“We expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia,” Trump told reporters Wednesday at the swearing-in ceremony of Tulsi Gabbard, his new intelligence chief. “The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, [to] see if we get something done.”
Trump previewed the meeting after his first announced call with Putin since returning to the White House, a 90-minute conversation that preceded a discussion with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The telephone diplomacy came as the Trump administration helped broker a peace deal almost three years after Russia launched another invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Kyiv on Wednesday to meet with Zelensky before the Ukrainian sat down with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Friday.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier Wednesday also told a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, Belgium, that the United States does not consider NATO membership for Ukraine to be “a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”
After watching Attorney General Pam Bondi swear in Gabbard, a former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman, Trump said it was not “practical” for Ukraine to become a member of NATO, agreeing with Hegseth that it was similarly “unlikely” that Ukraine’s territory would return to its 2014 borders after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“President Putin said that he wants it to end. He doesn’t want to end it and then go back to fighting six months later,” Trump added. “We’ll probably end up at some point getting a ceasefire in the not-too-distant future.”
When pressed on whether he was pushing Zelensky out of the talks or conceding the war to Putin, Trump disagreed but encouraged Ukraine to hold an election, citing the Ukrainian’s polling. At the same time, the president recommitted to sending aid to Ukraine, though he was adamant that it be “secured.”
Trump was expected to take executive action to enact reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday afternoon but said he would do so later because he did not want to detract from Gabbard.
“I don’t want to take anything away from this young lady’s day because this is her day, and I may do it later on, or I may do it tomorrow morning, but we’ll be signing reciprocal tariffs,” he continued. “The world has taken advantage of the United States for many years.”
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The Senate confirmed Gabbard on Wednesday, 52-48, with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) casting the lone Republican vote against her. Her nomination was criticized due to her own foreign policy views on Russia and meeting with deposed former Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“There’s nobody like her for the job,” Trump said.
