Donald Trump rebuked Ukraine president on Friday afternoon for the excessive “hatred” of Vladimir Putin and inadequate gratitude for the United States.
This extraordinary dust came at the end of the tail of a press conference, presenting President Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vice President JD Vance. Zelenskyy had come to the White House in the hope of burning relations with the US, in part creating a deal giving America a financial action in Ukraine’s mineral property. On the contrary, the Ukrainian leader provided little from his American counterpart beyond public ridicule.
Tensions began to light when Trump defended his hesitation to publicly criticize Putin, saying that Zelenskyy’s “hatred” to Russian leader was a barrier to peace. Vance Buttresses Trump’s position arguing that Joe Biden’s “harsh” conversation had done nothing to prevent Russia’s occupation and that the path to peace was through “engaging in diplomacy”.
Zelenskyy then expressed reservations about Vance’s reasoning. The Ukrainian President noted that his country had signed a ceasefire with Russia after its occupation in Crime in 2014, however it had not provided sustainable peace. Therefore he was not inclined to hit another peace agreement, guarantees in the absence of security that would prevent Russia from re-encompassed to capture more Ukrainian territory in the future. On these bases, Zelenskyy asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you talking?”
The vice president took an exception to this question and accused Zelenskyy of disrespecting the United States trying to “judge this before the US media”. He then told Zelensky that “he should thank the President for trying to end this conflict.”
Trump continued to tell the Ukrainian President that he was “gambling with the lives of millions”, and that he did not have “cards now”, while Vance repeatedly demanded that Ukrainian president say “thank you”.
For the liberals, some Republican foreign policy hawks and most European leaders, Trump and Vance’s behavior constituted a historical shame: the US president had publicly mocked a US ally fighting an occupation, thus undermining his (hypothetical) position diplomatic negotiations with his oppressor.
However, for Trump’s admirers on the right, his dress by Zelenskyy was the cause of catharsis and pride. The American conservative magazine greeted the dust as “a great explanatory moment” in which a US president finally stood up on Washington’s warm foreign policy. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon praised the performance of the administration as a “master class in the way of dealing with a Punk with right”. Similar feelings were released by other conservative influenza, social media users and politicians.
The enthusiasm of the right to humiliate Zelenskyy has two distinct sources.
First, among the most radical social conservatives of America, Putin’s Russia has long commanded admiration as an example of traditional sexual morality, in an increasingly decadent world (ie LGBTQ friendly).
Second, a wider group of contractual commentators, isolation intellectuals and nationalist voters believe that the benefits of Ukraine’s aid are scarce, while the risk of tail is catastrophic. This perspective takes many different forms. However, in his most extreme interpretation, Zelenskyy is understood as a voice: a “dictator” who is leading his tired population in a meat meat while trying to include the United States in the United World War.
Both of these perspectives are lamentable. But the unfounded pro-Putin right is perhaps clearer than its co-partisans diligently “against war”: Trump’s clothing of Zelenskyy undoubtedly strengthened Russia’s position, but there are few reasons to believe that it has rushed the return of peace.
Why the right fell in love with Putin
When Vladimir Putin buried the Russian presidency in 2012, he faced a slow economy and boiling public discontent. To support his support, Putin reassesses himself as a Crusader for the traditional values of the Russian nation. Putin’s difficult right turn center was a so-called anti-propaganda law that banned the positive portraits of LGBTQ people in the media available to minors.
In the engagement of the autocrat, this blow to civil freedoms not only restored the godliness to Russian society, but also founded its nation as the great defender of Christianity on the world stage. “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have left their roots, including Christian values,” Putin said in December 2013. “Politics are being followed at the same level a family of many children and a partnership of the same sex, a belief in God and a belief in Satan. This is the way to degradation.”
At a time when American social conservatives felt themselves losing the struggle of culture in general – and the fight against homosexual equality in particular – Putin’s words and works were an inspiration. In a 2014 column, the former Nixon Pat Buchanan’s writer suggested that in the “New Ideological Cold War”, God was on the Russian side. Three years later, the researcher of the Claremont Christopher Caldwell Institute stated that if “we would use traditional measures to understand leaders, which include protection of borders and national flourishing, Putin would be counted as the main man of the state of our time.”
The growing links between the Christian law of America and the Kremlin were not merely ideological but also institutional. Russian oligarchs have contributed to funds to the World Congress of Families, an American Christian organization promoting discrimination against LGBTQ people, stopping abortion and other reactionary causes.
