The Zelensky-Trump Ticket
Disparaged disruptors team up to help Mother Russia
Volodymyr Zelensky is alone, tired and frightened. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is raging across Ukraine, which has reported more than 38,000 cases and is suspected of hiding ten times more. The economic downturn in the country was well underway before the epidemic started. Parliament has so far refused to endorse the new government’s anti-crisis program.
Zelensky’s poll ratings are the lowest they have been since he was elected more than a year ago. Following a series of grotesque gaffes, an increasing number of Ukrainians regard him as a symbol of national degradation.
Like Trump, Zelensky has failed to deliver on his campaign promises. He has not ended Russia’s occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. He has not fixed the country’s corrupt judiciary or sold off corrupt state-owned enterprises. Ukraine’s president needs help. He badly needs a win. Zelensky needs, specifically, U.S. President Donald Trump to be re-elected.
It’s true that some in Zelensky’s circle were disappointed initially with Trump’s lieutenants, especially Rudy Giuliani, who demanded Zelensky “go to a mic” to announce publicly investigations against former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has since only reluctantly supplied Ukraine with defensive weapons. Yet Trump still hates Ukraine and opposes inviting his Zelensky to the White House for a photo opportunity.
It’s worth considering the gifts America’s supreme leader could give Zelensky, if he wanted. Trump could destroy the reputation of Zelensky’s arch rival Petro Poroshenko by providing unflattering details about U.S.-Ukraine relations when Barrack Obama was president. He could also help Zelensky broker a deal with Putin.
Zelensky has said off record repeatedly that he will do what he can to help Trump. Any doubt about that was removed by a press conference he gave last month that appeared aimed directly at the Kremlin and the White House.
While pro-Russia media in Ukraine publicly stroke Trump, Zelensky can supply his re-election campaign with ammunition directly. There is, for example, the tape recording that surfaced in Kyiv, released by a member of parliament with ties to Russian intelligence, that captures Biden pressuring Poroshenko to fire a corrupt prosecutor — and is meant to revive the Trump camp’s false charge that Biden did so to help his son. Networks of Russian-run social media accounts are systematically amplifying conspiracy theories spread by Trump’s sycophants.
At the moment, Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies aren’t getting much traction — and Trump’s prospects in November are trending downward. But Zelensky and Trump are resourceful. Both are disruptors who are willing to take risks and break norms. In 2016, no one expected expected Trump to become president.
Now, Zelensky needs his reelection.