Blinder Than The Blind Eye: Ingrate Zelensky’s Entitlement Syndrome Desecrates The Sanctum Of World Power—And Gets Him Evicted

On Friday, the world witnessed a ten-minute, high-stakes back-and-forth drama in the Oval Office that beat a Hollywood blockbuster, with all due respect to the Oscars.

For those who watched reruns of the clip on social media, let us remind them that the drama unfolded after a routine, yet lengthy, 30-minute initial discussion, which was just fine. President Trump took numerous steps to praise Ukrainian leader Zelensky, at one stage even saying it was a privilege and honor to welcome him to the White House. These words, coming after Trump had dubbed him a dictator the previous week, marked a remarkable turnaround. Trump was obviously celebrating a minerals deal that his Treasury secretary had signed with the Ukrainian government, and even more so that Hill Democrats were also singling him out for praise, including such skeptics as Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut senator.

The video feeds, not hearsay, not based on leaks, but happening and carried live to a global audience, invited immediate media backlash. The turn to "a spectacle to horrify the world," as the Daily Mail put it, happened during the last ten minutes of the 40-minute Oval Office meeting.

Vice President JD Vance made a valid point, noting that Trump had said throughout his campaign that the West hadn't pursued diplomacy enough to end the war and that diplomacy was the way forward. That ticked Zelensky off, who began to give a history lesson dating back to 2014, arguing that diplomacy doesn't work. During his diatribe, Zelensky never talked about the West's actions in helping overthrow the Kyiv government in 2014 and Merkel's comment about Minsk II buying time to rearm Ukraine.

And it went downhill from there. Trump called an end to the live coverage, and his staff escorted the media out of the Oval Office. A shocked Marco Rubio, who, as Secretary of State, had assured Trump that everything would be A-OK, reportedly told Zelensky to leave the White House. The lunch, which Trump had mentioned in his live remarks, was supposed to precede a formal minerals-signing agreement between him and Zelensky in the East Room, was canceled and given to the press.

The New York Times charged, "President Trump's Oval Office encounter reflected his determination to put aside alliances and commitments to principles in favor of raw great-power negotiations." CNN said that Trump and Vance "castigated" Zelensky. The Guardian published an entire article about media reactions globally.

We carried an editorial that appeared Friday morning before the mess at the White House. We had anticipated that Zelensky would be obsessed with security guarantees and would raise the issue at the meeting to make one final push for more military aid and even American ground troops. What we didn't expect was that Zelensky would pursue it in front of the cameras and worldwide media.

Zelensky's turn against a benefactor country, without whose support Ukraine wouldn't have had a fighting chance during the last three years, suggests that he had become overconfident in his brand. He thought he would emulate former President Ronald Reagan and address a divided nation, which returned President Trump to office by a relatively slim one-percent margin in the popular vote.

Ronald Reagan, often dubbed "The Great Communicator," had a unique approach to engaging with the American public that frequently involved bypassing traditional media filters. His strategy was rooted in his belief that he could connect more effectively with citizens by speaking to them directly. He leveraged his skills as a former actor and broadcaster to convey his message with clarity and charisma. One of Reagan's signature moves was his use of televised addresses, particularly from the Oval Office.

Zelensky probably thought a Reaganesque opportunity was right there in front of him. The world was watching, as were his sympathizers on Capitol Hill, including the numerous NeoCon Republicans who had waited in lines to take selfies with him a few hours earlier. They had all commiserated with Ukraine as Zelensky peddled photographs of the dead, wounded, and the destruction brought about by Putin's inhuman actions.

For nearly six years in the public eye, Zelensky has been treated as a moral leader whose flaws are so minuscule that the media views him as a God-like figure and watches him being treated the same way by political peers. But Zelensky forgot a crucial fact: In his political life, he had never faced a hostile situation in front of the cameras.

He was going up against President Trump, the most hated and dismissed world leader, who has received 90% negative media coverage for the last ten years. It was not a fair fight, even if one were to discount the fact that Zelensky was the beneficiary and attended the Oval Office meeting as a guest.

In these pages, we have noted instances when politicians are protected by staff and prevented from answering tough questions that reflect the ground reality. For nearly 39 months, the elite and the media ignored former President Biden's diminishing mental faculties, even protesting vehemently when some of us brought it up. When reality hit in the June 2024 Atlanta debate, the Left scrambled to find an alternate leader. If the media hadn't been as blind and fawning, the truth would have come out earlier, including questions about who was running the White House and why these officials were driving Washington to the edge of a nuclear war. President Biden never seriously pursued diplomacy, reinforcing the public’s long-standing frustration with his administration’s handling of the war. TIPP Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans (51%) were dissatisfied with President Biden’s efforts to negotiate a settlement to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with dissatisfaction levels remaining steady. By January 2025, with Washington's foreign policy in disarray and Ukraine at a standstill, the Doomsday Clock advanced the closest to midnight in its history—an indictment of Biden’s failure to pursue diplomacy before the crisis escalated.

Zelensky's hubris was so over-the-top that when he failed and rushed out of the White House, he didn't realize how the house of cards was going to fall apart. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a politician who has been Ukraine's friend since the Maidan Revolution in 2014 and a steadfast supporter of Zelensky in Washington, called for the Ukrainian President to step down. It couldn't get any worse than that.

Zelensky, an ingrate, has been coddled by Biden and Europe's leadership, fueling the very Zelensky Entitlement Syndrome that now defines him. Blinded by hubris, he refuses to accept that a new sheriff is in town and still believes he can bleed billions from the U.S. as he did under Biden. But his ambitions go beyond aid—his goal is to entangle America in the conflict, whether through direct troop deployment or NATO escalation. Zelensky is pro-war, anti-peace, and unwilling to de-escalate.