Donald Trump scolded the president of Ukraine Friday afternoon for expressing excessive “hatred” for Vladimir Putin and inadequate gratitude for the United States.
This extraordinary dustup came at the tail end of a press conference featuring President Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Vice President JD Vance. Zelenskyy had come to the White House with the hopes of burnishing relations with the US, in part by forging an agreement giving America a financial stake in Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Instead, the Ukrainian leader secured little from his American counterpart beyond public ridicule.
Tensions started flaring when Trump defended his reluctance to publicly criticize Putin, saying that Zelenskyy’s “hatred” of the Russian leader was an obstacle to peace. Vance buttressed Trump’s position by arguing that Joe Biden’s “tough” talk about Putin hadn’t done anything to prevent Russia’s invasion and that the path to peace lay through “engaging in diplomacy.”
Zelenskyy then expressed reservations about Vance’s reasoning. The Ukrainian president noted that his country had signed a ceasefire with Russia following its invasion of Crimea in 2014, yet this had not secured lasting peace. He was therefore not inclined to strike another peace agreement, absent security guarantees that would prevent Russia from re-invading to capture more Ukrainian territory in the future. On these grounds, Zelenskyy asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?”
The vice president took exception to this question and accused Zelenskyy of disrespecting the United States by trying to “litigate this in front of the American media.” He then told Zelenskky that he “should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”
Trump proceeded to tell the Ukrainian president that he was “gambling with the lives of millions of people,” and that he didn’t “have the cards right now,” while Vance repeatedly demanded that the Ukrainian president say “thank you.”
To liberals, some Republican foreign policy hawks, and most European leaders, Trump and Vance’s conduct constituted a historic disgrace: The American president had publicly mocked a US ally fighting an invasion, thereby undermining its position in (hypothetical) diplomatic negotiations with its oppressor.
To Trump’s admirers on the right, however, his dressing down of Zelenskyy was cause for catharsis and pride. The American Conservative magazine hailed the dustup as “a great clarifying moment” in which a US president finally stood up to Washington’s warmongering foreign-policy “blob.” Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon lauded the administration’s performance as a “Master Class in How to Deal with an Entitled Punk.” Similar sentiments were issued from other conservative influencers, social media users, and politicians.
The right’s enthusiasm for Zelenskyy’s humiliation has two distinct sources.
First, among America’s most radical social conservatives, Putin’s Russia has long commanded admiration as an exemplar of traditional sexual morality, in an increasingly decadent (i.e., LGBTQ-friendly) world.
Second, a broader cohort of contrarian commentators, isolationist intellectuals, and nationalistic voters believe that the benefits of aiding Ukraine are slim, while the tail-risks are catastrophic. This perspective takes many disparate forms. In its most extreme rendering, however, Zelenskyy is understood as a villain: A “dictator” who is leading his war-weary populace into a meatgrinder while trying to ensnare the United States in World War III.
Both of these perspectives are lamentable. But the unabashedly pro-Putin right is arguably more clear-eyed than its avowedly “antiwar” co-partisans: Trump’s dressing down of Zelenskyy undoubtedly strengthened Russia’s position, but there is little reason to believe that it has hastened the return of peace.
Why the right fell in love with Putin
When Vladimir Putin reassumed the Russian presidency in 2012, he confronted a slowing economy and simmering public discontent. To shore up his support, Putin recast himself as a crusader for the Russian nation’s traditional values. The centerpiece of Putin’s hard right turn was a so-called anti-propaganda law that forbade positive portrayals of LGBTQ people in media available to minors.
In the autocrat’s framing, this crackdown on civil liberties not only restored godliness to Russian society, but also established his nation as the great defender of Christianity on the world stage. “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,” Putin said in December 2013. “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
At a time when American social conservatives felt themselves losing the culture war in general — and the fight against gay equality in particular — Putin’s words and deeds were an inspiration. In a 2014 column, the former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan suggested that in the “new ideological Cold War,” God was on Russia’s side. Three years later, the Claremont Institute scholar Christopher Caldwell declared that if “we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the pre-eminent statesman of our time.”
The burgeoning ties between America’s Christian right and the Kremlin weren’t just ideological, but also institutional. Russian oligarchs have contributed funding to the World Congress of Families, an American Christian organization that promotes discrimination against LGBTQ people, the prohibition of abortion, and other reactionary causes.
