Pity the Oscars. There they were thinking they were hogging the stage for sheer compelling screen time – the frocks! The gum-throwing! The big, shocking reveals! Jeff Bezos at the after parties! But we all knew different. The most outrageously compelling watch of the last few days was the incendiary showdown on Friday at the White House between Ukraine’s President Zelensky and President Trump and V-P JD Vance. Then it was over to Keir Starmer to provide a more muted spectacle – from accompanying him to his car to the supportive hand on his shoulder. It was all a riveting display, because it was for real.
Can we take it as read that most of us were watching between our fingers as the showdown between Trump and Vance versus Zelensky unfolded on Friday? It was partly the fact that it was two against one, partly that the Ukrainian president was shouted down, partly the failure to acknowledge that Ukraine had indeed been the victim of aggression, partly the sheer petulance of JD Vance’s pronouncement: “you never said thank you”. Actually, JD Vance was the real disappointment: there we were – I can’t have been alone – thinking that the author of the Hillbilly Elegy, the underdog made good, the thoughtful one, would have been an influence for restraint on the flammable president, and there he was, looking like the school bully’s best friend.
