Trump and Vance Demand Zelenskiy Thank Them in Grotesque Display

Donald Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Friday went off the rails, as the grievance-addled U.S. president started arguing with the world leader.

Amid tough negotiations to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has killed more than 43,000 soldiers and destroyed cities, Trump and JD Vance took Zelenskiy’s visit as an opportunity to scold him for not acting more grateful to them for American financial support.* (It seems worth noting that they weren’t in the White House when that aid was actually approved.)

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. has sent $350 billion, but the actual figure appropriated by Congress is closer to $174 billion. He has also begun to falsely claim that other countries are getting their money back. Trump has been increasingly desperate to recuperate the money, and he and his sniveling sidekick Vance lost their tempers during the meeting.

Zelenskiy’s unforgivable faux pas seems to have been explaining to Vance and Trump about Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014—that’s when the scolding started, anyway.

“Mr. President, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” Vance scolded. “Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front line because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for—”

“Have you ever been to Ukraine, that you see what problems we have?” Zelenskiy said, leaving the vice president buffering. “Come once.”

“I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour Mr. President,” Vance said. “Do you disagree that you’ve had problems bringing people into your military?”

“We have problems—” Zelenskiy tried to answer, but Vance wouldn’t relent.

“And do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?” the vice president plowed on.

“I will answer, I will answer,” Zelenskiy said. “A lot of questions, let’s start from the beginning. First of all, during the war, everybody has problems. Even you, but you have nice ocean, and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless—”

“You don’t know that, you don’t know that—” Trump interjected, visibly agitated.

“God bless, you will not have a war—” Zelenskiy assured him, but Trump continued speaking over his guest.

“Don’t tell us what we’re gonna feel. We’re trying to solve a problem, don’t tell us what we’re gonna feel,” Trump said.

“I’m not telling you, I’m answering—” Zelenskiy said.

“Because you’re in no position to dictate that, remember this,” Trump warned, still speaking over Zelenskiy. “You’re in no position to dictate what we’re gonna feel. We’re gonna feel very good.”

“You will feel influence. I’m telling you, you will feel influence,” Zelenskiy warned.

“We’re gonna feel very good and very strong. You’re right now, not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position, which he happens to be right about. You’re not [in] a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us you start having cards,” Trump insisted.

“I’m not playing cards, I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious. I’m the president in a war—” Zelenskiy tried to respond.

“But right now—yeah you’re playing cards. You’re playing cards,” Trump ranted. “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country! This country!”

“Have you said thank you once?” Vance fumed, suddenly deciding to rejoin the fight.

“A lot of times, even today,” Zelenskiy said.

“You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October. Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country!” Vance said.

In September, Zelenskiy met with Kamala Harris at the White House, where she affirmed her support for him. Zelenskiy also visited a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania—Joe Biden’s hometown located in a critical swing state—to shore up support for Ukrainian resistance, giving a boost to Harris’s campaign.

During that visit, Trump had refused to meet with him, and then complained that the Ukrainian president wanted Harris to win.

To Trump and Vance, it seems that they were expecting a supplicant president, but were instead greeted with Zelenskiy’s well-founded doubts about their approach to the ongoing negotiations, which could lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin getting everything he wants, and no assurances for the future security and stability of a war-torn Ukraine.

This story has been updated.

* This story originally misidentified the type of casualties killed.

Republicans are already worried that their aggressive policy agenda could bite them come midterms.

The House GOP passed a budget resolution Tuesday that will gut major social services, including Medicaid, which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans. The $880 billion cut is a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Donald Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

But now that the budget resolution is in the rearview, conservative lawmakers are afraid that the forthcoming fiscal package could damn their chances at reelection.

“It could be trouble.… We saw what happened in 2018,” one moderate Republican told Axios, referring to the last Trump administration’s midterm year when anger over the GOP agenda flipped 40 House seats in favor of the Democrats.

Conservatives were quick to distance themselves from the budget framework following a 217–215 vote, which passed with no Democratic support and only one Republican defection (Representative Thomas Massie).

“Last night’s vote was just a procedural step to start federal budget negotiations and does NOT change any current laws,” Republican Representative Rob Bresnahan said in a statement Wednesday.

Others practically lied about the contents of the resolution, misdirecting Americans into believing that the bill did not task the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find, at minimum, $880 billion in savings from programs that fall under its jurisdiction, a seismic order that leaves the committee with practically no other option than to cut away at Medicaid.

Speaking with CNN, Montana Representative Ryan Zinke insisted that there was “zero mention of cutting Medicaid,” which, while technically true, misrepresented the scope of the resolution.

