2026
Diplomacy dies on live TV as Trump and Vance gang up to bully Ukraine leader
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
2026 points (99.1% liked)
World News
41538 readers
3195 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Trump's unreasonable nature is so obvious in the full video that I don't see how anyone with two braincells can be on his side. Some highlights I want to share:
Reporter asks at 37:39 "… and who would protect those minerals … ?" Trump: "They'll be protected. The agreement will protect them. The agreement, yeah we're signing an agreement." Reporter: "Right but what if Russia tries to invade or there's russian agression in those spots." Trump: "I just don't think that's going to happen." He then deflects by trying to discredit the reporter since he couldn't answer the question. So instead of giving Ukraine any guarantees or acknowledging Russia's previous deceit, he hand waves it away.
At 33:45 "… what did [Putin] tell you that he wanted peace?". Trump: "My whole life is deals … I've known him for a long time, he had to suffer through the Russia hoax, you know Russia Russia Russia it was a hoax. It was all Biden it was nothing to do with him … I think that he wants to make a deal and he would like to see it end." What an absolute nothing answer. He's asked why he believes this is viable and after a short attempt at making Russia the victim he just says, rephrased, "because, lol".
At 39:50 Vance goes on a truly incoherent ramble about how Biden tried "thumping [his] chest and pretending that the president of the United States words mattered more than the President of the United States's actions" and thus "the path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe in engaging in diplomacy". Ah, diplomacy, the path that is famously known for it's lack of words... sending money to Ukraine or providing military aid? Those aren't actions, they're just words. Zelensky goes on to ELI5 to Vance how Putin broke diplomacy before the clips everyone is posting begins.
And just for fun, at 30:15 Trump delivers a line so stupid it almost breaks Zelensky's poker face: "I've stopped wars, I've stopped many wars. My people will tell you, I've stopped wars that nobody ever heard about. I stopped wars before they ever started. … I could give you a lot of nations that would tell you right now they were probably going to war — I could tell you right now there is a nation thinking about going to war on something that nobody in this room has ever even heard about."
This is ignoring all the times they try and blame Biden for Russia invading Ukraine which just ???
You seem to be one of the few people I've seen online that seems to have watched the whole video and came away with this take, so I would love a civil response.
I'm certainly not on Trump/Vance's side, but when watching the whole video I can't help but think that Zelenskyy truly failed at understanding the purpose of the meeting and has condemned many more of his countrymen to death. It seemed obvious from the get go that Trump wanted this to be a public deceleration of economic entanglements and that the security discussions would come later. I get Zelenskyy's point that Russia has been impossible to deal with from a diplomatic standpoint and that he didn't want to leave Washington without a security gaurentee, but by publicly shaming Russia from the ovel office he is making diplomacy impossible. My impression is that Zelenskyy wants the war to keep going, but I truly don't understand why. His citizens are dying and they are losing territory. Russia has 10x the population and, historically, has had little reservations about sending their soldiers into the meat grinder. And let's not forget that if Russia gets backed into a corner, they still have nukes that could escalate the situation to unfathomable destruction.
From my nonexpert opinion, if I was the leader of Ukrainian I would be trying to make as many economic deals as possible with foreign nations and look to stop the war asap. I truly can't think of a better alternative than that given the current situation. So my question is, what should the US, EU, and Ukrainians be doing to stop the killing? What is the most realistic path to peace?
And just reiterate, I don't agree with the wording and attitude of Trump/Vance during that meeting, but the general sentiment of economic entanglements seems like the best option at this point. No?
Zelenskyy was only interested in allowing the US to take their 'rare earth' if the US was also going to guarantee that it would help their defense against Russia's advancements.
Trump claimed the deal had already been made, and tried to make the conference about how great he is and how bad the previous presidents were.
He praised questions that verbally sucked him off, and belittled those who asked genuine questions about the deal.
Then the two Americans bombarded Zelenskyy with questions and refused to allow him to answer.
They talked over him and got upset at him for not sucking their cocks the whole conference.
Zelenskyy was sent out because the babies in the Whitehouse couldn't handle somebody who didn't kiss their feet. He didn't disagree with the deal, he just wanted more clarification and this was taken as a personal attack.
The world does not respect Trump or the US. We laugh at their incompetence and look forward to their ego getting checked.
This whole press conference made the US look like half-assed war profiteers, rather than the 'freedom fighters' they like to roleplay as.