Tensions flared between United States President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Friday during a high-stakes meeting about the future of Ukraine. Zelenskyy was in Washington, D.C., to sign a preliminary deal giving the U.S. access to Ukrainian rare earth mineral deposits in return for military aid. The terms of the preliminary deal had already been worked out. All Zelenskyy had to do was put on a tie, show up, smile, sign the papers, and have lunch. Yet things went sideways during a press conference before the signing.

Instead, Zelenskyy complained on live television that the U.S. was not giving enough military support, he cussed out U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and he raised his voice and talked over President Donald Trump. The result was that Zelenskyy was escorted to the door. The deal was left unsigned. Now, some Republicans are calling on Mr. Trump to cut ties with Ukraine; some are even calling on him to withdraw from nato.

Watching this spectacle reminds us of a truth the Prophet Isaiah spoke about humanity: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness” (Isaiah 59:8-9).

President Trump told Zelenskyy he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker. Yet few of the parties he is negotiating with actually want peace.

Zelenskyy does not want peace if it comes at the cost of conceding land that Russia has taken. He understandably balks at giving up territory, which President Trump has said he is fine with.

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want peace if it means surrendering to Ukraine. He called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and is prepared to wage endless war to conquer Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe.

Democrats do not want peace if it means making Donald Trump look like a hero. They want to destroy Trump. It emerged since then that anti-Trump Democrats had met with Zelenskyy before his meeting with President Trump and urged him to reject the deal. Any Trump-brokered peace deal is a political loss for Democrats. They would rather the U.S.-Ukraine alliance blow up than see Trump claim a diplomatic victory.

In the March 2017 Trumpet, my father, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, wrote that Vladimir Putin is “a vengeful, monstrous friend of the devil with all sorts of anti-God policies.” So any deal with Putin is a deal with the devil. And in the August 2016 Trumpet, my father noted that the devil “controls the radical left” in the United States. So any concessions to the radical Democrats advising President Zelenskyy is also a deal with the devil.

Gen. Mike Flynn recently said in an X post that “the devil is not Russia as the intelligence elites, the media and the liberal political class wants Europeans to believe, it is the dangerous rise of globalism along with other ‘isms’ that are not conducive to freedom and democratic ideas.” Flynn does not seem to understand that the devil has the power to influence all sides in a complicated geopolitical negotiation.

In this situation, the devil is influencing both the Russians who are attacking Ukraine and the Democrats trying to sow division between Trump and Zelenskyy.

As my father’s book America Under Attack explains, the devil’s primary geopolitical objective is to destroy the United States, and one way of doing that is to create a rift in the nato alliance currently defending world peace. The explosion in the Oval Office helps accomplish this goal.

The Bible says God will use an end-time Jeroboam figure to save end-time Israel (2 Kings 14:26-28). President Trump is this Jeroboam figure, so it makes sense that he would have many different enemies. Right now, these enemies are accusing him of actively trying to sabotage nato. Yet nato was hardly a strong and healthy alliance that Donald Trump is single-handedly destroying.

My father has written before about a secret German-Russian alliance to destroy nato, so many German industrialists are no doubt rejoicing about the rift between Trump and Zelenskyy. And many U.S. Democrats are rejoicing as well. They don’t want a trans-Atlantic alliance. They want a trans-Atlantic alliance against Trump.

Elon Musk, Marco Rubio and many other prominent figures are now calling on the U.S. to withdraw from nato because they recognize it as a dysfunctional alliance. European nations won’t say “No” to U.S. tax dollars, but they are not truly legitimate allies of the United States. President Trump’s reasonable request for rare earth minerals exposed this fact. Ukraine loved all the blank checks the Biden administration sent but does not want to give anything back to the United States. So the trans-Atlantic alliance has fallen into infighting.

Who benefits from such behavior? Certainly not the Ukrainian people, who desperately need U.S. support. It benefits radical Democrats, who would rather destroy America than help Trump. This gives them something to attack the president for—even to resurrect the threadbare Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.

Also, the German industrialists who want independence from the United States benefit. European defense stocks are booming as European arms makers expect orders to skyrocket in the aftermath of the explosion in the Oval Office. So the ceos of bae, Rheinmetall, Thales and Leonardo are probably happy.

A prophecy in Ezekiel 23 says America will be betrayed by the German lovers it has trusted so much since the end of World War ii. That is where events today are leading.

Frederick Merz, likely Germany’s next chancellor, says President Trump is betraying Europe. But in the end it will be evident that it was actually the other way round. Neither Germany nor the Democrats want to see Donald Trump step up and defend Ukraine. But entities want to see Donald Trump destroyed.

“Many elite Germans feel their nation has now gotten all it can from the U.S. and they are ready to move on,” my father wrote in a September 2018 article titled “Germany and Russia’s Secret War Against America.” He continued:

Some powerful Germans today are thinking more and more about the Holy Roman Empire, and they want modern Germany to assume more power of its own in the spirit of that empire. They want to establish Europe as a mighty, German-led superpower. These Germans know that nato is an obstacle to their goal. Back when nato was first founded, its first secretary general, Hastings Ismay, explained its main purpose: “Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The notion of keeping “the Germans down” directly contradicts the imperialistic ambitions that are growing more intense among many elite Germans today.

Many Democrats in America are willing to help Germany achieve this goal if it helps destroy Donald Trump, so both Germany and the Democrats have an interest in encouraging Zelenskyy to burn bridges.

There is still a lot we don’t know. But from a Bible prophecy perspective, the next big trend we should watch for is a German betrayal of the United States. In the end, nato will be destroyed by treachery, and the war between Russia and Ukraine is inflaming tensions between Republicans and Democrats, and between Americans and Europeans.

To learn more, read the chapter “Atlantic Rift” in our free booklet He Was Right.