Mr. Hyde Murders Dr. Jekyll

The mauling of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last Friday marks a new low in America’s MAGA transformation

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office at the White House on February 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

I’ve been sitting here, staring at my laptop screen for the better part of two hours, trying to figure out what I want to say about the shocking event that took place on Friday afternoon in the Oval Office. I’m reaching for metaphors. Was it a geopolitical earthquake? A diplomatic meltdown on par with Chernobyl? The collapse of a structure in which we’ve all been living and thriving for the past 80 years? Has our barrel finally gone over the falls we’ve heard approaching in the distance for quite some time?

None of the analogies fit perfectly. All of them aim to capture the enormity of what we witnessed when the American president and vice president ganged up on Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in public, directing a vitriolic stream of ignorance, lies, and half-truths at a man desperately trying to defend his country against a rapacious predator whose ultimate aim is to subjugate Europe’s eastern edge and spread chaos and disfunction across the rest of the continent, leaving it ripe for Russian domination.

Whatever analogy or image you want to draw to make sense of it, the public expression of hostility and disrespect toward Zelensky by the American president and vice president is a very, very big deal. It’s just the latest and clearest indication yet that the world is undergoing major tectonic shifts driven by the refusal of the United States to continue playing by the (American-authored) rules that have defined our foreign policy since the end of World War II.

America’s Oscillation Between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde