Summary

Trump just presided over one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, with flared tempers, raised voices, and shredded protocol.

Never before has a U.S. president bullied and berated an adversary, never mind an ally, in such a public way.

During a tense Oval Office meeting, Trump and JD Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanding he accept a peace deal with Russia or lose U.S. support.

The conversation devolved into shouting, with Trump accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and “gambling with World War III.”

The meeting ended in chaos, with no agreement reached.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      Zelenskyy is a goddamn hero

      He’s far from being a hero. Zelenskyy just happens to be the president of a country being invaded, if trump was in his place you would be here calling him a hero. Zelenskyy is the president of an authoritarian government who turned to martial law and is drafting people by force while not allowing any male between 18-60 to leave the country.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilization_in_Ukraine#2024

      “In 2023, harsher methods of mobilization began to be used, such as road blocks, business raids, and pulling people from the streets. In the latter half of 2023, videos surfaced online showing Ukrainian men violently dragged into vans and driven to the military recruiting centers”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANxo0gBM6GM

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXhC8WREVKM

      • finder@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Zelenskyy is the president of an authoritarian government who turned to martial law

        Active invasion of their country from Belarus and Russia. What a brain dead take.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilization_in_Russia

        Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics

        The mobilization was accompanied by mass raids on men of military age. In the enterprises of the region, up to 80% of employees were called up, which led to shutdown of mines and public transport, as well as the paralysis of cities and public services. To avoid mobilization, residents hid or tried to illegally leave the republics.[21]

        Recruitment of prisoners

        Implementation

        It was reported that Russian authorities were targeting poor, homeless and people from poorer regions of Russia for conscription.[79][80] Russian authorities drafted detained protestors with no previous military experience, including a 17-year-old boy who was arrested at an anti-war demonstration in Moscow.[81]

        On 14 April 2023, Putin signed into law a bill that would allow authorities to issue electronic summons to draftees.[92][93] The law blocks anyone eligible for military service who has received a digital summons from leaving the country.[94] Russian lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina called it a “hidden mobilization.” According to Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, “Now, any person, regardless of whether he took a summons or not, [or] has an account with Gosuslugi or not, can be arrested and convicted for not going to war.”[95] Russian lawyer and human rights activist Ivan Pavlov said that the “only option is to leave the country as soon as possible, but there is very little time for that.”[96]

        • index@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          Thanks for reporting on the draft in russia too. Forced conscription is form of slavery and a violation of human rights, it should be abolished and every person should fight against it and against the governments forcing it on people.

          When two countries drafting people by force and not allowing them to leave the country get into a war you get a total disaster where poor people are forced to murder each others. The rulers and government behind these authoritarian polices are criminal and enemies of humanity.

          • stroz@infosec.pub
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            14 days ago

            When two countries drafting people by force and not allowing them to leave the country get into a war you get a total disaster where poor people are forced to murder each others

            In this situation, one country got into a war. The other is defending its sovereign territory.

            • index@sh.itjust.works
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              14 days ago

              So if russia were to be attacked by china would it be ok for them to draft people by force to defend their sovereign territory? If you were someone living in russia would you be ok with putin goons arresting you if you try to leave the country?

      • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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        14 days ago

        Wait, are you upset your favourite orange sack of shit is the laughing stock of the world, while Zelenskyy is unanimously praised?

        Aw.

          • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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            13 days ago

            I know that’s very natural for you to go around sucking off every man with a raised voice, but I’m not a republican, I don’t do that. Thanks for the offer, you do you.

      • freebee@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        Most people would have taken the ride offer out of Kiev in 2022. That alone made him a hero. This new incident just adds even more to his hero status

  • x00z@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I checked a few parts for a few minutes. It was too painful to watch.

    Troomp and JD couch showed the worst traits leaders could have. The obvious ones are the American superiority complexes and the toxic need to escalate and talk down upon others.

    In all of the bits I saw when skipping trough it, Zelenksy deescalated the situation multiple times while Trump and especially Vance escalated and started talking like some pretentious teenager bullies that gotten themselves a country.

    Fuck the USA.

  • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    And then to top off his hissy fit, he kicked Zelenskyy out. Like the diaper wearing toddler he is.

        • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          15 days ago

          A petulant child *operating at the behest of a foreign dictator. This whole Stupid Show he’s put on around Ukraine has proven he has Putin’s dick so far up his ass that it does all the talking for him.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      America is an enemy to freedom, democracy, and peace to the world; Americans just haven’t felt it yet.

      They will soon when the dictatorship turns violent, after all checks and balances are removed.

  • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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    14 days ago

    Trump’s unreasonable nature is so obvious in the full video that I don’t see how anyone with two braincells can be on his side. Some highlights I want to share:

    Reporter asks at 37:39 “… and who would protect those minerals … ?” Trump: “They’ll be protected. The agreement will protect them. The agreement, yeah we’re signing an agreement.” Reporter: “Right but what if Russia tries to invade or there’s russian agression in those spots.” Trump: “I just don’t think that’s going to happen.” He then deflects by trying to discredit the reporter since he couldn’t answer the question. So instead of giving Ukraine any guarantees or acknowledging Russia’s previous deceit, he hand waves it away.

    At 33:45 “… what did [Putin] tell you that he wanted peace?”. Trump: “My whole life is deals … I’ve known him for a long time, he had to suffer through the Russia hoax, you know Russia Russia Russia it was a hoax. It was all Biden it was nothing to do with him … I think that he wants to make a deal and he would like to see it end.” What an absolute nothing answer. He’s asked why he believes this is viable and after a short attempt at making Russia the victim he just says, rephrased, “because, lol”.

    At 39:50 Vance goes on a truly incoherent ramble about how Biden tried “thumping [his] chest and pretending that the president of the United States words mattered more than the President of the United States’s actions” and thus “the path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe in engaging in diplomacy”. Ah, diplomacy, the path that is famously known for it’s lack of words… sending money to Ukraine or providing military aid? Those aren’t actions, they’re just words. Zelensky goes on to ELI5 to Vance how Putin broke diplomacy before the clips everyone is posting begins.

    And just for fun, at 30:15 Trump delivers a line so stupid it almost breaks Zelensky’s poker face: “I’ve stopped wars, I’ve stopped many wars. My people will tell you, I’ve stopped wars that nobody ever heard about. I stopped wars before they ever started. … I could give you a lot of nations that would tell you right now they were probably going to war — I could tell you right now there is a nation thinking about going to war on something that nobody in this room has ever even heard about.”

    This is ignoring all the times they try and blame Biden for Russia invading Ukraine which just ???

    • dirigibles@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      You seem to be one of the few people I’ve seen online that seems to have watched the whole video and came away with this take, so I would love a civil response.

      I’m certainly not on Trump/Vance’s side, but when watching the whole video I can’t help but think that Zelenskyy truly failed at understanding the purpose of the meeting and has condemned many more of his countrymen to death. It seemed obvious from the get go that Trump wanted this to be a public deceleration of economic entanglements and that the security discussions would come later. I get Zelenskyy’s point that Russia has been impossible to deal with from a diplomatic standpoint and that he didn’t want to leave Washington without a security gaurentee, but by publicly shaming Russia from the ovel office he is making diplomacy impossible. My impression is that Zelenskyy wants the war to keep going, but I truly don’t understand why. His citizens are dying and they are losing territory. Russia has 10x the population and, historically, has had little reservations about sending their soldiers into the meat grinder. And let’s not forget that if Russia gets backed into a corner, they still have nukes that could escalate the situation to unfathomable destruction.

      From my nonexpert opinion, if I was the leader of Ukrainian I would be trying to make as many economic deals as possible with foreign nations and look to stop the war asap. I truly can’t think of a better alternative than that given the current situation. So my question is, what should the US, EU, and Ukrainians be doing to stop the killing? What is the most realistic path to peace?

      And just reiterate, I don’t agree with the wording and attitude of Trump/Vance during that meeting, but the general sentiment of economic entanglements seems like the best option at this point. No?

      • phlegmy@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        Zelenskyy was only interested in allowing the US to take their ‘rare earth’ if the US was also going to guarantee that it would help their defense against Russia’s advancements.

