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A Fiasco in the Oval Office The dressing down of a besieged ally might be ‘great television.’ But it’s terrible for the United States. Eli Lake

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

On Friday the world witnessed one of the most astonishing spectacles in White House history.

American presidents have surely dressed down besieged allies behind closed doors; never before has it happened on live television. This break with any prior presidential diplomacy must be seen to be believed.

What unfolded between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance turned into a political Rorschach test.

For Trump’s base, the 50-minute exchange was proof positive of America First foreign policy—an ungrateful freeloader gets upbraided by the populist tribune.

For Americans who still cling to the now unfashionable notion that the international system should be ruled by rules and not might, Friday’s incident was a horror.

From the perspective of Europe, it’s the beginning of the end of the Trans-Atlantic alliance.

To recap, after agreeing under pressure from the White House to sign a rare earth mineral deal, Zelensky came to Washington with the intention of repairing his strained relationship with Trump, inking the deal, and convincing the U.S. to keep the weapons flowing to his war effort.

The meeting was intended to be a photo-op before the real discussions behind closed doors—and it began on a cordial note. Trump praised Ukraine’s soldiers. Zelensky politely showed Trump photographs of Russian atrocities.

But then Vance laid a trap. Or at least deviated from the diplomatic niceties. He explained that Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, thumped his chest and talked tough but never engaged in diplomacy with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. “The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy,” he said.

Vance, in this case, was not a reliable narrator of recent history. Biden hosted a virtual summit with the Russian leader at the end of 2021. Biden also waived sanctions on the construction of a second gas pipeline between Russia and Europe in the months leading up to the war. Before Putin invaded, Biden tried for nearly a year to dissuade him from doing it.

Nevertheless, the smart thing to do at this point would have been for Zelensky—who desperately needs America’s military support—to nod politely and let it go.

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Trump 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by John Podhoretz

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/articles/john-podhoretz/trump-2-good-bad-ugly/

The 47th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is a man with a plan. His predecessor, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was not. Trump 45 portrayed himself throughout his first campaign as the embodiment of the electorate’s rage. That was effective in getting him elected and may have had the virtue of being true—but the role of rage-embodier provided little guidance when it came to the day-to-day task of being president. How were you to embody rage while at the same time repealing Obamacare, for example?

Trump 45 had no road map and no agenda. He had a vibe, and his first administration was an improvisation. Now, anyone who’s done (or watched) improv knows that moments of inspired brilliance can arise from a few disparate observations mashed together in an entirely new and unexpected way. But those unfortunate performers and audiences also know those indelible moments are usually outnumbered by the ones that go on too long, or are embarrassingly off-key, or just don’t work. The greatest improv of Trump 45 was the Abraham Accords, and a remarkable accomplishment they were. But then there was the bad improv, most notably the inconstant policy pronouncements and nightly briefings on the pandemic in 2020, which were so uncertain and discomfiting that they brought Trump 45 to its end.

Trump 47 ran for president for two years after the 2022 midterms, and the improviser was no more. His was a tight campaign and it had an overarching through line. The first, and most obvious, was that his successor had done a bad job and was so cognitively impaired, he wasn’t even really the president. That was the classic “binary choice” approach that every candidate running against a sitting president has to deploy: Do you want more of him or do you want to try me instead?

But it was more than that, and what we’ve seen in the first month of the Trump campaign is evidence. What Trump did, in every speech and every rally, was vow to take on and destroy two forces imperiling America’s present and condemning it to a dark future. The first was wokeness. The second was the weaponization of the law and the culture as a means of imposing wokeness on America. From the minute Trump took the oath of office on January 20, his determination to fulfill this vow—which unites even those parts of the right that remain skeptical or worse of Trump himself—has released a kind of primal political energy that has hit Washington with the force of one of those 2,000-pound bombs Joe Biden refused to send to Israel.

As I write, Trump has been president for three weeks. He has promulgated executive orders banning biological males from girls’ sports and recognizing two and only two genders. Other executive orders ended the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in government and extended the ban to institutions that receive federal funding. He has set loose the world’s richest man and most brilliant executive to root out waste in government, with no regard for prior political niceties—or niceties at all. He has targeted foreign aid, which collectively constitute the least popular doings of the federal government. He has sent illegal migrants who have committed criminal acts to Guantanamo. He has suspended government grants. He has moved American troops to the Southern border. He has threatened tariffs, then temporarily suspended them.

These are just the things he’s done that have popped into my head as I have been writing these sentences.

