‘Are The Russians Stringing President Trump Along?’ NBC’s Kristen Welker Confronts JD Vance in ‘Meet the Press’ Showdown

NBC’s Kristen Welker confronted Vice President JD Vance on whether President Donald Trump is getting taken for a ride on Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations.

In a high-profile showdown on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Welker noted that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — with whom she also taped an interview for Sunday’s broadcast — said there is currently no meeting planned between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And that led Welker to ask whether Trump is not making as much headway with the Russians as he believes.

“Are the Russians stringing President Trump along?” Welker asked the vice president.

“No, not at all, Kristen,” Vance said. “I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict. They’ve actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands. They’ve talked about what would be necessary to end the war. Of course, they haven’t been completely there yet, or the war would be over. But we’re engaging in this diplomatic process in good faith. We are trying to negotiate as much as we can with both the Russians and the Ukrainians to find a middle ground to stop the killing.”

Welker pressed the vice president on whether Russia really has ceded ground in the negotiations.

“You talk about concessions,” Welker said. “And yet, the Russians rejected the ceasefire proposal that President Trump put forward. There’s no meeting planned between President Putin and President Zelenskyy. And this week, Russia targeted an American factory in Ukraine. There were 600 people inside at the time. No one was killed. What makes you think President Putin is serious about peace?”

“Well, I didn’t say they conceded on everything,” Vance replied. “But what they have conceded is the recognition that Ukraine will have territorial integrity after the war. They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Again, have they made every concession? Of course, they haven’t. Should they have started the war? Of course, they haven’t. But we’re making progress, Kristen.”

The Meet the Press moderator then asked Vance about Russia’s attack, on Thursday, on an American-owned electronics company in Ukraine — as part of a massive overnight drone strike.

“Were you enraged when you learned that Russia targeted an American company based in Ukraine?” Welker said. “Was that not a slap in the face to the peace process.”

“I don’t like it, Kristen,” Vance said. “But this is a war. And this is why we want to stop the killing. The Russians have done a lot of things that we don’t like. A lot of civilians have died. We’ve condemned that stuff from the get go. And frankly, President Trump has done more to apply pressure and to apply economic leverage to the Russians, certainly than Joe Biden did for three and a half years when he did nothing but talk but do nothing to bring the killing to a stop. So you asked me what I’m enraged by. What I’m enraged by is the continuation of the war. What I’m enraged by is a presidency in Joe Biden who for three years did nothing to end the killing. What I’m actually excited about right now is that we have a president who’s engaging in energetic diplomacy to try to stop the killing. That’s as it should be.”

Watch above, via NBC.