'You Don't See All The Things That Led Up To This': Rubio Defends Trump After Clash With Zelensky (youtube.com)
Rubio said that the US being in Ukraine is already a sort of guarantee, and that the deal was ready 5 days ago, and that Ukraine ‘insisted’ on coming to Washington, and had been there for days and in all their meetings with Zelenzky and with Zelensky’s public statements, ‘there have been problems' with the issue of security guarantees, Rubio said.
Rubio said that they had told Zelensky to not make it about ‘lecturing us about how diplomacy isn't going to work, President Zelensky took it in that direction, and it ended in a predictable outcome...' ‘That’s the path he chose.'
‘We are trying to bring it to an end. The way that you bring it to an end is that you get Russia to the table to talk. And he understands that attacking Putin, nomatter how anybody feels about him personally, forcing the president into a position where you’re trying to goad him into attacking Putin, calling him names, maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction, all the things that you talk about in a negotiation. When you start talking about that aggressively, and the president's a dealmaker ... you're not going to get people to the table.' Maybe Zelensky doesn't want a peace deal, although he says he does, suggested Rubio. The efforts to undermine the peace process is deeply frustrating for everyone involved. He should apologize for wasting our time.
The points Zelensky raised at the news conference had aleady been discussed numerous times, and then in the conference he said those things which seem deliberately ‘geared toward making the argument that peace is not possible.’
The Biden strategy was funding a stalemate, the continuation of war, just sending Ukraine anything it asks for with no goals, he said.
‘The point now is, it has to end.’ ‘You don’t get people to a negotiating table when you're calling them names, and you're accusing them of things, because at the end of the day this is not a political campaign. This is high-stakes international diplomacy in an effort to bring about an end to a very dangerous war.'
‘Right now the only leader in the world who can even have a chance to bring an end to this war is named President Donald Trump, and we need to give him the opportunity to try and do that. When you tell someone, don't say, let's not talk about these things, let's not go in this direction, because it makes it harder for us to engage, and they insist on doing it anyways, you start to wonder ...'
The war has been going 3 years, and there's no exit strategy. The EU doesn't have a strategy. The only one who's trying to bring an end to this conflict is Trump, he said, and we should be helping him to do it.
They wouldn't even have a chance to negotiate without the current White House, he said.
He related that he'd heard that Biden got into a shouting match with Zelensky over not being thankful. He referenced NBC News.
He said that Trump called the day off because it wasn't going to be productive anymore, and let Zelensky come back when he wanted to do peace.
He said it was fine for anyone else to talk tough and criticize, even Congress people, as he had done as a congressman, countries with no real skin in the game can do it, commentators can do it, and that might play well in the public sphere, but not in diplomacy, when you're the president you trying to bring about peace, the only way to do it is to try to create space for people to come to the table and talk.
Rubio was very sharp. He handled all the questions, even tricky ones, strongly, and even corrected misleading or misdirecting questions. He's growing up, I guess, and he seems really competent at least in talking and sorting out and organizing facts and material.