Ten takeaways from the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office spat
Great television but poor diplomacy. Here’s a top ten list after the remarkable televised meeting in the Oval Office, and a prediction for JD Vance’s future.
Donald Trump ended his Oval Office spat with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky by saying, “This is going to make great television, I will say that.”
Great television but poor diplomacy. Here’s my top ten list of takeaways from one of the most remarkable 40 minutes or so of television ever recorded in the White House Oval Office.
JD Vance started the fight. The meeting had been under way for about 40 minutes before Vice President JD Vance blew his stack, seemingly losing his patience at Zelensky’s insistence that Vladimir Putin and Russia were the aggressors in the Ukraine war who must be made to pay the consequences.
Up to that point, both Trump and Zelensky had been calm and polite in their exchanges, with the Ukrainian leader firmly but reasonably making the case that his country needed security guarantees beyond the implicit assurance that a deal on extracting rare earths would give the United States a stake in Kyiv’s future security.
Had the meeting finished at 38 minutes it would have been seen as nothing extraordinary by the standards of the Trump White House. Vance’s attack on Zelensky was astonishing: he said it was “disrespectful” for Zelensky to “come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media”.
Well, that might happen when you put a wartime leader in the media spotlight and ask him to agree with some deeply inaccurate propositions about the war.
Vance’s intervention led to seven minutes of increasingly sharp exchanges, all of them unhelpful to American and Ukrainian interests.
Trump doesn’t like being upstaged. Vance is intellectually faster, verbally more fluid and shorter-tempered than Trump. That’s a dangerous combination in a relationship where Trump’s expectation (as we saw from his recently televised cabinet meeting) is that all around him defer to his authority.
My guess is that Trump will not thank Vance for derailing a meeting that was edgy but still on track to deliver an agreement – to be signed after lunch – on rare earths co-operation. As it was, Zelensky left the White House with the agreement unsigned. That’s not the outcome the President was aiming for. He can thank Vance for the road-bump. Here’s my prediction: Vance will not last a full term as Vice-President to Trump.
Zelensky was not well prepared for the meeting. The Ukrainian President should have realised that an Oval Office press gaggle was designed to put Trump centre-stage. We know Trump thrives on interminable riffing with the media – and some questions were unbelievably fawning to his ego.
Zelensky should have just soaked up the theatre. Instead, he wanted to argue his point, at one stage handing Trump “before and after’’ photographs of Ukrainian prisoners brutalised by Russia. I am entirely sympathetic to Zelensky’s position but trying to upstage Trump in front of the media was counter-productive.
Trump’s rare earths deal is good for Ukraine. Trump maintained that the security guarantee Ukraine was looking for was “only two per cent of the problem”. What he called the “raw earths” deal would bring security with it in the form of American workers “digging, digging, digging”.
Trump has a point. A large American civil presence, backed up with European military peacekeepers creates an interest in Ukraine that raises a serious barrier on further Russian intervention.
Zelensky would have been better off nodding his way through Trump’s inaccurate rendition of the war and signing the deal. In fact, I suspect he will come back to that agreement soon.
Once signed it strengthens his negotiating position considerably to get more security support from the US.
It’s the deals, not the alignments. Trump made the case that he has spent a lifetime doing deals. When pressed by a journalist about being too aligned with Russia he said “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America.”
Allies should take note. Trump isn’t swayed by more typical American rhetoric about being “shoulder to shoulder” with allies. It’s all about the deals he can do to advantage American national interest.
This makes for a foreign policy more gritty than pretty, but it surprises me that many find Trump’s approach offensive. It’s entirely appropriate that the US pursues aims in support of its national interest, just as Australia does.
Trump’s risky relationship with Putin. Trump thinks his relationship with Putin means the Russian leader will respect a peace agreement largely out of fear of crossing the President.
“I’ve known him [Putin] for a long time now and I don’t believe he’s going to violate his word … when we make the deal, I think the deal’s going to hold.”
Zelensky, most European leaders, perhaps even Xi Jinping, would disagree. Trump’s assessment of Putin’s character is the riskiest element in the President’s foreign policy, but it’s clear Trump is not going to be talked out of that view.
More than anything Trump’s international engagement is shaped by the personal contacts he makes with foreign leaders. That’s a different way of doing foreign policy which Australia has not adjusted to.
Europe’s defence is in its own hands. If European leaders didn’t know it already, after this Oval Office encounter there can be no escaping the reality that Europe must do more for its own defence.
Zelensky is right that the United States remains the essential security backstop. But I’m sympathetic to Trump’s position that European countries are wealthy enough to spend more on their defence and must do so. That message is also true for Australia, for Japan, for Taiwan, indeed for all countries worried about China.
It is astonishing for how long America’s allies have grifted off the United States for their security. That time is over.
This is why Albanese won’t visit Washington. I have written regularly in these pages that Anthony Albanese should have met Trump personally to make the case for AUKUS, for the alliance and Australia’s economic relationship with the US.
Albanese won’t do that, presumably on a calculation that an Oval Office press call might descend into criticism of our obvious alliance shortcomings. Politically it suits Albanese to be distanced from Trump.
This strategy won’t work beyond our federal election. There are many points of intersection that will bring Trump and the Australian PM together. We can’t hide forever from the consequences of underinvesting in our own security.
China knows that tough behaviour works with Trump. Xi Jinping may puzzle over how it is that a thug like Putin can have such a bullet-proof relationship with Trump. But China loses nothing in the thuggish stakes compared to Russia.
Beijing may judge that the way to impress Trump will be to look tougher in its international behaviour. Note Trump’s comment to Zelensky: “The problem is I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy. I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the US, although your people are very brave. But you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Xi Jinping won’t need telling twice. China will be approaching the White House with multiple deals, all ego-boosting for the President.
Does it matter? Probably not! Befitting his hall of fame membership of the World Wrestling Entertainment franchise, President Trump knows compelling television when he sees it. He moves on quickly from one arresting scene to another.
All of which means that an awkward fifteen minutes in the Oval Office will most likely be forgotten by next week. Zelensky may emerge higher in the President’s esteem by being seen to be a tough guy – as if fighting the Russians for three years doesn’t show that.
My guess is that Ukraine will circle back to signing Trump’s rare earths agreement. That’s the strongest basis Zelensky can have to negotiate more from the Americans, and he has now a golden opportunity to ask more of the Europeans for direct security support.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-2012).
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