FRANKLIN FOER: It was an extraordinary Oval Office meeting.

Unlike anything we've ever seen.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: You got to be more thankful.

Because let me tell you, you don't have the cards.

You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You're gambling with World War III.

If you didn't have our military equipment, uf you didn't have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, Ukrainian President: In three days, I heard it from Putin.

In three days.

DONALD TRUMP: You're either going to make a deal or we're out.

FRANKLIN FOER: Next.

DONALD TRUMP: This is going to be great television, I will say that.

FRANKLIN FOER: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Franklin Foer.

Jeffrey Goldberg is away.

This week, President Donald Trump abandoned Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an Oval Office meeting that devolved into a display of raw anger.

The fallout has been swift and intense.

Some Republicans are calling for new leadership in Ukraine while some European allies are breaking with the United States.

There's a lot to sort through, but here to help us make sense of it all are Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Jonathan Karl, the chief Washington correspondent at ABC News, Ashley Parker is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Nancy Youssef is a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Welcome back to Washington Week.

Peter, history will remember Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a great defender of democracy and today he was booted from the White House.

You wrote that today was like anything you've ever seen in all your years covering the White House.

Unpack that for us.

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, look, I mean, it's not that American presidents don't sometimes get frustrated or angry with their foreign counterparts.

They just don't usually do it on camera and at the volume and intensity that we saw today.

And it was a real -- it was practically a shouting match.

And he lashed out at Zelenskyy in a way that was personal, that was that was ferocious and that was threatening because he did say, as you point out at the beginning, that there are consequences.

If you don't accept the deal that I make with Russia, that's it.

We're out.

Big consequences for Ukraine, which has been under attack now, really for 11 years, as Zelenskyy tried to educate Trump and J.D.

Vance only to have them not listen.

FRANKLIN FOER: I want to remind our viewers of some of the strange dynamics at play.

Let's watch this clip.

DONALD TRUMP: You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: I'm not playing cards.

DONALD TRUMP: Right now, you don't have playing cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: I'm very serious, Mr. President.

I'm very serious.

DONALD TRUMP: You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You're gambling with World War III.

You're gambling with World War III.

And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that's back to you far more than a lot of people said they should have.

J.D.

VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Have you said thank you once this entire meeting?

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: A lot of times.

J.D.

VANCE: No, in this entire meeting, have you said thank you?

FRANKLIN FOER: Jon, Senator Chris Murphy and others have described this as an ambush.

Was this, in fact, a premeditated confrontation?

JONATHAN KARL, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: No.

I mean, look, the context here is, earlier in the week, the president met with Macron, France, he met yesterday with Starmer of the United Kingdom.

You know, and those meetings went fairly well, even though the disagreements are quite deep between the United States and our European allies right now.

This was not expected to go this way.

But I will tell you this.

I'm told that before Zelenskyy arrived at the White House, there was a pre-meeting in the Oval Office with the president, with Vice President Vance, with the treasury secretary, Bessent, who of course went to Kyiv and met with Zelenskyy, with Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, with the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

And Trump in that meeting was quite irritated and quite angry, not interestingly so much at Zelenskyy.

He was actually upset with his own team.

He thought this minerals deal that they were supposed to sign a framework, it wasn't even a deal, it was a framework, a phase one that was supposed to be signed today, was not strong enough for the United States.

The United States was not getting a big enough share of Ukraine's natural resources.

So, he was primed to be -- FRANKLIN FOER: So, he wasn't spoiling for a fight, but he was in a grumpy mood.

JONATHAN KARL: He was in a very -- that's fair.

FRANKLIN FOER: Okay.

Ashley, just parse J.D.

Vance's role in this.

I mean, was his intervention premeditated?

ASHLEY PARKER, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: So, what's interesting is when you watch these clips, the real moment when it goes more off the rails than it already is what you just played, where Vance starts going after Zelenskyy and saying, you haven't said thank you once in this meeting.

