Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview airing Friday night heavily criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over a heated argument with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office.
The Context
Vance tried to praise diplomatic efforts led by the Trump administration to seek a peace deal with Russia, but Zelensky questioned him on the value of diplomacy when Russian President Vladimir Putin already broke previous peace deals with Ukraine.
Trump interrupted Zelensky and accused him of being disrespectful to the United States. Vance criticized Zelensky, accusing him of campaigning for Democrats in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and of not being “thankful” to Trump for his support.
Trump said it would be “very hard to do business” following the blowup, then effectively kicked Zelensky out of the White House and canceled a news conference scheduled for after lunch, where the two would sign a deal that would have given the U.S. access to Ukraine’s vast reserves of rare earth minerals.
Trump and Zelensky separately addressed the Oval Office bickering—Zelensky during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier and Trump during a press gaggle while traveling to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Vice President JD Vance, left, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, join President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, both not pictured, in the Oval Office at the White House on February 24 in Washington, D.C.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
What To Know
Rubio, who was in the Oval Office seated next to Vance during Friday’s exchange, spoke with CNN host Kaitlan Collins and blasted Zelensky for the argument as well as his expectations for the peace deal process.
Highlighting that Trump campaigned on ending the war in Ukraine, Rubio stressed: “We’ve explained very clearly what our plan is here, which is, we want to get the Russians to the negotiating table. We want to explore whether peace is possible.”
Zelensky has raised numerous issues with a potential ceasefire plan, particularly with the aggressive push from the U.S. to secure rights to mine Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. He appeared to raise this issue again in the White House in front of reporters when he questioned the value of a nebulous peace deal without military security assurances, as Putin has a history of reneging on such deals.
Rubio repeated the Trump administration’s stance that the minerals deal would link the economies of the U.S. and Ukraine, which would prove an effective deterrence to Russia. He also slammed Zelensky for “the path he chose” that “sends his country backwards in regards to achieving peace, which is what President Trump wants at the end of the day.”
Rubio then insisted Zelensky should “apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became” and for “wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did.”
“There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic,” Rubio said, adding that the White House discussion “went off the rails” once Zelensky engaged with Vance about “what kind of diplomacy” the vice president was discussing in his comments.
CNN plays clips of Zelenskyy saying thank you. Rubio responds that Zelenskyy didn’t say thank you today and didn’t say thank you for what Trump did for Ukraine in his first term pic.twitter.com/dyz3inqBPf
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 1, 2025
Rubio said that Trump “understands that attacking Putin, no matter how anyone may feel about him personally … 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, when you start talking about that aggressively … you’re not going to get people to the table.”
Rubio questioned Zelensky’s desire for peace, quoting the Ukrainian president’s doubts about a lasting peace with Putin, but criticized the lack of “any endgame” to the Ukrainian plan. He argued that Ukraine is waiting for a beleaguered Russia to collapse and come with its tail between its legs to the negotiating table, but that it effectively manifests as “funding a stalemate.”
“We were funding a meat grinder, and unfortunately for the Ukrainians, the Russians have more meat to grind, and they don’t care about human life,” Rubio said. “We’ve seen it—human waves, the North Koreans, etc.—and so this is a very complex thing. It’s very delicate, it’s very costly, it’s very bloody.”
“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,” Rubio said, adding that he believed Vance “was right” about his rebuke to Zelensky.
Rubio added that “anything is possible” and that relations between Trump and Zelensky could rebound, but that the U.S. didn’t see support from Zelensky.
“Will that change? I hope so. It should, for the purposes of global peace and stability in Europe and around the world,” Rubio said.
Collins also asked Rubio to respond to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina’s suggestion that Zelensky resign if he can’t fix relations with Trump, which the secretary of state dismissed as a “passionate” response from Graham.
“The president’s taken no position on that,” the secretary of state said. “What he said today is, let him come back when he is ready to do peace. That’s what he said. Let him come back when he’s ready to do peace, so I can’t speak for what anybody else said. I can only go off the words from the president of the United States, and that is, today, we’re not, this is not going to be productive.”
What People Are Saying
Zelensky after the meeting wrote on X: “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.”
Graham, of South Carolina, during an appearance on Fox News later in the afternoon said: “This was a missed opportunity, and the question for me for the Ukrainian people: I don’t know if Zelensky can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States. Either he dramatically changes, or you need to get somebody new.”
Rubio, on X: “Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America First. America is with you!”
British television host and longtime Trump backer Piers Morgan wrote on X: “The only winner from today’s Oval Office debacle is Vladimir Putin… and anyone who thinks that is a good thing for the world is stunningly deluded.”
Former national security adviser John Bolton, a Trump critic, wrote on X: “Trump has put the US on the wrong side of the Russia-Ukraine war and it’s shameful. He is every day making it more and more difficult to pull the West back together. After his term, the U.S. will need to convince our allies that we are dependable and still a nation of normal people.”
What Happens Next
Zelensky will head to the United Kingdom on Sunday for talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he looks to shore up support from other allies. The long-term ramifications of the exchange with Trump remain unclear.
