March 1, 2025

Saturday, March 1, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Trump and his lackey J.D. Vance ambushed President Zelenskyy of Ukraine in a staged meeting in the Oval Office with television cameras present.

“This is going to be great television,” says Trump.

Reactions from American and world leaders.

Governor Josh Shapiro
@GovernorShapiro
Pennsylvania is the proud home to over 150,000 Ukrainian and Ukrainian American people. Some have planted roots here for generations – and tens of thousands are here to find safety after fleeing Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

My statement on today's White House meeting with President Zelenskyy

Joint statement from Democratic Govs. Kelly, Beshear, Evers, Ferguson, Healy, Hochul, Lujan Grisham, Mills, Murphy, Pritzker, Shapiro, Stein, Walz and Whitmer:

“Donald Trump and JD Vance used the sacred Oval Office to berate President Zelenskyy for not trusting Putin’s word.”

Thomas Friedman summarizes what we saw.

This Never Happened With an American President Before.

What happened in the Oval Office on Friday — the obviously planned ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.

You want an analogy? Imagine if, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the White House this month, Trump and Vance told him that the war with Hamas had gone on too long, too many lives had been lost and it was costing America too much money, so it was time for Bibi and the Israeli people to do a deal with the Hamas aggressor.

Because Russia did to Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, what Hamas did to Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — a surprise invasion, murder and the ensuing sexual violence to wreak destruction on another nation and its society. Trump took Bibi’s side 110 percent against Hamas, and now he is taking Putin’s side 110 percent against Zelensky and Ukraine.

It is hard to express what a break this is in American foreign policy. We stood on the side of liberty and those fighting for it around the world. There are times the isolationist forces in our population have held us back and had to be persuaded. There have been times when — in support of the larger cause of liberty — against dangerous foes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, we had to align ourselves temporarily with dictators.

But I can’t think of a single time when an American president declared that the democratically elected leader of a country preserving liberty was a “dictator” who started the war with his neighbor — when it was the vicious neighboring dictator who actually started the war.

If you listen to Trump, everything we have done for Ukraine is pure altruism. We have no actual interests at stake ourselves in its fate or the triumph of liberty there. We have no actual interest in the fact that Ukraine is protecting the European Union — a giant, pro-American alliance of free markets and free people. It doesn’t matter a whit to Trump what happens to the E.U. or Ukraine. All that matters is that Zelensky says “thank you” louder for our altruism and that, in the middle of his war of survival, sign over a generation of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to us.

This is a total perversion of U.S. foreign policy practiced by every president since World War I. My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.​ (Op-ed, New York Times).

Jonathan Alter summarizes what we saw.

A Low Point for America - OLD GOATS with Jonathan Alter

Trump and Vance bully an ally

See you tomorrow.