WASHINGTON DC – Having blown up the established international order in the Oval Office on Friday, JD Vance was hoping to enjoy a weekend on the ski slopes of Vermont. But in the aptly named Mad River Valley, more than 1,000 angry protesters were waiting for the Vice President and his family when they arrived in the town of Waitsfield.
As the Vice-President’s motorcade attempted to make its way to the Sugarbush resort, opponents of the Trump administration vented their fury. Some targeted the administration’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants, while others carried signs reading “JDV go home”. Counter demonstrations were also held by supporters of the Trump administration.
But it was the presence of hundreds of pro-Ukrainian protesters, activated by Friday’s drubbing of President Volodymyr Zelensky orchestrated by Vance and his boss, President Donald Trump, that forced a change in the Vice-President’s weekend plans. The Second Family’s reservation at Sugarbush was hastily cancelled, and they were hustled instead to an undisclosed location.
Protests sparked by Friday’s made-for-TV humiliation of Zelensky spread to several other cities across the country. Unusually, on Friday itself the security perimeter around the White House was expanded as Zelensky’s supporters gathered before the Ukrainian leader’s arrival. When Zelensky emerged from his motorcade, Trump was on hand in the White House portico to greet him.
“He’s all dressed up today,” the President growled sarcastically to the waiting press as Zelensky emerged from his limousine. With hindsight, that was the first indication of the ambush that Trump and Vance were to unleash against their guest.
Now, Zelensky must decide when, or if, he can ever return to Trump’s Oval Office. After Friday’s meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Zelensky’s actions warranted an “apology” to Trump. Hours after the Oval Office showdown, Zelensky refused to apologise, telling Fox News he was “not sure we did something bad”.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump whisperer and veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took it even further, laying out the White House demands. “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change,” the senator thundered in the White House driveway.
Trump later dodged a question about whether Zelensky should quit. “I want somebody that’s going to make peace,” the President told reporters.
Even some of Zelensky’s prominent supporters in the United States argue that he cannot ever bounce back in the Trump administration’s eyes. “I say with zero pleasure that the US relationship is irredeemable as long as Zelensky is there,” one downcast former top official told The i Paper. “There’s zero chance of saving anything with him still in power.”
Zelensky disagrees, and is now backed by European leaders who are meeting him in London today. None of them, nor the King, have made any sarcastic or disparaging comments about the manner of his dress.
After arriving in London on Saturday, Zelensky took to social media to insist that he still viewed the United States as a “strategic partner….but we need to be honest and direct with each other to truly understand our shared goals”.
Apart from Trump’s now-evident personal disdain for Ukraine’s leader, the central issue hanging over their fractured relationship is Zelensky’s demand – shared by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron – that any peace agreement must be buttressed by US-supplied security guarantees.
On X, Zelensky articulated sentences that Trump and Vance did not permit him to complete on Friday. The minerals agreement, through which Trump is demanding repayment of the $350bn (£280bn) he falsely claims the United States provided in assistance to Ukraine, is “not enough…we need more than just that”, Zelensky wrote. “A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine…Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side.”
But America is plainly no longer on Ukraine’s side. Trump’s assertion that he wants to be “in the middle” between the Kremlin and Kyiv has been undermined by his repeated parroting of positions espoused by President Vladimir Putin: no Nato membership for Ukraine arising from any peace agreement, a need for Ukraine to cede some of its territory to Russia, and the argument the Putin should even be welcomed back into the G7. Each is a gift to the Kremlin bestowed by Trump before a single conversation occurs between the war’s aggressor and the aggrieved.
Now, it is falling to Starmer and Macron to pick up the shattered pieces of America’s relationship with Kyiv and try to put them back together. Their determination to work on a peace plan with Zelensky, and then present it to Trump, could afford the US President the chance to hail the success of his efforts to force Europe to shoulder more responsibility for solving the crisis. Or it could be rejected with stone-cold fury unless it includes pledges that Washington will get its hands on Ukraine’s rare earths and secure financial “compensation” that Trump falsely claims his country is owed.
Meanwhile, in Mad River Valley and other American towns and cities with less apposite names, the anger of Ukraine’s supporters in the United States is building.
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