And Vance is, in many ways, more strategic than President Trump, right?

With President Trump, things happen when he's in, as you put it, a grumpy mood, right?

Coming in there with a different demeanor might have led to a different outcome.

But Vance is someone who has long been skeptical, even before he was on the ticket, of Ukraine, of sending aid to Ukraine.

And it has been made clear before they even took office, that if there was something he had the ability to control, it would sort of be the end of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

So, the fact that Vance would be very sort of dismissive and sharp and challenging to the Ukrainian president is not at all surprising and is in very in line with who he is and what he actually genuinely believes.

FRANKLIN FOER: Is there any sort of internal debate about Ukraine policy when you described that meeting earlier today?

Are there factions?

Who are Rubio and Waltz would seem to be -- JONATHAN KARL: There are clear differences of opinion on Trump's own team about this.

J.D.

Vance represents what you might call the Tucker Carlson wing of the party, very anti-Ukraine.

Not just anti-U.S. support for Ukraine, but suggesting that Ukraine is the bad party in that fight.

Look, when J. D. Vance went to Munich and gave that speech, and he said that Europe's own policies, the European countries and their own -- how they treat their own people is more of a threat to security in Europe than Russia or China.

That is not something you would have seen Marco Rubio say, that's not something you've seen Mike Waltz say.

Both of them have been on record for a long time supporting a Ukraine funding, but the question is, is any of that expressed in the meetings?

Are they actually challenging Trump on this point?

And I don't get a sense, after this meeting, Marco Rubio put out a statement on X, a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said that he couldn't be more proud of the way Donald Trump stood up for his country.

ASHLEY PARKER: It feels like if you looked at Secretary Rubio's body language, that might be the closest you could get to an expression of his true feelings.

FRANKLIN FOER: Yes.

But, Nancy, I'm relying on your telepathic skill, which I have faith in.

What do you think Zelenskyy was thinking as he entered this meeting?

What was his expectation as he walked in?

NANCY YOUSSEF, National Security Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal: Well, I think at the minimum is that the war and the U.S. support is at jeopardy and how you can then end this war, because the pathway that was supposed to happen today, believe it or not, this was supposed to be a positive meeting.

It was supposed to end with some sort of framework for a minerals deal.

And now he's finding this confrontation with what was the biggest backer of Ukraine military, $119 billion dollars from one country alone.

And so I think there was some -- what we heard from him was agitation that he was being attacked by an ally that we've -- when is the last time you saw a wartime president, an ally being attacked by the United States?

I think, in some ways, he was expressing frustration that a lot of Ukrainians feel because they have felt under attack by the president in this first month in office.

And I think you started to see him, particularly in that Fox News interview, afterwards, start to lay out a framework for what do you do if the U.S. is not going to be the kind of allied partner that they were just a month ago, that, going forward, they're going to have to depend more on Europe for weapons and support, and potentially have to conduct the war differently if they can't get the kind of weapons support that they've gotten throughout this war.

FRANKLIN FOER: Before we leave the meeting itself, just watching the Fox News interview in the aftermath, there were a lot of people on Fox News saying Zelenskyy should have handled this differently.

It just is a matter of, of course, if he had reacted differently, would there have been a different outcome?

PETER BAKER: It's possible.

If you watch the entire thing, the first 40 minutes, there's some friction there, right?

They obviously are stating different positions.

And Zelenskyy is very intent on saying, I don't want a simple ceasefire because that simply empowers the Russians.

It has to be a bigger deal and you shouldn't trust Putin.

He is not, you know, a good faith actor.

And he's making these points to Trump.

But he's really trying to convince Trump.

He brings these pictures of Ukrainians who've been held prisoner, right, and showing Trump how badly they've been treated by the Russians.

He's trying to get through to Trump that Putin is not a good guy.

But he doesn't have the defer and flatter gene that Starmer and Macron have, right?

He doesn't play to Trump's ego the way these other foreign leaders have -- FRANKLIN FOER: But it's not like that actually broke through, their strategy actually broke through with Trump.

