President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated and clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday after the Ukrainian leader vowed to reject a ceasefire without security assurances once fighting with Russia stops.
“You don’t have the cards,” Trump pointedly warned Zelenskyy, later adding, “You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to [our] country.”
Zelenskyy was in Washington to sign a rare earth minerals pact pushed by the American president to help recoup the billions in wartime aid sent by the Biden administration. But minutes after their contentious exchange, Trump suggested on social media that no further action would be taking place on Friday. Zelenskyy left the White House without the deal being signed and a planned joint news conference featuring Trump and Zelenskyy was canceled, a White House official said.
“I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after the meeting. “I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”
Speaking from the Oval Office earlier Friday, Zelenskyy declared that “there must be security guarantees” in any ceasefire and then went through a history of Russian aggression against Ukraine, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin took some of Ukraine’s territory in 2014, but no U.S. president took action for the next eight years and then Russia started the ongoing war.
“What kind of diplomacy, JD, [are] you asking me about?” Zelenskyy asked the vice president, who had earlier said that the “path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.”
That set off an extended exchange during which Trump and Zelenskyy talked loudly over one another.
“It’s going to be a tough deal to make because the attitudes have to change,” the U.S. president said of the ongoing peace talks. “I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.”
Vance accused Zelenskyy of lacking gratitude — “Have you said thank you once?” he asked the Ukrainian president — and brought up Zelenskyy’s visit to an ammunition factory in a key U.S. swing state last year: “You went to Pennsylvania to campaign for the opposition.”
“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 into Ukraine,” Vance said.
Trump, who in recent weeks has sided with Russia’s narrative of its brutal war in Ukraine, took over the scolding for the American side, even at one point putting his right hand on Zelenskyy’s left shoulder as the duo bickered heatedly.
“You’re, right now, not in a very good position,” Trump told Zelenskyy.
Parts of the surreal exchange were difficult to make out, as Trump and Zelenskyy talked over one another — with a group of American and Ukrainian journalists watching just a few feet away.
“If you didn’t have [American] military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks, in three days,” Trump said. With a dismissive expression, Zelenskyy responded: “I heard it from Putin, in three days.”
At one point, Trump appeared to threaten to totally cut off Ukraine, telling his counterpart: “And your people are very brave, but you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”
“You don’t have the cards, but once we sign that deal, you’re in a much better position,” Trump said sharply. “But you’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing.”
What set off Vance, and then Trump, was Zelenskyy saying that he would not agree to a temporary halting of the war.
“We will never accept just [a] ceasefire,” the Ukrainian leader said, sitting beside Trump, who has sidestepped questions about what the United States might provide in terms of personnel and funding to help keep any peace that might be negotiated between Zelenskyy’s government and Putin’s.
Trump later said it was “good” for the heated exchange to play out in front of the cameras and closed the meeting by adding that it was “going to be great television.”
Following the Oval dust-up, the parties went into separate rooms. Trump huddled with advisers and decided continuing the talks would not be productive, according to the White House official. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House national security adviser Mike Waltz were then sent to inform Zelenskyy he was being asked to leave and negotiations were done for the day, the official said.
After the meeting, Zelenskyy wrote on social media: “Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.”
Hours later, as he departed the White House for his South Florida resort, Trump told reporters that Zelenskyy had “very much overplayed his hand.”
Wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, Trump was asked what the Ukrainian president needed to do to restart talks.
“He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace,’” the U.S. president responded. “He doesn’t have to stand there and say about, ‘Putin this, Putin that.’ All negative things. He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace. I don’t want to fight a war any longer.’ His people are dying. He doesn’t have the cards,” he said.
Trump said either Zelenskyy agrees to “get the war done or let them go and see what happens. Let them fight it out.”
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