A meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the White House on Friday descended into a farce as the US president picked on his Ukrainian counterpart with a number of odd remarks
Donald Trump hit a new level of bizarreness today during an unpreceded meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
Talks between the two leaders unexpectedly broke down as the Ukrainian president was verbally bullied by both the US president and his sidekick JD Vance in front of the world’s press. Trump spewed out a flurry of belligerent remarks towards Zelensky as any attempts at peace talks quickly disintegrated.
A planned joint press conference was cancelled as Trump, whose actions have been roundly condemned, stunned everybody in the room and claimed Zelensky was “not ready for peace”. Among the multitude of rants that the 78-year-old made were comments about Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell’, ‘javelins’ and Trump being a formidable ‘tough guy’.
Below is a breakdown of every unhinged comment that Trump said to Zelensky.
On a ceasefire in the war
Here, Zelensky talks with Trump talks about Vladimir Putin breaking a previous ceasefire and not exchanging prisoners like planned. In an unusual, but not uncommon for Trump tactic, the US President talks about himself in the third person.
Trump responds: “That was with Obama, who gave you sheets and I gave you javelins. Yes. I gave you the javelins to take out all those tanks. Obama gave you sheets. In fact, the statement is Obama gave sheets and Trump gave javelins.”
On Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell’
At this point, a reported asks Trump what will happen if Putin breaks a ceasefire. He replies by referring to an incident when a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden – the previous US president’s son – was left in a Delaware computer shop in 2019. Days later, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in including the Trump’s administration among others, published an open letter stating that the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.
Trump said: “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia … You ever hear of that deal? That was a phony. That was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam.
“And he had to go through that. And he did go through it. We didn‘t end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden‘s bathroom.
“It came out of Hunter Biden‘s bedroom. It was disgusting. And then they said, oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia. The 51 agents. The whole thing was a scam.”
On being a ‘tough guy’
Trump seemed to enjoy flexing his power by effectively claiming to be the strongest person in the world. “You want me to be tough? I can be tougher than any human being you’ve ever seen, I’d be so tough, but you’re never going to get a deal that way, so that’s the way it goes,” he threatened.
He also added: “You’re in no position to dictate what we’re gonna feel, we’re going to feel very good. We’re going to feel very good and very strong.”
On political card games
Trump accused Zelensky of gambling World War III, stating: “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards… Right now you’re—you’re playing cards, you’re playing cards—you’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III.”
He goes on to slam the Ukrainain president for apparently not showing enough respect. “And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country. It’s backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have,” he adds.
Again, he feels it necessary to call out Zelensky’s attitude in his mind: “But you’re not acting at all thankful, and that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.”
Trump also couldn’t help calling out previous US presidents as he said: “That was with a guy named Biden who is not a smart person—That was with Obama.” He ended the meeting clearly aware of the fuorore he’d created following the exchange of words between the pair: “I think we’ve seen enough, what do you think? This is going to be great television, I will say that.”