Waltz: US Officials Advised Trump Not to Go Ahead With Zelenskyy Meeting After Oval Office Clash
Waltz recalled telling Zelenskyy, ‘Look, Mr. President, time is not on your side here.’
Waltz recalled telling Zelenskyy, ‘Look, Mr. President, time is not on your side here.’
National security adviser Michael Waltz said on March 1 that administration officials had advised President Donald Trump to avoid a follow-up meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the latter clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in a heated White House exchange the previous day.
Speaking with Fox News’ Charlie Hurt, Waltz explained how he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to speak with Zelenskyy after the Ukrainian president was escorted out of the Oval Office.
During the meeting, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance told Zelenskyy he needed to be willing to compromise and suggested he needed to be more grateful and respectful to the United States for what it had already provided and for the Trump administration’s effort to help broker a cease-fire deal to end the war Russia began with its invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
We “pretty much unanimously advised the President that after that insult in the Oval Office, we just do not see how that could move forward, that any few further engagement would only go backwards from this moment on,” Waltz told Hurt regarding Trump’s previous plans to meet with Zelenskyy for lunch after the Oval Office exchange.
Instead, Waltz and Rubio, who have both previously defended Ukraine and Zelenskyy, had to speak with the Ukrainian president’s entourage after he was asked to leave the White House. Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova was “practically in tears” as the delegation waited, Waltz said, while Zelenskyy remains seemingly argumentative.
Waltz recalled telling Zelenskyy, “Look, Mr. President, time is not on your side here. Time is not on your side on the battlefield. Time is not on your side in terms of the world situation, and most importantly, U.S. aid and the taxpayers’ tolerance is not unlimited.”
The national security adviser denied allegations that the White House talks were intended as some kind of ambush and said the administration was preparing to sign a deal with Zelenskyy on rare earth minerals in exchange for continued military support.
During an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier on Friday, Zelenskyy defended his comments and said that he respects Trump and the American people but does not think he needs to apologize.
“I think that we have to be very open and very honest, and I’m not sure that we did something bad,” he said, adding that he regretted having the conversation in front of the media “because we had a lot of different dialogs.”
Baier asked the Ukrainian leader if he agreed with accusations that Trump is “too close” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In response, Zelenskyy said Trump had told him that he sought to be “in the middle” of the two warring countries to ensure all parties participate in negotiations.
“I want really him to be more at our side,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s not just that the war began somewhere between our countries. The war began when Russia brought this war to our country.”
He added that Ukraine is “ready for peace, but we have to be in a strong position.”
Rubio, who joined Waltz to deliver the news to Zelenskyy following the heated exchange, criticized the Ukrainian leader for not following through with signing the minerals agreement after extensive discussions with U.S. officials in the days leading up to the White House meeting.
“In the last ten days, he’s met with the Secretary of Commerce. He spoke to the President on the phone, met with the Secretary of Commerce, met with me, met with the Vice President, met with our special envoy. ... He wanted to come over on Friday to sign this commercial deal that didn’t happen,” Rubio told George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s “This Week.”
Rubio also told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday that Zelenskyy appeared to refuse to negotiate with Russia, which he said compromised Trump’s effort to bring the two warring countries to the table.
“[Zelenskyy] was in the Oval Office to sign a minerals rights deal. ... But again, when you have comments that ... deliberately appear to be geared towards making the argument that peace is not possible. ... Almost as if to say, ... 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,” Rubio said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent weighed in on Sunday while speaking with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” saying that a potential economic deal with Ukraine is not currently on the table after the Oval Office meeting on Friday.
“President Trump’s idea for this economic arrangement was to further intertwine the American people and Ukrainian people and show no daylight,” Bessent said. “To show the Russian leadership that there was no daylight, and President Zelenskyy came into the Oval Office and tried to relitigate in front of the world the deal.”
On Saturday, Zelenskky wrote in a post on the social platform X that he is still ready to sign the economic deal, which would see his nation exchanging rare earth minerals for continued U.S. military support.
“We are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees. But it’s not enough, and we need more than just that,” he wrote. “A cease-fire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. We’ve been fighting for 3 years, and Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side.”
On Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Europe must continue to provide funding to protect Ukraine and the rest of the continent, while committing to roughly $2 billion in export financing to supply Ukraine with 5,000 air defense missiles.
Emel Akan contributed to this report.
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