right-wing US TV hosts, does nothing to accomplish those goals. This did not have the feel of a carefully stage-managed row in pursuit of a greater purpose. It just looked like petulance.
It was hoped Zelensky could charm Trump to some extent, convince him that the minerals deal he had coerced out of Ukraine was a major victory and that Trump would say something which suggested the US would act as the guarantor of any peace deal it negotiated.
But this unprecedentedly awful meeting does serve as yet another grim wake-up call for European leaders ahead of their security meeting in London this weekend. Just as Macron and Starmer were congratulating themselves on their textbook visits – and hoping something resembling normality might be salvaged out of Trump’s second term – it has all come crashing down.
Donald Trump has just reminded the world there is no such thing as business as usual any more. The world’s greatest superpower will humiliate a wartime ally in public, for almost no good reason. It is for the rest of the world to work out what on Earth they can do about it.
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