The Best of the Worst” Contest--op-eds and actions reported in the press
Who disrespected who?
This week we introduce a new feature in the Trenchant Observations newsletter: “The Best of the Worst Contest, for “The Best of theWorst” op-eds and actions reported in the press.
BACKGROUND
See,
1)”Marc A. Thiessen, “Zelensky must mend the breach with Trump — or resign; Zelensky’s stubbornness has badly hurt Ukraine,” Washington Post, March 2, 2025 (6:07 p.m. ET);
2)Minho Kim, “Rubio Attacks Zelensky, Firmly Defending Trump and Vance; Facing a wave of criticism from his former Senate colleagues, Secretary of State Marco Rubio backed the complaints lobbed by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance against Ukraine’s leader,” New York Times, March 2, 2025(Updated 2:43 p.m. ET);
Marc A. Thiessen, a right-wing columnist who can be reliably counted on to shill for Donald Trump and the Republicans, though he occasionally come up with a balanced opinion, is a strong contender for First Place in this week’s “the Best of the Worst” contest.
After the brutal Oval Office assault on Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Zelensky by Vice-President J.D. Vance and President Donald Trump on Friday, February 28, 2025, in which they heaped massive “disrespect” on the elected President of Ukraine while charging him with disrespecting the President and the Oval Office, Thiessen has offered up an op-ed opinion which is almost as shameful and sickening as the blow-up which is the subject of his column.
Who disrespected who, Mr. Thiessen?
Thiessen wrote:
The blowup was Zelensky’s fault. To understand why, one needs to watch the entire 50-minute meeting unfold. Trump greeted Zelensky graciously, praising the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people, and dismissed their earlier rift as “a little negotiations spat.”
Even after Zelensky refused a White House request to wear a suit, Trump praised his outfit, saying, “I think he’s dressed beautifully.” Trump extolled the minerals deal they had reached and said, “We look forward to getting in and digging, digging, digging.” He publicly pledged to continue military aid to Ukraine and even held out the possibility that he “could conceivably” commit U.S. troops alongside British and French troops to provide security after a peace deal was reached.
This should have been music to Zelensky’s ears. He should have taken the win. Instead, about 24 minutes in — long before his terse exchange with Vice President JD Vance — Zelensky started criticizing Trump in front of the assembled reporters.
He summarily dismissed Trump’s idea of an immediate ceasefire — something that is extremely important to Trump, who is committed to stopping the killing — because he said Putin had already broken ceasefires 25 times.
“He never broke to me,” Trump said. “No, no, you were the president,” Zelensky contradicted him. “He never broke to me,” Trump repeated. Instead of letting it pass, Zelensky contradicted him again: “In 2016, you’ve been the president, Mr. President” he said, adding, “That’s why we will never accept just a ceasefire. It will not work without security guarantees.”
Why on earth did Zelensky choose to fact-check Trump in front of the entire world rather than debate the wisdom of a ceasefire behind closed doors?
A few moments later, after Trump bemoaned the destruction of Ukrainian cities, Zelensky interrupted him again. “No, no, no, you have to come, Mr. President, you have to come and to look. No, no, no, we have very good cities.” He then suggested that Trump was falling for Putin’s propaganda, declaring, “iIt’s Putin that is sharing this information that he destroyed us.” But Trump was right: Many Ukrainian cities have been destroyed.
So, according to Thiessen, Zelensky was at fault because he provoked the blow-up by speaking forthrightly about the history of the Russian aggression against his country, and the failure of diplomacy to stop Putin’s war aimed at the elimination of Ukraine.
Moreover, he dared to refer to the facts, which Vance took to be the extreme offense of criticizing the King in the presence of the King-–the ultimate expression of lèse majesté (lese-majesty).
Not to be outdone by Thiessen, Secretary of State Marco Rubio debased himself on Sunday by doubling down on J.D. Vance’s and Donald Trump’s shameful attack on Zelensky. If the U.S. doesn’t become a completely fascist country, if the Republican Party is ever recaptured by non pro-Russian Republicans, Rubio’s Sunday morning TV appearance may turn out to be the turning point that definitively foreclosed any possibilities for higher office the Secretary of State may have had.
Trump is a grand master of the art of inciting supporters to debase themselves in a career-ending manner.
On ABC’s Sunday Morning” talk show, Rubio asserted:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday fiercely defended President Trump’s sharp turn against Ukraine’s leader, accusing President Volodymyr Zelensky of trying to derail the peace process with Russia by openly challenging Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in a heated televised exchange from the Oval Office.
“What Zelensky did, unfortunately, is that he found every opportunity to try to ‘Ukraine-splain’ on every issue,” Mr. Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Then he confronts the vice president.”
Mr. Rubio was in the Oval Office when Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance launched a public attack on Mr. Zelensky on Friday after the Ukrainian president, seeking to underscore Ukraine’s need for U.S. security guarantees in any cease-fire agreement with Russia, began running through Russia’s repeated aggressions on his country since 2014.
Mr. Vance interrupted, characterizing Mr. Zelensky’s efforts to elaborate the Ukrainian perspective in front of reporters and television cameras as “disrespectful” and scolding him for not being sufficiently grateful for U.S. support. Mr. Trump, his voice raised, then accused Mr. Zelensky of “gambling with World War III.”
“Gambling with World War III” is a phrase right out of Putin’s playbook. The nuclear threat of “World War III” often worked with a pusillanimous (cowardly) President Joe Biden, and even Barack Obama before him.
The competition for “The Best of the Worst” First Prize this week is intense. We have eliminated Donald Trump and J.D. Vance from the contest because their attack on Zelensky broke the measuring meter we use for “the Worst”.
Rubio is a strong contender for demonstrating the depths of debasement a Trump supporter can sink to, or be pushed to by Trump.
Still, Marc A. Thiessen takes First Prize this week for putting on display not merely Rubio’s boundless ambition and lack of principles, but also the developing script and talking points for Republicans to try to justify the shameful, to justify the inexcusable, and to justify the unforgivable.
***
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harv Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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