Terry Prone: A shrugging dislike for Donald Trump has turned to 'terror'

Until his two small children invade his office in full view of the camera before their mother, in desperation, hauls them out behind her academic husband, who doesn’t see the humour in the event, although the BEEB guy interviewing him clearly thinks it’s a riot.

On Friday evening, I was finishing off an online course with an individual, nicely framed in shot like Robert Kelly, when the door opened behind her and three people appeared. Not children, this time. I figured one might be her partner and the other two her teenage offspring. They were unapologetic about the interruption. 

She had to come and watch this: Zelenskyy in the White House. All hell had broken loose. It was evident that the interrupters believed what was happening in Washington might make personal skills-building in Ireland somewhat redundant. The client apologised and disappeared.

You could see it on the news. You could see it online. Endlessly looping while you took in the different details. 

Particularly details like the president pointing his finger at Zelenskyy as if the latter were a recalcitrant schoolboy rather than the respresentative of 44m Ukrainians

Viewers tended to get into an internal competition as to which input was weirder, if the reproof for ingratitude coming from the vice president was included. They could stare, wide-eyed at that, or go to the moment where Trump predicted that this event would make great television. So right, that man, on this one point. He knows what makes great TV, starting with the humiliation of a world leader being mocked because he marginally changed what he usually wears.

Before the incident, the brawl, the row actually started, the world was trying to settle into a comfort zone defined by Trump’s inattention to detail and chosen amnesia. It may seem bizarre to invest hope in either, but we must never forget that the man — Robert McNamara — who arguably did more damage to America’s global standing while contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers and Vietnamese fighter, was the antithesis of Trump.

As US secretary of defense, and, indeed as a businessman and banker, McNamara was cool, considered, not addicted to media, concentrated always on getting more and more data to inform his rational decisions. 

Re-examination of his consequential time in office, beginning during his life but accelerating in the 15 years since his death has gradually demolished his reputation. McNamara could not have been a greater contrast to Trump, but the reality is that while Trump has lowered the tone of American discourse, polarised views, and astonished the world with his dearth of interest in objective data or evidence, McNamara may have done more damage, aided by his attention to precisely those things.

And then there’s Trump’s capacity to abandon a position without explanation or apparent awareness of his own lack of consistency or logic. World leaders have begun to rely on that, as has mainstream media. Before the Friday fracas, some hack asked Trump about the contradiction in the Zelenskyy visit and the American president having recently described the Ukrainian as a dictator. 

Trump presented a perfect smack-down. Had he said that? He couldn’t believe he had said that. Next question? Now, anyone who shares former secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s view of Trump as “a fucking moron”, is likely to miss just how cleverly Trump managed that answer, creating a powerful device that was multi-layered in its applicability. First, knock the questioner off balance by questioning the obvious truth of their assertion. Next, provide a competitor journalist with the opportunity to ask their own question. The competitor will always take the invitation. In a competition between sole trader and professional solidarity among journalists, the sole trader wins, every time.

So the world was reasonably sanguine about the meeting on Friday, not least because the most transactional US president in history wanted a deal with the Ukrainian leader involving minerals and rare earth elements. Yet, shockingly, in less than an hour, Zelenskyy was gone (to write a warm online note of gratitude to the American people) and the world was staggering at the implications. 

Trump had presented himself as piggy-in-the-middle; a non-partisan, nothing-to-gain-here potential negotiator between Putin and Zelenskyy. Believing, as he does, courtesy of disinformation streamed from Putin, that Ukraine caused the war, Trump evidently expected Zelenskyy either to cave early, or to do the cleverly prepared ritual dance engaged in by French president Macron and UK prime minister Keir Starmer. A great outcome, the way the president saw it, would have been himself and Zelenskyy holding hands the way himself and Macron ended up.

That didn’t happen. Zelenskyy doesn’t seem to have been able to quite believe that an American president could be so naively bought into what the Russian leader was telling him. When Zelenskyy tried to raise evidenced doubts about Putin’s track record of adherence to truth, he was shouted down in front of world media. The abuse, by the US president and vice president, took the form of an attack on him for not being thankful to the US.

When he predicted that following the Putin line would cause long-term regrets to Trump and America, Trump told him he wasn’t to say that. The straight-up coercive behaviour of a bully

Zelenskyy watched the leader of the free world firmly align himself with the man who could be called the leader of the unfree world. He didn’t even try to delineate the existential threat Russia presents to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. No point.

“We see that there are real consequences to Trump’s admiration of and fascination with the world’s dictators, autocrats, and strongmen; that it’s not just a rhetorical preference,” was how The New Yorker put it this weekend. “It’s become an actual foreign-policy direction for the country, which represents a radical shift in America’s postwar view of the world.”

As the White House shouting match (two against one, by the way) ended and Zelenskyy left, presumably to read the supportive messages flowing from mainly EU leaders, I was struck by a couple of words popping up repeatedly in observations being made to me. Words like “scary” and “terrifying”. These were contained in comments from people who have, up to now, regarded Trump and his administration with shrugging dislike, rather than actual fear.

But now, it’s fear. It’s real and present fear.

And it’s a fear added to by the fact that one of the US president’s close supporters — the hugely powerful Elon Musk — responded to an event which carries profound life-and-death implications for the people of Ukraine with a laughing/crying emoji.