The Christian right’s conception of Russia as a bastion of moral probity — locked in a Cold War with an increasingly decadent West — informed its understanding of the Russia-Ukraine War. In a July 2022 column for the Daily Wire, the reactionary self-help commentator Jordan Peterson suggested that Russia’s incursion into Ukraine may have been an act of self-defense against creeping Western wokeness. In Peterson’s telling, the conflict between Christian and progressive values had grown “serious enough to increase the probability that Russia, say, will be motivated to invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country.”
From this vantage, Trump’s willingness to belittle the Ukrainian president and project a neutral stance on the war — in defiance of the globalist elite — constitutes a heroic defense of Christianity.
To the anti-anti-Russian right, Zelenskyy is a dictator fomenting a nuclear war
The pro-Putin right is a marginal force in American life. In a 2024 Pew Research survey, just 8 percent of US voters said they had confidence in Putin to “do the right thing” in world affairs.
But exhaustion with funding the Ukraine war is more widespread. A Pew poll taken last month found 30 percent of Americans — including 47 percent of Republicans — saying that the US was providing “too much” support for Ukraine’s defense (according to the Pentagon, the US has spent over $180 billion on the war thus far).
There are more and less ideological versions of this sentiment. Less politically engaged voters may have no strong opinion about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but simply feel that their government should spend less money on foreign countries and more on aiding its own people. From this nationalistic point of view, Trump and Vance’s grievance at Zelenskyy’s lack of gratitude for America’s altruism may prove resonant.
More committed America First isolationists, however, harbor a deep resentment of the Ukrainian president. In their analysis, Zelenskyy is a dictator who cancels elections and refuses to accept a ceasefire, thereby condemning his own people to pointless deaths, in service of an unwinnable war. What’s worse, the Ukrainian leader is seeking to trigger a hot war between the United States and Russia — which is to say, World War III — since he knows he can only win with the direct aid of the US military.
This argument has scant factual basis. It is true that Ukraine has not held previously scheduled elections since the war’s onset. But the nation’s constitution bars such elections under conditions of martial law, in which citizens in occupied or embattled areas would be disenfranchised. And although Ukraine would surely welcome direct US military intervention in its defense, there is no evidence it regards that outcome as even a remote possibility.
Nevertheless, this analysis has proven popular with contrarian podcasters and isolationist intellectuals. Last November, Joe Rogan excoriated Zelenskyy for firing missiles into Russian territory. He also mocked Zelenskyy for claiming that Ukraine had Putin terrified.
“Fuck you, man,” Rogan said of the Ukrainian president. “You fucking people are about to start World War III. …This is cocaine-like behavior. ‘Putin’s fucking scared, man, Putin’s terrified.’ … Like, what are you talking about? He has nuclear missiles. You fucking monkeys.”
Notably, Rogan’s suggestion that Zelenskyy’s thinking was distorted by cocaine use was echoed by the Kremlin Friday. “A fierce dressing down in the Oval Office,” Putin adviser Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram: “Trump told the cocaine clown the truth to his face for the first time.”
For those who believe Zelenskyy is a coke-addled autocrat scheming to set off a nuclear war, Trump’s ritual humiliation of the leader was more triumph than disgrace.
Trump’s break with Zelenskyy is more likely to advance Russian imperialism than peace
The pro-Putin right’s enthusiasm for Trump’s dustup with Zelenskyy is well-founded. Ukraine cannot maintain the war’s existing battle lines — or exert substantial leverage at the negotiating table — without American support. And it now appears that the Trump administration is indifferent to Ukraine’s fate. Following Friday’s press conference, Trump declared that he did not want Ukraine to have an “advantage” in negotiations with Russia.
Similarly, if one is solely concerned with minimizing the threat of US–Russia war or American spending on foreign nations, then Friday’s events could reasonably be a source of encouragement.
But the self-styled anti-war right often claims to be outraged by Ukrainian war deaths and desirous of peace. To the extent that such remarks are sincere, they should not take much comfort in Trump’s denunciations of Zelenskyy.
Conservative isolationists often speak as though Putin has proffered a ceasefire deal, which Ukraine has stubbornly refused to accept. And yet, precisely because Russia enjoys natural advantages in a prolonged conflict (as isolationists sometimes emphasize), it is not necessarily inclined to lay down its arms. And this is liable to be all the more true if Russia believes that a cessation of US support for Ukraine is imminent — a development that would drastically improve the Kremlin’s prospects for further territorial gains.
This is all well and good for those who wish to see Russian theocracy advance and Western liberalism retreat. But it should bring little pleasure to conservatives sincerely committed to peace.
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