What Europe can learn from the White House clash

The Trump-Zelensky summit is a geopolitical Rashomon. Some saw a lying, maniacal bully and his snarling sidekick berate a patriot for telling the truth about his nation’s attacker and refusing to surrender to him. Others witnessed a bratty ingrate haughtily shaking his begging bowl while dictating to his benefactors the terms on which he would accept their charity. Or you might, like me, have watched a medley of the two, a war-worn leader grown impatient with diplomacy and unwilling to tell the great despotic lump in front of him whatever he wanted to hear.

It’s possible to sympathise with Volodymyr Zelensky’s desperate situation, and his nation’s larger cause, and still regret his tactlessness in handling a neuralgic personality. Zelensky’s insistence on truth and his country’s interests was righteous but it was a righteous vanity given the stakes. Agreeing with Donald Trump’s every word, heaping praise on his genius, pledging to nominate him for a Noble Peace Prize — all would have surely stuck in Zelensky’s craw but might have coaxed the president in a more pro-Ukrainian direction.