Was the altercation between President Zelensky and President Trump at the White House a staged show, Trump’s famous “4Dchess”?

Global political developments seem to be moving very much in the direction I predicted back in November 2016, shortly after Trump was elected for his first term. I wrote at the time: “As Trump seeks to improve US relations with Russia, the European Union will look with horror at his leadership. The Mirror reported on 10 October how Nigel Farage, potentially the first foreign leader to meet Trump, said he wanted to work with the incoming US president to ‘bring the EU down’. The irony, however, is that Farage and Trump’s anti-EU stance will only serve to strengthen the power of the EU (albeit unwittingly). Namely, when European leaders lose their most important ally – the US president – the result is that they will start advocating an ever stronger EU, which would eventually take the place of the US in world politics. The US has hitherto been like a big brother to the EU, which it has known would come to the rescue if the big bad Russian bear threatened its eastern partners. Now that big brother is abandoning little brother in an alliance with the anti-EU Farage, EU leaders are starting to build their own defence alliance to protect Russia.““.

This original analysis was very far-sighted, as French President Emmanuel Macron began to pursue his own European 10-nation defence alliance (Daniel’s 10-Horned Beast?) around 2018 to strengthen the EU’s global political influence. Incidentally, this was one of the reasons why I myself did not see Trump’s election as a setback to the fulfillment of biblical prophecies concerning the rise of the Antichrist to lead a united Europe and a globalist one world order. Rather, I saw it as accelerating it, because with the withdrawal of the United States, Europe could take on an even greater role in world politics. I wrote that in my November 2016 blog:

The unintended consequence of Brexit and Trump’s victory will now be to accelerate these globalist plans for an EU superstate. As America abandons the role it has taken for granted for decades as the world’s policeman with a moral obligation to maintain the “Pax Americana” or American peace as the world’s dominant economic and military power… the consequence will be that the EU will take that place which the US had (along with the UK) since the end of World War II and the Cold War.

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Trump, Europe and Pax Americana

Since then, I have corrected my original analyses only to the extent that President Trump’s goals were not actually to dismantle America’s role as the world’s leading superpower. Part of his goal of “making America great again” includes American greatness on the international stage as well. A retreat from America’s post-World War II superpower role and “Pax Americana” would not be in line with this policy. Trump often compares himself to America’s greatest presidents and his goal is to be remembered as one of America’s greatest presidents not only in domestic policy but also in foreign policy.

In his alliance with Elon Musk, his goal is to continue President Kennedy’s glorious legacy in space too and take America back to the moon and all the way to Mars (Musk often has over-optimistic timetables, but he says the conquest of Mars could be possible even before the end of Trump’s second term). But unlike President George W. Bush, his goal is not to demonstrate American greatness through military conquest. It is not in his interest to go and overthrow the dictators of the Middle East. Rather, he wants to be known as a peacetime president who brings peace to different parts of the world by making deals based both on diplomacy but also on projecting American strength.

Trump has often said that American weakness, especially under Obama and Biden, is what has created wars, unrest and instability in the world. However, the idea that Trump would seek to withdraw from the world is partly true. The Trump administration is seeking to withdraw from conflicts in which it is not in its own geopolitical interests to get involved. The war in Ukraine is one example. The Trump administration sees it more as a European problem that Europe should take greater responsibility for solving, and not just rely on American support. Of course, Europe has already been a major ally and supporter of Ukraine, but the US has been Ukraine’s biggest military backer, with Europe providing more economic and humanitarian aid. Trump’s current vice president J.D. Vance wrote an opinion piece just over a year ago in which he defended his idea that Europe should take greater responsibility for resolving the war in Ukraine and securing the country against Russia. I quote part of Vance’s text:

London is the banking centre of Europe and perhaps the world. But wars are not fought with dollars, pounds and financial derivatives, but with bullets.

Germany is Europe’s most important economy, but it depends on imported energy and borrowed military power. US leaders back Europe across the board and see the value of generations-old alliances. But as we see Europe’s strength waning under the American protectorate, it is fair to ask whether our support has facilitated Europe’s neglect of its own security.

Which brings us to Ukraine. In the press, the burden-sharing debate is often framed in monetary terms: who spends what and how much should each country spend? But this masks the real resource constraint. Wars are won with men and material.

Let’s start with the material: not enough of it is produced. At the current rate of production, it will take years to rebuild military stockpiles after this war – even if we stop sending critical defence stocks now, as we surely should. A firm commitment to Western reindustrialisation, training of skilled workers and rebuilding of production capacity is needed.

