Speak up, speak out. Loudly.
Kevin Kruse offers perhaps the best summary of the Trump-Vance ambush of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week:
It’s nice how they’ve replicated the middle school dynamic of the insecure bully and his sniveling sidekick picking on someone surrounded by a circle of scared little boys who also try to talk shit so the bully doesn’t come after them.
Or as the right calls it, “masculinity.”
And on Brian Glenn, the Real America’s Voice reporter(?) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) boyfriend, Kruse adds:
And I mean that literally — he’s [Zelensky] there pleading for funds to save lives and this sniggling manchild mocks his fucking outfit
“It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war,” as the Kyiv Independent opinion page sees it. But, “The American people have not, and they should speak up.”
Please do.
Let this sink in. The president of a battered Ukraine, an ally of the U.S., became the first world leader in history to be kicked out of the White House. Not a dictator, not a disgraced politician — the president of Ukraine, a country suffering from the worst invasion in the 21st century. The country that the U.S. administration swore to bring peace to.
In an ugly exchange, the president and vice president joined forces to admonish Zelensky for “not being grateful” enough for the help Ukraine was getting.
To that, Zelensky reminded them that he had thanked the American people multiple times, including earlier that day. But it appears that gratitude to the American people isn’t what Trump and Vance were looking for — they wanted him to grovel and prostrate himself in front of Trump. Kiss the ring.
For sure, Zelensky could have done a better job composing himself and restraining his reactions, but it’s fair to say that he was put in a situation he couldn’t win. If he let Trump and Vance — and apparently, it takes two of them to win a verbal argument against one non-native English speaker — continue their line of attack on Ukraine, unchecked, he would be seen as weak both at home and abroad. Weakness is something a country at war can’t afford to project
Trump did not get into a pissing match with French President Emmanuel Macron or U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the editorial notes, when they publicly corrected both Trump and Vance “on their provocative and false statements about Europe.” Macron and Starmer may be shorter than Trump but they, like North Korea’s even-shorter Kim Jong Un, possess nuclear weapons. Zelensky does not. Every interaction is a dick-measuring contest for Trump, so Zelensky is the smaller kid Trump and Vance would have picked in the schoolyard to bully.
Except underlying Trump’s and Vance’s bullying performances is this: they are the scared little boys talking shit so a bigger bully, Vladimir Putin, doesn’t come after them.
The Independent continues:
Trump and his government are now making sure Ukraine will lose this war. They are also choking their other allies in the process. But most importantly, they are betraying the interests of America, and making it weaker.
The tragedy is that Trump is doing it all in the name of millions of Americans who completely disagree with that and are disgusted with Trump’s line.
[…]
Americans should stand up and send their political leadership a clear message: We don’t support what you’re doing, so stop doing it in our name. We don’t want an alliance with Russia, and we don’t want a betrayal of Ukraine. And frankly, we are embarrassed.
I’ve said as much in messages to my congressman and senators (all G.O.P.). My hand is raised in protest. My flag is out.
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