To call Volodymyr Zelenskiy‘s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office a “shouting match”, as many commentators managed to whitewash it, is a lie. It was a unilateral, vicious, premeditated political ambush – a mugging aimed at the political destruction of Zelenskiy in the eyes of the world – and in the eyes of his own people. It was as disgusting as it was shameful.
Trump is publicly showing himself to possess characteristics many of us have for years discerned in him: sociopathic, bullying, ruthless, selfish and destructive traits. These were identified in the perceptive pen portrait of him written by his own niece Mary Trump.
While his first term in office fizzled out electorally in a clownish orgy of sackings of nearly all those whom he had appointed to hold high office, he has now surrounded himself with a circus of super-wealthy, unqualified sycophants whose full-time activity is competitive adulation of their ringmaster’s folly.
When I wrote here last year that the world was entering into a dark age redolent of the late 1930s some people suggested that I was being unnecessarily pessimistic and alarmist. Now all our worst fears are being realised one by one. Trump’s engagement with Vladimir Putin has all the evil potential of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for the people of Europe – all of Europe, not just the east.
Trump wants to divide, destroy and subjugate the EU into a continent of economic vassal states
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Trump has set his sights on the destruction of the European Union, a body that has brought peace and prosperity to a Continent ravaged by war and the post-Yalta carve up. That is not a charge or speculation; it is his stated aim. He has openly claimed that the EU was established to “screw” America, later apologising for using that rude term “if I said it”.
Make no mistake, Trump wants to divide, destroy and subjugate the EU into a continent of economic vassal states dominated by the US and the Russian Federation. Everything he says and does, and has said and has done, points to that strategic purpose. The words of his acolytes – JD Vance, Elon Musk and Marco Rubio – all point in that direction.
Under the guise of demanding that Europe pays for its own defence (in which case it would need its own power and deterrence equal to that of the US and Russia), he is pursuing an entirely different aim – that Europe should be weak and vulnerable, and accessible to bullying pressure from the US and Russia.
Trump does not want to create a democratic and secure Ukraine. He is no longer a reliable guarantor of the integrity and sovereignty of, say, the Baltic States. They cannot by themselves fend off Russian aggression no matter what they do. The US alliance is being rapidly transformed into a Trumpian geopolitical protection racket in which vassal states like them must bend the knee to America’s every whim.
Consider the US political assault on the economy, sovereignty and status of its longest-term ally, Canada. Under a manifestly fraudulent trumped-up pretext of wishing to control illegal immigration and smuggling of fentanyl he is imposing crippling tariffs in gross violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement which he himself negotiated with Canada and Mexico.
Calling for Canada to be absorbed into the US as a state and referring to the Canadian premier as a “governor” is no joke. It has badly backfired if Trump really did hope that right-wing Canadians would be seduced by such a prospect. That behaviour is deeply offensive and wrong.
So is proposing the annexation, by military force if necessary, of Greenland. How does it sit with protecting Taiwan – an ally now being bullied into relocating its core economic activity – chip-making – to the US?
Do thinking Americans not cringe with shame as statesmen like Keir Starmer have to play out an idiotic diplomatic charade of waving a “beautiful letter” in the Oval Office, apparently obsequiously signed in large marker inviting Trump to come and dine with King Charles? Starmer played a veritable stormer by keeping a straight face during his shrewd encounter with the crude, loud and volatile Trump.
The suggestion made by Vance that Zelenskiy had never thanked the US for all the support it received under Biden’s administration was patently false. So too was the ludicrous claim by the Trump administration that Zelenskiy does not want peace and only wants to continue the war. This was as contrived as it was false.
Most revealing was Trump’s claim that Zelenskiy was risking world war three. Just who has rattled the nuclear sabre? Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal in solemn exchange for a US security guarantee. If Ukraine’s continued defence of its own existence risks world war three is Trump himself reacting to such a threat from Putin? And if MAGA man is cowed by that threat now, God help the Baltic States. Because Trump’s America won’t.
