Former United States ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel both reacted on horror to the vicious attack we all witnessed where bully-boys Trump and Vance sabotaged their meeting with Zelensky at the White House.

Both appeared on MSNBC immediately following the shitshow, and Stengel had it exactly right. It was like watching "one of the heads of the five families."

MCFAUL: We're on live TV, so I'm not gonna speak in terms that I would speak if we were off the air, but this was horrific.

This was a tragedy, and a tragedy for American national security interests. I want to really emphasize that. This does nobody any good. This doesn't make the American people better off tomorrow.

The senator, now Vice President Vance, pleading for the leader of a country to pledge his fealty to President Trump and say thank you.

I want to remind your viewers, President Zelensky said thank you to the American people 1000 times. I use chat GPT, Mr. Vice President, and look for it.

And by the way, Senator Vance voted against that aid to Ukraine. So this the paradox of that.

I don't... it just was shocking to me and, and we need to, what they need to sign this deal, this deal was good for the United States, was good for Ukraine, and instead of signing that deal we were re-litigating Biden and Obama and I just wish the president would put our interests today front and center and stop litigating what happened in 2016 or before because that is not in America's national interest.

After playing a clip of Trump threatening Zelensky and telling him "you don't have the cards," host Chris Jansing asked Richard Stengel for his reaction.

STENGEL: He sounded there like one of the heads of the five families. I agree with Mike, and one of the things as the ambassador knows is that in diplomacy, you prepare and prepare and prepare for meetings, so that something like this doesn't happen.

Trump treats everything as as though it's a television show and in this case, it's a live television show. He even said at the end, this is going to make great TV.

I think I watched the beginning of it, and Zelensky said thank you a number of times. It is hypocritical for the Vice President who voted against a Ukraine to ask Mr. Zelensky to, to thank him for it.

It's also so at variance with the last 75 years of American history. Since the Marshall Plan, the Marshall Plan was one of the greatest acts of international generosity in world history, and we didn't ask the French or the Germans or the Japanese to say thank you, but they were grateful, and that is part of the reason why our soft power has helped America over the years.

Ironically, the very reason that we have to sign this agreement for rare earth materials, for for rare metals, is that the Chinese have cornered the world market on all of this material that we need for electric vehicles, for computers, for phones, in part because of their efforts of soft power around the world, and making deals all around the world while we've been sitting on our hands.

So there's lots of ironies and hypocrisies here and I guess it is very dramatic, but it's exactly the kind of drama that we don't want to see.

That's putting it mildly. Our allies, or now former allies, are all watching this in horror as well.