OK, seriously: can anyone here give me an unbiased, agenda-free quick rundown on the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump? My entire social media is on fire from angry shitlibs crying about muh Ukraine, I'm seeing Redditards seething as usual, mainstream news sites are giving me the predictable orange man bad shtick, and Youtube is recommending me right wing grifter channels bragging about how Ukraine has been buckbroken by Trump. I don't know who to trust, and these threads are going fast. What honestly is happening?
Basically Zelensky comes by to sign off on the mineral deal they'd been negotiating for a bit, they end up talking in the oval office as everyone had seen, when things go awry when the talk of what a peace deal would look like.
Trump's people have been arguing a mineral deal should be treated by Ukraine the same as a security guarantee, while Zelensky is wanting to ensure Trump is arguing in favor of allowing countries like France or the UK can still be present during a cease fire to act as a security guarantee. It's been an issue since most of the talk around negotiations has been excluding Ukraine and Trump hasn't been eager to touch the issue. Starmer and Macron have also brought up the issue repeatedly with Trump when in the Oval office too, but it didn't cause Trump or anyone to sperg out the same as when Zelensky did the same. There was the difference that Starmer and Macron could speak better english and were acting much more fawning over Trump throughout, whereas Zelensky was pointing out stuff like how Putin had broken ceasefires before because there was nothing put in place to help with enforcing them.
This caused Vance and Trump to sperg out a bit since Zelensky was doing stuff like:
1) Suggesting the US negotiate on its behalf when talking with Russia without them
2) Pointing out a ceasefire deal could need help with it being reinforced even it isn't done by the US
3) Pointed out Vance hadn't actually seen what Ukraine is looking like these days (to which Vance said visiting is just part of propaganda tours)
4) Pointed out he'd thanked the US quite frequently over time which goes against the narrative on social media
5) Generally engaged with Trump and Vance even though English is a second language for him
So in all likelihood Trump was wanting to blow off Macron, Starmer, and the rest of Europe ignoring the requests to negotiate for peacekeepers to be around Ukraine during a ceasefire so he could get Russia to agree to something even if it didn't really mean anything.
In reaction, Zelensky went on to reiterate that he's fine with stuff like territorial concessions, resigning, and so on if it got some decent peace deal in place.
Meanwhile Trump's people have taken to talking as though the mineral deal initially presented for a half trillion dollars in return for nothing was the same as the recent draft that was for mineral rights to help pay back the US what Ukraine had received from the US as aid. The idea likely being to paint Zelensky as obstinate and repeatedly avoiding signing off on the same deal shown him even though there's no sign he wasn't going to sign the deal after that Oval office visit.
Trump and his people have also been weirdly against saying Russia invaded Ukraine, killing plenty civilians and so on. Trump even took time to denounce Zelensky being hateful towards Putin for pointing out stuff like the invasion happening.
This has caused all variety of countries to wonder if the US would just sorta ditch them. Whether it's the Japanese wondering if their goals and America's really align or Europe wondering if it can really depend on American weapons. Which is an issue that's popped up as American officials have threatened to revoke licenses for the use of weapons purchased from the US if they wanted to use them for purposes the US disagreed with. Would cause a lot of national security issues for these countries if they couldn't work towards safeguarding their own countries/allies if the US decided they didn't like it.
Example of a Japanese editorial:
https://www.asahi.com/articles/DA3S16160926.html
It's hard to tell what if anything Trump was trying to negotiate with Russia that would have allowed Ukrainians to feel safe returning home, so he may have been fine with many of them permanently remaining refugees.
There is a theory that Trump is largely wanting to give everything Putin wants in return for nothing so that they can sweeten them up and build a relationship to help break them away with China, which sounds retarded to me given Russia and China have way too many reason to stay intwined.
Personally I feel like a Trump and his people may have paid too much attention to social media influencers and not kept in mind that these people don't really seek out new information as it'd cost more money than doing another podcast episode, so are not the best news sources.
