Trump Brings a Day of Historic Shame for the United States

Then he noted the signed agreements Putin had violated and asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy are you talking about?” And that’s when Vance delivered his lecture, after which Trump came with his warnings that Zelenskiy was “gambling with World War III.” We all know where it went from there.

Last weekend, I went to the Principles First conference in Washington, a large gathering convened mostly by anti-Trump former Republicans. Garry Kasparov, the Russian dissident, was one of the speakers. He uttered a very simple line that chilled the thousand or so people in the room: “The United States has changed teams.”

If anyone doubted that before this horrifying exchange Friday, it surely can’t be doubted now. You had the president of Ukraine who, whatever his flaws, was representing a democracy—a struggling and imperfect democracy, for sure, but one that was invaded by a gangster regime; a country of 38 million people ravaged by a country of 144 million. He came to Washington willing to meet with a president whom he knows to be hostile but ready to sign a totally one-sided deal giving that president control over his country’s mineral rights. That he decided not to sit there in silence as lies were being told about him and the nature of Putin’s invasion was renamed impertinence. And in that moment, about three minutes and change into the tape linked to above, the United States of America symbolically and visibly switched from being the leader of the free world to being a partner of the global authoritarian axis.