Zelensky Never Had a Chance

When Volodomyr Zelensky arrived at the White House for his high-stakes meeting Friday, Donald Trump offered a sarcastic welcome. “How are you? You’re all dressed up today,” Trump said. “How are you, Mr. President?” Zelensky responded. Trump turned to the cameras. “He’s all dressed up today,” he said, with a wry smile, before leading Zelensky into the Oval Office. 

Nineteen minutes into the meeting, after mostly pleasant statements from the two leaders, Brian Glenn, a reporter with the Trump-boosting Real America’s Voice cable network, who is also Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, attacked Zelensky for his attire. 

“Why don’t you wear a suit?” Glenn asked. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, sitting a few feet from Zelensky, laughed at the question and smiled broadly as Glenn continued to berate the Ukrainian leader. “Do you own a suit?” he continued. “A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office.” 

After the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that White House officials were frustrated with Zelensky because of his tone, his body language and, yes, his attire. When Javers asked Leavitt why it was okay for Elon Musk to appear in the Oval in a T-shirt and baseball cap, she said Musk is not the leader of a sovereign nation.

Volodomyr Zelensky never had a chance. 

A White House offended by his clothing is a White House looking to be offended. (Zelensky, who has consistently worn military garb at meetings with world leaders and even while addressing the United Nations over the past three years, says he dresses the way he does in solidarity with the soldiers fighting on behalf of his country.)

Shortly after Vance laughed along at the dressing down of Zelensky, the vice president indignantly accused the Ukrainian leader of ingratitude. “Have you said thank you once in this entire meeting?” In fact, Zelensky hadn’t said thank you once—he’d said it three times. But Vance missed these expressions of gratitude because he wasn’t expecting to hear them. It was a classic case of selective perception and motivated reasoning—consuming information in a way that aligns with your preconceptions—and it arose again and again throughout the meeting. 

At one point, when Zelensky sought to make the point that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been unconstrained by diplomacy in the past, he calmly walked through the past decade of Russian aggression toward Ukraine, beginning with the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Trump heard it as an attack. “During 2014, nobody stopped him,” Zelensky said. “He just occupied and, two, he killed people.” 

“2015,” Trump interjected. 

“2014 and 2015” Vance said.

“I was not here,” Trump continued. 

“That’s exactly right,” said Vance. 

This bizarre defensiveness led to the most revealing moment of the entire ugly spectacle when Trump responded to a rather poignant question about whether the United States is no longer a force for good in the world. It’s worth quoting in full. 

Poland was under Russian control for decades after the Second World War. When I was a kid, I looked at the United States not only as a most powerful country, richest country in the world—the country that has great music, great movies, great muscle cars —but also as a force for good. Now I’m talking with my friends in Poland, and they are worried that you align yourself too much with Putin. What’s your message for them?

Trump’s answer was almost a perfect circle of contradiction. First, Trump rejected the premise, insisting he’s not taking sides. “You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?’” Trump has shown no such reservations about saying really terrible things about Zelensky, of course, twice calling him a “dictator” and scolding him for suspending elections. 

And then, immediately after explaining his unwillingness to criticize Putin, Trump blamed Zelensky for making diplomacy difficult. “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin,” Trump said mockingly. “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate—he’s got tremendous hate.” 

None of this should be surprising. Donald Trump is unquestionably pro-Putin—and has been for years. He doesn’t merely want to end the war. He wants to end the war on terms favorable to Vladimir Putin. He wants to end the isolation Russia has suffered as a result of its aggression and he wants to eliminate the constraints on Putin’s troublemaking. This isn’t theoretical. 

The U.S. lobbied allies to oppose a Ukrainian U.N. resolution condemning Russia for starting the war. Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, spoke recently of the “extraordinary opportunities” ahead for the United States and Russia. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s secretary of defense, ordered the end to offensive cyber operations against Russia. And Trump himself said he is “trying to do some economic development deals” with Russia. 

Trump can do a lot of this on his own—presidents have wide latitude to conduct U.S. foreign policy—but it’d be easier to do it with the support of his party. And that, more than anything else, is why the made-for-TV confrontation with Zelensky will matter. 

It’s hard to get elected Republicans to speak out against Trump on anything these days, even as many of them continue to have concerns about his behavior and some of his policies. And Republicans have long been divided on Ukraine. Still, when Trump suggested last month that Zelensky, not Putin, started the war, many Republicans spoke up in protest. And when Trump called Zelensky a dictator but refused to apply that label to Putin, a smattering of GOP lawmakers were willing to correct him on it. It’s hard to deny the indisputable-–or run quickly enough from reporters—even for partisans eager to please the boss. 

The Oval Office blow-up allows them to change the subject. Sure, Putin launched an unprovoked war of territorial ambition, but did you see what Zelensky wore to the White House? Sen. Lindsey Graham, who two weeks ago called Zelensky “the ally I’ve been hoping for all my life,” said after the meeting, “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.” Rep. Dan Crenshaw tweeted: “If you are the leader of a country in a dire situation with no path to peace without American support, do not come into the Oval Office and argue with the President of the United States in public. Just a word of advice.” Lots of elected Republicans expressed similar sentiments and too many others remained silent.

The journalist who remembered the United States as a force for good when he was a kid remembered us that way for a reason. The president back then described America as “freedom’s protector” and called for the country to be strong at home so that we could be a “force for good” in the world. Ronald Reagan’s party of moral clarity has become Donald Trump’s party of moral midgets.