‘You’ve Called Him a Butcher’: Kaitlan Collins Grills Marco Rubio After He Declines to Blame Putin for War
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reminded Secretary of State Marco Rubio he had recently referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “butcher” during a Friday evening interview.
Collins did so after Rubio told her the Trump administration was attempting to end the Russian-Ukrainian war by approaching both sides from a position of neutrality.
Rubio joined CNN hours after a meeting with President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ended chaotically.
Rubio defended the tone and tenor of his boss during the White House clash before being asked about the leadership in Moscow.
The former GOP senator criticized Russia but stopped short of directly insulting Putin:
I mean, they’re conscripting by the hundreds of thousands. They brought North Korean troops that were slaughtered in Kursk. And they keep going because they got more people. That’s the other fact they’re looking at, you know, again, we go back to the same point. I’m not going to fall into this trap of the who’s bad and who’s evil. People can make those conclusions.
People have seen how this narrative has played out and where we are today, and how this all started and so forth. The point now is, it has to end. And the way it ends is you get people to the negotiating table. And the president, who’s the ultimate dealmaker, knows you don’t get people to the 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, okay?
“But you yourself have said before that that you believe Putin is a war criminal,” Collins responded. “You’ve called him a butcher, and you said that as a secretary of state, you do believe it’s important for someone with such global influence as you have to to speak with that kind of moral clarity.”
Rubio replied, “Yeah, and at this moment, as secretary of state, my job working for the president is to deliver peace, to end this conflict and end this war. Ultimately, that is the job of the State Department. The State Department doesn’t fight wars. It ends them. It tries to end them. And that’s usually, by the way, celebrated.”
Watch above via CNN.