“A billion dollars is our goal over 10 years,” Zinke relented after being repeatedly pressed by CNN’s John Berman on how much Republicans would be willing to cut from the program.

In the days since the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly “ruled out” the largest cuts to the health insurance program, though he’s failed to offer any specifics as to how the party will do so without affecting Americans’ benefits.

Meanwhile, Republicans at home have faced fiery town halls led by their irate constituents, furious to discover that their elected representatives are sailing them down the river in order to advance Trump’s agenda.

Kash Patel’s appointment as FBI director seems to be coming with conditions: He wants to live part-time in Las Vegas and work remotely, far away from FBI headquarters in Washington.

Why Las Vegas? Patel has long called the city home, but what’s most intriguing is his actual place of residence. The FBI director lives at a home owned by Michael Muldoon, a Republican Party megadonor who runs shady time-share companies, reported the Nevada Independent earlier this month. Muldoon has been sued over allegations of running a “bait and switch” scheme in his time-shares, where “owners” didn’t actually own their properties and were gouged for fees at the same time.

Muldoon appears to have a history of cozying up to law enforcement officials. He has donated a lot of money to the political campaigns of former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, whose office received multiple complaints about Muldoon’s businesses but never pursued them. And apart from sharing an address with Patel, Muldoon also has intricate business dealings with him, utilizing the same incorporation and legal services.

Patel and Muldoon even took a golf trip together to Scotland back when the FBI director was a federal employee on the National Security Council, which could be an ethics violation. Patel at the time was barred from accepting gifts, and the NSC at the time wasn’t approving any trips. He also would have had to report the trip, and records aren’t available from that time to confirm whether he did or did not.

All of this raises questions as to how Patel is going to run not one, but two, prominent federal law enforcement agencies (he is also head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) with such extensive ties to someone with questionable practices, living in Las Vegas part-time. It seems that the appearance of corruption is not a barrier to working in the Trump administration, even if you’re in charge of enforcing the law.

Elon Musk is planning to once again prompt federal workers to tell him what they accomplished with their week, and is apparently hoping to make it a regular part of government work, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Last week, federal employees received a message from a human resources email at the Office of Personnel Management asking them, “What did you do last week?” and prompting them for a bulleted list of five activities. Failure to respond would be tantamount to a resignation, Musk warned separately on his social media site that federal workers probably don’t use to the same degree he does. His authoritarian threat summoned a flurry of outrage and trolling, and an all too predictable lawsuit.

Several agency heads warned not to respond to the email, and eventually, OPM stepped in saying that replying to the email was voluntary. This week, they’re planning to bring it back, but this time, with a twist.

Federal workers are expected to receive another email in their inboxes Saturday, from addresses that are associated with the chiefs of agency human resources departments, rather than from the OPM, two people familiar with the plan told the Post.

This would give a stronger mechanism for gathering information, as those individuals would have more authority than the OPM within their own agencies. While Musk has tried to use the OPM as his chainsaw, on Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the office did not have the authority to demand mass firings across other agencies. This change to the email plan reflects the limits of the OPM’s power.

But Musk and the OPM apparently have even bigger plans for their strange bid to get federal employees to tell on themselves: a Microsoft form.

Documents reviewed by the Post showed that department heads planned to elicit the crucial five bullets of information from government employees by developing Microsoft forms that would make the responses mandatory. The information collected would be shared with department heads, and would not be released externally.

One person briefed on the government’s plans confirmed all of this, and said that the responses would become a weekly requirement.

Donald Trump claimed that the email was somehow intended to catch out nonexistent government employees—but the true purpose has emerged: to see how closely federal agencies are following the president’s agenda and sweeping executive orders, even as they face an onslaught of legal challenges.

Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had a sit-down with Trump the same day of his right-wing crackdown on the opinion desk, according to The Spectator’s interview with the president.

“A lot of the people who played a significant role in that election, and particularly on the tech side of things, have come around to support you,” The Spectator’s Ben Domench said to Trump.

“Unbelievable. I had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night,” Trump replied, before going on to describe Bezos and the rest of the MAGA billionaires as “smart guys.”

The Spectator conducted the interview on Thursday, meaning Bezos met with the president just hours after he announced a MAGA makeover of The Washington Post.

Bezos announced Wednesday that the opinion editor David Shipley would be resigning and that the Post’s opinion desk would only be focusing on “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” The pivot was a culmination of multiple ideological steps toward MAGA that the paper has taken over the last few months. This isn’t really about personal liberties as much as it’s about being on the winning team.