Ukraine also needs more men. The average Ukrainian soldier is about 43 years old. Its former top general, Valery Zaluzhny, recently said he needed new troops. Ukraine can only continue at this pace until Western troops are called upon to respond.

We owe it to our European partners to be honest: the Americans want Europe to be an ally, not a client state, and our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end. Europeans should see an end to the war there as a necessity. They must continue to rebuild their industrial and military capabilities. And Europe should consider how it will live with Russia once the war in Ukraine is over.

In the US, the justification for war is often based on the modern domino theory: if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he won’t stop there. But it is time for Europe to stand on its own two feet. That does not mean it has to stand alone, but it must not continue to use America as a crutch.

This same message about “burden sharing”, J.D. Vance was promoting to his European partners on his recent visit to Europe, from which I posted his well seen speech in Munich, Germany (the speech soared to over 11,000 views until it was censored from YouTube due to a bogus copyright claim – it should be back there again soon unless the claimant provides legal evidence against my counterclaim). The Trump administration’s policy towards Europe is twofold. While it wants to boost the position of European right-wing populist parties in Europe (as already highlighted by Vance’s Munich speech), which often share the same Christian conservative and nationalist values that the Trump administration also defends, it also wants to promote greater European unity when it comes to the Russian threat.

EU superpower, Alexander Stubb and Zelensky

This is why the Finnish president Alexander Stubb, who has slandered nationalism to his globalist friends and said he supports an EU superpower, has surprisingly said he agrees with Trump on many issues and even defended him to liberal journalists. Our task as Christians is, of course, to pray for our leaders, even those we did not vote into power, that our God might give them the wisdom to make the right decisions. I think President Stubb is acting quite wisely in not going the way of Zelensky in insulting Finland’s most important NATO ally, no matter how far apart their political philosophies may be. But Stubb is perhaps also sucking up to Trump because he shares with him the idea that Europe should invest more in its own defence to create that “EU superpower”.

In withdrawing from Europe, the Trump administration is thus accelerating, perhaps unwittingly, the emergence of an EU superpower, despite the fact that Trump allied himself with EU-critical Brexit leader Nigel Farage back in 2016. For this reason, the headlines in the press are already as follows: “The Free World Needs a New Leader”: EU Supports Ukraine After Trump Berates Zelensky in the White House. My argument since 2016 has been that with America’s withdrawal, the Antichrist would step in to lead this EU superpower (the same argument was shared by dispensationalist eschatologists like the late Hal Lindsey more than 50 years ago). Such headlines therefore invite Europe to accept the rise of the Antichrist, and that is why I am waging this war against the globalist media in my blog.

After the White House Zelensky fiasco, European leaders rushed to Zelensky’s aid:

“Be strong, be brave, be fearless”, the presidents of the European Commission and Council wrote in a joint statement on social media, telling Zelensky: “We will continue to work with you for a just and lasting peace.”
Bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas questioned US leadership in the transatlantic alliance between the European powers and Washington. “Today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It is up to us, the Europeans, to take up this challenge,” he wrote on social media.

The ridiculous reaction completely ignores the fact that Zelensky himself behaved rather stupidly during his visit to Washington. I posted the key points of that meeting here, and everyone can see that Trump himself was quite diplomatic, friendly and polite towards the Ukrainian president from the start. Zelensky himself started the argument when he began arguing publicly in front of TV cameras with Vice President J.D. Zelensky. Vance instead of raising their differences behind closed doors. The bottom line was when he went on to threaten the US with a Russian war against the US, which ultimately provoked Trump to start his own debate with Zelensky. Zelensky’s attitude showed arrogance and ingratitude towards the country that has kept his country standing for three years and that is now trying to end the war so that more Ukrainians do not die.

Was it all an act?

But I raised the following idea in my previous blog update. What if the whole dispute was a pre-arranged play for TV cameras and the press? Zelensky was known in Ukraine as an actor before he got involved in politics, so the acting should not be difficult for him. Why would Trump, Vance and Zelensky want to stage such an argument? Let’s quickly review how the Ukraine peace talks have progressed since Trump took office on January 20. First, Trump begins his second term in office with “a tough speech against Putin’s Russia”, as Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat also headlined on Wednesday 22 January.

