President Donald Trump dressed down Volodymr Zelensky just as the Ukraine President stepped out of his limousine to visit the White House Friday, congratulating him for wearing a nice outfit rather than his trademark fatigues.
“Ooh, look you’re all dressed up today,” Trump said as he shook Zelensky’s hand.
“He’s all dressed up today!” Trump added to reporters while pointing at Zelensky.
The Ukraine president is known for wearing his green military fatigues all the time everywhere he goes, because he’s in a war, after all.
In fact, one reporter on Friday asked Zelensky, “Why don’t you wear a suit?”
“I will wear costume after this war will finish,” Zelensky responded.
Trump’s denigrating remark about Zelensky’s attire may have been a classic Trumpian “art of the deal” negotiation tactic, which he once explained during an interview with Larry King, telling the show host that his breath was bad in order to get the upper hand in the conversation.
In a 1989 interview with Larry King, Donald Trump said, live on air, "Can I sit back? Your breath is really bad." pic.twitter.com/F0IVdWofd6
— Ciro De Siena (@CiroDeSiena) April 22, 2018
Years later, Trump explained King’s breath wasn’t actually bad, but that he’d done that to shift the conversation and get the interviewer off guard, as explained by Mother Jones in 2016:
In a 2010 interview on King’s CNN show, Trump recalled the moment. “I took heat the next day,” he said. Trump also told King that his breath wasn’t actually bad that day—Trump had just made the comment in response to an earlier question from King about Trump’s strategies for catching people off guard in his business dealings. By commenting on King’s breath, Trump said, he was merely illustrating the point. “And you even were offended by it,” Trump said to King “and you forgot the first part of your question.” King had, according to Trump, indeed been caught off guard.
The condescending greeting came as Zelensky traveled to Washington to meet with Trump regarding peace negotiations to end the Ukraine-Russia war, where the US president told him he had no leverage to negotiate.
During Friday’s meeting, Trump later told Zelensky, “I do like your clothing, by the way.”
More on this as it develops…
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