(Michael Goodwin’s post from the NEW YORKPOST’s on 01 March 2025.)
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| Zelensky was there to sign the deal. |
Disaster in the Oval Office: Dems lead Zelensky,
Ukraine off a cliff with pressure to reject mineral deal. A common criticism of
Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous Friday performance in the Oval Office is that
he failed to read the room.
Actually, the Ukrainian president did read a room —
but it was the wrong room. Before meeting President Trump, Zelensky met with
anti-Trump Democrats who advised him to reject the terms of the mineral deal
that the president was offering, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
“Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky
here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a
fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no
security arrangements for Ukraine,” Murphy’s office posted on X at 11:15 a.m.
Friday.
He attached a picture of Zelensky at a conference table, with Murphy seated on the opposite side. Forty minutes later, Zelensky arrived at the White House, where Trump met his car, smiled, shook his hand and walked him into the Oval Office.
Arrogant ingrate
The meeting, as the world now knows, quickly went
off the rails and ended with Trump angrily ejecting the arrogant ingrate from
the White House. The earlier meeting with Dems undercuts wild claims that Trump
and Vice President JD Vance staged an ambush. In fact, it was Zelensky who came
with an ulterior motive.
The purpose of the meeting was to sign the mineral
agreement that he and Trump representatives had negotiated. He had twice
refused to sign it after promising to, and thanks to Murphy, we now know he had
no intention of signing it Friday.
By listening to the nakedly partisan advice of Dems
instead of dealing forthrightly with the current president, Zelensky betrayed
his countrymen and, for now at least, leaves them without the military and
diplomatic protection that only America can provide. Good luck counting on
Britain, France and the rest of Europe to save Ukraine. Maybe the Germans will
send strudel.
In a perverse way, Murphy and other Dems got the
outcome they wanted. The fireworks at the White House gave them an excuse to
replay their Russia Russia Russia hoax. Once again, they and their media
handmaidens are dishonestly insisting that Trump is in Vladimir Putin’s camp.
Like the original Russia hoax that consumed much of
Trump’s first term, Russia 2.0 is born of political desperation. After months
of not knowing how to respond to Trump’s fast, populist start to his second
term, Dems up and down the food chain decided that the president’s refusal to
write a blank check to Zelensky and pledge a military guarantee amounts to a
gift to Putin.
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| Democrats already knew Zelensky was not signing the Deal. |
The logic is twisted beyond description, but any
port in a storm will do. And with Trump off to the fastest start of any
president in modern history, Dems are desperate to be relevant.It’s a mark of
their bad judgment that Zelensky is their new hero. He and they have zero
chance of persuading tapped-out Americans that an open-ended commitment of
their tax dollars and possibly sending troops to Ukraine is sensible.
Certainly Trump supporters didn’t vote for that,
and the president himself campaigned on bringing the war to a fast end, not
sending our army to fight Russians. He made it repeatedly clear for three years
that he viewed President Joe Biden’s strategy of providing just enough support
for Ukraine to keep the war going without any plan for victory as a fool’s
errand. He has also been consistent about his desire to stop the enormous loss
of life on both sides and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and towns.
Despite the fact that the president made foolish
comments two weeks ago suggesting Ukraine started the war, I am convinced Trump
truly wants peace. He is not afraid to use the military, but he is not a
warmonger. To that end, he and his White House came up with the minerals plan
that he called a first step to a cease-fire.
The plan went through several drafts and the latest
would have America and Ukraine form a partnership to mine the Eastern European
nation’s plentiful rare-earth deposits, with much of the proceeds going to help
rebuild Ukraine.
Zelensky, who privately agreed to the terms, has
every right to demand a security agreement — up to a point. But he didn’t get
one and his decision to respond by insulting the president and vice president,
interrupting them and waving off their responses, was madness.
As Trump noted, the heated jabs made for great
television, but it was a disaster for Ukraine and a gift to Putin. Zelensky had
an opportunity to apologize to Trump in a later interview with Brett Baier on
Fox, but repeatedly refused to do so, saying, “I’m not sure we did something
bad.”
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| He cheated them by not signing, so they kicked him out of White House. |
Unfortunately for him, there is an audience egging
him on. Beyond Washington Dems, the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas,
wrote on social media that “the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us,
Europeans, to take this challenge. We stand by Ukraine.” Sure, Europe stands by
Ukraine — and will continue to stand by as it gets carved up by Putin’s war
machine.
‘Ukraine is our ally’
Murphy and other Dems are no better, celebrating
Zelensky’s stupendous failure as if it were a victory. Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote that “Trump and Vance are doing Putin’s dirty work”
and the always repellent Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) called Trump a “coward.”
New York’s daffy governor, Kathy Hochul, who seems
to pick a daily fight with Trump, added her two cents, saying, “Ukraine is our
ally. Putin is not. It’s not complicated … This president may not stand with
democracy, but we will.”
Oh, please. Hochul can’t even keep the peace on New
York’s crime-ridden streets. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s rejection of the mineral
deal means there will be no American interests and businesses in Ukraine,
which, as Trump repeatedly said, would help deter Russian attacks.
Moreover, Trump said a final settlement would
require Putin to return some of the lands he has taken, and that France, Great
Britain and others likely would station peace-keeping troops in Ukraine.
All that should have given Zelensky more than
enough confidence to go forward, or at least to raise any concerns in private.
Instead, he used a friendly meeting in front of the press to complain that no
agreement was sufficient without an American security guarantee, despite being
told repeatedly that none would be included in the minerals deal.
He’s right that Putin can’t be trusted, but he’s a
fool for rejecting Trump’s plan and counting on Europe and feckless Dems to
help him get a better deal from Trump. As the president reminded him three
times, “you don’t have the cards” to make the demands he was making, but
Zelensky ignored the advice and the facts.
What a tragic mistake.
