Trump, Zelensky, And The Food Fight In The Oval Office - Great Television And A Harbinger Of Things To Come

Donald Trump was not 'acting presidential', observed commentators on the Left; but what is such thing other than an outdated, miscast version of reality?  Who but the dumbfounded Left could imagine that a President must be a gentlemen, a man of carefully chosen words, a philosopher king, a man of sincerity, honesty, and moral principles; and that a vaudevillian, a tummler, a crude, crass, uninhibited man of Las Vegas runways, Hollywood glitz, and New York real estate deals could never, ever be President of the United States? 

 

His DOGE blitzkrieg, his flurry of dismantling executive orders, his outspoken reversal of supposedly absolute, sanctified foreign policy; his outrageous personal attacks and refusal to bow and scrape to received wisdom, ceremony, and expectations are to be expected.  Why should a man of the mean streets, a brawler, bar fighter, and gunslinger make nice with those who have tried over the past ten years to disgrace, cancel, and destroy him? 

No one but the most one-sided Trump haters was surprised at the dustup in the Oval Office where Trump and Vance put the arrogant little Ukrainian pecker in his place.  Zelensky has received trillions in military and economic assistance from the United States, much of which has either gone down the rathole or into Swiss bank accounts, and at the very least has propped up a tinpot imperator who has bilked and milked the United States for years

   

Zelensky, said the Biden Administration, was fighting for the survival of democracy against a dangerous, opportunistic, imperialistic power which if not stopped would move on all fronts to create a Russian caliphate, a hegemonic rule over all of Europe.  Biden, for all his pompous posturing, never had the chutzpah to confront Russia, to use American military force to defeat the enemy; but instead sat back in his dotage on Pennsylvania Avenue content to pass on billion dollar contracts to American arms dealers and bask in the limelight of as a hero of freedom. 

A new world order has been established in less that two months.  Gone is American exceptionalism, defiance from afar, the glorification of American democracy as a higher-order moral value; and in its place is a hard and fast Machiavellian realpolitik, an America first policy of realistic alliances, objective risk assessment, and preview of gain.  

 

The new axis of power - the United States, Russia, and China - will indeed rule or at least dominate world affairs; and the relationship among them, while always suspicious and at times contentious, will result in power-based accommodation, give and take within well-understood and -respected parameters, and a stable world. 

Ukraine has only one value to the United States - rare earths - and the United States is right to ask for a large share of them in repayment for its past military support. The era of free lunch is over.  Contracts, international agreements, and arrangements will from now on be based on a payment due basis. 

Donald Trump knows that to continue an adversarial relationship with Russia and China will only exclude the United States from what would be a dyad of power instead of a triad.  The innate, instinctive, self-preservational motivation of all human beings are applicable in geopolitics - stick to your own kind - and in this case the rich, the powerful, and the mighty are birds of a feather, not the has-beens and wannabes of the world

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And so the little guy was put in his place in the Oval Office.  This shabby political shaman was told to love it or leave it, sign on the dotted line or go home.  So Zelensky was shown the door and then to no one's surprise, trots out his begging bowl in Europe where febrile, panicked politicians are ready to pour volumes into the con man's saddle bags.  The Europeans will be taken for a ride just like Biden was, and sooner rather than later they will realize that they are impotent. 

'The only reason the EU exists is to screw us', said Trump, so begone with them, and see what life is like without the old traditional bending over at the ankles NATO obeisance and American greenbacks. 

Faded progressive academics like Jeffrey Sachs says that the unceremonious booting of Zelensky by Trump opens the door to unrestrained Russian expansionism and Chinese regional imperialism. He is wrong to assume that the new Trump realpolitik will give carte blanche to predatory regimes; but right to note that the Administration will decide whether Tibet, the Uighurs, and Taiwan are worth fighting over, worth the effort in practical, objective terms. 

The members of the new axis will weigh their options very carefully.  The new world order of power sharing and accommodation is not without risk.  Trump, Putin, and Xi are smart men and certainly smart enough to know how to maintain parity in the highest stakes card game of them all. 

The Left is flabbergasted.  This is beyond belief, beyond their worst fears.  Not only is an SS-style pogrom underway in Washington, with storm troopers smashing down doors, rounding up bureaucrats, and loading them on cattle cars bound for some Sobibor or Auschwitz in North Dakota, but the careful, respectful diplomacy of Christian Herter, George Bush I and the old guard WASP diplomats of the past is history.  The Doomsday Clock has inched more towards midnight.  Hell is upon us.  The End of Days is nigh.

This is only the beginning, and the flabbergasted Left is at sixes and sevens, discombobulated and lost.  All they have managed is more of the same hot air blown at Trump during the election, vaporous nonsense.

So, Zelensky is out on the street, and Putin and Xi have been invited to tea.  The way it should be, the way it always had to be.  Only those in coastal caves never saw this coming.  The rest of America did and is cheering.