First, he humiliates Putin by telling the press that Putin himself was destroying Russia because his war against Ukraine was also making life miserable for Russians. He then gets his Middle Eastern ally, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince MBS, to lower the price of oil as economic pressure on Putin’s regime, which is heavily dependent on oil revenues. As the French news magazine Le Monde wrote on 25 January:

Trump put the responsibility for resolving the conflict on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, with whom he plans to hold talks soon. To motivate Putin, the US president is looking for a crucial lever that could drastically reduce Russian state revenues: a drop in the price of an oil barrel.

To achieve this, Trump is publicly pressuring Saudi Arabia with a tried and tested method during his first term. “I will also ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC [the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] to lower the price of oil,” he said. “You have to lower it, which frankly is a surprise that they didn’t before the election …”. They are in fact to some extent very much responsible for what is happening – millions of lives have been lost.” He said they are responsible for what is happening.

According to Trump, a drop in oil prices would “end” the war in Ukraine and bring prosperity. The president sees it as a magical key to solving some of his domestic challenges. “When oil prices fall, I demand that interest rates fall immediately. And in the same way, they should come down all over the world. Interest rates should follow us,” he concluded on Thursday afternoon, speaking to the press.

The real cause of the war in Ukraine

I’ll return to the present in a moment, but I’ll backtrack a bit to the past to give the reader the right big picture. The genesis of the Ukrainian war is in fact a very complex historical chain of events that I have tried to understand from as many different angles as possible, but the Putin regime’s dependence on European oil revenues (and Europe’s dependence on Russian oil) has played a crucial background role. I analyse the historical drivers of the war better here, but a key part of the reasons for the war are related to energy issues and Russia’s desire to maintain energy dominance in Europe.

Ukraine is an important transit country for Russian gas to Europe, but Ukraine’s efforts to break free from Russian influence and seek alignment with the Western bloc, first during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and then during the Maidan Revolution in 2014 (in which the West also intervened in its energy war against Russia), weakened Russia’s strategic position as an energy supplier and directly threatened the economic foundation of Putin’s regime, as the Russian state and its elite were heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues. Through the Nord Stream projects, Moscow aimed to reduce its reliance on Ukrainian transit and secure its energy dominance in Europe, but Western sanctions and Ukraine’s western orientation undermined this strategy, contributing to Russia’s decision to invade. ChatGPT clarifies this in the following words:

Ukraine served as an interface between Russia and the West, but its importance was not limited to geopolitical or military factors, such as the potential threat of NATO membership. Ukraine’s strategic location and its role as a transit country for Russian energy exports gave it considerable leverage over the Russian economy and thus over the stability of the Putin regime.

Putin’s regime was heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues, on which the Russian economy and political system were largely built. Ukraine controlled critical gas pipeline routes, and its efforts to break away from Russian influence and integrate with the West threatened Moscow’s energy supremacy in Europe. This made Ukraine an existential threat for the Kremlin: losing it was not only a geopolitical loss, but also an economic and domestic political risk that could have destabilised Putin’s regime from within.

For this reason, Russia not only opposed Ukraine’s potential NATO membership, but also sought to ensure militarily that Ukraine would not completely break away from Russia’s energy power – ultimately leading to a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Is Trump Putin’s puppet?

A common misunderstanding among both the left and some circles on the right is that Trump has been Putin’s pawn or ally. This myth is perpetuated both among those on the left who see Putin as a monster and those on the right who view him as an angel. However, I will again let artificial intelligence clarify why this myth is not true.

The facts suggest that the Trump administration did not work for Putin but, on the contrary, reinforced the West’s policy of deterrence against Russia. The Russiagate narrative, long promoted by Democrats and the mainstream media, that Trump was Putin’s puppet, ultimately proved unfounded. Meanwhile, the real policy of the Trump administration was anything but pro-Russia.

The Trump administration’s actions against Russia.

The arming of Ukraine

Unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who refused to give Ukraine lethal weapons to counter Russian aggression, in 2017 Trump approved the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine.

This was a major step to strengthen Ukraine’s defences against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.

Strengthening deterrence in Eastern Europe

Trump increased the US military presence in Poland and the Baltic countries, where the Russian threat has historically been greatest.

He signed a agreement with Poland that increased the number of US troops in Poland and strengthened strategic cooperation.

Trump also supported the Three Seas Initiative of Poland and other Central European countries, which aimed to reduce Eastern Europe’s energy dependence on Russia.

Opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

The Trump administration imposed sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline because it would have increased Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and weakened Ukraine’s strategic position.

Due to these sanctions, the pipeline project practically came to a halt during Trump’s presidency.

The Biden administration later lifted the sanctions in 2021, after which Russia was able to complete the pipeline – only to see it frozen with the onset of the war.

