Zelensky Must Repair the Relationship of Resign

It is really hard to have a rational and coherent conversation about Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Ukraine. It is almost impossible. I'm going to attempt to do it. And depending on which side of the aisle you're on, I suspect I'm going to trigger you one way or the other because people are not rational, they're not coherent, they're not thoughtful, they are tribal and emotional.

If you are a hardcore MAGA, it's all Ukraine's fault, screw Ukraine, we don't want to be there anyway. If you are hardcore anti-Trump, it is all Donald Trump's fault, he's a plant for Vladimir Putin. He is a traitor to the country, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Nobody seems to be coherent, and there are real issues at stake. And I'm not talking about that five minutes that will live in infamy of JD Vance and Donald Trump ganging up on Volodymyr Zelenskyy. You've got to understand that what happened in those last five minutes had 40 minutes before it that you probably didn't watch. I watched it.

What's frustrating to me is that the well is so poisoned on Donald Trump that people get their back up on both sides. You either have to be all in on a defense of Trump and support Trump, or you have to be all in on attacking Trump. You can't say “yes, but” or “no, but.” It's got to be all or nothing. It's got to be all one way or all the other way, when actually this is a complex world and there are rights and wrongs and there are good things and bad things on both sides. But I got to tell you, I watched the 40 minutes.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy screwed that up. Donald Trump did not, for all of his faults. And for JD Vance, I had a buddy of mine say he acted like a Wormtongue whispering in Trump's ears. Maybe so. JD Vance doesn't want to do a deal with Ukraine and found an opening to be more antagonistic at the end, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy was given a security guarantee in exchange for mineral rights, and he not only rejected it, but chose to, sitting in the Oval Office, lecture the President of the United States.

I think you can be pro-Ukraine and recognize that Ukraine's president screwed this up, not Donald Trump and JD Vance. You may not like Donald Trump and JD Vance, but can you at least understand that what Donald Trump was trying to do was give a security guarantee to Ukraine without giving a security guarantee to Ukraine. Why? And what am I talking about?

If Donald Trump were to tell Volodymyr Zelenskyy, "You know what? The United States is going to commit troops to Ukraine," that would a massive escalation, a massive, massive escalation in the war. But if Volodymyr Zelenskyy gives the United States mineral rights in Ukraine — oil, natural gas, other rare earth minerals — and Donald Trump says, "You know what? We're going to commit peacekeepers to make sure that we can extract these minerals and natural gas and oil without Russian interference." Guess what? We're not there to be a part of a war. We're there to preserve American interest, and that is a fundamentally different thing under international law. Zelenskyy was three times given the deal, including by Kellogg over there, who wanted to do it as a ministerial deal, and three times Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned his back on it at the last minute and rejected doing it.

By the way, you should understand that Ukraine has done mineral deals in the past. This is not unheard of. There is precedent for Ukraine doing this, for among other things security guarantees, but Zelenskyy three times now has been offered this arrangement, said he would do it, and at the last minute backed out.

Again, you may not like what transpired, you may not like how JD Vance handled himself at the end, but that was the end of a 40-minute offer from Donald Trump to Zelenskyy. Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post is unquestionably a supporter of Ukraine. This is him:

The blow-up was Zelenskyy's fault. To understand why one needs to watch the entire 50-minute meeting unfold. Trump greeted Zelenskyy graciously, praising the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people and dismissed the earlier rift as a little negotiation spat. Even after Zelenskyy refused a White House request to wear a suit, Trump praised his outfit" saying, "I thought he dressed beautifully." Trump extolled the mineral deal they had reached and said, "We look forward to getting in and digging, digging, digging." He pledged to continue military aid to Ukraine and even held out the possibility he could conceivably commit US troops alongside British and French troops to provide security after a peace deal was reached. That should have been music to Zelenskyy's ears. He should have taken the win.

Instead, 24 minutes in, long before the terse exchange with JD Vance, Zelenskyy started criticizing Trump in front of the reporters. He summarily dismissed Trump's idea of an immediate ceasefire, something that's extremely important to Trump who's committed to stopping the killing, because he said Putin had already broken ceasefires 25 times. "He never broke it to me," Trump said. "No, no. You were the president," Zelenskyy contradicted him. "He never broke it to me," Trump repeated. Instead of letting it pass, Zelenskyy contradicted him again, "In 2016, you've been the president, Mr. President. That's why we will never accept just a ceasefire. It will not work without security guarantees." Why did Zelenskyy choose to fact-check Donald Trump in front of the entire world, rather than debate the wisdom of a ceasefire behind closed doors?