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An Unprecedented Disaster By Abe Greenwald

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/issues/march-2025/

I was three-quarters done with today’s newsletter when an unprecedented disaster at the White House made my day’s work superfluous. So we recorded an emergency podcast (link below), and I’ll just say a few things about the president’s and vice president’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy a few hours ago.

This public ambush of America’s ally was truly unprecedented and truly disastrous. Trump invited Zelenskyy to the White House for…well, for what? 

If it was to bring Ukraine closer to some sort of cease-fire deal with Russia, why blow it up (or let your vice president blow it up) by provoking a fight about Zelenskyy’s invented ingratitude toward the U.S.? If it was to just get Zelenskyy to sign the mineral-rights deal, the same applies. Why let him leave without a guarantee of signing, to say nothing of kicking him out of the White House?

The only thing that’s clear about Trump’s supposed peace plan is that he doesn’t care at all about Ukraine’s position after the missiles and rockets cease. He wants to end the war and end it quickly. The quickest route to doing that is ending it on Vladimir Putin’s terms, without any pushback on Ukraine’s behalf. If that’s clear to me, it’s a lot clearer to Zelenskyy. 

So while Zelenskyy didn’t help his cause by being goaded into a yelling match, what difference would it have made if he responded differently to Vance’s instigation? Had he just sucked it up and endured the abuse with a polite smile or some form of assuagement, would Trump be less inclined to come to a deal on Putin’s terms? Doubt it. Trump’s made up his mind about what he wants. Zelenskyy would have looked, before the whole world—including Ukraine and Russia, obsequious in accepting his country’s defeat. No one can say how best to handle an unprecedented disaster.

The unprecedented nature of the meeting is self-evident. The disaster part is manifold. Before long, Ukraine will have to keep fighting without any U.S. assistance. U.S.-Europe relations might be strained to the breaking point as Ukraine’s neighbors deal with an advancing Putin’s increasing good fortune. To the U.S.’s friends, we look unreliable, immoral, and weak. To its enemies, we look like dupes. They won’t miss the opportunity to take further advantage. Zelenskyy was right in saying that if Putin is left unchecked, even Americans would feel the consequences. That feeling of shame is the first one.  

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Iran’s Regime: Why Diplomacy and Deals Always Fail by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21435/iran-regime-diplomacy-deals

The Islamic of Republic of Iran is a revolutionary state, deeply committed to an ideological mission that transcends conventional diplomacy. Its very core identity is rooted in anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and the goal of exporting its revolutionary ideals worldwide.

This ideological foundation is not just some negotiable policy but an unshakable pillar of the regime’s existence. If the Islamic Republic were to abandon these principles, it would not merely be modifying its foreign policy — it would be dismantling its own identity. The regime cannot and will not abandon its hostility toward the United States and Israel; doing so would strip it of the very ideology that justifies its rule.

The Western dream has been that economic benefits, integration into the global system, and negotiations could push Iran to abandon its radical policies and support for terrorist groups. Iran, however, has mostly used negotiations as a tool to buy time, secure economic relief, then continue its military buildup. Iran’s regime has never wavered from its core mission, which is to spread its revolutionary Islamist ideology and challenge the global order that it views as corrupt and dominated by the West.

Iran’s constitution explicitly enshrines its mission to export its revolution abroad. Article 11 states that the government “considers the continuation of the Islamic Revolution at home and abroad as its duty.” Article 154 states that the Islamic Republic “supports the just struggles of the oppressed against the arrogant everywhere in the world.” This language is not mere rhetoric; it is the foundation upon which the entire state apparatus operates.

The regime’s founding mullah, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, made clear that the Islamic Republic’s ultimate goal is to unite the Muslim world under its own Islamist governance: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.” This ideology is the regime’s very essence. To abandon it would mean abandoning the Islamic Republic itself. That is why Iran’s rulers will never truly compromise, regardless of how many sanctions are lifted or how many agreements are signed.

The world ignored similar signs from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, perhaps in the wish that appeasement would prevent a greater catastrophe. We know how that ended. Iran’s current regime, sadly, will never be a friend to the United States, to Israel, or to the free world — no matter what it is given.

For more than four decades, some policymakers in the United States and the West have clung to the belief that Iran’s regime can be persuaded into cooperation through diplomatic engagement, economic incentives or strategic deals. This persistent delusion has driven various US administrations to pursue negotiations, lift sanctions, shower Iran with cash, and offer it reintegration into the global financial system — all in the hope that such gestures would encourage moderation.

The regime’s record, however, has repeatedly proven the opposite. Regardless of the strategies employed to engage it, Iran’s regime remains intractably hostile to the United States, Israel and the broader Western world.

