More Than Once Have Americans Rejected the Arrogant Pretensions of a Foreigner

In no way, in all the history of the United States of America, was President Donald Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s handling of the visit of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unprecedented.

An earlier, public dressing down of an official from a European nation occurred during the term of the first President of the U.S., George Washington.

The Ukraine President arrived on the heels of the seemingly desperate envoys, French President Macron and UK Prime Minister Starmer, to pressure President Trump to provide security guarantees to a Europe hell-bent on continuing the war between Ukraine and Russia, even to the point of World War III.

Before television cameras in the White House Oval Office on February 28, 2025, Zelenskyy took to quarreling with the elected leaders of the U.S., arguing his case before the court of public opinion.

Vice President Vance wasn’t having any of it:

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

The Tale of Citizen Genet 

Go back 230-plus years.

France had recently had their own Revolution, forming the French Republic, deposing their King. They had also, in February 1793, declared war on Great Britain. The French Republic sent Edmond-Charles Genet—Citizen Genet—as their Ambassador to the United States, to secure U.S. assistance in defending France’s Caribbean colonies, advance payment on its war debt, a new commercial treaty, and the right to interdict British merchant shipping using ships based in U.S. ports.

From the moment Genet arrived in South Carolina in April 1793, he set out to organize privateering commissions and militias of American volunteers, all while taking his case directly to the public, violating U.S. neutrality and diplomatic protocol.

As the U.S. began the process of demanding his recall, in October, a French privateer seized an English vessel in U.S. waters, sailing it into Boston harbor. A U.S. Marshall, attempting to assume control, was interdicted by the Lieutenant of the French frigate La Concord, who assumed control, while the French Vice-Consul asserted that the French prizemaster would hold the vessel.

President Washington revoked the Vice Consul’s authorization, the Consul in Boston protested, and Citizen Genet declared President Washington to have overstepped the authority of the Constitution, taking his case to the public and giving the sovereign state of Massachusetts priority over the government of the United States.

Washington did not have a JD Vance as his Vice President, but Thomas Jefferson, his Secretary of State, was decidedly more sympathetic to the French. So, American patriots took to the press in defense of the Constitution. A young John Quincy Adams entered the fray on November 30, 1793, writing as  “Columbus” in the pages of the Columbian Centinel. He writes about Citizen Genet:

 “To divide in order to govern has been one of the favorite maxims of political villainy, ever since the relative stations of tyrant and slave have been the fashion of the world. Every public measure of the French Minister, since the profession of his resolution to appeal, may be traced to the policy of arming one part of America against the other.”

The intentions of Minister Genet were no less hostile to the Constitution, than insulting to the government of the Union. Americans

“had delegated to the Congress of the United States the power to regulate their commercial intercourse with foreign nations. They had delegated to the President the power of negotiating with the ministers of foreign power, and with the concurrence of the Senate, to make treaties with them. They had specially directed their President in the Constitution, which defined his authority and prescribed his duties, to ‘take care, that the laws be faithfully executed:’…” 

Genet endeavored to support his failing influence in the U.S. by connecting himself with a particular party of American citizens, separate from the whole body of the people, “a party professing republican sanctity beyond the rest of their fellow-citizens, and scarcely endeavoring to disguise sentiments, hostile to the national government of the country.”

"Columbus" describes coercion of an American jury deliberation, the slanderous targeting of citizens, the founding of “democratic societies,” and the threat of assassination, including printed caricatures circulating in Philadelphia, depicting the President of the Union and a Judge of the Supreme Court with a guillotine suspended over their heads.

“When the Americans were rudely called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of the patriot, whose disinterested virtues and superior talents had been employed in their service through all the vicissitudes of fortune; whose generous magnanimity had supported them in the most distressing moments of national depression; whose expanded patriotism had participated with rapture in the most blissful scenes of national exultation; the glory of their war, and the ornament of their peace; when a beardless foreigner, whose name was scarcely enrolled upon the catalogue of Liberty; a petulant stripling, whose commission from a friendly power was his only title to their respect, and whose only merit was his country, presumed to place himself in opposition to the father of their country, and to call for their approbation to support his claims, they viewed the application as an indignity offered to themselves, and…rejected the arrogant pretensions of the foreigner, with pointed indignation.”  

Ambassador Genet was recalled to France within the month, not by the government that sent him, but by the new government of Robespierre. Citizen Genet, fearing for his life if he returned, was granted asylum by President George Washington.