Right-wing fashionistas review Zelensky's U.S. trip like it was a runway show

The Republican right-wingers just couldn’t resist jumping all over the olive drab sweatshirt and cargo pants Volodymyr Zelensky wore to both the White House and to his own address to a joint session of Congress.

Let’s stop for a moment and take a closer look at what we’re talking about here.  On Tuesday, the president of Ukraine visited Bakhmut, the city in the Donbas where the most brutal fighting is taking place against the Russian invaders.  He was apparently then flown to an airbase in Poland where he got on a U.S. military jet and was flown overnight to this country.  He got off that plane at Joint Base Andrews, just outside of Washington D.C., and was driven by armored convoy to the White House, where yesterday at about noon, he met with President Biden.  Zelensky then apparently met with members of the Ukrainian diaspora, who had been driven from their homes by Russian invaders.  He asked that some of his Ukrainian fellow citizens be permitted to watch his speech to the Congress from the House gallery, where no other visitors – even personal guests of members of Congress and Senators – were allowed due to increased security concerns for Zelensky’s safety.  Then he was driven back to Joint Base Andrews, where he got on another government jet and was flown back to Poland and was transported back to his offices in Kyiv.

Throughout his day-long visit to Washington, Zelensky wore the same olive drab outfit and sturdy boots he had worn in Bakhmut the day before.  He is a wartime president of a country under siege by Russia, a much more powerful foe.  He is commander in chief of the Ukrainian military.  In Kyiv, the seat of government in Ukraine, he has been under rocket fire and attacks by Russian cruise missiles and Iranian drones dating back to the first days of the war last February, more than 300 days in all.

As they completely ignore the reality of the destruction and murder of civilians going on every day in Ukraine, this is what the right-wing swamp had to say about Zelensky’s visit:

Tucker Carlson – “The president of Ukraine arrived at the White House dressed like the manager of a strip club and started to demand money. Amazingly, no one threw him out. Instead, they did whatever he wanted. American taxpayers, Joe Biden declared, will continue to give Zelensky whatever he demands for ‘as long as it takes.’”  After falsely accusing Zelensky of calling for the overthrow of Putin in Russia, Carlson asked, “So what happens if he ‘wins?’ What does the ensuing chaos look like? Thought about that? Who’s gonna secure the largest nuclear arsenal once we help Zelensky topple the Russian government? Who replaces Putin?”  But even pushing that lie wasn’t enough for the bow-tied heir to the Swanson frozen food fortune.  He had to double-down on his sartorial dig at Ukraine’s commander in chief: “The point was to fawn over the Ukrainian strip club manager and hand him billions more dollars from our own crumbling economy,” Carlson said.

Tuckie-poo apparently hasn’t thought through why Zelensky dresses the way he does.  First of all, he and his country are at war. He is not technically a member of Ukraine’s military, which does not have a presidential fatigue uniform for him to wear, so, he wears an olive drab sweatshirt over a pair of similarly-colored cargo pants.  In case Tuckie-poo doesn’t understand the seriousness of what Zelensky and Ukraine face in Bakhmut and elsewhere, you don’t want to be wearing a suit and white shirt and tie that would positively identify you as the president of the country when enemy soldiers and snipers are within shooting distance.  Here is a photo of Zelensky, hours before he visited Biden at the White House, with his troops on the front line on Tuesday. Russian forces were close enough that his soldiers are wearing their Kevlar helmets.

Conspiracy lie peddler Charlie Kirk, who uses his Republican “youth” outfit Turning Point U.S.A. as a personal piggy bank, started the fashion criticism with this: “Remember, Zelenskyy is an actor. Instead of a suit and tie for his White House visit, he's wearing an army fatigue colored sweater and cargo pants. The costume just hits better when you're in the middle of a multi-billion-dollar shakedown of American taxpayers.”  Clever, eh?  Tying together Zelensky’s choice of clothing with a raid on the national treasury? 

Right-wing pundit Benny Johnson was right there with him.  You may remember Johnson as the politics editor at Buzzfeed who was fired after they discovered he had plagiarized 41 pieces he had written for them.  I guess we should note here that his take on Zelensky’s outfit was not apparently cribbed from one of his buddies.  He was able to write this little gem all by himself: “This ungrateful piece of sh*t does not have the decency to wear a suit to the White House — no respect the country that is funding his survival. Track suit wearing eastern eropean (sic) con-man mafia.  Our leaders fell for it. They have disgraced us all. What an incredible insult.”  Johnson should get whoever his new benefactors are to front him the money for a trip to Ukraine and visit Bakhmut and ask the troops how insulted they felt by Zelensky’s visit to the front lines on Tuesday.

But of course, it was Donald Trump Jr. who got in the most disgusting dig of all: “Zelensky is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen,” he tweeted yesterday. 

This from a man famed for posing atop dead animals in his custom-tailored hunting outfits, just before being driven back to his luxo-hunting-camp in an airconditioned Range Rover to be served canapes by the hired help.

Every time you think these assholes have hit bottom, they just keep on digging.  Not one of them, of course, has ever worn his nation’s uniform or donned anything in olive drab unless they got it wholesale from the latest Ralph Lauren collection.