A senior Trump administration official ridiculed the several European leaders that attended the high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, calling the heads of state “tedious” and “used to being in charge.”
Speaking with Politico on the condition of anonymity, the official said the goal of inviting the European leaders to the meeting was “to say ‘we’re in charge,” and to communicate to them that they’ll “sign on to anything we say.”
“The Europeans were positive today, but they are tedious,” the official said. “But they were really good. And if you just were an observer of the two hours today, you'd say, ‘wow, that’s like a family – a happy family.’ But they all have their own little thing that they want to have happen.”
Monday’s meeting with Zelenskyy was the second recent meeting initiated by Trump to bring about a quick end to the Russo-Ukraine War, and followed Trump’s Friday meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And while some fears that Trump would fold in the negotiations to Putin’s demands have been quelled following Monday’s meeting, the official made clear that the United States was still calling the shots — despite European leaders’ pleas that the Trump administration commit to a few red lines in its negotiations with Putin.
“They're heads of state,” the official told Politico. “They’re used to being in charge. And when you put seven of them in one room, you get what you would think. But it wasn't bad.”
The fact that European leaders were invited at all to the meeting Monday in Washington, D.C. was due strictly to what the official described as the success of Trump’s meeting with Putin the preceding week, a second senior administration official said, who noted that Russia seemed open to concessions to end the war, and that that “opening is huge.”
“After Alaska, we were excited that Putin was at least talking and there were signs we could negotiate,” the second official said. “If Alaska was not successful and Putin didn’t give us a little bit of an opening, we wouldn’t have [had] the Europeans at the White House.”
European leaders are set to convene virtually Tuesday to debrief on the outcomes of Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy, dubbed the “Coalition of the Willing”, co-chaired by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. The White House now has its hopes set on a trilateral summit, a meeting between Trump, Zelenskyy and Putin.