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Opinion

DEVINE: Zelensky Was the True Instigator of the Oval Office Fracas — Not an ‘Ambush’ from Trump

posted by Hannity Staff - 3.03.25

By Miranda Devine

Anybody who watched the entire Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky would know that it was not an “ambush” or a “setup” by Trump, as characterized by Democrats and malign media entities.

It was the opposite. If anyone came to that meeting in bad faith, it was clearly Zelensky, whose body language and attitude was negative from the start. Trump could not have been more cordial, having steered the complex negotiations with Russia and Ukraine to a first step where he believed peace was a real possibility.

But Zelensky had other ideas. He contradicted, interrupted and insulted Trump, even before Vice President JD Vance said a word.

It was 11 minutes in when Zelensky first contradicted Trump with a gratuitous defense of Europe’s financial support for the war, which Trump repeatedly has said was less than America’s.

“President Trump said that they made less support but they are our friends and they are our very supportive partners. They really gave a lot, Mr. President.”

Trump responded: “They gave a lot but they gave much less.”

“No,” said Zelensky.

“Much less,” said Trump.

“No,” repeated Zelensky. “Nooooo, no.”

Trump smiled and flicked him jokingly to make the exchange look like light-hearted banter.

“OK,” said Trump, ending it.

“OK,” said Zelensky smirking.

As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said later, if Zelensky wanted to contradict Trump, “the proper venue for that would have been 15 minutes later [when] we were going to walk into the White House dining room and have lunch, just 16 of us.

“I actually think he was always going to do this and I think he was surprised by the forceful reaction he got back,” Bessent told Fox News.

Pre-deranged meeting

At the end of the meeting, when he’d blown up the whole deal, Zelensky smirked and gave the thumbs up to someone off camera among the press pack.

Never mind that his ambassador was sitting a few feet away watching the debacle unfold with her head in her hands.

There is no excuse to misconstrue who was to blame for blowing up the meeting and jeopardizing the peace deal because it all played out live on camera for almost an hour.

But misconstrue it bad people did, and for base political motivations, skewed by a good dose of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Zelensky himself seems to suffer from the affliction, and his inability to understand the situation he was in should disqualify him from leading Ukraine in the future. That, of course, is up to the Ukrainian people, or perhaps their generals — although since two-thirds of Ukraine’s media outlets have received some, if not most, of their funding from USAID, it’s likely Ukrainians have never received the unvarnished truth about their wartime president, an actor who cosplays as a soldier.

Now Trump’s creative “Art of the Deal” effort to end the war lies in tatters, just as his enemies here and abroad wanted. They could not tolerate that Trump, who thumbed his nose at all their sacred cows, would be successful in ending the war. If Trump succeeded, it would expose warmongers on both sides of Congress and in Europe as incompetent or far worse.

So Trump’s enemies are using the million dead souls of the Ukraine war to spawn a new Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, their fourth by my count.

There’s more! Read the full op-ed over at The New York Post: