To understand just how shockingly pathetic and childish JD Vance and Trump acted in their meeting with Zelensky today, it's important to understand the background for the meeting.
Zelensky came in person to negotiate a rare Earth minerals deal, a $500b deal that involves rare Earth minerals currently in and close to conflict zones, including regions Russia currently occupies. Signing over the rights to those resources would be a big deal for Ukraine, they're valuable resources and war is expensive, not only do they need to rebuild their own country, they have loans to pay back. But despite the fact that the US so far has only provided ~120b in aid since 2021, Trump is trying to get his grubby hands on all of those resources. What's far worse is that Trump is not providing any security guarantees in exchange for those resources while pushing for a ceasefire deal.
Zelensky, being a good steward of Ukraine's resources and negotiate this deal, is asking 1) what he gets in exchange for signing over those resources, and 2) what happens if Russia does not stop invading and continues to take over regions with those resources? What guarantees will the US provide to make sure they maintain access to those minerals to continue to satisfy the deal? These are important details to iron out, particularly as Trump is pushing for a ceasefire which could mean Russia continues to occupy the land some of these minerals are on for the foreseeable future.
This is the backdrop for the meeting today and questions about this were peppered throughout the whole press conference (in between questions asked by pathetic, groveling, sycophantic propagandist outlets).
So where did it all go wrong?
JD Vance, interjecting himself, decides to try to tear down Biden, bashing him for not engaging with Putin, says it's time for "Diplomacy". Now, people might be thinking, well doesn't he have a point here, isn't diplomacy good? Shouldn't we be talking about this? And the answer is, of course! We love diplomacy, that's the ideal way to solve things rather than with war. But there should be a little voice in your head that asks "well why haven't we tried that yet?" And the answer to that very good question is, "WE FUCKING HAVE!!!".
Important to keep in mind here is that it is in Russia's interests, which happen to align with Trump and Vance's interest, to make it seem like everyone involved is a rational actor, but fuckup senile Biden and elitist Europe simply don't want peace and provoked Russia into invading Ukraine out of fear for it's future. Putin especially wants the American people to believe he's not such a bad guy and letting him continue his invasion and occupation of Ukraine isn't such a bad thing afterall, as it gives him more time to continue on to his ultimate goal of rebuilding the Soviet empire.
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Because I'm already seeing MAGA and ignorant centrists try to blame this shitshow on Zelensky, I wrote about the background that makes it clear just what pathetic snowflakes Trump and Vance are https://paragraph.xyz/@asenderling/zelensky-gets-bullied-for-asking-a-basic-question
If you haven't watched the whole press conference you really should. It's important to see the lead up to the raise voices. That context, along with the background info really clearly demonstrates just how justified Zelensky was and how unfairly he was treated by these two impostors.
mistake Zelensky made was engaging Vance in a discussion. he should've prepared 5 soundbites and just kept saying them and ignored everything Trump and Vance said. the video is being clipped and pushed through the media machine so each side will confirm its own priors.
He's there to negotiate a deal and they're building a false public pretext for trying to pressure him to accept the deal, while also literally spreading Putin's propaganda, again publicly. How can he go back to his people having sat by and let them spout this nonsense publicly?
good article, ty!