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Watching the disastrous discussion between Zelensky Trump and Vance I wonder how you guys here feel? The whole thing made me nauseous , treating an ally like that is disgusting , unpresidential and certainly geopolitcally inept. The EU-US relationship is not salvagable and at this point I would clap if US bases were emptied and NATO dissolved. Decouple the EU from the US as fast as possible and be independent. There is no way to talk sense into lunatics like Trump and Vance and Putin's control over them somehow seems to be absolute. What an absolute disaster. I know that there will be differing opinions here but at least most of you must agree that this is too much, or not , maybe Russian propaganda really has you convinced that Ukrainians are stealing money and started the war or some nonsense.
America is throwing its empire away for nothing, like @doglatine says. There was no reason to do it. It cost almost no American lives and secured America's place as the richest major nation on earth. The American public were and are wealthier than ever. There were zero downsides bar the occasional volunteer getting hit by an IED in a military they volunteered for. As a percenage of American GDP, it amounted to a pittance, whereas for the British and French, Empire was always an economic burden. What is the reason? Pure arrogance.
Neither Trump nor Vance are controlled by Putin. But both have a strong, angry contrarian streak, which is more than sufficient to explain this. The US has an extroardinarily overvalued currency and has a deficit that will now exceed 6% GDP; Trump is currently trying to pass $4tn of tax cuts with $2tn of spending cuts. That the US can borrow so much, so easily, so cheaply is testament to its extraordinary power and influence, easy to lose, hard to gain.
Yeah I don’t think so. We’re telling the rest of the world that they don’t get everything for free anymore.
Ukraine can’t show up in our country, yell at our president, and try to shame us into giving them more money. JD rightly pointed out that Zelensky was in PA campaigning for KaHa in October. That kind of thing is not acceptably any longer.
Trump said that Zelensky had been maximalist in negotiations, Zelensky rebutted with a boilerplate 'it's hard to negotiate with a vicious enemy' type paraphrase. Trump would have nodded sagely and said nothing or replied with some more ambivalent criticism. The show would have gone on.
Then Vance out of nowhere responds with a comment about litigating the debate in public (which they were all engaged in) and then a ridiculously simpish "you're disrespecting the president, SAY THANK YOU" jibe that made no sense. Trump was and is more than capable of defending himself, and nothing Zelensky said was particularly personal.
That is not what happened though? I don’t mean as an interpretation, I mean that is very objectively just not the course of events.
Trump said something about the importance of diplomacy, and how tough words don’t mean anything.
Vance interjected basically just agreeing with him, but adding a jab at Joe Biden.
Zelensky then turns it into an argument by implying that you can’t be diplomatic with somebody like Putin. Zelensky points out that regardless of diplomacy, Putin has been slow invading Ukraine for 10 years now. Zelensky says “so what kind of diplomacy do you mean?”
Jd: “I mean the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country”, and then goes on to say he thinks it’s inappropriate to try and litigate this in front of the press (I think he’s right).
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