Low Blows in the Oval

One of the lowest moments was JD Vance’s Goodfellas groin-kick of “Just say thank you…Have you said thank you once?”

I was convinced halfway through the Oval Office beatdown of President Zelensky that we were going to get the political version of that epic 2022 Oscars moment when Will Smith strode up to Chris Rock on stage and smacked him in the face. Zelensky would have been well within his rights. It’s hard to know what was the most apt moment for Trump – and his 3D internet troll JD Vance – to receive a knockout punch in the kisser from the Ukrainian president. Trump taunted him, “You don’t have the cards.” “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with WWIII.” “I've empowered you to be a tough guy.”

One of the lowest moments in the exchange was JD Vance’s Goodfellas groin-kick of “Just say thank you…Have you said thank you once?” As if he expected this valiant war hero who has led the resistance to the Russian tyrant for three agonizing years to crawl across the floor like a supplicant serf and kiss the emperor’s feet.

Zelensky, it must be said, wasn't at his best, arriving at the end of a week in which we had seen Macron's boyish Gallic charm and British PM Starmer’s brilliantly pregamed flattery and poise. Starmer’s hand-delivered invitation to Trump for an unprecedented second state dinner at Buckingham Palace (cut to the planning meeting at Number 10 with Starmer and his Foreign Office advisers rolling with laughter as they cooked up this obvious ploy) worked like a charm on King Cheeto, who loves nothing more than photo ops with real royalty.

There’s a rough edge and a gruffness to Zelensky, who projects a bantam self-confidence in the face of bullies. On this occasion, it would probably have been advisable to open with a flowery speech about gratitude and the great return he would make to the US by handing over a large portion of Ukraine’s critical minerals. But diplomatic charm is easier to access when your country is not facing eradication before your eyes. Zelensky knows that, in Trump’s pretend peacemaker rant, “stopping the killing” is a euphemism for demanding Ukraine’s surrender to Putin and allowing the US to rip off Ukraine’s mineral wealth with no security guarantees in return. When Trump snarled, “You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position,” it was clear that what the U.S. president really wants is to browbeat Zelensky out of office—a dream scenario for Putin, who could then engineer the installation of a puppet. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who seems to have had a head transplant since a year ago, when he prayed all night for the strength to put his job on the line to push Ukrainian aid through the House, and one-time hawk Senator Lindsey Graham piled on with calls for Zelensky to go. “I can give [Graham] citizenship of Ukraine, and he will become a citizen of our country. And then his voice will start to gain weight,” Zelensky shot back. In more annals of moral amoeba, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once a fierce supporter of Ukraine, followed up the Oval Office meeting with a gaslighting account on CNN of the “fiasco” Zelensky had turned it into.

The fact is that Trump’s animosity toward Zelensky is personal and always has been. Trump will never forgive him for the fateful “ perfect” phone call in 2019, when he was caught pressuring the newly elected Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden in return for more Javelin anti-tank missiles, a shakedown that led to Trump being impeached.

Nothing enrages the 47th president more than confronting people with intractable principles. Zelensky’s bravery as a wartime leader is an affront to Trump’s amorality. It’s all in Othello. POTUS is the perpetual Iago, who hated the admired lieutenant Cassio because “he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”

Even so, Zelensky is going to have to eat crow and apologize.

Tea and Sympathy

British PM Sir Keir Starmer got his first good headlines in the UK in months after his White House performance. He is, at last, emerging as an impressive statesman after a lackluster and amateurish opening to his premiership, and an embarrassing flimflam scandal about a donor paying for his designer eyeglasses. Those who know him well say his strengths as the former Director of Public Prosecutions—a deep reading of his briefs, relentless prep, and the plotting of farsighted strategy, the kind of unsexy attributes that bore the press, who love talking about “optics”—are now suddenly seen as skills that match the hour.

There is nothing like the crucible of a crisis to lay bare a leader’s grasp of power. In the House of Commons on Monday, Starmer referred to Trump’s “continued commitment to that peace, which nobody in this House should doubt for a second is sincere." It was a deft squeeze on the U.S. president, just as it was a smart move for Starmer not to join in other European leaders in posting outraged tweets over Zelensky’s Washington humiliation. Instead, the British PM emerged from Number 10 to greet the Ukrainian leader on Saturday with a bear hug on the sidewalk.

Trump, best buddy of loudmouthed Brexiteer Nigel Farage, has brought Europe together in ways we haven’t seen through all the bitter years since the Vote Leave referendum. It has allowed Starmer, the stalwart Remainer when he was Labor’s Brexit secretary in the Boris Johnson years, to play the independent chairman of a reinvigorated alliance, the leader who can corral the Europeans into stepping up defense spending and crafting their own peacekeeping security bloc, a move long overdue, with or without Trump’s goading. Starmer, his infamous designer eyeglasses agleam, presided over a pivotal meeting he convened with 18 world leaders at the illustrious setting of Lancaster House in St. James’s. It was an image of a war prime minister in the making, and one the rest of the shell-shocked continent can trust.

But the most heartwarming picture of the week, the one that most restored Zelensky’s dignity, showed the berated Ukrainian hero standing with a beaming King Charles III in front of the fireplace at Sandringham House, where you will always find him during the shooting season. Like his mother Queen Elizabeth, Charles knows how to say nothing but do the right thing. It was a glimpse of vanished stature in an era of base brutality. Cue the WWII chanteuse Vera Lynn’s “The White Cliffs of Dover.” There'll be love and laughter, and peace ever after, tomorrow, when the world is free.