Democratic lawmakers rushed to defend Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the Ukrainian leader was publicly berated by Donald Trump in a disastrous Oval Office meeting.
The US president accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with world war three” while his vice-president, JD Vance, called the Ukrainian leader “disrespectful”, before cutting short talks aimed at kicking off the process of ending Kyiv’s three-year war with Russia.
Zelenskyy abruptly left the White House soon after without signing a rare critical minerals deal with the US that Trump has said is the first step toward a ceasefire agreement that he is seeking to broker between Russia and Ukraine.
Democratic senators came to Zelenskyy’s defense in statements condemning Trump and Vance’s “shameful” and “disgraceful” treatment of the Ukrainian leader.
“Every time I’ve met with President Zelenskyy, he’s thanked the American people for our strong support,” Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware, wrote on X. “We owe him our thanks for leading a nation fighting on the front lines of democracy – not the public berating he received at the White House.”
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Adam Schiff, the California senator, said: ““A hero and a coward are meeting in the Oval Office today. And when the meeting is over, the hero will return home to Ukraine.”
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, said: “What an utter embarrassment for America. This whole sad scene.” The Arizona senator Ruben Gallego added: “This is a disgrace.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland also described the scenes in the Oval Office as “beyond disgraceful”. The Illinois senator Dick Durbin added: “The people of Ukraine and President Zelenskyy deserve an apology.”
“Trump and Vance berating Zelenskyy – putting on a show of lies and misinformation that would make Putin blush – is an embarrassment for America and a betrayal of our allies,” Durbin said. “They’re popping champagne in the Kremlin.”
Trump and Vance “are doing Putin’s dirty work”, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said after the calamitous meeting, adding that his party will “never stop fighting for freedom and democracy”.
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, also accused Trump and Vance of “acting like ventriloquist dummies for Putin”.
Whitehouse was part of a bipartisan group of senators who met with Zelenskyy earlier in the morning before his meeting with the president. The Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said the hour-long discussion showed “strong bipartisan support in the Senate for Ukraine’s freedom and democracy”.
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Klobuchar later addressed Vance directly in a social media post saying that Zelenskyy had thanked the US “over and over again” both privately and publicly.
“Our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe,” she wrote. “Shame on you,” she said, referring to Vance.
Tina Smith, another Democratic senator from Minnesota, called on her Republican colleagues to “speak out” in the name of “patriotism”. “Once, we fought tyrants. Today Trump and Vance are bending America’s knee,” she said.
But Republican senators rushed to defend Trump, describing the president’s exchange with Zelenskyy as evidence that he was “putting America first”.
Mike Lee, a Utah Republican senator, thanked Trump and Vance “for standing up to our country and putting America first”. The Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks also thanked Trump for “standing up for America”.
“[Zelenskyy] ungratefully expects us to bankroll and escalate another forever war–all while disrespecting the President,” Banks wrote on X. “The entitlement is insulting to working Americans.”