        Trump claimed the deal had already been made, and tried to make the conference about how great he is and how bad the previous presidents were.

        He praised questions that verbally sucked him off, and belittled those who asked genuine questions about the deal.

        Then the two Americans bombarded Zelenskyy with questions and refused to allow him to answer.
        They talked over him and got upset at him for not sucking their cocks the whole conference.

        Zelenskyy was sent out because the babies in the Whitehouse couldn’t handle somebody who didn’t kiss their feet. He didn’t disagree with the deal, he just wanted more clarification and this was taken as a personal attack.

        The world does not respect Trump or the US. We laugh at their incompetence and look forward to their ego getting checked.

        This whole press conference made the US look like half-assed war profiteers, rather than the ‘freedom fighters’ they like to roleplay as.

      • voldage@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        The idea that any deal with Russia that wouldn’t include rock solid security guarantees would lead to stopping the killing, much less any sort of peace, is extremely naive. This issue is ongoing ever since Russia annexed Crimea, there have been many deals and all of them failed to stop Putin from breaking them. The issue is very simple - Trump can not (and absolutely doesn’t want to, from the looks of things) convince Putin to stop the war, because Putin doesn’t want the war to stop. It was shown time and time again that they aren’t willing to stop their invasion, and only thing that ever thwarted their progress was military opposition. There is no reason to believe that Russia wouldn’t just continue the invasion after the deal with USA is made. And Ukraine wouldn’t have any benefit from this kind of deal, so why would they go through with it?

        Since you watched all of it, as unbearable to watch it was, you probably also heard the comments of Trump in the interview afterwards - that he organized and prolonged this discussion to show the world that Zelensky can not be negotiated with. Whatever you might believe in, it’s hard to imagine that as anything else other than admission that Trump never expected his “deal” to go through. They jumped and insulted the president of soverign country and blamed him for the war their close friend started. If your reaction to that is “he shouldn’t have reacted to the provocation”, then you’re missing the point of why they provoked him in the first place. This way, at the very least, he made sure the world despised Trump and that all other allies of Ukraine were sympathetic. His only choice is to weather this storm until the fascist bubble in USA bursts and there is some chance for diplomacy in the future.

        As for the economic entanglements, they mean nothing in times when USA is incapable of diplomacy and Russia is unwilling of adhering to any deals. Speaking of any trades where Ukraine is giving up their minerals before USA promises to push Russia outside of Ukraine borders is meaningless, and Ukraine wouldn’t get anything out of that.

        • dirigibles@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          Hey thanks for the reply. I know this is an emotionally charged topic, so I appreciate the civility.

          I have read a few books, but I would absolutely consider myself a novice on this topic. There is a deep history in that part of the world that I’m sure I will never fully appreciate. I think I am better understanding your point of view, but I still can’t wrap my head around it completely. If you’ll indulge me, let’s table all of the personalities. Forget about Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy, etc. Forget about exactly what words were used during that disastrous press conference and the various followup interviews.

          How do we push back at Russia without further risking nuclear holocaust? From what I understand, it sounds like Ukrainian membership into NATO has always been a pipe dream and a complete non-starter. If the USA, Europe, or others put boots on the ground, surely that would spark a dramatic increase in hostilities from Russia.

          To your point, I absolutely agree that Russia has reneged on various deals in the past and should not be trusted. I would imagine the only thing that we can trust Russia to do is to act in their own best interest…and honestly, I would say this about any country/corporation/person.

          I would think Russia will only walk away from this war when they are able to point at something that looks like victory. So how do they get that while also ensuring the safety and stability of Ukraine? What is the path to peace if not economic entanglements?

          Maybe I am being a bit naive about how the world works, but I would hope that if a private US or European company was in a particular region of Ukraine performing mining, logistics, or construction; maybe Russia would think twice before bombing or attempting to take the region over. No?

          • voldage@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            Russia invaded Ukraine under a very weak pretense of de-nazification, and buldozed over a lot of privately owned means of production, including foreign owned. They had some reputation to lose back then, now the worst that could happen would be Trump getting pissed at them and threatening them to escalate the war, but never doing so, because he’s still beholden to the capital interests, and this war has been extremely lucrative for the world’s main exporter of weapons. At best(for Putin) Trump would claim that Zelensky is using private contractors as human shields and that Zelensky broke the deal because the yield of the mining operations was lower than promised, and because of that USA will help Russia deal with the terrorists that overtook the land.

