Someone needs to tell Margaret Brennan that Volodymyr Zelensky is the leader of a country at war and not, in fact, a lost little boy looking for his mommy.
The CBS anchor on Sunday adopted her irksome trademark tone of reproach in an interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio wherein Brennan suggested that a White House meeting the next day might result in the head of Ukraine being “bullied” by President Trump. “You know there’s concern from the Europeans that President Zelensky is going to be bullied into signing something away,” she said. “That’s why you have these European leaders coming as back up tomorrow. Can you reassure them?”
Rubio informed Brennan that the other European leaders would be attending the meeting at the invitation of the administration and were not acting as some kind of high school clique for Zelensky’s protection. But more to the point, the exchange between Rubio and Brennan was a perfect example of how unseriously our superficial, infantile news media approach this war. They have a personal hatred for Trump so they cast every development of the conflict with him as the villain, even as the president has put forth the only realistic effort to make peace.
The media don’t want what’s realistic, though. Realistic runs counter to their preferred position of hating Trump, because the reality is that he was elected president for a second time, in no small part because America wants him to decide what happens with Ukraine. (It sucks to lose an election, but the media did lose the last one.) Trump has made his decision, and if Zelensky and Western Europe have any hope at all that Ukraine remains an independent nation, not swallowed by Russia whole, then they have only two realistic options: Side with the U.S. in resolving the problem or take their chances on their own.
Everything outside of that is a fantasy, a dramatic world of make-believe wherein the media (and many Democrats and Republicans alike) believe they can write this war like a movie. In their preferred fiction, Ukraine somehow beats back Russia, and President Vladimir Putin is defeated, thereby humiliating Trump, as well as his supporters, who don’t share the media’s hysterical and irrational animosity for Russia.
That’s not what’s going to happen. Russia is bigger, has more money, has more people, and, most importantly, has nukes.
The media insist on an alternate reality. It’s the reason they can look at a deadly dilemma wherein hundreds of thousands of people have perished and then show fake concern that the president of the United States might have “bullied” another head of state into a peace deal — one that saves his own country, even if it means sacrificing a piece of it.
Ukrainians may not like the reality of their situation either, but they can’t afford to live the same fantasy the media keep trying for.