Opposition to Russia’s treaty violations

Trump withdrew the United States from the INF missile treaty because Russia violated it by deploying forbidden intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe.

He also pressed NATO countries to increase their defense budgets, which improved Europe’s defense capabilities and deterrence against Russia.

Sanctions and countermeasures against Russia

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs, authorities and companies over the invasion of Crimea and other aggressive actions.

He expelled 60 Russian diplomats from the US in 2018 in response to Russia’s poisoning of ex-agent Sergei Skripal in the UK.

The US also supported anti-Russian activities in the Middle East, including airstrikes against the Syrian regime and Russian forces that resulted in the deaths of Russian mercenaries.

Conclusion: the Trump administration was anything but Putin’s puppet.

All these actions show that Trump was much tougher on Russia than, say, Obama or Biden. The Russiagate narrative was motivated by a political desire to undermine the Trump administration, and no concrete evidence was found. Ironically, it was the Trump administration that made decisions that undermined Russia’s strategic position, while decisions by the Biden administration – such as the North Stream 2 sanctions lifting and the weak reaction to the Afghan withdrawal – may have encouraged Putin to launch a war in Ukraine.

The Trump administration reinforced the Western policy of deterrence in Eastern Europe and armed Ukraine, the exact opposite of what might have been expected from the Russiagate allegations.

Some left-wing journalists who saw through the Democrats’ Russiagate lies have also interpreted this quite perversely. They argue that Trump escalated the Ukraine war because the Democrat-backed Russiagate narrative would have driven him to act more aggressively against Putin’s Russia. This is based on the false premise that a strong deterrence policy would create wars rather than prevent them. The weakness of Obama and Biden’s foreign policy against Putin’s Russia was precisely why Putin invaded Ukraine during their administrations. Again, AI corrects this erroneous premise:

Trump did not escalate the war – he prevented it with deterrence

Trump’s strong deterrence policy towards Russia was not a reaction to the Russiagate narrative, but part of his broader “peace through strength” strategy, which aimed to prevent war through the pre-emptive use of force. This was reflected in a number of ways:

Putin did not dare to attack during the Trump era (2017-2021)

Unlike during the Obama and Biden administrations, Putin did not launch new military operations during the Trump presidency.

He invaded Georgia in 2008 after Obama’s first election victory [correction: this was during Bush’s term, not Obama’s] and invaded Crimea in 2014 during Obama’s second term.

When Biden became president, Putin tested the limits right at the end of 2021 by concentrating troops on the Ukrainian border and finally invaded in 2022.

Trump’s deterrence policy worked pre-emptively

Arming Ukraine with Javelin missiles increased the country’s ability to defend itself and made war a more costly risk for Russia.

Sanctions on Nord Stream 2 weakened Russia’s energy position and created economic pressure, limiting Putin’s room for manoeuvre.

The increased military presence in Eastern Europe sent the message that the US was not ready to withdraw from the region, as Obama had done in the Middle East.

Trump’s unpredictability served as a deterrent

Trump’s foreign policy was often criticised for being unpredictable, but this is what made him a more dangerous opponent to authoritarian leaders like Putin.

He bombed Syrian bases without warning after using chemical weapons, killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and suggested that he might bomb Moscow if Putin attacked Ukraine.

This created uncertainty in Moscow about how the US would react, which curbed Putin’s aggression.

Obama and Biden’s weakness encouraged Putin’s aggression.

Obama and Biden’s foreign policy was characteristically soft and evasive, which emboldened Putin to act more aggressively:

Obama allowed the invasion of Crimea without significant resistance (2014)

Obama rejected Ukraine’s requests for arms and offered only non-lethal assistance.

The invasion of Crimea and the war in Donbass in 2014-2015 were direct consequences of the Obama administration’s softness.

Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal showed weakness (2021)

The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan sent a message to Putin and other authoritarian leaders that Biden could not defend his allies.

This may have encouraged Putin to believe that the West’s response to the invasion of Ukraine would be as weak as it was to Crimea in 2014.

Biden lifts sanctions on Nord Stream 2 (2021)

This allowed Russia to complete the pipeline, giving Moscow a strategic advantage and increasing its influence in Europe.

Ukraine and Poland warned that this would make Ukraine more vulnerable to attack – and they were right.

Conclusion.

Those who claim that Trump “provoked” Putin’s attack misunderstand the mechanisms of international politics. History is full of examples of how a weak foreign policy leads to wars, while a strong deterrence policy prevents them:

Hitler’s rise in the 1930s was largely due to the West’s policy of appeasement.