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Well, Zelenskyy’s Interview With Bret Baier Was… Interesting… Matt Margolis

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/28/well-zelenskyys-interview-with-bret-baier-was-interesting-n4937441

Just hours after being unceremoniously booted from the White House by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to salvage what was left of his diplomatic credibility in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier. And boy, was it a doozy.

Zelenskyy kicked things off with the expected platitudes, thanking President Trump and the American people for their support throughout Ukraine’s three-year war with Russia. “I was always very thankful from all our people. You helped us a lot from the very beginning… you helped us to survive. We are strategic partners, even in such tough dialogue,” Zelenskyy said—sounding like someone ready to capitulate to Trump to get this deal done.

But the winds changed when Baier pressed him on whether he owed Trump an apology for the Oval Office debacle. Instead of showing an ounce of contrition, Zelenskyy doubled down: “I respect president and I respect American people, and… I think that we have to be very open and very honest and I’m not sure that we did something bad.”

Not sure you did something bad? Is getting thrown out of the White House after a shouting match with the leader of the free world not a big enough clue? Ironically, Zelenskyy also expressed that some of the issues ought to have been discussed privately—which is exactly what JD Vance said. 

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Trump, Vance, and the New New World Order The postwar order built on Roosevelt’s naive trust in Stalin and sustained by America’s costly global interventions now teeters on the edge of irrelevance. By Stephen Soukup

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/01/trump-vance-and-the-new-new-world-order/

This past week, the venerable Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for The Financial Times, used his column to declare the Trump administration and, by extension, the United States “the enemy of the West.” “Today,” Wolf wrote, “autocracies [are] increasingly confident,” and “the United States is moving to their side.” According to the subhead on the column, “Washington has decided to abandon…its postwar role in the world.” Meanwhile, Wolf cites the (in his estimation) august Franklin Roosevelt, as he complains that the United States “has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests.”

The ironies here—as well as the historical ignorance—abound.

To start, one would imagine that Wolf, an educated man with two degrees from Oxford, might know that it was his countryman (and two-time Prime Minister), Henry John Temple (i.e. Lord Palmerston), who declared in a speech in the House of Commons that “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Wolf might also be expected to know that this statement was repeated—more famously and more pithily—by Henry Kissinger, perhaps the quintessential American diplomat in the supposedly vaunted postwar order. Kissinger, like Palmerston and Trump (apparently) understood that a nation that pursues anything other than its interests is foolish, faithless, and, in time, doomed.

What bothers Wolf, it would seem, is that American interests are diverging from British and continental European interests. That is unfortunate, but it is also more than likely the case that this divergence is the result of Britain and Europe’s abandonment of the principles, values, and ambitions the allies once shared, rather than the other way around. For example, Wolf criticizes the speech given by J.D. Vance in which the vice president defended the traditional American dedication to free speech and attacked the British and European rejection of that principle. Yet again, Wolf might be expected to know that the American preoccupation with this and all other negative rights is something the nation’s Founders inherited from their British forefathers. If the two nations now differ on the importance of this fundamental right, then that’s hardly Vance’s, Trump’s, or any other American’s fault.

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Video: Victor Davis Hanson on Trump-Zelensky Dust-Up at Oval Office “Usually, in international diplomacy, the client doesn’t dictate to the patron.”

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/video-victor-davis-hanson-on-trump-zelensky-dust-up-at-oval-office/

In this new video, historian and pundit Victor Davis Hanson discusses the Trump-Zelensky dust-up on Friday at the White House, reflecting on how, “usually, in international diplomacy, the client doesn’t dictate to the patron.”

Don’t miss it!

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Trump, Vance Shut Down Zelensky in Jaw-Dropping White House Confrontation And the Left is apoplectic about it. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on March 1st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-vance-berate-zelensky-in-jaw-dropping-white-house-confrontation/

In an astounding public exchange between world leaders in the White House, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance gave Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky a dressing-down that demonstrated American resolve to end business-as-usual for the Ukraine money pit and bring the war with Russia to an end.

Things got off to an awkward start from the very moment Zelensky arrived dressed in his usual  performative, combat-ready green sweatshirt, cargo pants and boots, as if he might have to rush back to the front lines against Russia at any moment. As the Ukrainian leader exited his motorcade, Trump shook his hand and wise-cracked to the press, “He’s all dressed up today.”

