Who’s afraid of Volodymyr Zelensky? Donald Trump and the Republican Party, that’s who. So much so that they have insulted and demonized the diminutive Ukrainian president as if he were the embodiment of evil.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, cavorts with Trump in Mar-a-Lago and no eyebrows are raised. Vladimir Putin routinely kills his opponents and tries to interfere with American elections, and Republican outrage is at best muted.
But poor Zelensky visits an ammunitions plant in Pennsylvania, and he and Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, are attacked for interfering in America’s elections.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is demanding that Zelensky fire Markarova.
The conservative response to Zelensky in general and during his visit to the U.S. in particular is, at best, completely asymmetric. (Recall Tucker Carlson’s characterization of Zelensky as “far…
