![]() ![]() ![]() “Whether he understood this or not,” Foer writes, “Zelenskiy was complicit with this stunt. In protest, Cruz blocked confirmation of state department nominees. The author also says Zelenskiy regarded Biden as weak, particularly over his decision earlier in 2021 to waive sanctions against a Russian company building Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline to Germany, a move Zelenskiy saw as undermining Ukrainian economic and security interests.īiden granted Zelenskiy a meeting but “didn’t think much” of him, Foer reports, particularly over friendly relations the Ukrainian president had struck up with the hard-right Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz, over the Nord Stream decision. Donald Trump rebuffed him, because he refused to help dig up dirt on rivals including Biden – efforts which led to Trump’s first impeachment.įoer claims Zelenskiy nursed “lingering resentments from the episode” and “at least subconsciously … seemed to blame” Biden, Trump’s successor in the Oval Office, “for the humiliation he suffered, for the political awkwardness he endured”. But his publisher, Penguin Random House, says the book is based on “unparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades”.Įlected in 2019 and under constant pressure from Russia, Zelenskiy had long sought a White House meeting. On Tuesday, a lengthy excerpt in the Atlantic, Foer’s employer, dealt with the withdrawal from Afghanistan in late summer 2021, the time of Zelenskiy’s first White House visit.Īs in other sections of the book, Foer does not use direct quotes or cite sources when reporting the Biden-Zelenskiy meeting on 1 September. The Guardian obtained a copy of The Last Politician, which will be published next week. But as the war in Ukraine drags on, with military and financial support for Kyiv a hot-button issue in Congress and in the Republican presidential primary, news of Foer’s portrayal of Biden and Zelenskiy’s floundering start may add to reported White House anxiety over the book. ![]() “It suggested more difficult conversations to come.”įoer also writes glowingly of Biden’s leadership of world support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion in February 2022, saying the US president proved “a man for his age”. “Even Zelenskiy’s most ardent sympathisers in the administration agreed that he had bombed,” Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, writes of the meeting in September 2021. ![]()
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