WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, on Friday effectively took the side of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in his brutal invasion of Ukraine, calling visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “disrespectful” and telling him he has “no cards” with which to negotiate.
“You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out, and if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty,” Trump said, berating Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in front of gathered reporters.
Vance added: “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media… You should be thanking the president for trying to bring you into this conference.”
Trump has been trying to coerce Zelenskyy into handing over Ukraine’s mineral rights in exchange for U.S. support, and the purpose of Zelenskyy’s visit was ostensibly to reach an agreement. Trump then told Zelenskyy that the Ukrainian leader was currently in no position to complain about the state of affairs, even though it was Putin, not Zelenskyy, who began the bloody three-year war.
“You don’t have the cards, but once we sign that deal, you’re in a much better position, but you’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing, I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing,” he said.
Trump and Vance’s insults of Zelenskyy came at the tail end of a nearly hour-long photo opportunity in which Trump invited questions. Trump grew visibly angry and ended media availability with: “I think we’ve seen enough.”
A planned joint news conference was canceled and Zelenskyy left the White House about an hour later. No agreement was signed.
By that point, Trump had already attacked Zelenskyy in a social media post:
“We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today. Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”
Trump is trying to force Ukraine, which has been under a near-daily missile and drone barrage from Russia for three years, to turn over rare earth mineral deposits to the United States to pay for U.S. military aid the country was provided under former President Joe Biden.
The new efforts at coercion come six years after Trump’s first attempt to extort Ukraine, which had its origins in Trump’s choice to accept Russian help to win the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
During his discussion with Zelenskyy, Trump went off on a long tangent about the investigations into Putin helping Trump win the presidency in the first place in 2016. Although the details of Russian involvement were confirmed by both special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and a separate inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump has lied that it was a “hoax.”
After sending his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to dig up evidence that Ukraine had tried to help Clinton in 2016, Trump attempted to extort the then-newly elected Zelenskyy into announcing an investigation into Biden, whom he most feared as an election opponent in 2020. Trump was impeached but not removed from office for that action.
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Trump’s animosity toward Zelenskyy has clearly endured in the years since.
On Friday, Trump ranted about the investigations into Russia’s 2016 election interference in response to a question about how he could trust Putin to honor any peace agreement. Trump told reporters that Putin was similarly wronged by the investigations and then inexplicably dragged Biden’s son Hunter and California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff into his answer:
“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him in ‘Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.’ You ever hear that deal that was a phony, that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam, Hillary Clinton, shifty, Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam, and he had to go through that. And he did go through it.”
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Trump continued, “We didn’t end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. Came out of Hunter Biden’s bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden’s bedroom. It was disgusting. And then they said, oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia, the 51 agents. The whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. He was being accused of all that stuff.”
It was unclear exactly what Trump meant.
Trump claimed during his campaign to win back the presidency in 2024 that he would end the war in Ukraine prior to taking office. For years, he has claimed without evidence that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine had he remained in office in 2021 ― even though Russia was actively fighting to take Ukrainian territory in the eastern part of the country during Trump’s entire first term.