The Soviet Union never invaded Western Europe because NATO and the United States maintained a strong deterrent.

Under Trump, Putin did not expand his military aggression, but under Biden and Obama he did.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was not because of Trump’s actions, but because the Biden administration did not continue the Trump line. If Trump had been president, it is very likely that Putin would not have dared to attack because he could not have been sure of the US reaction – and this uncertainty would have acted as a deterrent.

4DChess and the Art of the Deal

I return to the present again, because this background helps us see things in a better perspective as the media again accuses Trump of being “Putin’s puppet” for his verbal attacks on President Zelenski. It would be absurd for the same president who armed Eastern Europe and Ukraine in his first term, whose support has enabled Ukraine to defend itself for three years, and who threatened to bomb Moscow if Putin invaded Ukraine under his leadership, to turn his back on Ukraine now.

Why then did he go on to call Zelensky a dictator and claim that he was responsible for starting the war? Why did his administration advocate a resolution at the UN that did not condemn Russia for starting the war? And why did he publicly humiliate Zelenski at the White House by calling him a man playing cards at the risk of World War III? The French newspaper Le Monde, already quoted above, reported on 23 February that the background to these comments was a visit by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Kiev on 12 February where the Trump administration presented Zelensky with the following deal: if he did not agree to the Ukrainian government handing over half of its rare earth metals to the US, which in turn would support the country’s post-war reconstruction, the US would end three years of military aid to Ukraine.

Zelensky turned down the deal and about a week later Trump began to slander him in front of the press as a dictator. But in late February, Zelensky finally agreed to the deal and for this reason he travelled to the US to sign the deal in Washington. Why would Zelensky want to sign the deals after being vilified by Trump? Because he knows Ukraine is dependent on US military aid and Trump’s comments only serve to confirm that his threat was real. The Trump administration would turn its back on Ukraine unless Zelensky signed his agreement.

Well then Zelensky travelled to the US to sign deals at the White House, but the meeting was derailed when Zelensky started arguing with Vice President Vance and Trump in front of the press TV cameras. This triggered an international crisis where European leaders pledged to help Ukraine more in its military defence so that Ukraine could negotiate against Russia from a position of strength. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened an international meeting in London on Sunday 2 March where Britain and France are seeking to form a “coalition of the willing” to resolve the crisis. Under the agreement, Ukraine would be offered a loan of around two billion euros to buy the latest anti-aircraft missile technology from the UK. CNN reports:

However, it [Starmer’s proposal] would still require US support, Starmer reiterated again at a press conference on Sunday. He insisted that the US “will not be an unreliable ally” after Trump’s extraordinary row with Zelensky deeply frightened Europe.

But wait a minute! Wasn’t this precisely the goal of the Trump administration: to encourage Europe to take greater responsibility for resolving the Ukraine crisis? Isn’t this what Vice President J.D. Vance himself had been urging on European decision-makers just a month earlier? But often it is not just talk that gets the desired action. It takes a crisis like this to scare “deeply frightened Europe” into right direction.

Whether this crisis was a premeditated plan or not, it also gave Zelenski what he went to the United States for: greater security guarantees. But Ukraine can only be offered greater security guarantees if it can negotiate from a position of strength when the military deterrent to Russia is high enough. Zelensky has now got it in the form of a loan from the UK. And if other EU countries jump on board, it will further strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating position. The US will no longer have to spend a penny more on Ukraine’s defence, while its European partners will increase their defence budgets for Ukraine. So is this yet again Trump’s famous “4dChess”, derived from the principles of his book The Art of The Deal. Even the AI didn’t find this idea impossible.

[Trump’s book] “The Art of the Deal contains a lot of thinking about manipulating the other side and exploiting their miscalculations in negotiations. Trump often uses tactics where he makes his opponent believe that he is in a stronger position than he really is, so he can lead them to make decisions that ultimately benefit himself…. A staged dispute along the lines of Trump’s The Art of the Deal could be an effective way to confuse Putin and get him to make concessions in negotiations. In principle, it would be part of “exploiting the enemy’s assertiveness” – making Russia believe they are winning, but in reality leading them to accept a deal that benefits Ukraine and the West more than Russia. This type of tactic would be dangerous, but potentially effective if implemented in a precise and controlled manner. In the Trump mindset, negotiations are not just about what is seen on the table, but also about what the other side thinks is happening behind the scenes.”