Former President Joe Biden shared pizza with U.S. troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at the Polish border with Ukraine in March 2022. Still nursing old enmity, Donald Trump, on the other hand, continues to fume over Biden’s perceived personal business dealings with and support of Ukraine in repelling the Russian invasion — best seen in a savage 139-minute Oval Office showdown involving Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, 2025.

Contrary to many commentaries, the poisonous diatribe directed by American President Donald Trump to his Ukrainian counterpart did not materialize simply because Trump is a bully who treats the White House like a board room in which he can play pitiless CEO. No. Rarely is the act of vindictiveness that simple.

Here, some oversimplified history comes in handy.

After Joe Biden’s two-term tenure as vice president ended in 2016, the year Trump got his first go-round as top dog, Biden dove into the public sector. He and one of his sons saw a rich opportunity in Ukraine, a country under constant threat from Russia — Crimea had been annexed a decade earlier — and eager for powerful American friends.

And Biden was glad to oblige, transacting business opportunities while befriending the Kiev leadership, including the aspiring politician Trump would later savage.

Trump, a business creature to the core, watched all this from the sidelines, his envy and anger rising as it always does. He saw Biden as a clever profiteer who’d parried his White House legacy into cash. So it was that Trump came to hate Ukraine, which he somehow perceived as a nation whose leadership had come to adore one of his sworn enemies, Biden, and which had also loved Barack Obama, the president Trump had once labeled as an Islamic extremist in disguise.

In a nutshell, no love lost between Ukraine and Trump, who in any case had a crush on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Then came COVID and the unlikely election of Biden to the presidency, an event all have come to know enraged Trump, who hates losing and never met a conspiracy he didn’t like. So furious was Trump that he organized a smaller version of Mussolini’s march on Rome. It failed, but the event gave Biden ammunition to call him names and mock his soiled presidential legacy.

Trump saw Biden as a clever profiteer who’d parried his White House legacy into cash. So it was that Trump came to hate Ukraine . . .

Trump seethed, then he seethed some more.

Cometh the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a move that immediately aroused Biden’s pro-Ukraine ardor. He promised money. He vowed wholesale support. He urged that Russia be excluded from the international community and pledged that Ukraine would be allowed to join NATO, which was among the reasons for the Russian invasion. He munched on pizza with troops stationed on the Polish border with Ukraine. And he told NATO and the world that Ukraine was one of his own, a beacon of freedom in distress. America would not flinch in defending it, short of boots on the ground. He was, to say the least, passionate, and within weeks, Russia and Russians were ostracized as if by executive order.

Again, Trump’s envy was triggered, but this time he took a different tack: America was pouring billions into a war that did not concern it. And it was doing so largely because Ukraine was Biden’s pet project — though he never quite said this aloud. He did make clear that if he deposed Biden in 2024, things would change.

As it happened, Trump never got his chance for revenge. In a panic move, the Democratic Party removed the stumbling Biden three months before the general election.

This only made Trump angrier, since he’d longed to defeat the rival who had many times embarrassed him verbally. Instead, he beat a vice president, hardly the victory he’d had in mind.

But the Biden-Ukraine enmity held. Trump openly accused Biden of corrupt dealings with shadowy Ukrainians, whom he never named. And he again said American money had been wasted.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, when Trump finally got his shot at taking down the Ukrainian chief, he did so with rare gusto, much of it bottled up over years.

With this in mind, IN NO WAY defending Trump’s almost casual approach to ugliness, I invite readers to review the Oval Office exchange (transcript of key moments available here). They will witness the sort of humiliation no sitting American president has ever directed publicly at a visiting head of state. Not pretty, as Trump likes to say. But in many respects, an accident waiting to happen. A contrived accident of a kind. With Trump knowing Biden could watch it from afar and weep.