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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

He’s also a former stand up comedian. If you’re going to heckle the guy you’d better be good at it if you want to come out looking good.

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He did one mistake though, when he asked "Can I speak/say something?" to Trump, and Trump said no. This is lesson learnt for the future (for myself too in terms of public speaking).

But overall, he did rather well, considering the shit-show it was.

I still can't believe Trump publicly tries to humiliate an ally like this, and at the same time calls Biden "the stupid President".

Stupid or not, perhaps he is, but not to stay in public like that. It shows Trump doesn't respect the function of the US President and shits on the vote of the citizens.

> He did one mistake though

I don't think I'd consider that a mistake. Not that it matters to everyone but it's one more asshole thing to know Trump did, which was only publicized because Zelenskyy respectfully asked for his turn to speak. Other leaders are likely to have taken note of that: Trump isn't even pretending that you're equals.

To some common folk, it will make Zelenskyy look weak but also consider this exact thread in which people say his calm demeanor makes him look strong. I'd wager Zelenskyy is interested in impressing the latter folk and not interested in impressing the former.

There’s a short list of people Trump is afraid to let speak.

It did get Trump and Vance to show their asses, that's for sure.

Yup, I’d wager that given how the meeting had gone thus far, he made the strategic decision to specifically do this. He knew that this would be spun in whatever way Trump wanted, so it was better to win another point with the group that is smart enough to look past the talking points that Trump is going to push onto the media.

Well put. Idiots respect a man that yells and see it as power/strength, smart people recognize the person who is calm in face of that.

But the idiots are so numerous!

> Other leaders are likely to have taken note of that: Trump isn't even pretending that you're equals.

They’re not equals and to pretend otherwise is delusional. One is the leader of the most powerful country on earth. The other is broke and soon to be defenseless.

Trump definitely came off as a zhlub in my eyes.

may not have been a mistake - I think Z was trying to maintain the high ground and force Trump to act poorly (by saying no); bad optics for Trump (unless you're MAGA)

> Trump doesn’t respect the function of the US President

Probably why people voted for him.

> shits on the vote of the citizens.

yes 4 years ago. But now… can’t really say we didn’t know what we were voting for. I didn’t vote for him, but most of my fellow Americans did, and we gotta live with that, and hope we learn.

> most of my fellow Americans did

Not true.

Trump - 77 million votes

Harris - 75 million votes

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/...

The OP said “most Americans”, not “more Americans than voted for Harris”.

US population: 340M

- an American citizen who wasn't able to vote in multiple presidential elections due to nonsense like being unregistered without notification in a state with an early registration deadline

> 49.91%

"First past the post" means "first to get above 50%". He didn't win enough of the vote to be elected.

That is not what first past the post means.

First past the post is plurality wins.

Anyways, that's not how US presidential elections work. The aggregate of votes doesn't matter, only the electoral votes divvied up by state.

That's the official counts. How many voters in Georgia were disenfranchised? How many provisional ballots were thrown out?

Stuff like this https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

Neitber of those are even remotly a majority of the US.

And even more votes for other candidates, hence Trump did not win a majority of the vote.

Look down one more line where it says Trump got less than 50% of the total.

Trump only won by plurality.

I love Zelensky and I think he's a hero, but I don't think he did well at all. People think he did well because they love him, but objectively I think he made quite a few mistakes besides the one you mention.

The first one is getting emotional in the first place. His team and Ukraine's intelligence services should have spent weeks interrogating and trying to provoke him in order to desensitize him to this kind of shit. Trump, Vance and Musk are primarily trolls and they should be dealt with as such.

He should not have interrupted Vance answering him either. That was fatal.

He needed to stay calm and slow. He did better than any of us could ever have done, but it wasn't quite enough for this situation. He could have looked a lot stronger and I think we need everything we can possibly get in the situation we're all in right now.

I want to highlight this comment too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43211604

Given the situation, he did stay calm and slow. He did an excellent job trying to keep the cadence measured.

But Trump jumped in angry at the implication that one day Putin will come for the US. That is when Trump stated his machine gun speech … millions will die, world war 3.

This was a shameful day for America. Period. Full stop.

When Trump jumps in like that, it's a real fear he has. Trump is really for real scared of the Russians. Why? Well, one can muster a couple of hypotheses.

He’s not scared of the Russians. He’s scared of the voters thinking they should be scared of the Russians. When Zelenskyy said the Russians will come for America, Trump was angry because he knew it was going to scare voters and lose him support.

Maybe, but such a false equivalence. When Vance, Trump and Musk preside over a collapse of all that they hold dear, let’s see how cool they are…

Based on the livestream of the incident, I personally think the issue was the lack of a Ukrainian-English translator.

Vance was absolutely trying to score domestic political points by undermining Zelenskyy, but Zelenskyy was unable to communicate or respond in the manner he wanted to, and definetly committed some obvious Russian L1 / English L2 mistakes (Zelenskyy's first language is Russian and this can be seen by his "costume" statement, because the direct translation for suit across the CIS is костюм/costume [0][1][2][3] because of French influence), and he inadvertently insinuated that Trump wasn't doing enough even though he was trying to join Vance in dunking on the previous admin.

This is why the Japan and India meetings with Trump had English translators despite Ishiba and Modi having a similar level of English fluency to Zelenskyy.

[0] - https://stager.ua/ru/category/kostyumi/

[1] - https://arber.ua/ru/catalog/kostiumi

[2] - https://online.voronin.ua/ru/katalog/kostumy/

[3] - https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/костюм

It is definitely going to become a meme, the way he sat there like a scolded kid while Trump said "No. You've talked a lot today. Look, you're not winning this. You're not gonna win this"

Felt like watching your friend get scolded by his parents when they find a cigarette in his backpack

It's ironic that a "conservative" President does not honor the long-standing traditions and manners that used to be common for past Presidents

Maybe I will wear a suit like yours, maybe it will be better. Z is pure class!!

How do you think he came out looking good after this? Do you mean this was some elaborate play to "expose" Trump..?

I personally think everyone looked rather unprofessional in this meeting..

More than unprofessional. Embarrassing is an understatement.

I don’t think it was some elaborate ruse… he is a trained actor but his frustration seemed very real. And maybe he shouldn’t have shown it but I do think he was simply reacting to what was unfolding in front of him.

IMO he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Maybe he could have been more professional and statesmanlike but I don’t think it would have earned him a thing. The US strategy seems locked in at this point and it’s a pro-Russia one. He could have really flexed the “deal with a heckler” muscles but the risk is far too great.

European leaders are queuing up to restate their support for Ukraine after this and I think that’s probably the best he could have gotten from it anyway.

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