Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to apologize after his meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office turned ugly.
The roughly hour-long meeting devolved into a shouting match, particularly after Vance said Trump is “engaging in diplomacy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the invasion of Ukraine three years ago. Trump has not included Zelensky in peace negotiations he’s having with Putin.
After explaining that Putin had not complied with ceasefire deals in the past, Zelensky asked: “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about?”
Vance then called the Ukrainian president “disrespectful” for trying to “litigate this in front of the American media.”
Hours later, the secretary of state, who was in the room where it happened, told CNN’s The Source Friday evening that Zelensky should apologize.
When host Kaitlan Collins asked what Zelensky should apologize for, Rubio responded: “For turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became,” the secretary of state told host Kaitlan Collins. “There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic.”
Rubio did not address the antagonism of Vance or Trump.
Speaking of Zelensky, Rubio said: “When you start talking about that aggressively – and the president is a deal maker, he made deals his entire life – you’re not going to get people to the table,” he continued. “And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky doesn’t want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe he doesn’t.”
That “active, open undermining of efforts to bring about peace is deeply frustrating … I think he should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did,” Rubio said.
Collins pushed Rubio on his previous remarks about the Russian president.
Zelensky in the Oval Office meeting was trying to underscore that he needs security guarantees in order to reach a peace deal, citing all of the previous agreements Putin has ignored, Collins said. “You yourself have said previously that Putin cannot be trusted in negotiations … Do you still feel that way?”
With Putin, the U.S.’s approach will be “trust but verify,” he said.
“President Trump has made deals his entire life. He’s not going to get suckered into some deal that’s not a real deal,” Rubio said. “We have to explore whether peace is possible. I don’t know, but I think it is.”
Rubio previously called Putin a “war criminal” and a “butcher,” Collins noted, once again pressing him on his previous stances.
“You’ve said that as a secretary of state, you do believe it’s important for someone with such global influence as you have to speak with that kind of moral clarity,” the CNN host said.
“Yeah and at this moment, as secretary of state, my job working for the president is to deliver peace, to end this conflict and end this war,” he said. “Ultimately, that is the job of the State Department, the State Department doesn’t fight wars, it ends them. It tries to end them.”
Zelensky addressed the contentious exchange in an appearance earlier on Fox News. He said he believes his relationship with Trump can still be salvaged. “It’s more than two presidents: [It’s] the historical relations, strong relations, between our people,” he noted.
“This is the most important — and of course [we’re] thankful to the president and to Congress — but first of all to your people,” Zelensky told host Brett Baier. “Your people helped to save our people.”
“This kind of spat, it’s not good for both sides,” the Ukrainian president said, underscoring that seeing an end to the war is at the top of his agenda. “We are ready for peace, but we have to be in a strong position … First of all we want peace, that’s why I’m in the United States.”
