President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky had a very tense exchange in the White House earlier this week.
The moment was caught on camera, and the scene played out on screens all over the globe. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance blasted the European leader for lacking gratitude.
Vance wants Zelensky to show more appreciation for the billions that America has poured into the Ukraine war in the past few years.
The Trump administration is also asking for an apology because Zelensky wasted their time with pointless negotiations. After the incident, MAGA world rallied around Trump, and European leaders did the same with Zelensky.
However, one lingering question remains: Why did things unfold this way? Many experts say that the Ukrainian politician fell into a trap and should have seen this coming.
Other commentators believe that Zelensky knew what he was doing and found a clever way to put more pressure on other European countries.
The two views have legs but miss an essential element: Trump’s clear-eyed assessment of the situation. Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, did invade Ukraine, and Zelensky is right to stand up for his people.
However, Trump believes continuing the fight would be a losing proposal for Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio painted a harsh and gruesome reality during a recent interview on CNN. His statement explains why Trump is acting this way.
The former senator from Florida told Kaitlan Collins that former President Joe Biden “was funding a stalemate, funding a meat grinder, and the Russians have more meat to grind.”
This comment displayed the billionaire’s full cynical and fatalistic view of the Trump administration. For the billionaire, there is nothing heroic about standing up to a bully and losing the battle anyway.
Mr. Rubio also stated: “You guys only saw the end, you don’t see all the things that led up to this. The president has been very clear on this, and he campaigned for it. He thinks this war should have never started, and I agree that had he been president, it never would have happened.”
He continued, “Now, here we are. He’s trying to bring an end to this conflict. We’ve explained very clearly what our plan is here: we want to get the Russians to a negotiating table, and we want to explore whether peace is possible.”
Some may call Trump a Putin appeaser, but the president has made it a philosophy to only engage in battles that he thinks he can win.