Once inside the White House room packed with reporters and cameras, there were 40 minutes of reasonable, calm discussion before Zelensky made what former US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker called a “terrible, unforced error” by demanding security assurances before agreeing to a minerals deal with the U.S. He also argued that previous American Presidents including Trump 1.0 did nothing to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against his country, and therefore the kind of diplomacy with Putin that Vance was urging was pointless.

This prompted an immediate and sharp rebuke from Vance, who upbraided him for “litigating” the war in front of the cameras: “Do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”

The conversation went off a cliff from there, as Zelensky went on to employ the blackmail tactic of claiming that the U.S. has the privilege of “nice oceans” between us and Russia, but that if we don’t help him defeat Putin now, Americans will “feel it in the future.”

Trump then sternly interjected, “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel, because you’re in no position to dictate that.”

An increasingly angry Zelensky tried to talk over Trump, who continued, “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War Three. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country – this country – that’s backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have.”

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A vile equivalence Jews who support the Palestinian death cult pose the greatest danger to the Jewish people Melanie Phillips

Posted By on February 28th, 2025

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

Noa Argamani, the Israeli hostage who was rescued from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces last June, addressed the UN Security Council this week. She spoke about being abducted into a “world of torture and humiliation,” where she tried to comfort two small girls who had been dragged with her into the darkness of the Hamas tunnels and where she saw her fellow hostage, Itai Svirsky, brutally murdered.

Her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, who was dragged into the Gaza Strip with her, remains in captivity. Of the 63 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.

Argamani’s raw testimony was a necessary corrective to the unconscionable indifference in the halls of the United Nations to Israeli suffering, and its shocking embrace of Israel’s genocidal attackers.

Shortly afterward, however, someone else addressed the Security Council. This was Daniel Levy, the British former Israeli peace negotiator and now president of the US/Middle East Project think tank.

Referring to Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the murdered Israeli infant hostages who were buried in Israel in heartbreaking scenes the following day, he said:

A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate, as would a minute of silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.

What a breathtakingly vile comment. Hamas terrorists murdered nine month-old Kfir and four year-old Ariel with their bare hands and mutilated their bodies to conceal the crime. How could anyone equate this monstrous depravity with the fate of children in Gaza killed unintentionally in a war to defend Israel against genocide — killed, moreover, because Hamas uses Gaza’s children as human shields and cannon fodder?

Moreover, the 18,000 figure is merely a claim by Hamas that notoriously makes no distinction between dead civilians and combatants, has reclassified numerous adult fatalities as children and includes as “children” teenagers who serve as Hamas gunmen.

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Syria: Muslims Kidnapping, Possibly Torturing, Christians by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on February 28th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21438/syria-kidnapping-torturing-christians

After forces from the al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group conquered Damascus and overthrew Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024, they urged the residents of the Valley of the Christians to surrender any weapons they kept for self-defense, telling them that civilians would not be harmed. Since the jihadists’ takeover of Syria, however, around 500,000 Christians in the country have been faced with increased persecution and abductions

On February 16, more Christians… were abducted from another village in the area. Their kidnappers, according to sources on the ground, are torturing them.

“HTS’s successive renamings and ‘rebrandings’ appear to echo al-Qaeda’s own strategy in Syria of establishing branches and presenting them as locally-grown organizations arising in response to Syrians’ needs…” — US Commission on International Religious Freedom, November 2022.

Al-Sharaa recently started dressing in a suit and tie, and is now presenting himself to the West as a “moderate.” He has spoken of plans to form an inclusive transitional government representing diverse communities that will build institutions and run the country until it can hold free and fair elections. In schoolbooks, however, his government has been replacing the word “law” with “sharia,” and has been using Islamic teaching to recruit the country’s new army.

“Under HTS-control in Idlib, Christian clergy are not allowed to walk outside in any clothing that makes them recognisable as priests or pastors. Crosses have been removed from church buildings.” — Open Doors, December 2024.

“Islam does not tolerate other cultures.” — “Christina,” a Greek Christian in Syria, to Gatestone, January 2025.

“The new Syria should not be established without parties that represent the minority groups in the country, such as Christians, Kurds, Druze, and Alawites. The official recognition and acceptance of the jihadists by Western governments is like placing swords on the necks of Christians in particular and everyone who disagrees with them in general.” – “Christina,” a Greek Christian in Syria, to Gatestone, January 2025.

Sadly, the persecution of Christians in Syria’s “Valley of the Christians” (Wadi al-Nasara), overwhelmingly inhabited by Greeks originally from Antioch, has been escalating. Antioch is a city in today’s Turkey (now known as Antakya), near the country’s border with Syria. It is among the Turkish cities from which, in the last century, Greeks were forcibly expelled.