Americans revel in quadrennial presidential debates and arguments made by talking heads on TV, but many, many people were made deeply uncomfortable by the public tiff broadcast from the White House between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on one side, and the President and Vice President of the United States on the other:
We might wish to ask ourselves — why?
CNN’s characterization of it was interesting:
A remarkable shouting match broke out in the Oval Office on Friday between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, who was hoping to appeal to the US for continued security assistance during his trip to Washington. Raising their voices, Trump and Zelensky — along with the Vice President JD Vance — engaged in a tense back-and-forth about the nature of US support, and whether Zelensky had demonstrated enough gratitude.
But the “shouting match” was figurative, not literal. No one shouted, exactly. But voices were raised as Zelensky and Trump talked over each other. Someone was being impolite in that.
People unused to conflict that is demonstrated politely, and then devolves into a debate about manners, tend to think that all public meetings should be “nice.”
Not when war is the subject matter, perhaps.
In this case, Zelensky made his appeal in public, in a “nice” public setting, and the American leaders, Donald Trump and J. D. Vance, rose, ahem, to the occasion.
They have been called bullies for this, on TV and in social media. Perhaps it is the repeated you should be more thankful line that really galls.
But is Trump right? Is Zelinsky “gambling with World War III”?
Or is it Mr. Trump who gambles with WWIII? The U.S. siding with Russia after invading Ukraine might embolden further aggression by Russia or other authoritarian regimes (read: China).
Whether shouting or not, it was a tad tense. Tellingly, Trump defended the fracas. “But you see, I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on.”