Friends,
Sorry to intrude on you again today, but it’s important.
If you were shocked and disgusted by the scene in the Oval Office today, with Trump and Vance belittling and berating President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, you’re not alone. Fourteen Democratic governors have released a joint statement condemning what occurred:
“Donald Trump and JD Vance used the sacred Oval Office to berate President Zelensky for not trusting Vladimir Putin’s word. Americans must protect our strong democratic values on the world stage instead of undermining President Zelensky’s work to fight for his nation and the freedom of his people after being invaded by Russia.”
They speak for much of America.
For more than three years, President Zelensky has courageously and nobly contained Putin’s aggression. Zelensky has maintained the morale of the people of Ukraine while diligently soliciting and getting help from Europe and the United States. He has waged a war that few assumed he could win, but he has not flinched.
He deserves our heartfelt thanks rather than the cruel rebuke delivered today by Trump and Vance.
Why did they hammer him? Because they don’t want Americans to view Zelensky as a hero. That view will complicate Trump’s plan to surrender Ukraine to Putin. Trump is ready to give Putin everything he wants. And then carve up the world.
Make no mistake: Putin’s aggression will not end with Ukraine. By giving in to Putin, Trump is inviting him to invade Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland — and then the rest of Eastern Europe that used to be under Soviet and Russian control.
Trump wants Canada, Greenland, Panama, and much else.
Today’s meeting in the Oval Office was a stage show. It will also be remembered by future historians (to the extent they have access to the truth) as a prelude to conquest. Trump believes only in power — which in his mind means complete and utter control. Putin does, too. The two dictators deserve each other.
The rest of us must make it clear — to our fellow Americans, as to the remainder of the free world — that we believe in democracy, that we appreciate Zelensky’s courage and tenacity, and that Trump and Vance do not speak for us.
Before receiving an Oval Office tirade from President Trump and before his White House visit was unceremoniously cut short on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was welcomed warmly by a bipartisan group of senators at a closed-door gathering at the Hay-Adams Hotel near the White House.
Republicans who have been among the Senate’s staunchest Russia hawks grinned and clasped hands with Mr. Zelensky in photographs posted on social media. But by the afternoon, at least one of them, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, was outside the White House suggesting that Mr. Zelensky should resign.
Another, Senator Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Ukraine’s most outspoken Republican advocates on Capitol Hill — who had organized the meeting at the hotel — took down a post showing him shaking hands with Mr. Zelensky.
The abrupt change in tone reflected the pivot underway in Washington, as some of Ukraine’s most ardent Republican defenders on Capitol Hill found themselves recalibrating and falling in line with Mr. Trump, some discarding long-held positions with remarkable speed.
Mr. Graham, who began the day smiling in multiple photos with Mr. Zelensky, initially appeared eager to celebrate what he had predicted would be a diplomatic victory for the United States with a minerals deal with Kyiv. “This is Donald Trump the deal maker and peacemaker on display,” he declared in a video.
But a few hours later, after Mr. Zelensky was caught in a fiery confrontation with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Mr. Graham pivoted dramatically. Appearing on the White House lawn moments after the uproar in the Oval Office, Mr. Graham scolded the Ukrainian president for being “disrespectful” and told reporters that Mr. Zelensky needed to “resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or change.”
Mr. Graham said he had anticipated a blowup, claiming to have warned Mr. Zelensky at the morning meeting not to “take the bait” from Mr. Trump.
Democrats in Congress were quick to condemn the episode, and to offer reminders that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been the aggressor in the war on Ukraine.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the scene “disgraceful & downright un-American” in a social media post, arguing that it reflected a White House that had “once again sided with a murderous thug, Putin, over our democratic ally, Ukraine.”
Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, who had participated in the morning’s bipartisan meeting, voiced a similar alarm.
“Whose side are we on?” he asked in an interview. “If you say we’re on Ukraine’s side, today’s events are shocking. If you say we’re on Putin’s side, or the president is on Putin’s side, then it all makes sense. That’s what’s so alarming.”
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, framed the spectacle as an embarrassment on the world stage, calling Trump’s conduct in the meeting “appalling.”
Yet for many Republicans, including some who have long questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, the confrontation was not an embarrassment but a triumph.
The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, chided the Ukrainian president and praised Mr. Trump’s dressing-down of the wartime leader, saying in a social media post that, “What we witnessed in the Oval Office today was an American President putting America first.”
Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee celebrated the U.S.-Ukraine rupture, writing on social media: “The United States of America will no longer be taken for granted. The contrast between the last four years and now could not be more clear.”
And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a leading Republican opponent of aid to Ukraine over the past three years, called the clash a long-overdue reckoning.
“What we saw today is the culmination of an arrogant small man’s ego FINALLY meeting world leaders who won’t put up with it,” she wrote on social media. “God Bless President Trump and Vice President Vance!!”
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