PETER BAKER: You could argue it doesn't make a difference, but they don't get yelled at, right.

And their goal in these meetings seems to be not to get yelled at.

Zelenskyy has a lot bigger problems than being yelled at.

His problem is if the biggest ally he has withdraws his support.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, it may prove to have been a miscalculation on Zelenskyy, not that he was the one that provoked this, not that this is his fault, how this played out, but, look, play if he had played the Trump's ego, if he hadn't, you know, gotten the kind of indignant response that he had to J.D.

Vance, I mean, for good reason, but if he hadn't done that, the cameras could have gone back, they could have had their lunch, they could have signed their preliminary agreement, there still would have been a lot more to go.

But he's now in a very, very bad situation.

FRANKLIN FOER: I want to play Lindsey Graham's reaction to today's spat.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The question for me for the Ukrainian people, I don't know if Zelenskyy 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.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, Nancy, where does this leave Zelenskyy?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, look, it's unusual for -- we would take offense if another leader came and said you need to change your leadership, right?

We have elections and we ask to be respected.

And so I think in some ways that kind of helped Zelenskyy having a U.S. senator say that you need to change your leadership.

But he goes back to Ukraine without the very thing that he came to get, and so he is politically damaged.

Now, does that mean that there's a change in leadership?

Maybe not.

But he goes in having to now plea with his European partners for support.

He is not has strength as I think he hoped he would be at such a critical time in the war.

But I don't know that they change leadership right away, but perhaps this is the first domino to fall as we start to see changes in Ukraine.

Now having said that, under Ukrainian law, you can't have elections during wartime.

And so, technically, he stays in place, but is he hurt politically, particularly with the war going not as well as Ukraine would like, and facing bigger threats from Russia, very likely so.

PETER BAKER: I think it's important to remember that the people who have been agitating for change and leadership in Ukraine are in Moscow.

PETER BAKER: This has been the Russian line for a while now, and Trump has adopted it.

He came in with his dictators without elections line, which Kremlin playbook.

In fact, Zelenskyy was elected in 2019.

They have not had elections because they are in a war zone, martial law situation, but his approval rating, not 4 percent, like Trump said it was, it's actually 57 percent, which is higher than Trump's.

And I think after this actually probably does rally people to his side in a sense of national, you know, taking offense at the way the president treated him there.

JONATHAN KARL: Well, in the context here of the U.N. vote earlier this week, so the U.N. General Assembly, you know, resolution condemning the Russian invasion on the anniversary of the invasion to see the United States as one of just 14 countries to vote against that, to be with Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Russia.

I mean, even China didn't vote against it.

China abstained.

It feels like we're seeing a fundamental realignment here of United States policy towards Europe and towards Russia.

FRANKLIN FOER: How much closer is Ukraine to collapse tonight after everything that's transpired?

NANCY YOUSSEF: You mean on the battlefield?

FRANKLIN FOER: Yes, does this weekend -- I mean, Ukraine this obviously weekend.

Will armed shipments continue to Ukraine?

I know that's been a question in some of the reporting.

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, right, there's been threats by the Trump administration to suspend it.

Right now, we haven't had weapons going through, not every sort of document has been signed to have those shipments go through the ones that were approved by the Biden administration.

And so whether that will resume at some point remains unclear.

This seemed to have damaged it.

In terms of the war, the war goes on.

Despite everything we've seen today, the war goes on.

And we're not closer to stopping it.

And, in fact, I think what you're going to see is Ukraine depending more on Europe in shipments of weapons to resume.

I think there's a threat that they might have to cease, lose some of that territory, ironically, some of the territory that holds the very minerals that the U.S. was seeking.

And in the longer term, they might have to revert to things like irregular warfare to sustain the fight.

There are some practical challenges.

I don't think either Europe or anyone else can replace the ammunition shortages that we're seeing.

So, they're going to have to make adjustments on the battlefield, but the war continues.

