At the abrupt end of an intended photo-op meeting, Trump noted, “This is going to be great television.”
Was there some irony in this statement? Both Trump and Zelensky became famous as TV actors; Zelensky played a fictitious president, and Trump played himself as a company president. Then, they shared the Oval Office in front of the world in a riveting one-act skit.
It was good television, but politics was bad for both. Trump lost his hoped-for victory celebration for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. Zelensky lost an agreement tying American military support to investing in Ukraine.
During the meeting, Trump demanded that Zelensky talk only about achieving peace by rapidly ending the war and not raising doubts about Russia's starting the war again. Zelensky pushed back, citing Russia’s past broken promises. As soon as the TV cameras went dead, their dinner was canceled, and Zelensky was ushered out of the White House.
Within a week, Trump cut off military support and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, saying they would only be reinstated if Zelensky followed Trump’s directive.
The transcript shows Trump criticized Zelensky first.
The exchange among Trump, Zelensky, and Vance reveals that Trump initiated deprecating statements about Zelensky when he responded to a reporter who asked how he saw himself aligning with both Zelensky and Putin. His response was if “I didn't align myself with both of them, you'd never have a deal. You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?’”
Trump firmly stated he would not offend Putin. Then Trump attacked Zelensky as a person filled with hate, not reason. “He's got tremendous hatred. You see, the hatred he's [Zelensky] got for Putin, it's very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.” Zelensky had not criticized Putin in the meeting before Trump made these accusations.
Vance also jumped to respond to this question, ‘The path to peace and prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.” Vance did acknowledge that “Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country.”
Zelensky replied to both of their comments by relating how Putin, from 2014 to 2022, during the terms of Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, was killing Ukrainians, and nobody stopped him. “And God bless President Trump will stop him.”
He reminded them how Putin broke a signed ceasefire deal with Ukraine in 2019, which included an exchange of prisoners, which he did not complete. Exasperated, Zelensky asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you talking about?”
Zelensky put Vance on the spot and challenged him to recognize Putin’s past actions as casting doubt on his trustworthiness in promising not to invade Ukraine in the future. It was the kind of question that should have been dealt with in private, not televised.
Vance just jabbed back at Zelensky, accusing him of being
disrespectful “to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”
Then Vance did some litigation arguing that Ukraine had very big problems recruiting soldiers. Vance switched to asking Zelensky if he thought that it was “respectful to come to the Oval Office to attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”
Zelensky said, “During the war, everybody has problems … you have a nice ocean buffering America, and you don't feel Russia’s aggression, “but you will feel it in the future.”
Trump couldn’t ignore that taunt: “Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying to solve a problem.”
The exchange was raw, rough, honest, and disastrous for both parties. Trump did his usual slightly off-hand blustering about how great he is. But Zelensky is a serious person, seeing his country being destroyed daily by Russian bombing.
You could see how annoyed he felt being scolded by those who had not visited his war-torn country, but Vance said he felt satisfied seeing it on TV.
Was this a David versus Goliath battle?
Although Trump could physically loom over Zelensky, with Trump standing at 6′ 3″ and Zelensky at 5′ 7″, the difference in the economic and military resources between Ukraine and the U.S. is astronomical.
The U.S.’s GDP is 164 times larger than Ukraine’s, and the U.S. spends more on defense than the following nine countries combined. While the U.S. spends 3.4% of its GDP on defense, Ukraine spends 37%.
Trump summed up Zelensky’s position, with Vice President J.D. Vance sitting beside him and Cabinet members in a small circle around them. He bluntly told Zelensky, “You don’t have the cards. You’re buried there. You people are dying.”
Trump proclaimed that Zelensky had no option but to acknowledge America's power. It was a classic battle tactic: pick the ground to fight on and surround your enemy, then ask them to surrender peaceably or face annihilation.
Afterward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended the meeting and appeared on news shows praising Trump and ridiculing the Ukrainian President for not thanking Trump.
Democrats accused Trump of setting up a trap for Zelensky to fail in their meeting. That’s not likely, given that it would significantly damage Trump’s chances of receiving a Nobel Peace award, which he has been yearning to receive if the agreement was signed leading to an immediate cessation of the war.
Trump thought he deserved a Nobel Prize in 2019, saying he should get one "for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly—which they don't.” Norway's parliament appoints the awards, and Trump has been nominated for a Nobel several times during his presidency.
Nevertheless, Trump has complained that they gave President Obama a Nobel shortly after he became president without him earning it.
Trump’s script for clobbering a competitor didn’t play out as planned. Since Zelensky is like Trump, he doesn’t like being lectured. Unlike other Republican politicians, including his Vice President, past critics have succumbed to Trump’s leadership and apologized for being mean or discourteous to him.
