Everyone Missed the Most Revealing Line from Trump

And Zelensky proved he’s ten times the man Trump and Little Boy Vance are combined.

So much garbage spews from the dumpster fire that is Donald Trump’s mouth that it can be easy to miss when he says something that’s actually revealing. That’s what happened when he met with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office yesterday, where he, Little Boy Vance, and the Fashion Police ambushed the Ukrainian president.

The “reporter” is Brian Glenn, who is apparently dating Marjorie Taylor Greene (and therefore in no position comment on taste). Notice Vance laughing during the interaction because he’s still about twelve years old. Him and Little Marco sat there on the couch as if they were Trump’s kids desperate to win his affection. Someone should tell Little Marco that the job of secretary of state includes diplomacy.

Yet, this Tim Gunn moment aside, the most telling comment from the atrocious display at the White House yesterday was when Trump remarked, “It’s going to be a very hard thing to do business like this” (around 6:30 in the clip below).

The comment was made so casually that many people likely missed just how much it reflects Trump’s overall philosophy: his actions are never motivated by morality or a desire to help people, but by a desire to benefit himself by making a deal that serves him. He doesn’t care how many innocent people might be killed or about defending principles or about any ideas of loyalty or leadership. There’s only one thing that matters to him: What do I get?

It was with this in mind that Lindsey Graham had tried to spearhead the minerals deal that he claims is worth a “half-trillion dollars” and that he believed would’ve linked us economically with Ukraine’s survival – or at least so he says – Lindsey has to check up Trump’s ass every day to see which way his farts are blowing. (Don’t imagine it – I’m sorry.) Graham said that doing the deal would give us “an interest worth defending,” because I guess protecting democracy and trying to stop the world’s worst dictator isn’t enough of a cause.

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In truth, the deal looked a hell of a lot more like an attempt at exploitation than a mutually beneficial pact. It’s also clear that Graham, like Trump, is also using the usual Republican tactic of cherry-picking numbers and ignoring costs. As reported by NBC, Ukraine is indeed rich in natural resources, though “rare earth elements” (actually not so rare) are only a small portion of what can be found in the country, and the entire market for rare earth elements – globally – stands at just around $12 billion. There are other big problems with extraction, including that about 40% of Ukraine’s mineral wealth is in areas currently occupied by Russia, that the costs of extraction in many cases would be high, that Ukraine’s power system and other infrastructure has been terribly damaged, and that – in case no one’s noticed – they’re in the middle of a fucking war!

As always, the whole thing is really about making Trump look good – because, as we’ve heard time and again from all of his sycophants – he’s the greatest dealmaker in history and he alone can fix the whole thing.

Well, we’ve seen how he does the fixin’: alienate allies, kiss Putin’s ass, and blame and berate Zelensky.

Even Graham called the meeting an “absolute, utter disaster.” He lambasted Trump for his petulant, childlike behavior, which has now jeopardized the Ukrainian people and our position in the world. To his credit, Graham really went to town on Trump, and even suggested that we need new leadership in the White House to address the crisis.

I’m fucking with you, of course. Graham Cracker broke rather easily, blaming Zelensky, telling us not to believe our own eyes about what we saw, and saying that the Ukrainians need to replace their president.

Not to be outdone, Marco Rubio went on Crappy News Network with Kaitlan Collins to work up Big Brother’s angle that Zelensky was somehow the aggressor. Collins let Little Marco ramble on (I guess he suddenly found his voice) while doing basically nothing to challenge his veracity or his narrative. For the life of me, I’m still wondering when people in the media will stop believing that every person they speak with is simply just presenting an honest view – some people, Ms. Collins, are just liars and of low moral character. Tim Russert understood that. Maybe it’s time to stop allowing these assholes to filibuster your show with bullshit.

If Kaitlan Collins had bothered to do just a bare bit of research, she would’ve seen that the Trump administration had already made clear prior to the meeting that we’re withdrawing support from Ukraine and that Trump isn’t going to challenge Putin. Trump didn’t bother to include Ukraine in his negotiations with Russia, and long before the Zelensky meeting, cuts to Ukraine for desperately needed supplies and services were part of Trump and Musk’s destruction of USAID. Trump used Zelensky’s supposed disrespect at the Oval Office meeting to continue this pattern, further reducing our commitment.

Once again, I’m most concerned media failure. While, yes, there are plenty of examples you can find of people calling out what happened in opinion pieces and some fairly accurate reporting by the likes of the AP and Reuters, Collins’s interview is emblematic of the problem. We have moderators instead of journalists, and they’re weak and unable to deal with the onslaught of bullshit from Trump and the Republicans. Start using the term “lie” and start calling out liars. Question their integrity at times. If that means they’ll never come on your show again, so be it. If they’ll only come on if you’re “nice” to them, that doesn’t do much good and is a disservice to the public.

Right now we’re all living in a surreal world where Trump can be president while missing a brain while Kamala Harris was seemingly disqualified for missing a dick. We’re seeing the consequences of that, and what we need is honesty, not bothsidesism. Report on what happened, not on what some people say happened.

And what happened was we ceded any notion that we’re going to be a world leader.