Hi, I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.Â
Joining me today is White House correspondent Kerry Picket.Â
[GERBO] A lot going on at the White House. We will start with potentially an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia. President Trump has been pushing for a resolution for the last couple of months now, some threats toward Russia, some threats toward Ukraine. And now we are approaching a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump in Alaska, where Trump really wants to get this deal, another one of his signature deals you could say, over the line and and get peace, or at least what looks like peace in this day and age, between Russia and Ukraine. How close of that how close is that to becoming a reality and what are some of the roadblocks potentially in that happening?Â
[PICKET] Yeah, George, it really is East meets West and not just with Trump and Putin but quite literally the the physical area where we have it being over in Alaska. And what’s interesting here is that Trump is being much more careful about how he is wording whether or not success is going to happen at this summit because he knows that the history of these ceasefires going all the way back to 2014 when you had Russia do that invasion of Crimea, and even before that, in 2009, I believe, with Hillary Clinton with the reset button. And all these broken ceasefire agreements constantly, every single time they’ve had a ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and Russia, sometimes minutes into the ceasefire agreement, there was an attack, And it was like, “okay, so much for that ceasefire agreement.”Â
And so this has more to do with, Trump said at the Kennedy Center, he said, look, if Russia decides to attack Ukraine, then there’s going to be consequences. He didn’t say what they were going to be, but it looks like he says that something is going to happen. That being said, he is saying, like, don’t necessarily expect success. This is more of a listening meeting. And if he is satisfied, it could lead to a second meeting, in this case, with President Zelenskyy. And Trump said, if they want me there, then it could be a trilateral meeting.Â
[GERBO] President Trump’s been accused in the past, being too close to Russia cozying up to Putin and this and that. And the initial part of his term, his second term here, maybe did feel like that, especially after the very contentious meeting at the White House with President Zelenskyy came all the way from Ukraine and you’re there for 10 minutes and that was about at least what we saw on television from the Oval Office.Â
But now it appears Trump has met with some European leaders, other leaders on the continent, on the European continent. Zelenskyy is looking for security guarantees, but it does appear that as opposed to being maybe pro-Ukraine in this or pro-Russia in this, that Trump is kind of looking to kind of cement his status in playing dealmaker. Perhaps he’s looking for a win in Western Europe and bringing an end to this war that’s gone on three-plus years now, far longer than I think a lot of people would have expected.Â
[PICKET] But he also knows that this particular circumstance is a lot different. Of course, every conflict is going to be different. But he knows that unlike, say, the last peace deal that he brokered between Azerbaijan and Armenia, this is probably going to be a little more difficult because it doesn’t seem that he has necessarily two willing participants. And it appears that maybe one might want to try and outsmart President Trump as well as Zelenskyy and there tends to be the problem, because keep in mind, Russia and the United States has its own history going back decades upon decades upon decades. So therein lies a lot of the problem.
Watch the video to see the full conversation, including the president’s meeting with the CEO of Intel, the National Firearms Act and more.Â
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