On 1 March, Donald Trump hosted a nightmarish press conference in which he berated Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
While America betraying its allies or using them for its own imperialist agenda is nothing new, it is unprecedented for a president to do so in such an un-diplomatic fashion.
It proved hard for many watchers to stomach – particularly those who still believe the Western powers are the peacekeepers of the world rather than its plunderers.
In fact, it’s proven so hard to watch that even the UK Conservative Party felt a need to distance themselves from Trump’s actions:
Earlier today in Northern Ireland, I was asked by news outlets about Ukraine.
We must not forget that President Zelensky is a hero. He represents the Ukrainian people’s strength and resistance in this terrible war. pic.twitter.com/Sj9NKxQpnW
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) March 1, 2025
Badenoch VS Trump
Speaking to journalists, the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said:
I thought it was quite an extraordinary press conference.
This was putting it mildly. For those who’ve somehow not seen it yet, this clip shows where it all started to go wrong, with vice president J.D. Vance scolding Zelenskyy like a child:
We can all pretend Trump and Vance are some sort of inspired geniuses. Or we can see two soft bullies haranguing a man who has been fighting a war to save his country for three years. pic.twitter.com/v1j5QHcJMx
— Stig Abell (@StigAbell) February 28, 2025
This is how it ended, with Trump shouting “you’re not winning!” over the top of his guest and chastising ‘stupid Biden’ for the money he gave Ukraine:
Wow. What a disgusting human being Donald Trump is. pic.twitter.com/F4Cvq1YNgo
— Jonathan Pie (@JonathanPieNews) February 28, 2025
So yes, for once we’re in complete agreement with Badenoch; it certainly was “extraordinary”.
Past this, Badenoch continued:
And we all need to remember that President Zelenskyy is a hero. He represents the Ukrainian people’s strength and their resistance to an authoritarian regime that is trying to destroy them. He needs all of the support that he can get, and I think that it is inappropriate to conduct that kind of disagreement in front of cameras, as the only person who benefits from that is President Putin.
Badenoch expanded on what she said in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg:
"My heart went out to President Zelensky"
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says she "couldn't believe what was happening" and that Ukrainian President Zelensky was "humiliated" while meeting US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office#BBCLauraK https://t.co/Qc14PAI113 pic.twitter.com/jBOB0yA79N
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) March 2, 2025
It shows just how much Trump has fucked up when the failing UK Conservative Party feels like they have no choice but to admonish him. This is especially true given that we’ve all seen how Trump and goons like Elon Musk treat those who speak out.
So why is this happening?
Donald Trump: car-crash propaganda
What Trump seems oblivious to is that he can’t just unravel decades of Western propaganda in a single press interview. Citizens in the West – particularly in the US and the UK – have been conditioned to see ourselves as ‘the good guys’; to see ourselves as the ‘international rules based order’; to see ourselves as the bulwark against malign foreign threats like Russia. There are also two important factors at play with the Ukraine war:
- It’s one of the rare conflicts post-WWII in which we’ve sided with the invaded force (as opposed to just invading someone ourselves).
- Ukraine has a majority white population, meaning a wider range of people in the West can put themselves in the shoes of those being invaded.
The message from politicians and the media has been clear; we are the good guys, Russia are the bad guys, and supporting this war is righteous. And then Trump grabbed the handbrake, sending everything into a spin.
It’s worth pointing out that Badenoch agrees with our assessment of how Western politics usually operates; just look at how she phrased it:
I think that it is inappropriate to conduct that kind of disagreement in front of cameras
In other words, there’s one reality for the cameras and another behind closed doors.
Or there was, anyway.
Awake to the American nightmare
Towards the end of the Zelenskyy haranguing, Trump said:
I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important; that’s why I kept it going so long.
What Trump meant was that he wants Americans to see what a ‘bad deal’ they got with Ukraine. As often happens with Trump, though, there’s a truth to his words beyond his intentions. This was an instance in which the American people got to “see what’s going on”, as this is precisely how America treats its allies once it can no longer benefit from them.
One recent example of America betraying a key ally is when they abandoned the Kurds to an attack from Turkey. The Kurds played a key role in defeating ISIS, but they never enjoyed the popular coverage that Ukraine did, so it was easy for America to abandon them (not to mention the fact that they come from a part of the world we’ve been conditioned is inherently prone to conflict).
The trope of America abandoning its allies is such that people are actually meming about it:
Moreover, Trump also pulled the curtain down on the entire American imperialist project. For him, Ukraine and the ill-fated meeting with Zelensky was, in his own words, about a deal; a business deal at that.
This, once again, is no different to how Western leaders view their relationships with the rest of the world. However, again these comments are usually reserved for behind close doors – and a humanitarian facade is created for the public.
Here, Trump made it clear that Ukraine, its people, and their lives, were little more than chips on a poker board to him – much like Biden before him. It’s just that Trump said the quiet part out loud.
Hard power
From what we’ve seen of Trump’s second term so far, it’s clear that he’s on a mission to drastically shift politics in a similar fashion to how post-war governments moved towards social democracy and how Reagan/Thatcher moved towards deregulation. The Trump project so far has involved ending ‘soft power‘, gutting the federal government, and declaring a trade war on something like half of the planet.
What happened with Zelenskyy is that Trump replaced soft power (trading aid for influence) with hard power (taking what he wants at no benefit to Ukraine). What remains to be seen is if he can make this pivot stick, or if the people of the West need the propaganda to stomach how we behave on the world stage.
It really was an extraordinary press conference.
Featured image via Kemi Badenoch / The White House