Secretary of State Mark Rubio, the most obsequious cabinet member, claimed that Trump was the only person in the world “who has any chance” of bringing Russian President Putin to the negotiating table.
World leaders, from the United Kingdom and France, are careful not to ruffle Trump in public. Zelensky ignored that strategy, cautioning Trump on dealing with Putin. And Zelensky paid the price for such independence.
Zelensky can still protect Ukraine’s future as an independent nation.
Zelensky now understands that he should have let Trump blow his horn and then sign the proposed mineral-rights deal as they had planned. Zelensky called the heated meeting with Trump ‘regrettable’ and posted on X that he would sign the deal. Yes, Trump would have beat his chest and declared he was a mastermind negotiator.
However, as the agreement is written, the negotiations would not be in the Oval Office; they would happen elsewhere, and Zelensky would have much more leverage to determine the final document’s contents.
While the main media outlets focused on this brawl, they didn’t dive into the proposed document that Trump and Zelensky were to sign. It was not a giveaway to American interests and presented Zelensky with significant leverage in negotiating the final agreement.
Zelensky could use the additional time needed to reach a final agreement to shore up his European financial and military commitments. Zelensky and European leaders know that Trump would walk away from the final deal, blaming Ukraine for the loss if he didn’t like it. In the meantime, Ukraine would continue receiving military assistance and time to stock up supplies.
Here are six key sections within the Ukraine—US Minerals Agreement that provide Zelensky leverage to achieve an acceptable final agreement, formally identified as the Bilateral Agreement Establishing Terms and Conditions for a Reconstruction Investment Fund.
1. Ukraine’s primary legal obligation is to begin negotiations, not to sign one with the US. It will not be formed if there is no agreement on a more detailed description of the "Reconstruction Investment Fund" activities.
2. Neither Participant, i.e., America or Ukraine, will sell, transfer, or otherwise dispose of any portion of its interest in the Fund without the prior written consent of the other Participant. This allows the Ukrainian government to stop any action that does not benefit Ukraine.
3. The Ukrainian government will contribute 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets to the Fund, as agreed by both Participants. Ukraine has the power of veto over these decisions. The revenues as described do not include the current sources of revenues, which are already part of Ukraine's general budget revenues. Consequently, Ukraine forfeits future revenues that do not currently exist and are uncertain and a ways off from being available. It is expected to take years to identify the exact locations of the key minerals and extract and transport them.
4. Contributions made to the Fund will be reinvested at least annually in Ukraine to promote the safety, security, and prosperity of Ukraine, to be further defined in the Fund Agreement. If the size or percentage of those contributions is unacceptable to Ukraine, they do not have to sign the agreement.
5. The Government of the United States of America supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace. Participants will seek to identify any necessary steps to protect mutual investments, as defined in the Fund Agreement. This is the weakest part of the proposal since there is no specific commitment to providing any type of resources. As noted in this proposal, those specifics still need to be defined. If they remain unsatisfactory to Ukraine, then the agreement will not proceed.
6. The Parliament of Ukraine shall ratify the Fund Agreement. This is the most crucial element of the proposal because it allows Zelensky to adjust his negotiations to reflect the needs expressed by the government’s legislative branch. It also provides an opportunity to mobilize the Ukrainian population to support the agreement. It also offers Congressional supporters time to argue for its acceptance so that the decision goes beyond the two presidents' agreeing.
One last thought: Zelensky can exploit two of Trump’s weaknesses.
First, Trump has a narcissist’s grandiose sense of self (Trump’s Personality Will Deliver a Perilous Second Term – for Everyone) where he knows how to solve problems that no one else can. For instance, he suggested that had he been president, he could have avoided the unnecessary, bloody Civil War through “negotiation.” The American public must see that Trump’s reasoning would have led to the end of the U.S. by allowing the South to succeed. And he is asking for the same for Ukraine.
Trump’s second weakness is openly admiring authoritarian governments (Trump is not a Tyrant – he just admires them). After the first 100 days in his first term as president, he described our constitutional checks and balances as “an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.” Trump wants to replace Zelensky, who became president by a far more significant margin than Trump. He would prefer to negotiate with a Russian-approved Ukrainian president who will ignore the tedium of a democratic process.
Zelensky can highlight these traits without directly attacking Trump. By doing so, it frames a message that Trump’s self-interests do not secure a safe future for Ukraine. If the deal falls apart, Zelensky’s record of cooperation will bolster most European governments and American citizens to oppose Trump’s abandoning Ukraine to an authoritarian Russia.
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Nick Licata, a five-term Seattle City Council member, is the author of Becoming a Citizen Activist and Student Power: Democracy and Revolution in the Sixties.
He is also the founding board chair of Local Progress, a network of 1,300 progressive municipal officials.
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