And I think that's a really important part, that despite everything we've seen.

This does not get us any closer to the outcome that everybody said they wanted, which is an end to the war.

FRANKLIN FOER: What Jon just described was this massive realignment that's happening, and you've had Europeans coming here all week, trying to essentially stop that from happening, and in order to get there to be some American backstop.

And we've watched in the aftermath of today the way the Europeans have essentially rallied to Zelenskyy's defense.

Does it feel like the transatlantic alliance just today crossed some sort of definitive threshold?

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, let's just go back to Trump's first term where it felt like the transatlantic alliance was uncomfortable, was nervous.

There was always this sense that Trump was going to blow up NATO or rip up Article 5.

But there was a sense that they could just wait him out and that this whole, in their view, sort of fever dream nightmare would end after four years.

And then Biden is elected.

I was on Biden's first trip abroad where he literally sort of says America is back, right?

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

Trump has now won again.

It's his second term in many ways.

I view it almost like a third term because he lost the White House.

He was at Mar-a-Lago, but he was never really out of power among the Republican Party, certainly, and not even really out of the discussion, right?

So, he's back again.

And I think what you are seeing, and not just today, but even after J.D.

Vance's -- Vice President Vance's speech in Munich, is a sense that this is what it is.

This is the realignment in Europeans are going to have to respond accordingly in a world where they no longer believe they can count on America as an ally.

JONATHAN KARL: You know what's interesting, in the first Trump term, He had a lot of the rhetoric upset our European allies, his rhetoric towards Russia, you know, saying he trusted Vladimir Putin more than U.S. intelligence agencies, the fact that he raised questions about whether or not he would respect Article 5, whether or not he would withdraw troops from Germany, which he floated.

But the actual policy was actually, you know, very tough on Russia, largely led by people like Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, Jim Mattis while he was defense secretary.

What's different here is the rhetoric is the same rhetoric that upset our European allies the first time around, but the policies seem to be going in the direction of the rhetoric.

ASHLEY PARKER: And also just going back to that I spent so much time covering Vice President Pence in the first term where Pence was always dispatched to Eastern Europe to reassure the allies that what Trump was saying wasn't actually going to happen.

Now, compare that with J.D.

Vance who challenges Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and who goes to Munich to deliver the exact opposite message.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, Peter, where does Ukraine go from here?

I mean, what steps can he plausibly take to salvage his position?

PETER BAKER: I mean, he tried to smooth it over a little bit after he left the White House.

He put out a social media post saying, thank you to America, thank you to the president, thank you for your support, the words that J.D.

Vance felt he hasn't said enough.

He went on Fox News and basically said similar things.

He didn't apologize.

He did say he regretted and was sorry about the exchange, and we'll see.

Look, Trump isn't -- JONATHAN KARL: He didn't say he regretted his part of that exchange.

PETER BAKER: No, that's right.

JONATHAN KARL: He regretted the exchange.

PETER BAKER: I think that, yes, Trump is a volatile guy, right?

And we see with Trump that you can -- you know, he can yell at you one day and then they can pretend it never happened the next, right?

Just last week he said, well, this guy's a dictator.

When we asked him yesterday, or it was yesterday, he said, did I say that?

You know, so he's able to move on in ways that sometimes, you know, other presidents might not be able to.

But he's got it in for this guy.

He just doesn't like him, and he hasn't liked him really for five years, six years now.

It's not just this day.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And I think what we're seeing under this administration is that the policy is driven by those personalities, that if the president likes someone, then America likes them.

If he doesn't like that person, then the United States doesn't like them.

And so that's one of the biggest challenges in terms of trying to repair this.

FRANKLIN FOER: But, Ashley, in terms of Trump's psyche and all of his tendencies, does this feel like a beef that is just etched in stone now?

It's -- ASHLEY PARKER: It feels like a big beef, definitely, right, like the gauntlet has been thrown.

