Yesterday, February 28, 2025, a date which will live in infamy – politicalbetting.com
Yesterday, February 28, 2025, a date which will live in infamy – politicalbetting.com
Yesterday’s disgrace in the Oval Office literally left me shaking with anger, Robert Jenrick summed it up accurately and full marks to him for his lack of equivocation.
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I don't think that approach did anyone any favours yesterday but it does mean we were all in "the room where it happened"
I honestly don't think it matters any more - his actions are what count and it is abundantly clear that he is a mortal threat to our way of life. We need to treat him as such.
What is the point?
My take on Spatgate is that I don’t think there was a deliberate plan by anyone to sabotage the meeting. What happened was the result of thin skinned egotists losing it.
After about 30 mins the meeting which has been largely cordial is wrapping up. Vance makes a point targeted against Biden. Says Biden’s chest thumping didn’t stop Putin invading Ukraine. Vance says Trump has the answers - diplomacy (= dialogue) and dealing with Putin.
Z addresses Vance somewhat confrontationally. Makes the point that dealing with Putin doesn’t work. A deal was struck with Putin in 2022 and Putin went back on the deal. Z concludes to V “JD what kind of diplomacy you are speaking about? What do you mean?”
Vance is riled. He feels challenged by Z who is effectively saying Vance is wrong. Diplomacy doesn’t work with Putin.
Vance loses his cool. He is angry that Z has publicly disagreed with his one significant contribution to the meeting, challenging him in front of the whole world. He finds it disrespectful and petulantly reacts saying Zelensky is ungrateful. He raises his voice, points his finger, accuses Z of criticising America, says Ukraine is struggling in its war effort and calls Z disrespectful.
Z does not accept Vance’s portrayal of Ukraine struggling. Warns America that Putin could come for them next and that they will feel the influence (threat) of Russia
Trump - triggered initially by Vance saying Z is disrespecting America is further triggered by Z telling America what it feels and it all kicks off.
Vance pours oil onto the fire challenging Z by asking him if he has even thanked America for its help. Takes him to task for “campaigning for the Democrats in Pennsylvania”
It then further escalates.
Conclusion. Z was perhaps unwise to publicly challenge Vance’s “diplomacy thesis”. Vance felt belittled by this and reacted calling Z disrespectful and ungrateful. Trump was triggered by Vance and further triggered by Z forecasting America would in the future also fell threatened by Russia. Trump and Vance both lose it.
As long as they are views I agree with, otherwise I treat other posters with contempt and cosplay a moderator.
I was really harsh about Starmer's creepy fawning over Trump, at the time, and it looks even WORSE today
However, Starmer and Number 10 did the clever and correct thing in not rushing out some emotional tweet about Zelensky being a hero and always right and implying the Americans are all mad and evil and entirely to blame
Because, as the full video shows, that is not the case
There's some good analysis here, but I think Vance's aggressive, almosr proud inexperience, as Leon alludes to, is key.
Zelensky risks a lot by throwing into doubt any notion of a negotiaton with Putin. Vance then inexperiencedly feels he has to defend both his own idea of diplomacy,, and Trump's dignity, and also do that in a very public, "new politics" way. I doubt that the result afterwards is what he wanted.
A show that's all about him. And his ratings. The most telling thing was Trump's final comment on the row "Well at least it will make good television...." That is the world he knows.
Or rather, they can’t stomach criticism from what they consider to be their inferiors and supplicants. They would sit rigid with Cheshire Cat smiles if Putin or Lavrov started publicly berating them.
Vance in particular thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room and will brook no argument. He was probably sitting there speculating on whether his IQ was higher than Zelenskyy’s.
This is how it works in the White House. There is nearly always a press conference with the invited leader - Trump had one with Skyr Toolmakersson and Madame Macron this week. Think this was in the East Room, like those, as is usual
It's how the Americans do democracy
I think Trump is sincere when he says "America first". That is driving motive here. He clearly doesn't think that far ahead and thinks just saying stuff will magically make things happen.
I watched last night's press conference live and to be honest I cannot recall anything close to the shocking spectacle put on by Trump and Vance
It was sickening and showed Trump, Vance and others in their true pro Putin bully boys colours
My concern this morning is not only Trump's threat to stop all military aid to Ukraine, but also just how dependent Europe and especially UK are on US military hardware and not least for our Trident
Starmer may hope to act as a go between, but frankly I cannot see him making any progress with the new US administration and we with Europe need a new partnership and to include Canada, Iceland and others to modify NATO and to develop closer trading agreements without the need to join the EU, which I think will have to change, not least because it's members are quite openly disagreeing with each other
It also questions whether Australia, New Zealand, Japan and others should be embraced
At least this dramatic and dangerous turn of events came in the year I do not have a birthday, though my Mother always celebrated it on the 28th February !!!!!!
That two-minute clip would have done for him.
Due to the breakdown the afterwards one was cancelled, but having this press conference was not unusual - what was unusual was what happened in it, not that it was held.
"Why aren't you wearing a suit"?
I mean, really? Really? Zelensky is a war leader, they often wear combats and the like to express that status, and fair play, it's not like Zelensky is lying. He was in Kyiv as the bombs fell and as the Russians tried to hunt him down and kill him
It's that ignorant and insulting question that introduces the first discordant note and changes the mood, and you can see how it riles Zelensky (and I don't blame him) - he mentions it several times later (before the Goodfellas out-take)
Vance was obviously there as part of the ambush and the whole aim of the press conference was to belittle Zelensky for having had the audacity to challenge Trump.
It’s been a long term moan from the MAGA crowd about Zelensky. Strangely not a word about Musk’s divorced middle-aged dad fashion choices.
