It’s Monday, March 3. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today, we’re focusing on one big thing: the fallout from Friday’s extraordinary Oval Office spat.
Three days after the diplomatic earthquake between President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the world is still feeling the aftershocks.
In Europe, leaders have been jolted into action. Ukraine’s European allies, including British prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron, met in London on Sunday to forge their own peace plan and agree on additional support for Kyiv.
In Moscow, officials continue to welcome Trump’s approach to the conflict—and his foreign policy more generally. “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russian state TV described a new world order with Trump in the White House: “Now everything is being decided inside a big triangle: Russia, China & the US. Within this, the new construction of the world will come to fruition. The EU as a united political force no longer exists.”
In Washington, administration officials have made it clear that it is up to Zelensky to patch things up if there is any chance of a U.S.-Ukraine mineral deal being signed. “The president believes Zelensky has to come back to the table and he has to be the one to come and make it right,” one official told NBC News. (Italian leader Giorgia Meloni also urged Zelensky to extend an olive branch to the White House and warned of the risks of a “divided West.”)
The Zelensky-Trump bust-up—and the war in Ukraine in general—is one of those important subjects where people we respect (including our colleagues) passionately disagree. There are plenty of other outlets that will give you only one strongly expressed view. But it is our conviction—and among The Free Press’s reasons for being—that the only way we can get to the truth is by seriously considering multiple perspectives.
The differences of opinion start with the question of what, exactly, we all watched on Friday.
Were Trump and Vance bullying a besieged ally in public (as Eli Lake argued immediately afterward)? Or were we watching the White House finally stand up for American taxpayers (scroll down to read Batya Ungar-Sargon make that case)?
Then there are the bigger questions:
Is Trump’s Ukraine policy a long-overdue acknowledgment of the limits of American power? Or an unforced error that endangers not just America’s allies but America itself?
Could the end of NATO be just “days away,” as former Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis said Saturday? Or might the latest uncertainty get member states to finally meet the defense spending requirements on which the alliance depends?
And what are the chances of peace with honor for Ukraine?
One thing is clear: We’re at a pivot point not just for Ukraine but for the world order. Making sense of that shift is what we’ll be doing right here as events unfold.
For today, we wanted to offer four pieces from writers and thinkers we trust.
First, Christopher Caldwell assesses what Friday’s theatrics changed—and what they didn’t. “Zelensky is, Trump aside, the most Trump-like politician in the world,” writes Christopher. And, in his view, the Ukrainian leader tried to pull a Trumpian trick in the Oval Office, but it backfired. Chris explains Zelensky’s failed gambit—and why, in spite of the European effort now underway to take over leadership of the war, Zelensky still needs one man: Trump.
Read Chris: “Zelensky’s Trumpian Trick.”
Second, historian Victor Davis Hanson—a top interpreter of geopolitical events—explains why Zelensky’s White House visit ended without a signed minerals agreement, security guarantees for Ukraine, or a road map toward a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Read Hanson: “Ten Reasons for the Zelensky-Trump Blowup.”
Next, Batya Ungar-Sargon points out the divide between the media narrative of Friday’s fracas and the view of ordinary Americans. To hear the media tell it, says Batya, President Trump embarrassed himself and the country. But, as has become the dominant trend over the past decade, ordinary American taxpayers saw things differently. And polls are proving it.
Read Batya: “What Average Americans Think of Trump’s Showdown with Zelensky.”
Finally, Michael Oren remembers another Oval Office clash—and the lessons he learned from his ringside seat. Oren was Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. in May 2011, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lectured President Barack Obama at the White House.
The incident—which led to Rahm Emanuel pounding Oren’s chest and barking “Your [expletive] prime minister cannot come into the [expletive] White House and [expletive] lecture the president!”—left a deep impression on Oren.
“It underscor[ed] the importance of interpersonal relationships in the shaping of foreign policy. It taught me the degree to which the leader of a small and dependent state can publicly challenge the head of a patron superpower. And it showed me the crucial need to correctly read the geopolitical map—to know what ‘cards’ a country does and does not hold.”
Read Michael Oren: “What Zelensky Can Learn from Netanyahu.”
To find all of our Ukraine coverage, including Eli Lake on a fiasco in the Oval Office, Natan Sharansky on why a president’s words matter, Peter Savodnik on the frightening consequences of abandoning Ukraine, and much more, click here.
Trump is a negotiator. Negotiators don’t take sides (as Zelensky wanted him to). Negotiators, if successful, reach conclusions that benefit all and simultaneously piss off everyone.
Putin will never surrender. He would send his grandchildren into battle if he thought it would help. Reference 1,000 years of Russian history.
So the choice is endless carnage or an end that no one likes but stems the bloodshed.
And with a minerals deal that puts American resources (not American military) on the ground, the Administration will have a strong incentive to pushing initiatives that maintain peace.
As a recent Australian subscriber, do Americans realise how many bases you have here - Darwin is rotating your troops with an airstrip not too far away landing your bombers, Perth has your navy rotating including nuclear subs, central Australia has one of your most important secretive communication and intelligence bases ditto the west coast not to mention the various alliances. If Trump imposes tariffs on us public opinion will turn against the US. But then again he if he knew probably would not care. This of course leaves us effectively defenceless!!