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To the editor:
It was clear as Volodymyr Zelenskyy exited his vehicle Friday that Donald Trump invited him to Washington to humiliate him, beginning with the greeting, “You’re all dressed up.” Apparently, Trump didn’t notice Elon Musk’s baseball cap and T-shirt when Musk held court over Trump’s cabinet.
I mulled over what to write after watching Trump’s and JD Vance’s performance as bad cop, worse cop. But Times columnist David Brooks put it best: “I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea about America, that we're a flawed country, but we're fundamentally a force for good in the world…. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe.
"And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen…. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that's safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office… am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I'm in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It's a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.”
Joseph Cannisi
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