Sorry Donald Trump, I’m not impressed with what you just did
Donald Trump invited Ukrainian President Zelensky into the Oval Office on Friday in front of the cameras, only to have JD Vance rip into Zelensky in vicious and dishonest fashion. Trump then piled on. One of Trump’s flunkies even chastised Zelensky for not wearing a suit. And this all occurred while a Russian state media outlet was “accidentally” in the room despite not having a press pass.
I’ve been doing this for a decade. I’ve just about seen it all. I’ve come to expect Trump’s every move to be disgusting, unnerving, and embarrassing. But even I spent several hours feeling enraged, unable to get past what Trump just did to Zelensky. It was nothing short of a vicious and staged ambush against a key U.S. ally, for the benefit and amusement of Trump’s boss Vladimir Putin. It was, perhaps, the worst thing Trump has ever done in office. And this is a guy who stole classified nuclear secrets and hid them in a Florida bathroom.
But after taking a moment to reflect upon the horror that we just witnessed, something occurred to me: Trump wanted us to be outraged by this. Otherwise why make such a show of it? There are far more concrete ways to hurt Zelensky. In fact, given the sheer number of world leaders who have reiterated their support for Ukraine in the wake of the Oval Office debacle, it’s possible that Zelensky came out of this in a more powerful position. Now that the rest of the world fully understands that the Trump regime isn’t going to help Ukraine no matter what, world leaders seem more likely to increase the flow of funds and weapons into Ukraine.
When Trump plots his stunts like this one, he rarely focuses on who gets hurt. It’s not about that. It’s about putting on a show. It’s about distracting everyone from the current narrative, and goading them into focusing on what he wants them to focus on.
As long as everyone is bashing Trump for what he just did to Zelensky, no one is focusing on how Trump has broken the economy, or how Trump is sitting back and letting Elon Musk run the US government into the ground, or how Trump has become too senile to govern. All these storylines are suddenly in the backseat. The one thing these storylines have in common is that they make Trump look weak. So now Trump has used this stunt to replace those storylines with one that he thinks makes him look powerful: he bullied Zelensky on the world stage.
Sorry, Donald Trump, but I’m not impressed. When fighting against Trump, the most important thing to remember is not to take his bait. If he wants the story to be about how he bullied Zelensky, so be it. But I’m not going to let go of the other storylines about Trump, all of which expose Trump as weak, vulnerable, and in danger of losing power. Let’s take the outrage we rightly feel about what Trump just did to Zelensky, and funnel it into our activism, our protests, and our ongoing effort to expose for all to see just how weak Trump is.
