On this last day of February 2025, I took the time to watch, listen to, and read the transcript of President Trump’s meeting in the Oval Office with President Zelensky. If you’re inclined to spend several minutes listening to and seeing what was said just go to YouTube and turn on closed captioning.

At one point Trump tells Zelensky, “You have to be thankful.” Guess Trump wants him to bow down and kiss his whatever. As an American I felt ashamed by the way both Trump and Vance ganged up on him. Those two oafs knew the cameras were on them and they played it to the hilt.

Boy oh boy, Trump thinks Putin respects him while the invader is chuckling away in his Kremlin office and is probably saying, “Go ahead and do my dirty work for me.” Even more embarrassing is when Trump goes into a rant about ‘Russia, Russia’ and Hunter Biden. You can see that President Zelensky seems to be wondering, “What is it with this guy?”

I’m certainly not an expert on matters of U.S. diplomacy, but our country was not obligated to come to the aid of Ukraine since it wasn’t part of the NATO alliance, something Putin absolutely opposes. We do have an agreement known as the ‘Budapest Agreement’ of 1994 when Ukraine had the third largest nuclear weapons stockpile after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Under the terms of this agreement, Ukraine would destroy the weapons, while the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia would guarantee Ukraine staying safe.

We are now seeing how that’s been played out. President Trump, Vice-President Vance and all the rest of us should be thankful that Ukraine followed through on its promise to destroy those weapons, otherwise we could indeed see a World War III scenario with no card winners at all.

RALPH D. WARNER

Ocean Park