Bild: Trump thinks he has found a friend in Putin, but he is just using him

The scandal during the meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 28 was orchestrated by the American side. The head of state, who has been defending himself against a full-scale Russian invasion for more than three years, was simply lured into a trap to be publicly humiliated live in front of millions of people around the world.

Trump's goal was to convince Americans that Ukraine is "ungrateful" and "unworthy" of further assistance, and that the American president wants to make friends with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, but he will be bitterly disappointed. This opinion was expressed by Thomas Jäger, a German political scientist, foreign policy expert, and professor at the University of Cologne, in a conversation with BILD.

He shares the opinion of many Western analysts that the scandal in the Oval Office was planned in advance by the Trump team. The goal was to publicly humiliate the Ukrainian president.

Jäger claims that "the scandal was staged," and Washington was preparing a trap for Zelensky from the very beginning.

One of the main actors in the pre-prepared scenario was J.D. Vance, Trump's vice president and closest ally. Earlier, he caused outrage and shock in Europe by making accusations against European states at the Munich Security Conference.

"Trump and Vance wanted to humiliate Zelensky. That's why they organized a live broadcast of this spectacle. First they teased him, and then they bit him," Jäger said.

Zelensky was lured to Washington by Trump and his entourage under the pretext of a possible agreement on rare earth metals. However, the current US administration was of little interest in it. The real goal was to increase the level of support for Trump's pro-Russian course in the United States.

Trump, as Jäger notes, is trying to convince Americans that Ukraine is "unworthy" of further assistance because it is allegedly behaving "ungratefully." This idea is resisted by most Americans. Only representatives of Trump's "nuclear" electorate are delighted with it, who do not think that their leader is destroying the authority and all the achievements of the United States in the geopolitical plane over the past almost a century.

"Trump is currently undermining the dominant position of the United States in international politics. He has alienated all the allies that the United States has gained over the past 80 years," Jäger says.

At the moment, according to the expert, Trump is confidently moving towards rapprochement with Putin, but Jäger is skeptical about his prospects.

"Trump thinks he has found a friend in Putin, but he is just using him," the expert emphasized.

Earlier it was reported that the United States conducted a poll on who was responsible for the quarrel in the Oval Office. Half of the respondents named Trump as the culprit, a little more than 40% blame Vance, and only 4% of the respondents saw Zelensky's fault in the scandal.

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