Busy weekend, so I’m behind and have three days of political links to catch up on. I’ll triage.
- Reactions to the meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump/Vance/et al;
- Conservatives react by projecting;
- And links without comments about corruption, witchcraft, getting worse, contempt, taking credit, chaos, WSJ, and price of eggs.
Beginning with: The Trump/Vance/Zelensky meeting was a setup.
Slate, Jim Newell: Volodymyr Zelensky, subtitled “A setup.”
It was clearly a setup, with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance intent on lecturing and provoking Zelensky as ungrateful, arrogant, and dismissible, all to scratch an itch with the base. It became a three-way shouting match, the visit was cut short, and the minerals deal didn’t get signed. The body language was stunning: Vance was having the time of his life, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seated next to him, looked as if he might vomit. The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. had her head in her hand. … It was embarrassing. But to Trump, what matters is that it was “great television.”
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Same point from Tom Nichols.
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 28 Feb 2025: It Was an Ambush, subtitled “Friday marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.”
Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation fighting for its very existence.
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The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 28 Feb 2025: The Real Reason Trump Berated Zelensky, subtitled “He simply likes Vladimir Putin better.”
Of the many bizarre and uncomfortable moments during today’s Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky—during which Trump finally shattered the American alliance with Ukraine—one was particularly revealing: What, a reporter asked, would happen if the cease-fire Trump is trying to negotiate were to be violated by Russia? “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now?” Trump spat back, as if Russia violating a neighbor’s sovereignty were the wildest and most unlikely possibility, rather than a frequently recurring event.
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In classic fashion (i.e. projecting their own inclinations toward criminality upon their opponents), Republicans, most of them anyway, have *defended* Trump et al and have called Zelensky the boorish one who needs to apologize. None in the intelligent press sees it that way. No one in Europe sees it that way. But I haven’t collected any of those links, and Trump fans will never see them on Fox News or Daily Caller or whatever else they look at. There’s a real world out there they only see filtered through their ideological biases.
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Now a bunch of links with no graphics and minimal comments. (This is the second stage of triage.)
The Trump administration is nakedly open to corruption: The Bulwark, Mona Charen, 27 Feb 2025: Trump 2.0: Open for Corruption, subtitled “Firing watchdogs, rolling back reforms, and using government to reward friends and punish opponents.”
JMG, 28 Feb 2025: Anti-Witchcraft Candidate Named Navy Undersecretary (from The Hill)
The Globe and Mail [Canada], Andrew Coyne, 28 Feb 2025 (via): Brace yourselves: whatever crazy, awful things Trump may have done to date, it’s only going to get worse
Washington Post, Matt Bai, 24 Feb 2025: The blinding contempt of the DOGE bros, subtitled “Terrorizing USAID isn’t reform. Here’s an inside story of Elon Musk’s takeover.”
NY Times, 2 Mar 2025: DOGE Claims Credit for Killing Contracts That Were Already Dead, subtitled “Elon Musk’s group claimed credit for canceling procurement agreements that had been completed years earlier, the latest in a string of public errors on its site.”
The Atlantic, Matteo Wong, 2 Mar 2025: ‘It Feels Like It’s Chaotic on Purpose’, subtitled “Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency laid off a team whose purpose was to make the government more efficient.”
Even the notoriously conservative Wall Street Journal is pushing back against Trump:
Media Matters, Zachary Pleat, 28 Feb 2025: Trump warned of a “bloodbath” in the auto industry if he wasn’t elected. The Wall Street Journal points out that he’s now engineering one.
The Atlantic, Elaine Godfrey, 3 Mar 2025: J. D. Vance Stopped Talking About Eggs, subtitled “Last year, the vice president made prices a central theme of the GOP election campaign. Now that eggs cost more than ever, he’s gone quiet.”
Funny how this works. Some of us knew all along that the president would never be able to control food prices the way his fans naively assumed he could.
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We are living in interesting times.
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The third stage of triage is, after several days, skipping the relatively incidental links. But also — saving some of the substantial links for posts about non-political topics. Science, philosophy, religion. I’ll get to them.
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