The car crash of the Zelensky-Trump-Vance meeting in the White House on 28 February is still reverberating around the world. The specific realities have already been minutely analysed, dramatised, satirised, and AI re-engineered with alternative outcomes. But the true implications are being assimilated more slowly, enhanced by the bizarre claims regarding Ukraine, Europe, Russia and the world made by President Trump in his address to Congress on 4 March. The bottom line appears to be, remarkably, that the US under this administration has abandoned not only Ukraine, but also the free democratic world, the multilateral system put in place by US leadership after the Second World War, and above all, its allies. Moreover, it appears to be actively backing Russia under President Putin.
If this were a pitch for a Netflix series it would probably be rejected as too farfetched. But reality has long since left farfetched behind, lining up with the alternative world of billionaires, tech bros, oligarchs, and a failed real-estate magnate cum second-time US President, who apparently aspires to be king. Moreover, he seems to hold sway as such on the Republican Party, whose members of Congress have recently proposed resolutions such as adding Trump’s likeness to Mount Rushmore alongside presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to reflect his “towering legacy”; or making Trump’s June 14 birthday a federal holiday alongside Washington’s.
For a guided tour of this new bizarre world of the US and its role in the world, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El is joined by the storied US journalist Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. In a fierce and sometimes funny discussion, she demolishes whatever is left of the veneer of US political respectability to expose a group of thuggish bullies and cowards who now seem to be running the US — and the world. At least for now.
This episode was recorded on 6 March 2025.
Chapters
- What happened at the Zelensky-Trump-Vance meeting?
- Is the U.S. backing Russia and abandoning allies?
- Is Trump replacing diplomacy with personal deals?
- Where are the Democrats? How are Americans reacting to all this?
- Is Europe on the verge of a big change?
Mentions
- Trudy Rubin, “Trump seems a ‘Putin peace’ for Ukraine”
- Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
- Financial Times editorial, “The US Congress is missing in action”
- New York Times, “People Are Going Silent”
Follow our guest
- Trudy Rubin X/Twitter
- Her columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Follow us
- Instagram @women_leaders_podcast
- Our partner European Leadership Network social media Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook
- Ilana Bet-El
Credits
- Production: Florence Ferrando
- Music: Let Good Times Roll, RA from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-roll License code: ZXIIIJUU2ISPZIJT
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
Image credit: Florence Ferrando
