Zelenskyy and Netanyahu brave the whims of Trump’s darkly confounding White House

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu converged on Washington this week for a strikingly symbolic moment: two wartime leaders seeking support from a White House whose policies have shifted unpredictably under Donald Trump. Their visits, coinciding with the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican hawk of the old school, highlight the crumbling of longstanding certainties in US foreign policy. Both men face a president governed more by whim than by doctrine, and neither can predict how they will be received.

Contrasting Fortunes

Netanyahu arrives in the US with his star significantly dimmed. His once-close alliance with Trump soured after the Israeli leader persuaded the president to join a costly war on Iran based on the unfounded promise that Tehran would quickly collapse. Trump has since publicly scolded Netanyahu and allowed White House officials to leak vulgar tirades belittling him. Israel has been excluded from critical US negotiations—including talks with Iran, the sale of F-35 stealth fighters to Turkey, and a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia—while a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that nearly half of Americans think Netanyahu should be arrested for war crimes. Zelenskyy, by contrast, arrives in the ascendant. Ukraine has defied US intelligence predictions of inevitable defeat, becoming a world leader in drone warfare and winning over some former Trump skeptics who once scorned him as a loser.

Trump's Unpredictable Reception

In a conventional administration, both leaders would be natural allies and assured a warm welcome in the Oval Office. But this is no normal presidency. Trump began his term with full-throated support for Netanyahu’s wars, dropping even the pretense of concern for Palestinian or Lebanese civilians. Now, facing a hostile electorate, he seeks to extricate the US from the Middle East, finding Israel the most recalcitrant party on every front. On Ukraine, Trump tore up the traditional playbook, proposing peace deals that echoed Moscow’s talking points and rewarding aggression with territory Russia had not even won. Neither Zelenskyy nor Netanyahu wanted cameras in their private sessions, aware that the president’s mood could shift without warning. Trump sees his visitors as client-supplicants, but they are equally aware of his weaknesses—his declining approval, his impulsive decisions, and the erosion of the imperial presidency he tried to forge.

Implications for Two Wars

The absence of predictable US backing forces both leaders to recalibrate their strategies. For Israel, being shut out of regional negotiations could embolden adversaries like Iran and Hezbollah. For Ukraine, Trump’s erratic aid cuts have already forced Kyiv to innovate and rely more on European allies. Ukraine has shown it can fight on despite drastic reductions in military assistance, but sustaining that effort without reliable US support remains a challenge. The funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham—a reliable champion of both Israeli and Ukrainian war efforts—underscored the loss of a bipartisan consensus that once anchored US foreign policy. As Trump’s darkly confounding White House continues to defy conventional expectations, Zelenskyy and Netanyahu leave Washington with limited certainty: they are on their own in a world where the old rules no longer apply.