The conception of Christian law for Russia as a bastion of moral test-closed in a cold war with an increasingly decadent West-informed of its understanding of the Russian-Ukraine war. In a July 2022 column for The Daily Wire, Jordan Peterson’s reactionary commentator Jordan Peterson suggested that Russia’s incursion in Ukraine may have been an act of self-defense against western extension. In Peterson’s story, the conflict between Christian and progressive values had increased “quite serious to increase Russia, to say, will be motivated to conquer and potentially unable Ukraine simply to keep the pathological West outside this country.”
From this advantage, Trump’s willingness to reduce the Ukrainian President and project a neutral stance on war – contrary to the global elite – constitutes a heroic defense of Christianity.
To the right anti-anti-Russian, zelenskyy is a dictator who wage a nuclear war
Pro-Putin law is a marginal force in American life. In a study of the Pew study in 2024, only 8 percent of US voters said they had faith in Putin to “do the right thing” in world affairs.
But the exhaustion with the financing of the Ukraine war is more widespread. A Pew survey last month discovered 30 percent of Americans – including 47 percent of Republicans – saying the US was providing “too much” support for the protection of Ukraine (according to Pentagon, the US has spent over $ 180 billion in the war so far).
There are fewer and less ideological versions of this feeling. The less politically engaged voters may not have a strong opinion on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but they simply think that their government should spend less money on foreign countries and more to help their people. From this nationalist perspective, Trump’s and Vance’s complaint about the lack of Zelenskyy’s gratitude for America’s altruism can be resonant.
However, the first insulators of the First America have a deep dissatisfaction of the Ukrainian President. In their analysis, Zelenskyy is a dictator who cancels elections and refuses to accept a ceasefire, thus condemning his people to death in the service of an undesirable war. What’S worse, the Ukrainian leader is seeking to cause a hot war between the United States and Russia – that is, World War II – as he knows he can only win with the US Army’s direct help.
This argument has little factual basis. It is true that Ukraine has not held previously planned elections since the beginning of the war. But the constitution of the nation prohibits such elections in terms of military law, in which citizens in occupied or embedded areas would be distributed. And, although Ukraine will probably welcome the Military Intervention led by the US in its defense, there is no evidence that considers it as a distant opportunity.
However, this analysis has been proven known to the contrary podcasters and isolation intellectuals. Last November, Joe Rogan exclaimed Zelenskyy for rocket shooting in Russian territory. He also mocked Zelenskyy for the claim that Ukraine had terrified Putin.
“Fuck you, man,” Rogan told the Ukrainian President. “You filthy people will start World War II … … This is cocaine -like behavior. ‘Putin is scared, man, terrified by Putin.
In particular, Rogan’s suggestion that Zelenskyy’s thinking was distorted by the use of cocaine was echoed by the Kremlin Friday. “A tough dress in the Oval office,” Putin’s adviser Dmitry Medvedev wrote in the telegram: “Trump told the cocaine clown the truth on his face for the first time.”
For those who believe that Zelenskyy is an increased coke self -conscious that schemes to launch a nuclear war, Trump’s ritual humiliation for the leader was more triumph than shameful.
Trump’s rest with zelenskyy is more likely to advance Russian imperialism than peace
The enthusiasm of the pro-part right for Trump’s dust with zelenskyy is well established. Ukraine cannot store existing battlefield lines – or exercise a considerable lever on the negotiation table – without American support. And now it seems that the Trump administration is indifferent to Ukraine’s fate. Following Friday’s press conference, Trump stated that he did not want Ukraine to have a “advantage” in negotiations with Russia.
Similarly, if one deals only with minimizing the threat of American war -Russian or US spending on foreign nations, then Friday events may reasonably be a source of encouragement.
But the self-war right of self-war often claims to be indignant by the deaths of the Ukraine war and desires for peace. To the extent such remarks are sincere, they should not receive much comfort in Trump’s denunciations for zelenskyy.
Conservative isolationists often speak as if Putin has made a ceasefire agreement, which Ukraine has stubbornly refused to accept. And yet, precisely because Russia enjoys natural advantages in a prolonged conflict (as the insulators sometimes point out), it is not necessarily inclined to determine its wings. And this can be the truth if Russia believes that an interruption of US support for Ukraine is immediate – a development that would drastically improve the Kremlin’s prospects for further territorial benefits.
This is all good and good for those who want to see the progress of the Russian theocracy and to withdraw Western liberalism. But it should bring some pleasure to the sincerely dedicated conservatives to peace.