Zelensky Slides Into Business Casual

Famous dictator of the Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, has been wearing a GI Joe style military costume for several years. Although some communist and fascist leaders wore military-type outfits all or most of the time, they were military men before becoming political leaders.

It is not normal for a civilian leader of a country at war to start pretending he is a soldier by wearing a costume, but some consultants apparently thought this was a good idea, and I guess it must have polled well, because he kept doing it.

This is what he was wearing in the Oval Office with Trump earlier this year:

Now, the war is probably wrapping up. Trump met with Putin on Friday, and left the meeting saying that they are abandoning the demand for a ceasefire, and now agreeing to Putin’s assertion that the only way they can “do a deal” is if it is a full peace deal. Zelensky had an emergency meeting with the EU’s top slut Ursula von der Leyen this morning, and he has switched up his fashion game, going for “obsidian mode” business casual.

Apparently and perhaps obviously, it would have been too much for him to just all of a sudden start wearing a suit like a normal world leader, as the contrast would have been too stark. I’m aware of one time in the last 3.5 years when he wore a suit, and that was at Davos. But that is of course a very special occasion, and I would seriously doubt the Ukraine media reported on it much. Certainly, the US media did not.

So, with a potential turning point in the war coming up, he’s decided to begin to transition away from a GI Joe costume into something a bit more professional, and now he looks like a startup Jew trying to get VC funding: t-shirt and slacks with a baggy jacket.

Why he chose all black, I cannot say. Maybe, it was to make the transition less abrasive. Typically, business casual advisors are going to tell you there should be a contrast between the shirt and jacket, even if you’re wearing an undershirt. I would go so far as to say especially if you’re wearing an undershirt. A white t-shirt would have looked much better for Zelensky.

Anyway, this seems to imply he thinks something is changing. I don’t know if I think anything is changing. Honestly, I haven’t been paying a whole lot of attention, but that is still probably more attention than most, and while Trump has changed from “ceasefire” to the Russia-acceptable “peace negotiations,” and Marco Rubio was just on Meet the Press defending this and saying they won’t be adding new sanctions, I’m not totally convinced anything will actually change.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold up.

I just noticed that is not even a real jacket he is wearing. It’s got weird pockets on it.

(Looking at that photo, you wonder if he started this war in order to have an excuse to embrace the Jewish biological impulse towards very low personal hygiene.)

I suppose these pockets imply something militarized? It looked like a normal sport coat that was just too big with particularly ugly lapels, then I saw it up close and saw these apparently custom pockets. That fits more into my theory that the Alaska meeting might not really mean very much.

Firstly, Trump has been trying to bury this Epstein drama to no effect, and finally this Russia-Ukraine story has shifted people’s attention. Both his supporters and detractors feel strongly about the Ukraine, so both have switched to talking about this. Trump has a reason to stretch this out, to make a big show, and actually has a reason to end the war. If he’s successful, his supporters will be happy and his detractors will be talking about how evil it is (both having moved on from Epstein).

However, if the Europeans and the Ukrainians are committed to continuing the war, they can make a big mess. They can’t really keep the fight going very long without US money and weapons, but they can make a big enough mess and blame it on Trump and probably successfully use people like Marco Rubio to bully him into continuing sending weapons to the Ukraine.

If Trump would have swooped in on Day One like he said he was going to and simply cut all funding to the Ukraine when he had the wind at his back, he could have ended this, but at this point, he’s made all of these different weird and conflicting statements and given the Europeans time to organize a strategy to thwart him.

It’s possible he will be able to end it. But Russia isn’t going to give anything up. And now that he’s made it his war by making all these statements and not simply ending it on Day One, he’s going to be held responsible for the outcome, which could be made to look really bad.

This is to say: on Day One he could have just stopped all funding and then when there was fallout said “well, this was Biden’s thing, I don’t know, it was never my thing.” But he’s defended the war, he’s attacked Pete Hegseth publicly for canceling their funding (apparently without his knowledge?), and he’s made all these statements about how Putin is crazy and so on.

Maybe in Alaska, Putin convinced him of the obvious, but it could be too late for him to actually take serious action to end this war.

That said, things are heating up in the Middle East, with Israel ready to start bombing Iran again, and they are of course going to expect Trump to be all-in with them again on that. So it’s possible that my original thing will hold up: the US will cut off the Ukraine in order to focus on fighting wars for Israel.

Before Trump was elected, I spent six months saying that he was only going to do things for Israel, and the only things Americans could hope for is some economic relief and an end to the Ukraine war. It looked like I was wrong on both counts, and instead the only thing the Americans could hope for is a militarized police state (that somehow only manages a fraction of the deportations Obama did).

But hey – crypto is still doing well, right? And he cured the woke mind virus with a genetic vaccine, correct?

Kamala wouldn’t have done that for us.