The American side deliberately orchestrated the confrontation during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the White House, Friedrich Merz, the head of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the likely chancellor, said on March 3.
“It was not a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelensky, but obviously a manufactured escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” Merz said at a press conference in Hamburg.
The visit was expected to mark the signing of a long-debated agreement between Ukraine and the U.S. on jointly developing Ukraine’s mineral resources.
It looked like an episode of the Apprentice and a bad one at that
This was absolutely an ambush. Trump and Vance had a script and reactions ready to go, thinking they were going to get under Zelensky’s skin, justifying Vance’s angry reaction. But Zelensky stayed calm and reserved and Vance still has his angry outburst. Trump and Vance embarrassed the country, looking like toddlers screaming when they don’t get their way.
And every Republican who backs this is vile scum, but that’s to be expected from the GOP. Trump and Vance taking America to new lows every day and the GOP just doubling down on it.
Just finally watched it, he actually deflected most of their accusations on the spot 💪 These guys are making deals, lying on their part and not giving a flying fuck on the very probable future events. All Trump got was that he is special, and that is why the truce will hold this time 🫨
Edit. I don’t know what to make of this, they and everybody sure need peace, it is also bold to not see that card…
Lets be honest here, Trump and Vance didn’t orchestrate anything.
Putin did.
He wanted the weapons stopped, and he gave them a script.
Now the weapons have stopped as of a couple hours ago.
I think this gives this office too much credits.
The whole thing seems more spontaneous dysfunction than planned, Vance overplaying his troll role, and Rubio did not show up for job.
This is obviously aligned with their long term vision regardless, but I don’t think they were planning to hit the gas at that day.
Vance clearly walked in with an agenda to blow it up - his comments were tactless and incendiary while Vance has many times shown a willingness to hold his nose or backtrack former statements fir political gains. Vance, from the comments on wearing a suite (has he ever criticized Elon for his shitheel dress code) to saying “You should be thanking us” - there is no more universal thing you can say to an adult to instantly shutdown communication.
Things like requesting for emotional value in a serious conversation is such an unsophisticated tactic in arguments, just hard to believe it’s planned by a long time blogger and book writer who should be good at words.
Its weird now, because there used to be political theatre carried out by world leaders for the benefit of the pleb voters (us). Now it really feels like the world leaders are performing this theatre for trump. Like he’s a toddler and out of the loop, so the adults are doing their thing without him.
It was blatantly obvious that it was planned, and good to see people calling it out.
JD did a pretty poor job with his acting debut.
You must have missed the donut shop “pop in”
Ok, good.
“hello fellow human female, I require a dozen of you confectionary,manufactured wheat based breads in the shape of a doughnuts, we require for human consumption”
It was my very first thought too. Well, second after what a complete twat JD Vance was. But it just seemed so oddly paced. Like I’ve never seen a conversation go like that it was so strange. It felt really contrived. Course it could be chalked up to insane immaturity too so idk.
I mean Trump’s answer to what if Russia breaks the ceasefire was
What if the bomb drops on your head right now? OK, what if they broke it? I don’t know, they broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn’t respect him. They didn’t respect Obama. They respect me."
So essentially his answer to what happens if they break the ceasefire was… they won’t break it? But no, zelensky is the world’s biggest asshole for wanting to know about securities.
After already being the worlds biggest asshole for not wearing a suit, he may as well ask for securities. For the millionth time. Although that’s only 2% of the deal and he doesn’t have the cards. But he has raw earth. I think I’ve said enough, except thank you.
/s
Watching zelensky die inside while contributing to this shitshow was hard. I can’t imagine how bad that poor guy must have felt. And I’m sure he’s already seen a lot of bad things.
The pain in his expression was the most relatable thing I’ve seen from a world leader possibly ever.
It was like an episode of Veep except more obnoxious.
Vance going on about how the goal is a ceasefire to end the war, Zelensky relying that ceasefires haven’t been followed by Russia, and the Trump.and Vance going off on ‘disrepect’ was just wild. Like reality tv scripted argument level wild. Saturday Night Live parodied the meeting and the parody was toned down compared to the actual meeting!
It felt like Jerry Springer.
