Trump’s style of petty domination was in full display with Zelenskyy | Moira Donegan

Trump and Vance, I think, never really intended to have a conversation with Zelenskky. Instead, they wanted to look tough on TV

The last time Donald Trump did this, it was in secret, and he got impeached over it. In 2019, Donald Trump, on a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanded that the Ukrainian president produce - or fabricate - evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, the son of Trump's eventual opponent in the 2020 election, in exchange for continued US military aide.

At the time, Russia had already seized control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and was funding violent insurgent groups in the country's east; it was increasingly clear that a full-scale Russian invasion was coming, as it finally did in 2022. Since the end of second world war, it has been America that checks Russian expansionist ambitions in Europe - America that provided the backstop to the Nato alliance, America that secured the independence of eastern Europe. Trump wanted to condition that longstanding role on Zelenskyy doing him a personal political favor. The international order could be ended, he suggested, if those who depended on him didn't do enough to indulge his vanity, self-interest and impulsive whims.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist