Name: Rubio points finger at Zelensky for breakdown of Trump meeting
Uploaded: 2025-03-05T08:08:45.000Z
Duration: 10 min 7 s
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And my source tonight is the Secretary of State, who is in that room today, Marco Rubio.

Gerund

Thank you so much, Secretary Rubio, for being here.

Past simple

He said he does not think that he owes President Trump an apology for what happened inside the Oval Office today.

You don't see all the things that led up to this.

He thinks this war should have never started.

He believes, and I agree, that had he been president, it never would have happened.

He's trying to bring an end to this conflict.

We've explained very clearly what our plan is here, which is we want to get the Russians to a negotiating table.

We want to explore whether peace is possible.

They also understand that this agreement that was supposed to be signed today was supposed to be an agreement that binds America economically to Ukraine, which to me, as I've explained, and I think the president alluded to today, is a security guarantee in its own way, because we're involved.

And nonetheless, for the last 10 days, in every engagement we've had with the Ukrainians, there's been complications in getting that point across, including the public statements that President Zelensky has made.

This agreement could have been signed five days ago, but they insisted on coming to Washington, and there was a very, and should have been a very clear understanding, don't come here and create a scenario where you're going to start lecturing us about how diplomacy isn't going to work.

President Zelensky took it in that direction, and it ended in a predictable outcome as a  It's unfortunate.

That wasn't supposed to be this way, but that's the path he chose, and I think, frankly, sends his country backwards in regards to achieving peace, which is what President Trump wants at the end of the day, is for this war to end.

He's been as consistent as anyone can be about what his objective is here.

But what specifically do you want to see President Zelensky apologize for?

Well, apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became.

There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic.

It went off the rails when he said, let me ask you a question to the vice president.

What kind of diplomacy are you talking about?

I mean, thousands of people have been killed, thousands.

And he talks about all these horrible things that have happened to prisoners of war and children, all true, all bad.

The way you bring it to an end is you get Russia to the table to talk.

And he understands that attacking Putin, no matter how anyone may feel about him personally, forcing the president into a position where you're trying to goad him into attacking Putin, calling him names, maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction, all the sorts of things that you talk about in a negotiation.

Well, when you start talking about that aggressively, and the president's a dealmaker, he's made deals his entire life, you're not going to get people to the table.

And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky doesn't want a peace deal.

And that active, open undermining of efforts to bring about peace is deeply frustrating for everyone who's been involved in communications with them leading up to today.

And I think we should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did.

You yourself have said previously that Putin cannot be trusted in negotiations.

That was the point that President Zelensky was ultimately making during that conversation, is that there cannot be an agreement without security guarantees, because he was talking about all the ceasefire agreements before, or agreements that Putin has just blown past.

I mean, do you still feel that way, that Putin cannot be trusted in these negotiations?

Well, I was there yesterday when the president said in front of the media that our approach is going to be trust, but verify.

President Trump's made deals his entire life.

He's not going to get suckered into some deal that's not a real deal.

We understand it on our end, for certain.

And so the goal here is to get to a place where we have to explore whether peace is possible.

I think it is, based on what they've said so far.

I ask people, what is the European plan to end this war?

I can tell you what one foreign minister told me, and I'm not going to say who it was, but I can tell you what one of them told me, and that is that the war goes on for another year.

And at that point, Russia will feel so weakened that they'll beg for a peace.

That's another year of killing, another year of dying, another year of destruction.

And by the way, not a very realistic plan in my point of view.

So if there's a chance of peace, even if it's a 1% chance, that needs to be explored.

And that's what President Trump is trying to do here.

President Trump said just when he was leaving the White House after that meeting that he doesn't think President Zelensky wants peace.

But isn't that why the Ukrainian leader was in the Oval Office for that meeting today?

Well, he was in the Oval Office to sign a minerals rights deal.

That's what he was in the Oval Office to sign today.

But again, when you have comments that deliberately appear to be deliberately, I mean, after having discussed this repeatedly, deliberately appear to be geared towards making the argument that peace is not possible.

You know, again, I turn to the, he turns to the Vice President, what kind of diplomacy are you talking about?

Almost as if to say, these people, you can't deal with them.

We can't, you can't have any negotiations with Putin because he can't be trusted and you're just wasting your time on negotiations.

Well, he's directly, basically undermining everything the president has told him he's trying to do.

You start to suspect, does he really want an end to this war?

Does he just think that, you know, we have to do whatever he says and give him anything he wants without any end game?

And unfortunately for the Ukrainians, the Russians have more meat to grind and they don't care about human life.

We've seen it, human waves and North Koreans, et cetera.

It needs to be brought to an end, but it isn't going to be brought to an end with public pronouncements and maximalist demands in the public.

But in real diplomacy, the vice president was right.

When you say they don't care about life, you, are you talking about the Russians or the Ukrainians?

Well, the Russians, I mean, they're conscripting by the hundreds of thousands.

They brought in North Korean troops that were slaughtered and cursed and they keep going because they got more people.

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Rubio points finger at Zelensky for breakdown of Trump meeting

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