Discussion on Ukraine and Russia Relations

Because the president is the only leader in the world,

if this is possible, he's

the only one that can help make it happen.

Well, he's got the leverage over Vladimir Putin

if he wanted to crush his

economy or at least do more damage to it.

But you have held off on those secondary sanctions.

President Trump told Fox News his advice to President Zelensky

is make a deal, Russia's a very big power, and they're

not. You know there is concern from the Europeans that

President Zelensky is going to be bullied

into signing something away. That's why you have these European leaders

coming as

backup tomorrow. Can you-

No, it isn't

... reassure them?

That's not why they're coming as back- That's not true.

No, but that's not... Why, why would- That's not true.

They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied.

They're not coming. In fact-

Well, that February Oval Office-

They're, they're coming here tomorrow because-

... meeting in front of television cameras

where President Zelensky-

Do you know how many meetings we've had since then?

... was dressed down. Oh, no, I, I know, and I was just up in Alaska-

Yeah, but we had a bunch of meetings since then

... watching the one with Vladimir Putin where

a red carpet rolls, rolled out for

the Russian leader.

No, but it was Zelensky

It was very different.

We've had more meetings. We've had, we've had,

we've had one meeting with Putin

and, like, a dozen meetings with Zelensky. So the... But that's not true.

They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied.

They're coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans.

We talked to them last week. There were meetings in the UK over the fol- the

previous weekend.

And they said President Trump-

Uh, the president's talked to these leaders-

... was gonna demand a ceasefire

... as early as Thursday.

No, no. But you said that they're coming here tomorrow to keep

Zelensky from being

bullied. They're not coming here tomorrow...

Oh, this is such a stupid media narrative, that they're coming here tomorrow

because, uh, the Trump is gonna bully Zelensky into a bad deal.

We've been working with these people for weeks, for weeks on this stuff.

They're coming here tomorrow 'cause they chose to come here tomorrow.

We invited them to come. We invited them to come.

The president invited them to come.

But the president told those European leaders last week

that he wanted a ceasefire.

The president went on television, said he would walk out of the meeting

if Vladimir

Putin didn't agree with one. He said there would be severe consequences

if he

didn't agree to one. He said he'd walk out in two minutes.

He spent three hours talking to Vladimir Putin, and he did not get one.

So there's mixed messages.

Because obviously something, things happened during that meeting.

Well, because obviously things...

Look, our goal here is not to stage some production for the

world to say, "Oh, how

dramatic. He walked out." Our goal here is to have a peace agreement, to end

this war, okay? And obviously, we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough

progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to

allow us to move to the next phase. If not,

we wouldn't be having Zelensky flying

all the way over here. We wouldn't be having all the Europeans

coming all the way

over here. Now, understand, and take with a grain of salt,

I'm not saying we're on

the verge of a peace deal. But I am saying that we saw movement,

enough movement to

justify a follow-up meeting with Zelensky and the Europeans, enough

movement for us to dedicate even more time to this.

You talk-