When Trump bemoaned the destruction of Ukrainian cities, Zelenskyy interrupted him and insisted he needed to come see it for himself. Y'all, a Polish journalist asked Trump whether he had aligned himself too much with Putin. You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, "Hey, Vladimir, how are we doing on this deal?" That doesn't work that way. "The path to peace and prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy," JD Vance interjected.”

Guys, you may not like Donald Trump being in charge of the United States, but he's the democratically elected President of the United States because the American people did not like the path that Joe Biden was on. And if you want to be really serious about the path that Joe Biden was on, the path Joe Biden was on was a path where he would promise things to Ukraine and then drag his feet on delivering those things to Ukraine as the situation in Ukraine got worse. Donald Trump is committed to peace in Ukraine, whether you like it or not, and he's willing to do a mineral rights deal in Ukraine to help pay for the costs of us sending troops to Ukraine to ensure the peace. Donald Trump literally is willing to commit to US troops in Ukraine to secure a peace and Zelenskyy blew up on it.

I have a theory.

For the last four years, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been surrounded with Western progressive elites whispering in his ears. They got him to do the Vanity Fair photo. They thought it would help him in the West. It actually wound up hurting him with people in the West. See, you need to step back at a little distance and look at what's happening around the world. Western progressive elites in Europe and around the world are losing elections. They've gotten so out of touch with people.

It's not just in this country where the Western elite in this country have embraced the transgender agenda, abortion on demand, environmentalism at the sake of economic growth — all sorts of things that actually turn off normal people. It's happened in Europe as well. They want massive immigration to replace their workforce. They're super, super progressive. They're very anti-free speech, even as they claim to be free speech, and the voters in these countries are starting to reject them. And these are the same people who have supported Zelenskyy, and these are the same people who hate Donald Trump.

Throw into the mix Biden and Obama officials who have built relationships with Zelenskyy. There are rumors in Washington — and they're not the dismissive, the crazy rumors that are online — there are real credible rumors behind the scenes that before Zelenskyy met with Donald Trump, Zelenskyy reached out to some of these Democrats who have worked for Biden and worked for Obama and asked how he needed to deal with Trump. And you know and I know what they told him: “Dig in your heels and be combative. That's the way Trump likes it. Trump likes to drive a hard bargain. You've got to drive a hard bargain or he's going to run all over you.”

Zelenskyy's not in a position to negotiate with the President of the United States, but he clearly took advice that he needed to dig in his heels and he needed to be as hard a negotiator as Donald Trump. You don't be a hard negotiator with the President of the United States in the Oval Office before a live televised audience. You don't do that. It ends badly for you. He took really bad advice. There are plenty of criticisms to be made about Vance, plenty of criticisms made about Trump, but you have to understand that it was Zelenskyy who scuttled this deal. He's been offered this deal three times now.

On Friday, Donald Trump was willing to commit. It was Zelenskyy who sabotaged the deal.

Ukraine is not the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. But also, sometimes you get so in the weeds on waging war that it becomes hard to wage peace. You can't fathom waging peace. You've lost any ability to trust that the other side might be committed to peace. When some new person comes along and says, "We should have peace," you become too cynical to even try. That seems to be Zelenskyy's problem. Zelenskyy at this point, doesn't trust the Russians. And I understand why. He has no reason to trust the Russians. But he has every reason to try to trust Donald Trump, and he doesn't because someone somewhere poisoned the well between him and Trump. Someone somewhere probably convinced him that Trump is on Russia's side because those people are Democrats who do not like Donald Trump, and those people want to do everything to stop Donald Trump.

At the end of the day, the Democrats who have been whispering in Zelenskyy's ear are not actually committed to peace in Ukraine. They're committed to stopping Donald Trump. And if they could do anything to make Donald Trump look bad and undermine Donald Trump, they would rather sacrifice Ukraine to stop Donald Trump than actually help Ukraine and make Donald Trump look good. And they fed Zelenskyy some very bad advice.

If Volodymyr Zelenskyy actually wants to save his country, he now has two options and they're the only two options on the table. Whether you like Donald Trump or not, you have to acknowledge this is God's honest truth. He has two options: reset the relationship with Donald Trump and giving the mineral rights deal or resign in favor of someone who can reset the relationship. That's the bottom line here.

I don't care who you blame. I don't care who you think is at fault. I don't care what you think about the deal. The reality is either Russia is going to win or you're going to have to let Donald Trump do a peace deal that trades land for peace in Ukraine, land the Russians have already taken. And the way to do that is to give him a mineral rights deal that secures American troops in Ukraine to secure that peace, which is the offer that has been on the table from Donald Trump. You may not like the man, but he's the President of the United States. He won the popular vote. It is his call to make and Zelenskyy needs to stop listening to Democrats, reset the relationship or resign if you want to save your country.