Margaret Brennan Confronts Marco Rubio On Concerns Zelensky Will Be ‘Bullied’ Into Deal While Secretary Decries ‘Stupid Media Narrative!’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio torched what he called a “stupid media narrative” as CBS’ Margaret Brennan confronted him on “concerns” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be “bullied” into a deal with Russia.
Rubio made the morning show rounds on Sunday to discuss President Donald Trump’s recent Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though no deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was struck during the meeting, Trump and Rubio have said a larger peace deal is in the works.
A topic of conversation on Sunday in a number of Rubio’s interviews was “concessions” that Ukraine or others would need to make to bring the war to a close. Rubio refused to get into specifics on negotiations with Russia, but he did push back on what he called a “stupid media narrative” when Brennan on Face the Nation asked him whether European leaders would be used this week to help “bully” Zelensky into a deal with Putin.
Brennan noted in the interview that Russia’s demands include everything from Russian being an official language in Ukraine to demanding control of specific land while Rubio insisted it will be Ukraine that is the ultimate decider on the conditions.
“This is such a stupid media narrative that they’re coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal,” Rubio said as Brennan pressed him on Zelensky being “bullied into signing something away.”
The secretary further noted that there have been numerous meetings since the contentious exchange of words between Trump and Zelensky in February at the White House in front of cameras.
Check out the exchange below:
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know there is concern from the Europeans that President Zelenskyy is going to be bullied into signing something away. That’s why you have these European leaders coming as back up tomorrow. Can you reassure them?
MARCO RUBIO: No, it isn’t. That’s not why they’re coming as back- that’s not true. No but that’s not, why, that’s not true. They’re not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied. They’re not coming —
BRENNAN: Well that February Oval Office meeting in front of television cameras, where President Zelensky was dressed down —
RUBIO: Do you know how many meetings we’ve had since then?
BRENNAN: Oh, no, I know. And I was just up in Alaska —
RUBIO: Yeah, but we’ve had a bunch of meetings since then.
BRENNAN: — watching the one with Vladimir Putin where a red carpet was rolled out for the Russian leader. It was very different.
RUBIO: No, but it wasn’t Zelensky. We’ve had more meetings, we’ve had, we’ve had, we’ve had one meeting with Putin and like a dozen meetings with Zelensky. So that, but that’s not true. They’re not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied. They’re coming here tomorrow because we’ve been working with the Europeans. We talked to them last week. There were meetings in the UK over the following, the previous weekend —
BRENNAN: And they said the President Trump was going to demand a ceasefire.
RUBIO: The President’s talked to these leaders as early as Thursday. No, no, but you said that they’re coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied. They’re not coming here tomorrow — this is such a stupid media narrative that they’re coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal. We’ve been working with these people for weeks, for weeks on this stuff. They’re coming here tomorrow because they chose to come here tomorrow. We invited them to come. We invited them to come. The President invited them to come.
BRENNAN: But the President told those European leaders last week that he wanted a cease fire. The President went on television, said he would walk out of the meeting if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree with him. He said there would be severe consequences if he didn’t agree to one. He said he’d walk out in two minutes. He spent three hours talking to Vladimir Putin, and he did not get one.
RUBIO: Because obviously something, things happen during that meeting, well, because obviously things, look, our goal here is not to stage some production for the world to say, oh how dramatic he walked out. Our goal here is to have a peace agreement to end this war. Okay? And obviously we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase.
Watch above via CBS.