Zelensky was pro-Biden, basically campaigned for the Democrats, was obstructive on Hunter Biden re Trump
And was it the Ukrainians who tried to kill Trump, twice? Or Iran? Who? That question also lurks underneath all this - Trump was half an inch from dying
All this bad blood was bubbling away, and a few missteps from several people (including Z) allowed it to spill over the nice new White House carpet
They've allowed a very self-consciously disparate collection of journalists in for these news conference, to break the hold of the big networks and papers. So Zelensky wax also, probably, partly reacting against this atmosphere, and then didn't help himself either. Vance was the key, thigh, I think.
The reporter who asked Zelensky if he owned a suit, Brian Glenn, is from the pro-Trump network Real America’s Voice and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. He got one of the rare Oval Office interviewer spots after the White House blocked the Associated Press
Zelenskyy was not riled. He was doing classic European/British humour which went straight over the head of the Americans in the room.
He is one of the MAGA New Media idiots let in to replace real journalists like AP
One question, which others have also asked: why was Vance there at all? Vice Presidents aren't usually part of these occasions.
Having noted all that it doesn't feel as though the episode has done anything to either settle the Ukrainian situation or for world peace generally. What it has done, I suspect, is lower less involved observers opinion of all three participants.
However, 18 months or so after I was born a world war started, and I spent my early primary school years keeping a wary eye out for enemy bombers. Is that going to be the case for the last few years of my life, I wonder!
And as for ties, if they didn't exist, what madman would think of inventing them?
On this, as on much else, I stand with Zelensky and Ukraine.
Having a single point of failure means that you are far too vulnerable to failure. A single American army is vulnerable to the US POTUS being problematic as has happened.
Replacing overreliance on a single American army with a single European one would be a catastrophic failing in security. It would put us vulnerable to Hungary, or any dodgy European leader pulling a Trump.
Security is better without a unified command and control, with redundancy. We need coalitions of willing European nations, not a single unified one.
I also don't really care that much. Normal Presidents don't invite foreign statesmen to a press conference and then argue with them, but they also don't release AI videos of themselves lounging in Gaza, manboobs and all. Trump isn't a normal President.
This exchange hasn't really told us anything new. Trump wants to pivot away from the Russia conflict and toward Chayna. In this new context, old poster boy Zelensky, who was once the Greta, Mother Theresa, Malala, Nelson Mandela figure that all wanted to show off, see in his sweatshirt, get a brush of stardust from, is now an annoying encumbrance. Neither view of him is really true - it's just very shocking and visceral to see him go from one to the other.
I don't think policy should be made based on shocking, visceral moments, so I feel pretty much the same as I did yesterday.
As for being a Russian agent, I think if Trump were a Russian agent, he would handle the transition to a pro-Russian policy a good deal smoother than he has. He might discredit Zelensky by bringing forward private information about him and his Government etc. I think he is just someone who doesn't really care about Russia, and disdains the previous US foreign policy that was based on combatting and eventually dismantling it. It is being viewed as Trump’s personal caprice, but this is perhaps a necessary change - the USA cannot hope to defeat the world any more.
"Why aren't you grateful?" "What haven't you shown your gratitude" "You haven't been grateful enough, you bitch" and so on. And then blaming her afterwards for how she didn't handle him well enough, as some Trump supporters have done.
That voice, tone of the male abuser will be very very familiar to many abused women.
The US is not an ally any more. It is not a friend. The risk now is that it actively aids Russia eg by arming it. We need to prepare for this and PDQ.
Oh and the state visit should be for Zelensky not Trump. Giving a second one to Trump now would be as grotesque as giving a second one to Putin.
Zelensky might be well advised to cozy up to China at this point. After all China does not want a US-Russia axis.
Was it deliberate? Was it a case of Vance losing his cool? Was Trump being manipulated by Vance and his backers?
This was not that
I predict this will all blow over, even if I risk sounding like Rogerdamus on Nothern Rock. In the end too many people want/need this war to end, and soon
This was a cockup, due to bad human chemistry. It was very ugly, it was not the end of the world - or even the end of NATO
Military action can’t be driven by consensus
It needs to be a smaller group of key partners IHT an intergovernmental structure
That would have been brilliantly funny, and might have saved NATO
Ukraine could say that Turkey can have Crimea as a reward - once Russia is expelled.
If Europe then doesn't step up, the then endgame would be an Ukraine back under the control of a Russia, with whom Trump would very likely restore full economic relations.
That would be a disaster for the future security of Europe. And us.
Russia might be militarily fairly weak now; in that future it would be anything but.
Preventing that is going to be very costly. Not doing so will cost massively more.
It is quite obvious that he prefers Putin over Zelenskyy.
But Z, like Starmer and Macron before him, was playing to the domestic audience just as much to the international one.
The steadfastness, including in attire, sends a very specific message to his domestic audience, which he of course needs to do. Whether he needs to do that more than he needs to entertain the capricious American public is an impossible question for him to answer.
They can both fuck right off. Again.
A new alignment is needed led by UK and France with not only European nations, but also Canada must be accommodated as it cannot be isolated especially now with Trump's designs on it
How the world changed yesterday with old alliances ended, and new ones needed and quickly
The increase in defence spending across all nations is going to need an immediate and substantial increase including here in the UK.
We cannot wait to the mid 2030s to hit 3%
P.s. if America wants to be isolationist... they should start now. They have been sticking their noses in everything since the "isolationists" came to power...
There was zero criticism of him from the same people who are apparently offended by Zelenskyy's attire.
Because it's ridiculous criticism; designed solely to attack Z.