All eyes will be on Volodymyr Zelensky when he arrives at the White House on Monday afternoon—if only to see what he’s wearing when he meets President Donald Trump.
Ukraine’s wartime president found himself the target of a pile-on in his last Oval Office visit in February, when Vice President JD Vance accused him of being “disrespectful” to the U.S. by not wearing a suit and tie.
Keen to avoid a repeat, White House officials have reportedly been pressing Zelensky to dress up for Monday’s crucial talks at the White House, where Zelensky and Trump will be joined a slew of major European leaders.
Citing two sources inside the Trump administration, Axios reported Monday that the White House had explicitly asked Ukrainian officials whether Zelensky would be wearing a suit to the Oval Office.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One source told the outlet that Zelensky would be wearing the same sort of black jacket he wore to meet Trump at the NATO summit in June, rather than his usual army-style sweatshirt. “Trump was happy about that,” Axios reported in its newsletter.
Monday’s talks, which come on the heels of Trump’s summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, could help bring an end to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
But all anyone in MAGAworld seems to have cared about over the past few days is what Zelensky will be wearing when he shakes Trump’s hand.
In a scathing preview of the Oval Office talks, Real America’s Voice host Brian Glenn told viewers on Sunday: “Two questions right now. One: Will we have peace? But two: Will Zelensky wear a suit?”
The channel, which calls itself the “authentic voice and passion of real people all across America,” then played a clip from Zelensky’s infamous visit to the White House earlier this year when Glenn himself sparked a brutal pile-on from the room by criticizing Zelensky for what he was wearing.
Zelensky’s casual battle dress was reminiscent of that worn by previous wartime leaders during visits to the White House, including Britain’s prime minister during WWII, Winston Churchill. But the February meeting descended into acrimony, with Vance leading what many observers considered an ambush of Zelensky.
Zelensky will be joined at the White House by European leaders including Britain’s Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron of France who will try to persuade Trump that the pressure should be on Putin to end the conflict he started in 2022. Casualties are widely reported to be past the million mark after more than three years of attritional fighting.
The Oval Office talks come just days the Alaska summit, at which no real progress appears to have been made—and which some White House officials reportedly left looking ashen-faced.
Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin, who has largely been ostracized by the international community since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After greeting him like an old friend, Trump let Putin talk first at a post-summit press conference—with no actual questions allowed—and even gave him a lift in his armored “Beast” limousine.
It remains clear, however, that Putin is still clinging to his maximalist demands for sovereignty over large parts of Ukraine and subsequent demilitarization.
Trump is expected to greet Zelensky today at 1 p.m. ET, with a series of meetings with other European leaders scheduled throughout the afternoon.
