{"id":76347,"date":"2025-08-18T21:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T21:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/76347\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T21:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T21:41:09","slug":"all-smoke-but-no-fire-as-zelenskky-emerges-unbruised-after-trump-meet-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/76347\/","title":{"rendered":"All smoke but no fire as Zelenskky emerges unbruised after Trump meet | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there was a sign that Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a> wasn\u2019t going to be immediately voted off the island of the Donald Trump diplomacy show, it came early on when a familiar voice commended his choice of attire.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Zelensky, you look fabulous in that suit,\u201d said Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump pundit and member of the White House press corps, who had attacked him for wearing military fatigues during the infamous Oval Office meeting in February<\/a>. \u201cI said the same thing,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are in the same suit,\u201d Zelenskyy shot back, earning smiles and laughter from the room including the US president. \u201cI changed, you did not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u2018I\u2018I changed, you did not\u2019: Zelenskyy jokes with reporter about suit \u2013 video <\/p>\n

Thus did Zelenskyy survive his first media appearance at the White House with Trump on Monday as the US president focused less on belittling the leader of a wartime ally than boasting \u2013 and in many cases exaggerating \u2013 his exploits as a peacemaker in world conflicts.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy, dressed reluctantly in a black military-style suit to appease sticklers for protocol in the White House, largely sat by quietly as Trump claimed to have hammered out peace deals in six wars including one the veteran real estate developer said had taken place in the \u201cRepublic of the Condo\u201d.<\/p>\n

From Trump there was hyperbole about his ability to broker peace deals, digressions to internal US political battles over mail-in ballots, nebulous declarations about how he would end the conflict and evasions over how he would do that without negotiating a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

But there were no explosions \u2013 which meant for Zelenskyy it probably went as well as it could have.<\/p>\n

Luckily, Zelenskyy had some help, as he was joined by the UK\u2019s Keir Starmer and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the European Union in order to keep the discussion on track and to prevent a similar meltdown as took place in February.<\/p>\n

It was billed as a European summit at the White House on Monday, but it might as well have been an intervention.<\/p>\n

The European leaders were all smiles as they arrived at the White House on Monday afternoon, but they were there to steer Trump away from being sweet-talked by Vladimir Putin into a bad deal on Ukraine<\/a> and Europe.<\/p>\n

Before Trump rolled out the red carpet (literally) for Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week, he said that he would know within two minutes of meeting the Kremlin leader whether it would be possible or not to negotiate with him.<\/p>\n

But within two minutes of meeting Zelenskyy, Trump sent a message when he was asked early in a press conference whether Russia or Ukraine \u201chad the better cards\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say that,\u201d said Trump, who in February directly told Zelenskyy that he \u201cdidn\u2019t have the cards to negotiate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then, he went back and played the classics: \u201cLook, this isn\u2019t my war. This is Joe Biden\u2019s war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian leader\u2019s arrival at the White House on Monday had potentially threatened the kind of political fireworks \u2013 or some could say depth charges \u2013 that scuttled the Ukrainian leader\u2019s last visit to Washington in February.<\/p>\n

Then Trump and vice-president JD Vance teamed up for a brutal takedown of Zelenskyy during which Trump told him that he was \u201cplaying with world war III\u201d.<\/p>\n

But on Monday, Zelenskyy found a far more hospitable welcome from both Trump and Vance, and he kicked off the meeting with some high-level flattery, thanking Trump profusely for his efforts to end the conflict and praising Melania Trump for sending a letter to Putin about abducted Ukrainian children<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was little detail about the peace deal that Trump wanted to hammer out, except for the fact that he wanted to skip past a ceasefire \u2013 too difficult to actually negotiate \u2013 and go straight for a peace deal.<\/p>\n

And yet it appeared that all \u2013 or at least most \u2013 sides were keen to smooth over their differences in order to prevent Ukraine as being seen as the main obstruction to peace and of throwing the ball back to Putin.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s most substantive pushback (in public at least) came as the leaders all sat around a table and Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz and France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron both called for a ceasefire before talks over territory or a peace deal moved forward.<\/p>\n

Trump didn\u2019t appear to take umbrage although he had ruled out a ceasefire earlier \u2013 and doubled down after Merz again called for a halt in the fighting.<\/p>\n

But the most white-knuckle moment of the introductory remarks came as Zelenskyy began to delve into detail on Ukraine\u2019s priorities for ending the war, all good points that Trump appeared to have little interest in discussing in depth.<\/p>\n

As the minutes ticked by, Macron\u2019s face grew dour. Trump tried to break in but Zelenskyy continued to speak.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly, as though coming to, the Ukrainian leader straightened up in his seat and quickly wrapped up his remarks. Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato, quickly jumped in and, as soon as possible, said the main words that Trump wanted to hear: \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there was a sign that Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn\u2019t going to be immediately voted off the island of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-76347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}