Everything that went down in the disastrous White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was staged, former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice argued to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday evening.
"What do you make of this heated and shocking Oval Office clash that occurred today?" asked Blitzer.
"Well, Wolf, in my estimation, it was a setup," said Rice. "Let's recall the sequence here. Zelensky reluctantly agreed to a bad deal regarding his mineral wealth for which he got nothing in exchange. Not as bad a deal as the original one that the Trump administration proposed, but still nothing in it for Ukraine. He nonetheless was prepared to sign it, to come to Washington, to have the opportunity to try to persuade Donald Trump, before negotiations get really underway, that Ukraine desperately needs security guarantees. So he came, hat in hand, to the Oval Office. Donald Trump kept the pool spray in there for 40 minutes, and was saying things that were outrageous that like, you know, Ukraine started the war and Russia is not the aggressor."
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Furthermore, Rice argued, Trump "gave the permission to J.D. Vance in advance to try to provoke Zelensky, which he tried to do, and to start a rumble that would have two purposes. One, to appeal to Trump's base, which is why at the end of the meeting, Trump said, oh, this is great television. And they've been sending all of their lackeys out to to tout how wonderful it was, when in fact it was a massive embarrassment for the United States of America. But the other audience was Vladimir Putin. And my understanding ... is that the Russian state news agency, TASS, was in the room as part of the pool spray, but AP and perhaps Reuters were not. That tells you that the other audience was very much in Moscow, and you already indicated how delighted they are at the outcome."
"This was a setup designed to humiliate and antagonize the Ukrainians and Zelensky, and to give Donald Trump a pretext for what he has already indicated he is intending to do, which is to stop military assistance to Ukraine," she added. "So we are in a really dangerous, not to mention shameful situation, where yet again, in word and deed, Trump is aligning the United States of America with Vladimir Putin and, by extension, his best buddies, China, North Korea, and Iran, and abandoning our NATO allies, abandoning Ukraine, abandoning our principles, our values and democracy, and throwing our lot in with an autocratic dictator and an axis of authoritarians."
"It's dangerous and shameful," said Rice. "And we will pay for this day and all that preceded it for many years to come."
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