Rashomon is a Japanese story where everyone gives conflicting accounts of the same event, and all of them, maybe, are inaccurate. I get much the same feeling here. The sources cited here include lots of observations from intelligent, well-informed people—much more well informed, and closer to the center of power, than I am—and yet … the account ts and explanations are markedly inconsistent in important ways. Plus they seem glaringly incomplete.
One explanation for what happened is that Trump and Vance set up Zelenskyy.
One explanation is that Vance—a declared supporter of Christianist autocracy and an even bigger Putin ass kisser than Trump—sabotaged the signing of a framework deal with Ukraine.
One explanation is that Putin told his boy Trump to back out of the deal that was about to be signed, and that Trump had no choice but to do his master’s bidding.
But I was particularly struck by the point made by one of the talking heads in the Washington Week video, who reported that in a pre-meeting Trump lashed out at Rubio, Waltz, and his other minions for not making a deal that would give Trump an even bigger share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth. That suggests that what happened was Trump just playing his familiar bullying -bluster-and-bullshit game to sweeten a deal.
In any event, I don’t think all those talking heads and pontificating pundits are wrapping their heads around the larger context.
Every indication is that Putin doesn’t want to do a cease fire deal, and that he, particularly, does not want to share Ukraine’s carcass with Donald John Trump.
And, meanwhile, there are the Europeans. Trump thinks he can intimidate them by blowing hot and cold. Will he abide by Article 5? Won’t he abide by Article 5? Will he go to war if Putin attacks Estonia? What about Sweden? If Putin attacks France, how much money will Trump demand in exchange for coming to its aid?
Vance and Musk explicitly say the United States should withdraw from NATO. Trump keeps making that threat. The Europeans, along with Ukraine, are going to have to go it alone, as best they can, because they have no other choice.
I don’t mean any other reasonable choice. I don’t mean any other choice that they might live with.
I mean literally no other choice at all than to kiss the United States goodbye and go it alone.
Writing about yesterday’s TV spectacle in the Oval Office, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board does not focus on whether or not the US has actually switched sides. Rather, true to its lodestar value—namely, the election of Republicans to office, where they can pursue a business-friendly agenda of low taxes and minimal regulation—the Board has some pointed words about the political peril ahead. The Board writes,
“He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday afternoon after the exchange, while booting the Ukrainian president from the White House. “He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” The two didn’t sign a planned agreement on minerals that would have at least given Ukraine some hope of future U.S. support.
The meeting between Messrs. Trump and Zelensky started out smoothly enough. “It’s a big commitment from the United States, and we appreciate working with you very much, and we will continue to do that,” Mr. Trump said of the mineral deal. Mr. Zelensky showed photos of Ukrainians mistreated as prisoners of war. “That’s tough stuff,” Mr. Trump said.
But then the meeting, in front of the world, descended into recriminations. The nose dive began with an odd interjection from Vice President JD Vance, who appeared to be defending Mr. Trump’s diplomacy, which Mr. Zelensky hadn’t challenged. Mr. Zelensky rehearsed the many peace agreements Mr. Putin has shredded and essentially asked Mr. Vance what would be different this time.
Mr. Vance unloaded on Mr. Zelensky—that he was “disrespectful,” low on manpower, and gives visitors to Ukraine a “propaganda” tour. President Trump appeared piqued by Mr. Zelensky’s suggestion that the outcome in Ukraine would matter to the U.S. “Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Mr. Trump said at one point.
Why did the Vice President try to provoke a public fight? Mr. Vance has been taking to his X.com account in what appears to be an effort to soften up the political ground for a Ukraine surrender, most recently writing off Mr. Putin’s brutal invasion as a mere ethnic rivalry. Mr. Vance dressed down Mr. Zelensky as if he were a child late for dinner. He claimed the Ukrainian hadn’t been grateful enough for U.S. aid, though he has thanked America countless times for its support. This was not the behavior of a wannabe statesman.
Mr. Zelensky would have been wiser to defuse the tension by thanking the U.S. again, and deferring to Mr. Trump. There’s little benefit in trying to correct the historical record in front of Mr. Trump when you’re also seeking his help.
But as with the war, Mr. Zelensky didn’t start this Oval Office exchange. Was he supposed to tolerate an extended public denigration of the Ukrainian people, who have been fighting a war for survival for three years?
It is bewildering to see Mr. Trump’s allies defending this debacle as some show of American strength. The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot. That core interest hasn’t changed, but berating Ukraine in front of the entire world will make it harder to achieve.
Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to. Ukraine has enough weapons support to last until sometime this summer. But as the war stands, Mr. Putin sees little reason to make any concessions as his forces gain ground inch by bloody inch in Ukraine’s east.
Friday’s spectacle won’t make him any more willing to stop his onslaught as he sees the U.S. President and his eager deputy unload on Ukraine’s leader. Some Trumpologists have been suggesting Mr. Trump will put pressure on Mr. Putin in due time. But so far Mr. Putin hasn’t made a single concession on territory, or on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future after a peace deal is signed.
President Trump no doubt resents having to deal with a war he thinks he might have prevented had he won in 2020. But Presidents have to deal with the world they inherit. Peace in Ukraine is salvageable, but he and Mr. Zelensky will have to work together on an agreement that Ukrainians can live with.
Mr. Trump does not want to be the President who abandoned Ukraine to Vladimir Putin with all the bloodshed and damage to U.S. interests that would result. Mr. Vance won’t like to run for President in such a world either.
