Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and Odyssey joint,

featuring lively, in-depth conversations with the people to roam, quarters powered influence in America,

sometimes in Washington, sometimes not.

But even where they are, they're weaving the warp and web of our politics and culture.

A little more than two weeks it passed since the world historical, political, theatrical,

ambush slash tragic comic goat rodeo that occurred when Ukrainian president,

Volodymyra Zelensky, sat down in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, J.D. Bance, and the Tussaud's Wax Museum replication of a human being once known as Little Marco Rubio.

And yet, the diplomatic implications, the geostrategic consequences, the transnational aftershocks are still rippling around the globe.

After being humiliated and then turfed out of the White House, Zelensky beat a hasty retreat to the more welcoming, respectful, and supportive arms at the European Union, and then proceeded

on to Saudi Arabia for bilateral talks with the U.S. delegation led by America's nominal,

and still slack-jawed and

vacant-eyed Secretary of State, and former GOP congressman and current national security

advisor Michael Waltz, where Zelensky and his team quickly agreed to America's proposal for

an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war between Ukraine and Russia, during which ostensibly

serious negotiations between those

countries and the United States would take place with the goal of achieving a permanent

end of the war and establishing a just and lasting peace.

So, like, hooray, right?

Certainly, a number of otherwise sensible American foreign policy pundits thought so.

Some of them going so far as to say,

sure, that Oval Office meeting was ugly. Sure, Donald Trump's approach was, quote, unconventional.

But you had to admit Trump had moved the ball forward. Trump had gotten results. So, hey,

...