Dishonor and Incompetence in the Oval Office

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, February 28, 2025

 

So, I was well under way with the G-File when my phone started blowing up—no, not in a Hezbollah pager way—with texts about the Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky.

 

It felt weird to ignore the story and write about something else, so I’m switching gears, writing and thinking as I go. If fresh reporting changes how I see things, I’ll address it next week.

 

I went and watched the entire 50-minute question-and-answer session on C-SPAN (which you can do right here), not just the few minutes in which things got heated. I highly recommend watching the whole thing, as excruciating as it is.

 

I am trying to get my head around what we saw. And when I say “we,” I don’t mean you and me, but the world. I found it appalling and embarrassing for the country. Everyone is going to their predictable sides. Including me. I put the blame for this on Trump and J.D. Vance. When I say “this,” I mean the broader shame and dishonor Trump has brought to the issue of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

 

But I’m open to the idea that Zelensky is at least partly responsible for the spectacle in the Oval Office this afternoon.

 

Marc Thiessen, my AEI colleague, sees it that way. “This is entirely Zelensky’s fault. Trump greeted him graciously, was ready to turn the page,” he tweeted. “Just said he wanted to get help Ukraine get it’s territory back [sic]. And Z comes in and gets into a fight in public? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” My old friend Rich Lowry concurs. And I have friends and colleagues who see it roughly the same way.

 

I think that’s a defensible but wrong reading of the meeting.

 

For starters, this was supposed to be a photo op. Lots of arguments happen behind closed doors between world leaders. They were supposed to head into a meeting to hammer out the details on this mineral deal. Instead, Trump took 40 minutes of questions, some from MAGA loyal “journalists” who asked him stuff like how he mustered so much “moral courage” and what not. At another point a reporter asked a snotty question about why Zelensky didn’t wear a suit and the disrespect that shows to the Oval Office. Now, I think Zelensky should have worn a suit, but I’ll bet good money the dufus from Real America’s Voice would never think of asking Elon Musk that question.

 

Regardless, there were moments, many moments, when it was obvious that Zelensky and Trump were not on the same page and that everyone’s interests would have been  better served to end the “spray” (a term for a brief photo op before the press is ushered out of the room and the serious work begins).

 

For whatever reason, they decided to go on and on. That might not have been part of some larger scheme to blow up the meeting. It might simply have been incompetence and self-indulgence. A more experienced and knowledgeable team—comms team, national security team, heck, janitorial team—would have signaled to the president to end this thing. That didn’t happen.

 

Then, at the 40 minute mark, Vance chimed in with some sycophantic nonsense. He said

 

So look, for four years the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country? Is America engaging in diplomacy? That’s what President Trump’s doing.

 

What makes this nonsense is that, whatever blame Biden deserves for not deterring Russia’s invasion (I’m open to arguments on that front), the fact is that the “words” of Joe Biden were no longer the dispositive issue. His actions were. And we supported Ukraine—with weapons, with sanctions, by marshalling NATO allies to help. Those are actions. Vance is the one doing the pretending.

 

Zelensky returned to a point he made several times earlier in the conversation: that counting on Putin’s word is pointless. He’s broken countless—Zelensky said 25—agreements that Putin personally signed.  Putin has broken promises, violated agreements, lied, cheated, and murdered for decades.  The Wall Street Journal has a good short summary of their broken promises with Ukraine. That’s why Zelensky wants security guarantees, not just “words.” That’s why saying “diplomacy” like it’s some magic word is nonsense. It’s particularly galling from Vance, who has shown consistent contempt for Ukraine.

 

“What kind of diplomacy? J.D., you are speaking about? What do you mean?” Zelensky asked Vance Friday.

 

Vance responded:

 

I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, Mr. President, with respect. I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for … bringing an end to this conflict.

 

This is where things went off the rails. I think it’s plausible, probably likely, that Trump did not want this to blow up. I think it’s possible that Vance didn’t intend to monkey wrench it. I also think it’s likely that Zelensky didn’t either. I’ve also heard lots of folks suggest otherwise. It certainly feels like Vance is trying to bait Zelensky and goad Trump. After all, Trump actually seems to want a deal, but I don’t think Vance does.

 

Lowry, Thiessen, and others are almost certainly right that Zelensky shouldn’t have taken the bait. But Vance, the champion of diplomacy, shouldn’t have baited a war-weary man fighting for the survival of his country in the first place. If he wanted a deal, his job should have been to prevent Trump from being goaded, not to goad Trump. He should have been the one to nudge Trump to call an end to the presser. That’s what Mike Pence would have done. But Vance has his own agenda, and he poorly served his president in service to it. What is his agenda? To be America’s foremost troll.

 

So even if you think Zelensky made a fatal error by actually telling the truth about the predicament his nation finds itself in, even if you think the mineral deal—with no security guarantees—is brilliant, the fact remains that the administration mishandled the situation.  Remember, Zelinsky is a politician too. And for the better part of an hour he was asked to sit there as Trump painted a false moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine and was dismissive of Ukraine’s plight and the history that led to this. If you actually want a deal, maybe don’t do that in public? I mean, the Ukrainians are watching too.

 

In response to Zelensky’s bait-taking, Lowry says that Zelensky “made an excellent point, but he wasn’t there to be right or to win an argument.” Fair enough. But this is yet another situation where others are to blame for not fully adjusting to the fact that Trump is a thin-skinned, malicious toddler with poor impulse control. It’s always someone else’s fault for not enabling or humoring him sufficiently.

 

You know who knows Trump is easily baited into childish outbursts? J.D. Vance. And either out of cynicism or petulant incompetence, he acted on that.

 

So that’s how I see this event in isolation.

 

But since I’m not going to switch gears back to the G-File I’d been working on, let’s instead talk about the broader context.

 

This disaster never should have been possible in the first place. Trump’s position is that we should make a profit over Ukraine’s misfortune. That’s why he insists America should get its money back “plus.” As in we should get back the “350 billion” we gave to Ukraine (a wildly inflated and inaccurate number Trump cannot be talked out of using) plus a little extra for our troubles.

 

That’s grotesque.

 

Even as a rhetorical negotiating ploy, it’s grotesque. In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy Jr. said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” That might have been overly grandiose, but it was directionally right for the leader of the free world to draw those lines. Trump’s—and most emphatically Vance’s—position is “We might help you out, we might not. It all depends on our cut.”

 

Trump has called Zelensky a dictator, but when asked if Putin was also a dictator, he refused to do so, saying “I don’t use that language lightly.” That’s darkly funny, because Trump doesn’t actually consider “dictator” to be an insult. Or rather, he only thinks it’s a useful insult when it’s not true. For strongmen, respect is required. For friends and allies who share our values, contempt and bullying is the preferred course.

 

So ingrained is this deformed moral calculus in Trump’s thinking, he actually thinks Zelensky’s animosity for Putin is unreasonable. “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin, and it’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate,” he said during Friday’s Oval Office exchange. When has Trump condemned Putin’s hatred for Zelensky and the Ukrainian government (Putin calls them Nazis and drug addicts)? And for the idea of Ukraine as a nation or nationality? Doesn’t that make negotiating difficult, too? If it does, Trump doesn’t complain about it because Putin deserves respect, despite his crimes. Ukraine deserves contempt for not laying  back and taking it. And Zelensky deserves contempt for not undermining his country for the sake of a “deal” Trump can brag about.

 

It’s appalling.