Every day now, the case for Trump’s impeachment increases in strength amidst a growing quantity of testimony and the recent appearance of a second whistleblower from within the United States’ intelligence community. The evidence against Trump is damning; he has now asked not one but two countries to investigate one of his staunchest political opponents. When he asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, there was $400 million in military aid hanging in the balance. Meanwhile, the evidence against the actions of the Trump administration grows weekly.
Despite the scrutiny brought against President Trump and his inept administration, the foreign leader on the other end of the line, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, has largely escaped the same degree of scrutiny.
While we still may not have the full story of exactly what was said between President Donald Trump and President Zelensky because the memo is not a verbatim transcript of the call, Zelensky’s telegraphed responses reveal the rotten core at the heart of Donald Trump’s pay-to-play presidency. According to the memorandum, at the start of the call President Zelensky declared that he and his Servant of the People party “did win big” in the recent Ukrainian parliamentary elections; Zelensky also noted how he “had an opportunity to learn from [Trump]” and “used quite a few of [Trump’s] skills and knowledge.”
In his next response to Trump, President Zelensky once again referenced Trump’s jargon, noting that “[Ukraine] wanted to drain the swamp” and bring in “many many new people […] because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.”
Trump responded to Zelensky’s praise by throwing him and his country under the bus without remorse, even in the midst of over five years of Russian military presence in the Crimea and Donbas regions of Ukraine. According to Trump, however, “The United States has been very good to Ukraine […] I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal.”
After Trump told him that the United States was the victim of U.S.-Ukraine relations, President Zelensky doubled down on his sycophantic approach, telling President Trump that “Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000%.”
Both leaders were willing to criticize their European Union allies, even though the E.U. is the largest donor to Ukraine and has averaged almost twice as much total aid for defense and for economic development per year than the United States since 2015, according to factcheck.org.
With around $400 million in military aid up in the air, President Zelensky brought up the withheld defense funds by thanking Trump “for [his] great support in the area of defense,” suggesting that Ukraine was “almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States.” Of course, that comment preceded Trump’s demand that he would like President Zelensky “to do us a favor,” with reference to an investigation into a Russian-aligned conspiracy theory surrounding the security firm Crowdstrike. This theory has been largely peddled by Russian trolls and far-right fanatics.
All this is utterly troubling: a foreign leader agreed to phony investigations and our President trash-talked our closest allies in Europe. Near the end of the call, President Zelensky pulled out the trump card of subservient compliments to Donald Trump. He declared: “Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.” Give me a break. If you Google the definition of ‘suck up,’ the example sentence is — I kid you not — “He has risen to where he is mainly by sucking up to the president.”
Though we can already see the warning signs, time will continue to reveal the consequences of blind loyalty to an incompetent president. The price of entry to diplomacy should not be subservience and sycophantic and undeserved compliments.
Diplomacy should be about negotiation. Between allies, it should be made in good heart and with respect and trust at the center of relations. One could forgive President Zelensky for his indiscretion; with vital defense funding on hold to a country with regions under military occupation by Russian armed forces, it makes sense that Zelensky might be willing to scratch Donald Trump’s back. But personal attempts to woo a sitting president through exaggerated compliments or supporting a President’s family business should not weigh on a president’s diplomatic decision making.
Near the end of the call, President Zelensky made one final smarmy remark, this time making sure President Trump knew how much he preferred Air Force 1 to the Ukraine executive’s jet: “We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine.” Hopefully overly-flattering comments like these can only temporarily curry favor with the President of the United States.
