I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding

A Ukraine follow-up because what happened in the Oval Office today is unprecedented, unthinkable, and reveals poor strategy at a high-risk level

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to Ukrainians every night via video hookup, sometimes from his office, sometimes on the frontlines, sometimes in an undisclosed location for his safety. You can watch his addresses on YouTube or on the presidential website, where there are 223 pages of them starting in January 2022. That’s when it became clear Russian President Vladimir Putin intended to invade Ukraine.

---

Each message is about 20 minutes long and delivered in Ukrainian, directly addressing the people. In the early segments Zelensky stands stiffly in a suit and tie (that’s for you, Brian Glenn). The day the Russian invasion began—Feb. 24, 2022—he switched to the olive drab that would become his uniform as rockets rained on Kyiv and residents took to sleeping in subway stations and high-rise basements. He wore the olive army fatigues to global appearances, including a December 2022 joint session of Congress where he was warmly greeted on both sides of the aisle.

His nightly addresses are both formal and folksy, tight rundowns of war progress mixed with anecdotes about Ukrainian survivors and morale boosters. They carry good news and bad news. In one from early this month, the president reports on a missile strike that killed 14 people, including two children. He numbers the injured, 20, and those rescued, 22. This was a residential building, one whole section of it destroyed by one missile, one night.

“This is why Ukraine—and real peace—require guarantees,” not just words or documents, he says. Air defense systems and interceptor missiles “would bring peace closer.” Zelensky lists off and thanks those countries contributing aid that week. He gives a shout-out by names to the rescuers who pulled families from the building. “Glory to everyone who fights, works, and rescues all of us for the sake of Ukraine,” he concludes, “Slava Ukraini.”

This is political theater, to be sure, but it is theater in the service of Ukrainians and their cause. With nearly 1,099 messages for every day of war on file, it’s hard to call it a stunt.

Not so the theater that unfolded in the Oval Office today. I don’t have words for it, and I canceled my Friday night plans to sit down and think it over. I’ll leave links with some thoughts, and hope you’ll watch it for yourself.

C-Span has a video of the full event, about 50 minutes, and the heated-exchange clip, about 10 minutes.

By watching the full event, I saw something unfold that was more than Zelensky’s “failure to read the room,” as some reports have said. Before things went south, he sat through 40 minutes of repeated falsehoods (that the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than Europe, for example), listened to Trump call rare earths “raw” earths, and to sideswipes about his role in a war he didn’t start. Generally he had gone along with President Trump.

He was humble about his country needing help even as Trump tried to blame him for needing it. He tried to inject seriousness, pointing out that while he was in Washington today Russia fired seven ballistic missiles on Kyiv. Ukraine shot 6 of them down, but the single missile that hit killed one and injured others, including a 9-year-old girl. Some in the press pool asked leading and inane questions, in what is normally a rapid-fire crisp session. The most spiteful came from One America’s Brian Glenn (at about 18:40), who peppered Zelensky, “Why don’t you ever wear a suit? Do you own a suit?”

Here you begin to feel a set-up. Presidents usually receive foreign leaders in the Oval Office and speak to the press 10 minutes before they adjourn to talk in private. With the agreement still not signed, it begins to feel like Trump is waiting for something to happen. He rambles and takes off-topic questions for 15 more minutes after the suit question. Vice President JD Vance begins to interject and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seated next to him, looks pale and like he’d like to sink into the floor. Perhaps the plan was to have an audience goad Zelensky and it was taking awhile? I suspect so.

After 42 minutes, Zelensky tries, again, to explain why diplomacy without security guarantees won’t work with Putin. And Vance cuts him off, the vice president suddenly accusing the president of Ukraine of disrespect and of not thanking Trump enough, of taking Americans on propaganda tours in Ukraine, and on. Trump joins in, piling on, yelling at Zelensky, bringing up Hunter Biden’s laptop, and actually closing with, “this is going to be great television.”

Zelensky left the White House without a deal. To underscore: Top officials at the White House are yelling at a head of state. On camera. It’s a state that is a longstanding U.S. ally, a state at war against a nuclear power. Its president has to travel hours by train to get out of his country so he can fly unmolested to visit the White House, while neither Trump nor Vance have visited Ukraine.

So no, it’s not old fashioned to say the first White House error was forsaking hospitality. Yale professor and Ukraine history expert Timothy Snyder lists it and four other fundamental errors the American leaders committed. Watch here.

Timothy Snyder

“One can have different opinions about how to bring this war to an end. That’s normal. What’s not normal, what’s indecent, is to yell at the president,” he said.

Other errors Snyder highlights show why what happened today in the Oval Office isn’t only theater. It isn’t a spat for sport, as it seemed to be for the Americans in the room. Zelensky is the leader of a democracy, and like our head of state, he represents the people who elect him. Trump’s and Vance’s efforts to humiliate him are shaming to  Ukrainians, people at war, people living without heat and electricity many nights. And to what end? 

As Snyder notes, “Very few Americans believe we should throw aside Ukraine and have Russia as an ally.” Clearly the Trump administration wants to do that, and also throw away strong alliances with Europe and Canada. For what? is the question.

With Oscars coming up on Sunday, maybe it’s appropriate to close with Bob Dylan’s 1963 hit, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’ …