But to Peter's point, again, Trump is so -- as Lindsey Graham often says, Trump likes anyone who likes him.

So, there's a world in which if Zelenskyy could sort of just utterly supplicate himself and kiss the ring, it seems like, frankly, Zelenskyy doesn't have that in him.

You know, as a wartime president who can't accept a deal that just gives Russia all the Ukrainian land that they seized, you know, it's understandable.

But I don't know -- it may be irreparable, but I don't know that it inherently is.

And the last thing that hasn't come up, but I just can't help but think of how this might have gone at least a little differently had all the cameras.

Now, I've been there, and again, that is Trump's way, that's what he likes, but you could have seen this discussion if -- I mean, J.D.

Vance even turns to Zelenskyy and says, you're litigating this in front of the cameras.

Well, to be fair to Zelenskyy, who invited all those cameras into the Oval Office?

But it felt like by the end, and, again, as Peter points out, it starts off tense, contentious, but not quite that.

But when you have the cameras there, I mean, it reminded me, this betrays my age, but of like Jerry Springer Oval Office edition, right?

And once it goes off the rails, then everyone wants to put in their poi and I'll insult the next person and there's no way it was going to end without him getting kicked out of the Oval Office and no lunch for him, right?

That's a T.V.

figure.

That's not a diplomacy figure.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, more recently than Jerry Springer, I mean, when Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were in the Oval Office with Trump and it ended up in a big blow up and a government shutdown that went on some days and eventually some time and eventually Trump had to back down.

FRANKLIN FOER: Do you think -- PETER BAKER: Even that wasn't as nasty though.

It was really striking.

FRANKLIN FOER: In the Fox News interview, it was striking that Zelenskyy decided not to apologize, that he made that strategic decision not to do it.

What do you think his calculation is?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, look, Trump might have seen an apology as a show of weakness.

I'm not sure it necessarily would have worked.

But it was striking.

And Bret Baier in that interview gave him multiple opportunities, you sure you don't want to -- you know, I mean, really gave him the opportunity.

But, look, but Trump does switch on a dime on this stuff sometimes.

I mean, look at the way he dealt with Kim Jong-un, you know, fire and fury, and then suddenly -- but one key point there is, Kim Jong-un did write him essentially love letters.

I don't know if you've seen them.

I've read those letters.

PETER BAKER: Everybody's had them.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, you know -- FRANKLIN FOER: There's an epistolary solution here.

PETER BAKER: The janitor in the West Wing has read those letters.

FRANKLIN FOER: Nancy, I just want -- the Kremlin is expressing unabashed glee.

Dmitry Medvedev tweeted this tonight, that the insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.

I mean, it does feel like the Russians are essentially living their best life right now.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, look, after what happened today, they are in a stronger position.

Where is the pathway where you can see an alliance between the U.S. and Europe and Ukraine?

You're seeing a division at a very time when they are making advances and pushing into Ukraine.

And so for them to see that division led by the United States, I think, if you're Russia, really signaled the thing that they've been trying to do from the beginning.

Remember what Putin said.

We can just wait out this alliance.

And maybe this week indicated that they were onto that something.

FRANKLIN FOER: Peter, you wrote a superb piece titled, in Trump's Washington, a Moscow-like chill takes hold.

What does today say about America and where it's headed?

PETER BAKER: Well, this is the irony, right?

We're talking about.

Putin in terms of foreign policy, but that piece was about domestic policy.

That piece was meant to say that a lot of the things we're seeing in Washington right now remind me anyway of what it was like in the early years of Putin's time in Moscow.

My wife, Susan Glasser, and I were there for those first few years.

You're seeing the chill, the takeover of the press, the intimidation of people, and the fear among people who don't support the president.

FRANKLIN FOER: We need to leave it there for now.

Thanks to our panelists and our viewers for joining us.

For more on the fallout from Trump's meeting with Zelenskyy, be sure to read Tom Nichols piece on theatlantic.com.

I'm Franklin Foer, goodnight from Washington.

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