Re the jaw-dropping Zelensky-Trump showdown yesterday, one word summarizes my reaction: sadness. Sadness that an America I used to know and be proud of is gone. It’s a deeper and more profound sadness than the one I felt the other week.

Another thing popped to mind yesterday: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” I thought of this infamous Donald Trump line after watching MAGA types scramble yesterday to defend the president and denounce Zelensky. 

But there are still a few principled conservatives left. From the NYT’s Bret Stephens: “There’s no getting around the fact that Friday was a dreadful day — dreadful for Ukraine, for the free world, for the legacy of an America that once stood for the principles of the Atlantic Charter. Roosevelt and Reagan must be spinning in their graves, as are Churchill and Thatcher.”

The NYT’s Tom Friedman wonders aloud: Imagine Trump and JD telling Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the “war with Hamas had gone on too long, too many lives had been lost and it was costing America too much money,” etc. etc.  It would never happen. Unless Putin factored into the equation somehow.

Update – The Atlantic: ‘It Was an Ambush.’ … I’m not buying it. And I don’t really care who started it. Only hyper-partisans care about such things. … What matters is the substance of what was said and conveyed as the cameras rolled.