Volodymyr the First. Is Trump jealous?

Volodymyr the First. Is Trump jealous?

Donald Trump clearly dislikes Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It probably stems from Trump accusing Zelenskyy of taking sides during the campaign. Recall that Zelenskyy on a visit to the UN met with Harris and not with Trump. Trump said that Zelenskyy wanted Harris to win in order to “keep the money flowing.” He said “Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.” Zelenskyy then criticized JD Vance for his views on Ukraine and was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 to tour an ammunition plant with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Zelenskyy was accused of trying to influence the election. One critic said “Zelensky is also attacking JD Vance in the biggest, most important battleground state in the country during an election year. If that isn’t foreign election interference I don’t know what is.” Another opined “Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal.” 

Trump was infuriated. So his actions toward Zelenskyy are no surprise. Calling him a dictator is relatively mind – for Donald Trump. But the media immediately defended Zelenskyy giving further evidence that it suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The media’s reflex response was “If Trump thinks he’s a dictator then he is not.” Trump had said that Zelenskyy’s term in office had expired but that he suspended elections declaring martial law which made him a dictator. The media said “No he isn’t because Ukrainian law prohibits elections during periods of martial law”. 

The headlines blared that Trump was falsely accusing Zelenskyy of being a dictator. All the European leaders immediately came to Zelenskyy’s aid saying that he was not a dictator. Googled it and there is page after page accusing Trump of making a false accusation. Some even compared Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. The British parliament suspended general elections from 1935 to 1945 allowing Churchill to serve from 1940 to 1945 without the benefit of elections. Interestingly, when elections were held two months after VE day, Churchill lost. Lincoln never suspended elections but did suspend habeas corpus to rein in confederate sympathizers in Maryland in 1863 after both the House and the Senate passed bills giving Lincoln the right to do so. Lincoln proclaimed “Whereas the Constitution of the United States has ordained that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

I am convinced that if Trump had lauded Zelenskyy as a wonderful fellow who was saving the world from being ravished by the evil Putin and having a wonderful relationship with his subjects, that the media would have immediately branded Zelenskyy as a dictator. Note that none of the media denials went any further than the dictator part. I guess the media does not want the public to know that Zelenskyy has banned eleven political parties asserting that they are sympathetic to Russia. He expelled members of the Ukrainian parliament and revoked their citizenship over claims that they were sympathetic to Russia. Zelenskyy banned the Russian Orthodox Church which is the largest church in the Ukraine claiming the church was a threat to national security and its priests were Russian spies. He has also frozen the assets of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko who was deposed in part due to his relationship with Putin. Zelenskyy has also censored free speech and sought to control the Ukrainian media. He consolidated television programming into a single state controlled outlet. Ukrainian journalists claim that they have been threatened and are under government surveillance if they do not parrot the official government line.

Our media ignores these actions. Rather they are more interested in refuting anything that Trump says or tweets. Trump said that Zelenskyy had poor approval ratings, had started the war and had gotten millions of Ukrainians killed. The media said “No!” His approval rating is 57% not the 4 percent cited by Trump, that Russia started the war and that Ukrainian casualties are around 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded not millions. So Trump is lying and he must be lying about the dictator thing too. This is sloppy journalism at best and assumes that the public is too lazy to find out the truth. Trump is smart. He knows that by proclaiming Zelenskyy as a dictator, that the press will take the opposite stance. Since the press is always reporting the democrat claim that Trump wants to be a dictator, Trump knows that it can’t show parallels between him and Zelensky.

So is Zelenskyy a dictator? Do the above actions of censoring the press, banning the largest church in the country, expelling members of parliament, freezing the assets of the opposition, limiting the news, banning political parties and threatening journalists, are those of a dictator? They are indeed. However, even I understand that those actions may be deemed as justified during a time of war. But it still does not negate the old saying that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then odds are that it is a duck.