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President Donald Trump’s perception that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was overtaking the day’s planned emphasis on a US-Ukraine minerals deal partly set off Friday’s Oval Office blowup, according to a White House official.
After Zelenskyy was asked to leave the White House following a sharp exchange of words with Trump and Vice President JD Vance — with the minerals deal unsigned — the official told reporters that there was a palpable “hostility with Zelenskyy and his body language and his attitude.”
“He was talking about security guarantees, getting ahead of what today was for, which was the economic deal,” the official added.
The extraordinary verbal tussle is now threatening to erode the last vestige of Republican support for Zelenskyy as Trump’s administration pursues a deal to end the war sparked by Russia’s invasion three years ago.
The Ukrainian leader is seeking assurances that his country can get defense support from NATO members as part of any such agreement, but one of his leading GOP patrons in Washington edged close to abandoning Zelenskyy on Friday afternoon.
“He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters at the White House.
Earlier in the day, Graham had posed for a picture with Zelenskyy alongside Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Chris Coons, D-Del. Klobuchar posted the photo on X and declared: “We stand with Ukraine.”
After Trump and Vance dressed down Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, with the latter asking if the Ukrainian president had ever thanked the US for its billions of dollars in the support for its war effort, Klobuchar replied on X by noting that he “has thanked our country over and over again both privately and publicly.
“Shame on you,” she added to Vance.
While Democrats lambasted the White House for evicting Zelenskyy from its grounds — Trump announced that “he can come back when he is ready for Peace” — most Republicans praised Trump and Vance.
“Thank you President Trump for standing up for America,” Sen Rick Scott, R-Fla. posted.
Know More
The rare minerals deal that Trump and Zelenskyy were slated to sign on Friday came after fits and starts that appeared to frustrate the US president.
Zelenskyy spurned the idea of a pact that would allow the US access to Ukrainian resources in exchange for US-backed recovery funds for his country, seeing the terms as overly favorable to Washington. The final version of the US-Ukraine deal that was not signed on Friday reportedly included no such firm guarantees.
While talks between the two sides were ongoing after Zelenskyy’s initial rejection, Trump blasted Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections” and falsely stated that Ukraine was to blame for the war. Zelenskyy delivered his own rhetorical jab back, describing Trump as steeped in “disinformation” from Russia.
In short, the stage was set for a tense meeting before Zelenskyy arrived at the White House.
After the on-camera back-and-forth in the Oval Office, the White House official told reporters, Trump met with his advisers and the Ukrainians went to a separate room. Trump’s decision to ask Zelenskyy to leave was conveyed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House national security adviser Mike Waltz.
The lunch that had been prepared for Trump and Zelenskyy alongside a cancelled dual press conference ended up getting eaten by at least one White House aide, a second official confirmed.
The View From A Pro-Ukraine Republican
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., one of the handful of lawmakers in his party who remains unabashedly supportive of Kyiv, called Friday “a bad day for America’s foreign policy.”
“Ukraine wants independence, free markets and rule of law. It wants to be part of the West. Russia hates us and our Western values,” Bacon told Semafor. “We should be clear that we stand for freedom.”
He added a subtle critique of Trump for straying from the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan, comparing today’s White House to the perspective that “Democrats had towards the USSR” during the last decades of the Cold War.
“Reagan was right then, and I believe he’d be standing up to Russia today,” Bacon said.
Shelby and Kadia’s View
While White House officials describe Friday’s tense exchange as not part of some grand plan, it did play to the president’s base.
Conservative commentators — many of whom have long been skeptical of the continued aid the U.S. sends to Ukraine — defended Trump and Vance online. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted them for “standing up for the American people.”
One thing is clear: The clash was so intense that, as of now, it’s unclear how Zelenskyy mends the relationship. Trump left some room for a reset, but in the words of the White House official who addressed reporters Friday: “When that happens, that’s very much TBD.”