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People have commented that Zelensky's casual attire and his debating Trump and Vance in front of the media seems disrespectful or challenging to Trump. That's because it is. Contrary to Trump's claim that he has no cards, he does have a card - his popularity in Western media and the US congress. Trump has a thin margin in Congress and foreign policy is an area where a few Republicans are likely to peel off in support of popular wars.
Zelensky is betting that he is more powerful than Trump where it matters. If Trump has no power to withhold ongoing support from Zelensky, then it is Zelensky, not Trump, that controls American Ukraine policy. The press conference and its fallout serves as a test of strength where Zelensky challenges Trump and then gauges the results to see if his assumptions are correct.
That still doesn't give Zelensky a path to achieving any maximalist war objective. But it does give him a path to retaining the status quo of indefinite American material support, which seems good enough to him for the moment. Trump may be the elected President of the United States, he may be taller, better dressed, and more objectively correct about the best path forward. But in an open democracy it is popularity that matters - not any of those other things. And the contest pits Trump against America's most beloved political celebrity of the last three years.
It's no accident that Zelenksy looks like a character from a Marvel movie (strong resemblance to Hawkeye in particular). It is a persona designed to appeal to the American public. The President has a few explicit powers that a celebrity does not. But when it comes to swaying the US congress, it is an even battle ground - popularity vs. popularity, celebrity vs. celebrity. Zelensky thinks he can get 51 votes in the Senate and he's not going to sign any compromise agreement until he is reasonably sure he will lose.
Well he certainly seems to think he does:
I confess to being ignorant of the mechanics of how all this works, and a cursory Google search didn't turn up much, so if someone with more expertise wants to chime in please do. But the news articles coming out today seem to indicate that the President and his national security team have essentially unilateral power to withhold aid from Ukraine if they choose to.
This looks like it fits in with Trump's strategy to increase executive power by refusing to spend funds that Congress has appropriated, like how he shut down USAID. This is still a legal gambit on Trump's part, and it's not clear that he will get away with it.
If he does hold back aid for even a short period of time, the media response will be withering. Zelensky is popular. Does he have enough time before the midterms to weather the storm and pressure Zelensky to come to the table?
According to this, the funding for Ukraine is drawn from multiple sources, and at least some of those sources are under the direct control of the President/DoD:
Would be a bit odd if the President couldn't simply decline to exercise the Presidential Drawdown Authority. It wouldn't be much of an Authority in that case.
So, there are some funding sources that couldn't be canceled without getting into legally murky area, but Trump could choose to cancel a significant portion of it right away.
Interesting, thank you. That does give the President some short term discretionary leverage. But looking out on a longer timeline, Congress has the power to write spending bills that the President cannot stop
Yes, but in the long term, Zelenskyy could be dead, or at least Ukraine could be in a much worse position. A battle between Congress and Trump would take time, and that time would not be on Ukraine's side.
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