Talk about catastrophizing! On Sunday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, MSNBC contributor and Never Trumper Charlie Sykes said that calling Friday's Oval Office meeting among Zelensky, Trump, and Vance a "fiasco and disaster" wasn't negative enough!
No, in the world according to Sykes, the meeting marked nothing less than "a breaking point in world history." Not only, per Sykes, is the United States under Trump "no longer the leader of the free world," but "in many cases" is actually its "adversary!"
Co-host Michael Steele teed up Sykes by accusing Trump of having planned the "ambushing" of Zelensky. But the Washington Pos reports that, to the contrary [emphasis added]:
Hours before an explosive blowup in the Oval Office between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump and his team felt they had found a path forward to match the president’s urgency to end the war with the Ukrainians’ need for continued security assistance.
White House officials were expecting a positive meeting and said they had little reason to anticipate animosity. Both sides were satisfied with the minerals deal, hoping it might recalibrate the relationship between the two nations, Ukrainian and U.S. officials said, speaking like others on condition of anonymity to discuss relations at a tense time. Trump himself was in an upbeat mood the night before the meeting, according to those who had spoken with him.
Cheer up, Charlie. The world is not about to end. Consider that after the meeting, far from declaring that Zelensky had permanently become persona non grata, Trump said that "He can come back when he is ready for peace."
And within 24 hours, Zelensky responded "we are ready to sign the minerals agreement." And in an important change to his position at the meeting, Zelensky did not demand that security guarantees be part of the minerals deal, but only that it would be a "first step" toward those guarantees.
So you might be able to describe what happened in the Oval Office as . . . the art of the deal.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Weekend
3/2/25
8:03 am ETMICHAEL STEELE: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. So, the performative meeting in the Oval Office, which was really, in my estimation, planned. That was an ambushing of our ally. The contrast between what we saw with Starmer and what we saw with Trump speaks for itself.
But I think the important thread here is how our allies now stand up. The reality, the truth is, you cannot negotiate a peace settlement from a one-sided perspective. Trump started this process with Zelensky standing in the hallway. When he brings him into the room, finally, he berates him. He is working out his plan with Putin. Starmer is trying work out a plan for our ally.
How do you see the European role reshaping this conversation and ultimately what this peace plan and process will look like?
CHARLIE SYKES: Well, let's just go back to the last 48 hours, though. You used the word fiasco and disaster. And the more you think about what happened in the Oval Office, I think it is more consequential.
It feels like a turning point, breaking point, in world history and in the Western alliance. It's not simply what the Europeans are going to do in this particular circumstance.
They now have to realize that the United States is no longer the leader of the free world as long as Donald Trump is the president. That we are no longer a reliable ally. In fact, in many of these in many of these cases, the United States might be an adversary. And this is difficult to get your head around.
Because what we are seeing, what we saw on Friday, was perhaps the end of the post-war alliance. So Europe has to deal with a completely remade world. And the question is now, will Europe step up to fill the vacuum of American retreat and appeasement.
