If you are a vulnerable foreign leader in a situation where the president of your leading patron might berate you in public, the priority is not to get berated.

As someone who wishes Ukraine well, I was shocked at how poorly Zelensky handled yesterday; it was complete malpractice.

It was wrong of Trump and Vance to berate him the way they did, but if you are a vulnerable foreign leader in a situation where the president of your leading patron might berate you in public, the priority is not to get berated.

Nothing else matters — not your pride, not points of substantive disagreement, not your potential pique at sitting in close proximity to one of your fiercest critics in the person of JD Vance.

If Zelensky had been playing by these rules, the first thing he should have done was wear a business suit. It would have been a notable sign of respect, and would have removed a point of friction with Trump; if he and his team are halfway competent, they would take account of the fact that the president’s supporters absolutely hate his fatigues. It also made Zelensky seem even smaller when things went south that he wasn’t dressed appropriately.

When I said this on X, people replied that Elon Musk doesn’t wear a suit in the Oval Office. True. When Zelensky is named the head of DOGE, he can do the same and get away with it; in the meantime, it would have cost him absolutely nothing to violate his sartorial practice for one very important day.

Then, there was the substance of the Oval Office meeting. All Zelensky needed to do was say: 1) The war never would have happened if Trump had been president; 2) I appreciate his efforts for peace; 3) Ukrainians, too, want peace, but also what’s best for our country; 4) and I look forward to our discussions.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

That’s it. If he’d done it, he’d have come out just fine, and it wasn’t difficult.

When the whole thing blew up, he couldn’t even manage to sound appropriately regretful on Special Report, which wouldn’t have been hard, either.

You can rue, for good reason, the way that Trump views this conflict and how he expects to get fluffed up by people he meets and talks with, but it’s a reality. All sorts of foreign actors have taken this on board and reacted accordingly to protect their interests — except the one guy who has the most to lose by stupidly refusing to play by the simple, easy-to-understand rules.

Zelensky dressed in his usual fashion and scored some nice debating points in the Oval Office yesterday. What did it get him or his country?