{"id":249552,"date":"2025-03-01T13:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T13:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/oval-office-showdown\/"},"modified":"2025-03-01T13:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T13:33:08","slug":"oval-office-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/oval-office-showdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Oval Office Showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oval<\/div>


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After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America\u2019s traditional sources of power \u2014 its alliances among like-minded democracies \u2014 and return the country to an era of great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?<\/p>\n

The remarkable Oval Office shouting match yesterday provided the answer.<\/p>\n

As Trump admonished President Volodymyr Zelensky and warned him that \u201cyou don\u2019t have the cards\u201d to deal with Vladimir Putin, and as Vice President JD Vance called the Ukrainian leader \u201cdisrespectful\u201d and ungrateful, it was clear that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kyiv was shattered.<\/p>\n

Maybe it can be repaired, but it\u2019s hard to imagine how. Still, the venomous exchanges made evident that Trump regards Ukraine as an obstacle to a far more vital project.<\/p>\n

What Trump really wants, one European official told me as the administration had its first, ugly encounters with America\u2019s allies this month, is to normalize the relationship with Russia. If that means rewriting the history of Moscow\u2019s illegal invasion, if it means dropping investigations of Russian war crimes or refusing to offer security guarantees that would keep Putin from finishing the job in Ukraine later, then Trump, in this assessment of his intentions, is willing to make that deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n