A few days ago, Judge Reyes held a hearing in the case of Talbott v. Trump, challenging an executive order requiring the expulsion of transgender troops from the military, and specifically defaming all transgender people as dishonorable, untruthful, and undisciplined.
As an aside, I have to hand it to Orange Mussolini; if anyone knows how to recognize someone who’s dishonorable, untruthful, and undisciplined, that would be him.
Anyway, during the hearing, the judge was really tough on the unnamed Justice Department attorney who had the misfortune of trying to defend Trump’s words and actions. The ABA Journal writes,
The Associated Press and Law 360 report that during the hearings, Reyes:
• Raised her voice and demanded an answer from a government attorney about whether President Donald Trump’s executive order showed animus by calling “an entire category of people dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined.”
• Engaged in a rhetorical exercise regarding discrimination. Reyes declared that graduates of the University of Virginia School of Law would be barred from her courtroom because they are “liars and lack integrity.” She then told the government lawyer who was a University of Virginia School of Law grad “to sit down.” According to the ethics complaint, the directive “served no legitimate judicial purpose and transformed an attorney appearing before the court into an unwilling participant in the judge’s unnecessary demonstration.”
• Asked the government lawyer what “Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters? Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’?” she asked. The complaint says the question “placed DOJ counsel in an untenable position of either appearing unresponsive or speculating about how an incoherent hypothetical aligns with Judge Reyes’ personal religious beliefs.”
Professor Sunstein, a distinguished public intellectual, teaches law at Harvard. As I often remark: you can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much.
In this guest essay in the New York Times, Sunstein brilliantly covers a whole lot of ground and explains a whole lot of political theory and history, in a way that an ordinary educated person can readily understand.
Bottom line: full presidential control over all aspects of the federal executive is not, contrary to claims of some, mandated by the text of the Constitution or by our history. Such massive control poses many, many dangers.
Professor Sunstein is a polite person, so he did not say, in so many words, that presidential dictatorial powers given to a crazed monomaniac would likely produce disastrous results.
Bad as the unitary executive theory, read broadly, would be, Trump is also pursuing other ideas that are even worse. Sunstein writes,
[C]onsider the claim that the president gets to impound congressionally appropriated funds and choose which ones to spend. That claim would render Congress subordinate to the executive in what might be its most fundamental power: the purse. Impoundment authority, on the part of the president, would go well beyond the idea of a unitary executive. It would be a devastating blow to the separation of powers.
He did not add—but might well have added—that the notion that the president gets to pick and choose which court orders he obeys would likewise end the constitutional republic, and that right soon.
Indraneel Sur graduated from Yale, earned his law degree at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Law School, worked as an associate at the prestigious law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and then joined the Justice Department as an attorney. One source claims that he is a member of the Federalist Society. Yesterday, he appeared in court to defend the government’s response to the judge’s pending order to resume payments owed for supplies delivered to USAID.
The Washington Post reports that “During the contentious 90-minute hearing, Justice Department lawyer Indraneel Sur told [the judge] he was ‘not in a position to answer’ whether the Trump administration had taken needed steps to allow the assistance to begin moving.”
Politico writes about his day in court yesterday:
During a telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali grew impatient with a lack of clear responses from the administration’s lawyers to claims from aid contractors that they have seen no payments from the State Department or U.S. Agency for International Development since Ali issued an emergency orderFeb. 13 halting a broad freeze on aid-related programs.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” the judge lamented after Justice Department attorney Indraneel Sur repeatedly sidestepped a question about whether the Trump administration released any funds following the judge’s earlier order.
After Sur suggested that officials were holding up or canceling payments under the terms of individual contracts, Ali said he was baffled by the government’s view.
“I guess I’m not understanding where there is any confusion here,” the judge said. “It’s clear as day.”
What Seems to be Happening—and Some Friendly Advice from Your Dutch Uncle Ron
The picture will become clearer as this case proceeds—along with the many dozens of other cases involving the legality of the Trump administration’s acts. Right now, however, the picture that seems to be emerging is that someone in the administration is ordering its frontline lawyers to pull the wool over the eyes of the judges in these cases.
So here’s a friendly piece of advice. If you have drunk freely of the Trump Kool-Aid and want to defend its contentions about its dictatorial powers, then you can probably do so without being disbarred or sent to jail.
But do not lie to the court. If you do, you are going to be in a world of hurt.
And the day when your boss—or his boss—orders you to lie to the court is the day you need to walk off the job.
For your own protection, if for no other reason than to protect yourself.
A Wall Street Journal editorial slamming Donald Trump’s tariff plans as terrible for the US economy and auto industry prompted a broadside from the president on Wednesday followed by threats to sue the media.
In an opinion piece titled Trump’s Tariffs Will Punish Michigan, the Journal argued Trump’s tariff plans would harm “US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan”.
Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, a move the editorial argues would increase US vehicle prices, hurt auto workers and advantage Asian and European manufacturers.
“If the goal is to harm US auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan, then by all means go ahead, Mr President,” wrote the Journal.
On his social media site, Truth Social, Trump wrote the Journal is “soooo wrong”. “The tariffs will drive massive amounts of auto manufacturing to MICHIGAN, a State which I just easily one [sic] in the Presidential Election,” he wrote.
Trump followed the rebuttal with a threat to those publishing “Fake books and stories with the so-called ‘anonymous’, or ‘off the record’, quotes” criticizing the opening month of his second presidency.
“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist, which they largely do not. They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I’ll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!,” he wrote.
The Journal’s conservative editorial board has been a persistent critic of Trump’s tariff plans, calling them “the dumbest trade war in history” earlier this month.
Facing MAGA 