I thought it made Zelenskyy look good.
He was pleading for his people’s protection, while calling the US out on it’s bullshit.
Trump and co just looked like a bunch of dick heads.
Trump is a weak person’s view of a strong person. It only looked good to those weak people.
Daddy issues on a society-wide scale, ffs.
It definitely increased the respect for Zelenskyy across the world.
I say that too. Pure theatre for Putin and for trump’s crappy ratings. It’s exactly what Putin does to boost his ratings - start a war.
It was obviously performative when Trump said, “you don’t get to tell us what we’re going to feel” when Zelensky said that the US will feel the effect of the war.
It’s was after JD already escalated and Trump had to grab something to be a critical about, and that was the arbitrary point he decided to cling onto. He had to because JD upped the ante and Trump HAD to do something to keep up
His faithful MAGAts are probably waiting for him to tell other elected world leaders that they’re fired. Just because it’ll be funny to hear him say his catchphrase in his weird little voice. And that’s as seriously as they’ll take it until the lights go out and it’s blighted poultry rations for dinner again.
Rotten state of things.
No shit. They sat him down like a naughty schoolboy and took turns berating him into selling half his country to the yanks for no guarantees on stopping the Russians.
Calculated escalation or not, this public spat weakens Ukraine’s global standing against Russia. Well-supported and credible analysis of the situation but lacks conclusive proof for Merz’s claim.
😺😺😺🐱
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It’s a known tactic that has got its own meme.
You could tell. Vance is an awful actor …
👶 I’m going to be a bad ass today ! My pee pee feels funny just thinking about it. I’m so excited
I blame the couch for that
I’m not the biggest fan of Merz by any means, but credit where it’s due - it’s fantastic that he specifically and unambiguously called this out on the geopolitical stage.
Especially because he has always been a staunch atlanticist with a ton of connections in the US. That and the fact this comes from Germany, the most pro-US country, barring the UK, in Europe, gives his words extra gravitas.
Poland and the baltics would like to have a word.
Speaking of Poland, I sure hope Trump doesn’t decide that they have something he wants. The Fanta Menace might just invade. It seems to be par for the course when it comes to world wars.
Hey, ww1 was the Serbs!
His stance on Ukraine and the European Union is the silver lining for me with the CDU win tbh. Things might actually improve on these topics over Olaf Scholz.
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Right? I have been consistently underwhelmed at how… well, flaccid Scholz has been on the European leadership front. Dude comes off like he wants everything signed in triplicate before he’s willing to consider appointing a discussion board to evaluate possibility of thinking about making a decision.
Yeah Merz seems reasonable geopolitically speaking, and seems willing to make the hard choices. I’m not terribly sad about Scholz losing to him, especially as another GroKo is most likely to happen.
Orchestrated or not, it was a fucking cowardly spectacle.
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how low do we have to go before everyone wakes up and sees this orange shitstain for what he is?
I don’t think anyone capable of seeing it doesn’t already see it. We have to make it through these four years as a nation and somehow move forward despite them all.
If congress somehow gets Trump removed via impeachment or similar means (I know the chances are near zero) I fully expect magas to be shooting people in the streets a day later, or a much more violent Jan 6 style event.
Zelenski has the patience of a demigod for not slapping the shit out of Vance.
He handled the no-win situation as best as he could; I hope it raises Europe’s will to back Ukraine since it was obvious how he was ambushed by a supposed ally.
how low do we have to go before everyone wakes up and sees this orange shitstain for what he is?
“It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’d been fooled.” - Mark Twain
We have our work cut out for us when dealing with republicans.
Yeah, it’s amazing. He’s not a “Republican” he’s Trump. He’s not your friend/ally/supporter no matter who you are, he only supports himself. Your welfare is only vaguely relevant so long as it directly supports his status, the instant you aren’t useful, you will get backstabbed hard.
Unfortunately that’s not a particularly useful fact to highlight to republicans, and democrats bet too heavily on that being a talking point and it won them no favors.
The dude literally invited Russian state media and said “this will be great TV”.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but…
Getting a script right from RT via Putin no doubt on what to say
It’s not a conspiracy if it’s true haha
