They Only Have One Move

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

They only have one move. It’s grievance.

We saw President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance execute their favorite and only pose – that of an affronted victim – against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday.

Zelensky did nothing wrong. At the Oval Office meeting, Zelensky was trying to make a relatively simple point to Trump and Vance: diplomacy isn’t going to be enough. Every American president since the collapse of the USSR has gone into office thinking they can reset relations with the Russian government; Zelensky himself was elected in 2019 on a similar platform that called for negotiations to end what was then a comparatively small-scale war in Ukraine’s east. None of it worked, in large part, as Zelensky tried to convey, because Putin would violate the terms of any deal before him.

Vance’s response to that was to sneer: Wasn’t Zelensky being “disrespectful”? How dare he say that in front of all the cameras?

The rest was predictable to anyone remotely familiar with the American right. Trump became personally offended; the meeting blew up.

Within hours, as of this writing, Trump officials had leaked that they were considering halting weapons shipments and support to Ukraine over Zelensky’s supposed lack of respect. It’s almost overdone in how it was choreographed.

But when it comes to Ukraine, what exactly aggrieves Trump and his followers? What do they have to be affronted about?

There’s the answer that exists in their media world, cocooned off from reality, and one that they furiously spin: the country supposedly meddled in the 2016 election, not Russia, against Trump. Zelensky set Trump up for his first impeachment. We heard some of these grievance fantasies from Vance in the Oval Office: Zelensky supposedly “campaigned” for the “opposition;” he was begging for money while threatening to take millions to their deaths.

And then, there’s the reality: The Ukrainians are no longer weak. I mean this both in the direct, physical sense, and in the loftier moral sense. Over the past three years, they’ve demonstrated that they’re willing and capable of paying a truly horrific price for their independence. It’s a true mark of sovereignty that only a few countries in existence today can demonstrate. Yes, they’re dependent in a large part on American military hardware, ammunition, and intelligence-sharing to maintain their defense. But they’re not weak.

But it’s the loftier sense in which the Ukrainians have both demonstrated strength and affronted MAGA world. The Ukrainians are quite literally sacrificing themselves in order to live in a democratic society. They’re laying down their lives to defend their sovereignty, but also to defend the same values that, we constantly hear from the far-right and the far-left, are naive and foolish: that it’s possible to work for a common good, and that the old values that held up the U.S. – and the West more broadly – are still worth fighting for.

In that sense, their strength itself is the affront: the insult to Trump isn’t anything Zelensky said; it’s that he won’t capitulate.

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

• Khaya Himmelman updates us on another conspiracy theory that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is spreading as part of his push to get the DOJ to investigate and rescind federal climate contracts that were put in place by the Biden administration.
• Kate Riga walks us through Bidenworld’s latest public autopsies and Monday morning quarterbacking.
• Emine Yücel breaks down Fox News’ latest attempt to feign confusion over why vaccine confidence is at an all time low among Americans in the wake of a deadly measles outbreak in Texas.

Zeldin Is Pushing More Conspiracy Theories to Fuel Improper DOJ Investigation

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is once again spinning a web of conspiracy theories to justify his push to rescind and investigate $20 billion in grants that the Biden administration allocated for various climate projects.

The continued effort to halt and investigate funding and promote myths about the Biden administration’s allocation of climate funds is one of many examples of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice operating without independence from the White House.

This week, in a post on X, Zeldin wrote that the “Biden EPA shoveled $20 MILLION to an entity whose CEO was a current member on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.”

It’s the latest claim in a larger conspiracy theory that money and contracts that were part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund were somehow part of a Biden administration scheme. 

In his latest post, Zeldin is referencing an environmental justice grant that was allocated to the group Young, Gifted, and Green, which is founded by LaTricea D. Adams, who was also a member of the Biden administration’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. 

But, this money was publicly awarded to the group and is not part of some hidden plot to improperly award federal contracts, as Zeldin has implied. In fact, the grant money was announced in January 2025 in a publicly available press release, outlining where exactly the money was going and what it was intended for. 

“Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) today announced that Young, Gifted and Green, a community environmental organization, will receive a community grant of $19,996,791 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” the release reads. “The funding comes from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that only Congressman Cohen in the current Tennessee Congressional delegation voted for.”

Senior communications director at Evergreen Action Holly Burke, in an interview with TPM, called Zeldin’s latest outcry on X a “fake scandal.” These grants, she said, were intended to go to organizations exactly like Young, Gifted and Green.

“The so-called scandal that Lee Zeldin is uncovering here is that someone who the Biden administration brought in as an environmental justice advisor also happens to lead an environmental justice organization—that isn’t scandalous at all,” Burke said. “They’re going after small environmental justice groups that are trying to do water and air quality monitoring in communities that have been over polluted.”

Zeldin’s effort to claw back $20 billion in funding by Biden’s EPA is part of the reason why federal prosecutor Denise Cheung, who was in charge of the criminal division in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned from her post earlier this month. 

An investigation into these funds that have already been dispersed by the Biden administration is being led by acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin. Cheung refused to participate because, as she outlined in her resignation letter to Martin, she found no legal justification to do so. The investigation and this larger push to rescind funding is rooted in a video clip from right-wing conspiracy theory website Project Veritas. 

— Khaya Himmelman

Delusion In Bidenworld 

Members of the Biden inner circle are coming out of their self-imposed exile, performing public autopsies with the press. 

The theme of these interviews has been astonishing: the conviction that moving on from Joe Biden’s candidacy was a fatal mistake — implying that if he’d stuck it out, he could have won. 

Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s most trusted advisers, said earlier this month that Biden would have still been the “best” even after his disastrous debate performance. 

“Lots of people have terrible debates,” he said at a Harvard event. “Usually, the party doesn’t lose its mind. But that’s what happened — it just melted down.”

“I think it was insane, I think the party lost its mind,” he added. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House press secretary, likened the push to change candidates to a “firing squad.” 

“I have never seen anything like that,” said Jean-Pierre at another Harvard event. “It was truly, truly unfortunate. And I think it hurt us more than folks realized to have done that.”

Biden even reportedly told Donald Trump after the election that he blamed Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi for the loss.

To set the record straight: Biden did not have one bad debate. He had a disastrous debate where he struggled to complete sentences after studiously avoiding the press, and then proved incapable of cleaning up the mess. He was unable to communicate or to keep up a rigorous schedule. 

The right-wing campaign depicting Biden as a senile, frail old man worked so well because he was unable to combat it, leaving the party with an understudy candidate three months before election day. 

There is a lot to be angry about here. It is lunacy to aim it at Pelosi, Obama or the other Democrats who may have salvaged an electoral shellacking the magnitude of which could have banished the party to the political wilderness for even longer. 

— Kate Riga

Words Of Wisdom

“Vaccine confidence is at an all time low and we know why. Cause vaccines were pushed on people … we got to meet people where they live. That’s the way back to vaccine confidence.”

That’s Senior Medical Analyst for Fox News Dr. Marc Siegel discussing the measles outbreak that’s impacting the southwest U.S., while claiming that vaccine confidence is at an all time low because of the coronavirus vaccine mandates.

The confusion feigning is rich coming from Fox News.

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is the fact that that very network was spreading misinformation and disinformation around vaccines for months during and after the pandemic.

So, no, Mr. Siegel, the way back to vaccine confidence is not through “meeting people where they live.” It’s through major news networks halting the politicization of vaccines just to please an audience of one. 

— Emine Yücel