Deep Meaning of Zelensky-Trump Oval Office Mud Wrestling
The Mother of All Press Conferences was not an accident
What did Zelensky think he could accomplish by his visit with Trump? Zelensky hoped that he could entice Trump with the idea that Russian funds impounded in Europe might be released to Ukraine in order to be ear-marked for buying American weapons on a cash basis. Trump agreed in principle but required a signed "rare earth deal" handing over Ukrainian mining assets. We don't know the details, or if anything was actually signed.
Trump wanted to be able to wave a signed agreement, "look what Daddy brought home for the American people", but this was not Trump’s main objective.
Zelensky insists that a predicate for a cease fire is "security guaranties", by which he means troops from NATO nations along the contact line. This is a total non-starter. Perhaps Z knows this but has overwhelming pressure from his military insisting on these troops as a precondition to a ceasefire. In other words, Z cannot agree to a ceasefire.
What did Trump want to get out of the visit? Marginally, progress towards a ceasefire and a deal on Ukrainian rare earths, but these were really excuses to provide cover for the meeting, the real purpose of which was to ambush Z, attack EU-Ukraine policy and harden Trumps anti-deep state and anti-European stance.
The key audience for the ambush was EU elites and Trump's domestic opposition. The Vance and Trump tag team allowed Trump to flex in front of his enemies: the EU bureaucracy and US deep state. The performance was so successful that if anyone in Europe thought Trump was incapable of picking up his marbles from Europe and going home, now there is no one willing to risk that.
Trump's grasp on the US deep state is tenuous and still in the process of being tightened. The power centers of his domestic enemies are going to fight back hard in the courts and possibly later in the streets. Everything Trump does now has as a subtext the quest for power over the deep state which tried to destroy him politically and perhaps, he believes physically.
So, in a very real sense Ukraine, Zelensky, Putin, the EU and NATO all are subsidiary issues for Trump for whom job one is to complete his quest for absolute power over the executive branch. All US foreign policy now reflects this conflict.