Top Takeaways from Trump-Zelensky WH Meeting

Zelensky notably thanked Trump profusely as he mentioned first lady Melania Trump’s letter to Putin asking him to end the war and stop the killing of children.

“Thank you very much for being here,” Trump said as he kicked off the bilateral meeting.

“Thanks so much, Mr. President,” Zelensky responded. “If I can, first of all, thank you for invitation, and thank you very much for your efforts, personal efforts, to stop killings and stop this war. Thank you.”

“And using this opportunity, my thanks to your wife, first lady of the United States, she sent a letter to Putin about our children, abducted children,” Zelensky continued. “And my wife, she, first lady of Ukraine, she gave the letters. It’s not to you, [it’s] to your wife.”

The two leaders laughed at Zelensky’s quip.

The Ukrainian president’s attire was complimented by Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent of the conservative Real America’s Voice, who said he looked “fabulous in that suit.”

Trump interjected after Glenn’s compliment on Monday, saying he had told the Ukrainian leader the same thing, before Zelensky quipped that Glenn was in the same suit as the last time he saw him.

“I changed, you did not,” Zelensky said with a smirk.

“I just spoke to President Putin indirectly, and we’re going to have a phone call right after these meetings today,” Trump said. “And we may or may not have a trilat. If we don’t have a trilat, then the fighting continues, and if we do, we have a good chance. I think if we have a trilat, there’s a good chance of maybe ending it. But he’s expecting my call when we’re finished with this meeting.”

“If everything works out well today, we’ll have a trilat,” Trump said of a possible meeting between Zelensky, Putin, and himself. “And I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that.”

“I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” Trump told reporters. “You know, if you look at the six deals that I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires. And I know that it might be good to have, but I can also understand strategically, well, you know, one country or the other wouldn’t want it.”

Trump said he liked “the concept of a ceasefire” because it ends the killing.

“Well, we’re going to work with Ukraine, we’re going to work with everybody, and we’re going to make sure that if there’s peace, the peace is going to stay long-term,” Trump said when asked by a reporter.

“This is very long-term,” he continued. “We’re not talking about a two-year peace, and then we end up in this mess again. We’re going to make sure that everything’s good. We’ll work with Russia. We’re going to work with Ukraine. We’re going to make sure it works.”

“We’re meeting with seven great leaders of great countries also, and we’ll be talking about that,” he added. “When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help. It’s going to be good.”

“We haven’t done anything on that yet,” Trump said when asked by the Washington Examiner about not granting Ukraine NATO membership but granting them Article 5-like guarantees. “If you look back and you go back long before President Putin, it was always a statement that they would never allow Ukraine in today. So that was a statement that was made, but we haven’t discussed any of that yet. We’re going to be discussing it today, but we will give them very good protection, very good security. That’s part of it.”

While claiming that Ukraine cannot hold elections during a war, Zelensky answered that he would be open to elections but that a truce is needed for the country to hold them safely.

“We need a truce, yes, everywhere — the battlefield, in the sky, and the sea — to make it possible for people to do democratic, open legal elections,” Zelensky said.

“So you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections, oh, I wonder what the fake news would say,” Trump said.