This is a good read by Jonah Goldberg.
He points a finger or two at Vance.
This is where things went off the rails. I think it's plausible, probably likely, that Trump did not want this to blow up. I think it's possible that Vance didn't intend to monkey wrench it. I also think it's likely that Zelensky didn't either. I've also heard lots of folks suggest otherwise. It certainly feels like Vance is trying to bait Zelensky and goad Trump. After all, Trump actually seems to want a deal, but I don't think Vance does.
Lowry, Thiessen, and others are almost certainly right that Zelensky shouldn't have taken the bait. But Vance, the champion of diplomacy, shouldn't have baited a war-weary man fighting for the survival of his country in the first place. If he wanted a deal, his job should have been to prevent Trump from being goaded, not to goad Trump. He should have been the one to nudge Trump to call an end to the presser. That's what Mike Pence would have done. But Vance has his own agenda, and he poorly served his president in service to it. What is his agenda? To be America's foremost troll.
So even if you think Zelensky made a fatal error by actually telling the truth about the predicament his nation finds itself in, even if you think the mineral dealwith no security guaranteesis brilliant, the fact remains that the administration mishandled the situation. Remember, Zelinsky is a politician too. And for the better part of an hour he was asked to sit there as Trump painted a false moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine and was dismissive of Ukraine's plight and the history that led to this. If you actually want a deal, maybe don't do that in public? I mean, the Ukrainians are watching too.
In response to Zelensky's bait-taking, Lowry
says that Zelensky "made an excellent point, but he wasn't there to be right or to win an argument." Fair enough. But
this is yet another situation where others are to blame for not fully adjusting to the fact that Trump is a thin-skinned, malicious toddler with poor impulse control. It's always someone else's fault for not enabling or humoring him sufficiently.
You know who knows Trump is easily baited into childish outbursts? J.D. Vance. And either out of cynicism or petulant incompetence, he acted on that.
So that's how I see this event in isolation.
Dishonor and Incompetence in the Oval Office