One of the most surreal moments of Friday’s Oval Office showdown between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine came at the very end.
After all the shouting and the saber-rattling and the lecturing and the pleading and the politicking had ceased, the American president shifted a little in his seat and shared an observation.
“This is going to be great television,” he remarked. “I will say that.”
It was a conclusion as startling as it was fundamentally Trumpian.
This was not a season finale boardroom scene of “The Apprentice” that had just taken place. It was the highest of high-stakes talks — one that could determine the fate of millions, the existence of a sovereign nation and the security of a continent — going wildly off the rails.
But for Mr. Trump, one thing that was on his mind, as always, was the ratings. He sounded almost excited by the drama of the spectacle, as though he could feel the front pages of the world’s newspapers being written in real time.
This is a man who spent years yelling at people on TV as a way to make a living. He is wired to think about things in terms of “great television.” He is a highly conscious performer. But playacting as a tough guy on NBC on Thursday nights between 9 and 10 p.m. is not the same thing as bossing around an ally before the eyes of the world, even if Mr. Trump uses the same language to describe one performance as he would the other.
Still, how one postures before the cameras is of paramount importance in this White House.
After the meeting, the president did an imitation of Mr. Zelensky in front of the cameras and said: “All of a sudden, he’s a big shot.” Where Mr. Trump is involved, there is usually room enough for one big shot.
The other European leaders who had come to Washington over the past few weeks to reason with him about Russia understood this. They knew how to play their parts in the Oval Office while the cameras were rolling. President Emmanuel Macron of France literally held Mr. Trump’s hand at one point. Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer presented a letter from King Charles III to Mr. Trump for all to see. It went over so well that Mr. Trump brought the letter out to wave around again a little while later at their joint news conference.
It’s not that Mr. Zelensky doesn’t know how to perform. He was a television actor before he became president and has been skillful in using the media as he tries to galvanize support. But evidently the role of supplicant was not one he was going to play Friday.
Right away, things got off to a bad start, since Mr. Trump seemed to feel the Ukrainian leader was not properly costumed. He wasn’t wearing a suit. “He’s all dressed up today,” Mr. Trump said sarcastically as he greeted him outside the West Wing.
Ordinarily, in the theater of Trump, it is the journalist who plays the role of the heel. The president regularly clashes with members of the news media, and everybody more or less knows how to play their parts. This time the character arguing with him up there was another president — one with his own aims and his own experience playing to the world’s cameras.
Vice President JD Vance told Mr. Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to “try to litigate this in front of the American media.” But so much of the Trump doctrine is litigated before the media. And it was Mr. Vance — a onetime best-selling author and TV talking head who is media savvy himself — who seemed particularly determined to instigate a blowup while reporters were in the room.
Outside the White House, hundreds of journalists lined up for a news conference that would never come. When Mr. Trump announced that he was calling it off, a mob of cameras rushed across the pavement to get the shot.
Mr. Zelensky emerged from West Wing. He climbed into the back of a Black Chevrolet suburban adorned with two little flags, one American and one Ukrainian. All the cameras slowly turned to watch as he made his way down the drive and away from the White House.
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