Whose Dog Was Being Wagged During Showtime Between Trump and Zelensky?

Art requires the use of imagination, but so does political and social analysis. But imagination is just a first step; it proves nothing.

Evidence is required. But imagination rules out nothing from the start. If one cannot imagine an hypothesis or a scene – no matter how seemingly implausible – to be possibly true, one will leave it unexamined or unwritten.  As Graeme MacQueen, the author of the crucial book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception, and much else, put it:

Suppose our imaginations can embrace the possibility that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by elements in the U.S. government. In that case what do we do next? There is no mystery. Once the imagination stops filtering out a hypothesis and allows it into the realm of the possible, it can be put to the test. Evidence and reason must now do the job. Imagination cannot settle the question of truth or falsity any more than ideology, morality, or “common sense.”

We know that in the case of the attacks of September 11, 2001 that this is precisely what did not occur. Various hypotheses were ignored and emotional patriotism held sway.  The script had been written in advance and the good and bad characters chosen.  “It was another Pearl Harbor, bin Laden did it from his cave in Afghanistan, it seemed like a movie, etc.”  And those anthrax attacks were claimed to be second stage terror attacks of these monsters, except that it turned out this wasn’t so and that the anthrax came from a U.S. government lab.  MacQueen proved in his book that this was so and that the anthrax attacks were directly linked to the those of September 11, later showing through meticulously logical and evidence-based research that both were inside jobs.

Even today, this conclusion is hard for most people to accept, for the conclusion they started with – what was planted in their brains – precluded imagining another hypothesis.  To do so was considered too outrageous – an impossibility that offended the patriotic heart.

And of course the Bush administration’s lies steamrolled any skepticism, the Patriot Act was quickly passed, and endless U.S. wars of aggression ensued, both preceding and following Colin Powell’s Academy Award performance at the United Nations. But he too was an honorable man.

They too are honorable men.

So if you sat with your mouth agape in shock at the dog and pony show in DC between Trump, the reality TV actor, and Zelensky, the comedian, who became Ukraine’s president and Trump’s apprentice in 2019 during Trump’s first term, let me suggest a bizarre possibility at a time when the bizarre has become commonplace.

Across the spectrum of opinion on the mainstream and alternative media, it is assumed without question that what took place on Friday, February 28, 2025 between Trump and Zelensky, ably assisted by Vance, should be taken at face value – in other words, as real.

The political reactions to that shouting match are what one would expect.

The Democrats are outraged that Trump (and Vance) would bully and humiliate an heroic ally who has been fighting a valiant war against the evil Russians and Putin.

Thus Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, toeing the party war line, had this to say:

Trump criticizes Zelensky, the leader of a democratic country who is courageously fighting Russian imperialism, while he aligns himself with Putin, the dictator who started the bloodiest European war in 80 years. Sorry, President Trump. We believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.

And on the Republican side, Senator Lindsay Graham, while calling the meeting “a complete disaster” but urging continued support for the war for “democracy,” said he was never more proud of Trump:

What I saw in the Oval office was disrespectful and I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.

These reactions have been repeated ad infinitum. They are equally absurd propaganda in the service of the U.S. elites’ Repubmocratic tandem team of imperialists.

And then there are the reactions of utter shock from all corners who call this fight an historic and a diplomatic turning point to be immortalized.

It is hard, I know, to hear an unbearable possibility: But suppose it were a performance, not just in the sense that Trump and Vance set Zelensky up, but as a coordinated reality TV show in which all the principle actors were performing from a script whose goal was the opposite of all the subsequent interpretations. A script that allowed for some improvisation, as comedians like Zelensky and reality TV stars like Trump are adept at.  Improvisations that may have gone a step too far and elicited outbursts that tarnished the performance but did not derail the overall goal of showing that the puppet-apprentice serves at the whim of the show’s host, and despite all the loot showered upon him, he could still be fired and replaced with another puppet, as the play would proceed under a new name.

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “There are unconscious actors among them, and involuntary actors; the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.”

If it sounds hyperbolic to entertain such a thought, I agree. Yet I assume you would agree that we are living in hyperbolic and vertiginous times, a society of the spectacle, as Guy Debord called his famous book. A time when acting is promoted as the pinnacle of the professions, a skill requisite for spy craft, stagecraft, and political craft in equal measure.

A meaningless coincidence it no doubt is, but the famous shout down of Zelensky by Trump and Vance and Zelensky’s responses just “happened” to occur 48 hours before Hollywood’s self-celebration of the Academy Awards.

Of course I have no evidence for this hypothesis and it might sound as if I have come unhinged. But wouldn’t it serve common sense to entertain it as an alternative interpretation when hyper reality has become commonplace and the realization that we have been ruled by con men and fraudsters is widely accepted?

Over the same 48 hours, the Trump administration, that is allegedly antiwar and deeply affected by all the deaths in Ukraine, has had Secretary of State Marco Rubio expedite the shipment of $4 billion in military aid to Israel to continue its savage slaughter of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, et al. Rubio said this is part of the $12 billion Trump has approved in arms for Israel since he took office 42 days ago. Antiwar.com has reported:

The statement came a day after the statement [sic] department approved three separate arms deals for Israel worth nearly $3 billion, which includes a huge number of 2,000-pound bombs. The biggest sale, which will likely be funded by US military aid, includes 35,529 MK-84 or BLU-117 2,000-pound [sic] bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.

Israel has used heavy bombs in strikes on residential buildings that have killed hundreds of civilians. It has also weaponized the bombs as chemical weapons after finding that dropping several of them on tunnels releases deadly carbon monoxide gas.

As I have written previously, there is far more to consider when you hear clapping for Trump’s plans to “end” the U.S. proxy war against Russia. You can end the overt war and continue the covert.

As the Roman poet Virgil, drawing on Homer and Greek mythology, tells us in his great poem The Aeneid, that after a fruitless ten year siege of Russia – I mean Troy – the Greeks built a huge wooden horse at the request of Odysseus, the “wily” one, within which they hid Odysseus and his armed men.  The Trojans, believing they were being gifted, wheeled the horse into the city, only to be shocked when in the night the Greeks emerged from the horse and destroyed Troy.

So to paraphrase a few lines from Bob Dylan about my speculation here – Don’t fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear, it’s alright, reader, I’m only wondering – Who holds the joker in this “card game”?

I sense, said Laocoön in The Aeneid, “some crookedness is in this thing.”

Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.

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