Donald Trump has a prelapsarian instinct for spectacle. Over the summer, when a bullet grazed his ear, the then presidential candidate reacted quickly: against the backdrop of a deep-blue sky and an askew American flag, he punched the air and shouted, “Fight, fight, fight,” in the most consequential performance of his life. This aesthetic sense was honed over his years in small-screen reality programming. When his meeting with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky descended into a shouting match on 28 February, Trump called it right: this was great television.
Zelensky shares the US president’s thespian instincts. His job in this moment is to turn a dispiriting, three-year attritional war into a moment of “moral simplicity” for the rest of the world (to borrow a phrase from the Economist). Good thing he is an actor by training – and even better that he has a costume.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Zelensky has forgone the traditional suit of the world leader in favour of khaki T-shirts and fatigues. When he arrived at the White House to meet Trump he wore a black sweatshirt featuring the Ukrainian trident. “You’re all dressed up today,” said Trump when greeting him. Zelensky’s logic is obvious: this is a display of solidarity for his men on the front line, a straightforward piece of propaganda for everyone else, and a reminder that he is an honest-to-God wartime leader in the traditional model. And all of it is to say to his allies (more than his enemies): consider my demands and limitations through this lens; we cannot let the continent drift into apathy.
It may have been unpleasant viewing, but it was not surprising that Trump’s court mocked Zelensky for his attire. The White House correspondent for Real America’s Voice (a conservative cable network with a penchant for conspiratorial thinking), Brian Glenn, asked the Ukrainian president: “Why don’t you wear a suit? You’re at the highest level in this country’s office and you refuse to wear a suit… A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office.”
Hypocrisy is not the worst political crime but it was on display here. Elon Musk rarely wears a suit in the Oval Office or on stage, favouring a T-shirt instead. Trump’s bright red Maga baseball cap exceeds the narrow style guidelines applied to Zelensky, too. In his more bellicose moments, George W Bush loved a bomber jacket. Comparisons with Winston Churchill are often fatal, but since Trump has restored the wartime leader’s bust to the Oval Office, it would be remiss to forget his “siren suits”, an overall of sorts designed for wear in air-raid shelters, and worn by the man himself at the White House. Few are above the allure of such easy agitprop.
But there is a reason Zelensky’s wartime outfit plays so well in the UK. Pictures of the Ukrainian leader, still not wearing a suit, smiling and shaking hands with Keir Starmer and the King after the White House incident has flattered a very British sensibility. Excessive concern with politeness (don’t swear! Do up your tie!) is actually an American, not British, trait. It is also the product of long-term outsiders finally being on the inside: Trump was never quite at home with the Manhattan elite; JD Vance’s career began with itchy resentment at his “hillbilly” provenance; journalists from outlets with names such as “Real America’s Voice” haven’t traditionally held a spot in the press corps. But we belong here, they promise, we understand the rules.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the British establishment rather enjoyed pointing at the Yankee upstarts and their juvenile grasp of etiquette (not even the King cared about Maga’s frivolous preoccupation with the suit). This was Britain admonishing the nouveau politesse class of America: you could never understand the aristocratic affection for the scruffy maverick; you haven’t earned the right to such advanced snobbery. This is old-world vs new-world manners.
But Britain’s political predicament can be explained by the great satisfaction it has taken in winning on matters of decorum. Europe’s oldest security guarantor may have retreated inward, and the entire continent might be under-armed, but at least the British establishment doesn’t share Maga’s mid-bourgeois tastes.
Zelensky’s fatigues would never have convinced an administration that had already made up its mind. But his aesthetic campaign is not obsolete because of that. Sometimes only banalities will do, and when it comes to existential national threats, political spectacle matters as much as quiet backroom diplomacy.
On his deathbed the emperor Augustus – the greatest Roman ever, perhaps – requested a mirror to fix his hair. He admitted friends into his room and then said, as reported by Suetonius: “If the play has been a good one, then please clap your hands, and let me leave the stage to the sound of your applause.” Augustus understood, like Trump and Zelensky, something now rendered cliché by Shakespeare: all the world’s a stage – and you’d better put on a good show.
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This article appears in the 05 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Fall Out