            As for the nuclear war - billionaires that push this war forward for their profit aren’t interested in living in bunkers, they want to lie on beaches and be sucked off by sex trafficed slaves. The war will never escalate beyond the point where it would endanger their profits, and definitely not to the point where they might worry for their lifes. No major player in this conflict that’s capable of employing a nuclear armaments will ever do so for those reasons, not to mention the soft power they would lose if they did - not that Trump and Putin are very concerned with soft power…

            Russia doesn’t mind continuing, USA doesn’t mind either, it’s just that Trump lied in his campaign promises that he did, and now he’s making a stink about it not being possible because Zelensky is a dictator. If they can cause an election in Ukraine and do a coup once Zelensky wins, or forge some different series of events that leads to Ukraine changing it’s president to one aligned with Russia, then it would be a preferable outcome for them, but it’s going to be difficult without losing a lot of influence and power, and Trump is already very unpopular, so I feel it’s unlikely they would try, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Trump antagonized both the world and his own citizens, and the backlash is growing to a degree where he might lack means to control it. Zelensky probably saw that as his most viable way out, so he chose to argue with Trump and J. D. Vance, and hoped that the backlash will limit their further meddling. Not that he had any good option there, but out of bad ones this one at least didn’t lock all Ukrainian cards in a bad deal. At this point Ukraine can try dealing with Europe, Turkey (was it Turkey? I think so) or even China, and they still have those tasty minerals that Trump helped advertise.

            Europe in general has to rethink their means of defence, and if Ukraine has something valuable, a new military alliance with more hawkish stance against both Russia and USA, one that would include security assurances for Ukraine and other member states, is not out of question. If fascism in USA keep getting worse, then Europe will definitely need it. If the bubble bursts, they may include USA in this alliance in the future, though probably without as much sway as it had in NATO. Not saying that it will happen, just a wild shot in the dark, but there are more options for Ukraine now, than if Zelensky went along with the farce, and, I don’t know, apologized for being a dictator and promised to be a good boy.

            • dirigibles@lemmy.world
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              13 days ago

              Thank you for the well reasoned response. My fingers are crossed that your analysis is on point and a speedy resolution is found. 🤞

  • e$tGyr#J2pqM8v@feddit.nl
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    14 days ago

    Their first, still very polite disagreement that evening was when Trump said that the US has given a lot more aid than Europe did, to which Zelensky very politely replies ‘they gave a lot’, clearly avoiding the obvious ‘they gave more’, to which Trump then replies ‘they gave a lot, but much less than we did’, to which Zelensky replies with a clear ‘no.’ and then they laugh. You could argue that Zelensky does not need to do that, but he gives credit where credit is due to the Europeans, and he doesn’t let a blatant lie about an ally slide. It’s the type of moment that’s beautiful and horrendous at the same time. Source: https://youtu.be/CSe0ntgfpq4?t=726

  • Arda@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Most pathetic behavior from nation leaders i have ever seen, how Trump and Vance even talk is unbearable, its like watching the Boys in actual real life unbelievable. It would be funny if the world wasnt at stake

  • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    Holy shit, Trump stopped the war on Day 1, just like he promised. What a genius of diplomacy. The artist of the deal. So american 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

  • arc@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    The stupid part is that Trump / Vance made themselves look like assholes. Zelensky was over to sign a deal and they threw him out for disagreeing with their dumb talking points. And far from making America “great”, I expect that Canada, Europe, UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea etc has collectively decided that they need to reduce their dependence on America while these malignant narcissists are in charge.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      while these malignant narcissists are in charge.

      Not just then. Even if a standard quo administration magically appeared right now, it has been proven the the US can turn into a fascist dictatorship on a dime. It’s an extremely unstable country and should be kept at arm’s length as long as it has the current system of government, no matter who’s in charge.

      • uienia@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        He is a patholigical liar. He doesn’t need to have any source for his stories. His lying is completely integrated into his being, just like breathing.