Vice President JD Vance will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week at the Munich Security Conference.
Zelenskyy will lead Ukraine’s delegation at the yearly security conference, which starts on February 14. Vance will also be there. President Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office that he “may meet” with the Ukrainian leader in Washington, D.C., in the coming days. This meeting is now set to happen.
“I will probably be meeting with President Zelenskyy next week and I will probably be talking to President Putin,” Trump said. “I’d like to see that war end.”
Last week, a Ukrainian delegation held meetings at the State Department with Ukraine-Russia envoy Gen. Keith Kellogg, CBS News reported.
Trump has repeatedly pledged to bring an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“So we’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things,” Trump said.
Vance made headlines recently when he commented on his political future as he discussed what he and President Donald Trump believe contributed to the deadly mid-air collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Host Maria Bartiromo asked Vance about his political ambitions after the vice presidency. “You’re one of the youngest vice presidents that we’ve ever seen in the history of our country. Are you expecting to run for president in three and a half years?” she said.
“Maria, you’re the first person who’s asked me that,” Vance replied, smiling.
In one of his first television interviews since assuming office as the 50th Vice President of the United States last month, Vance also discussed Trump’s second-term agenda while addressing the major crises the administration has faced just days into the presidency, including the deadly plane crash that claimed 67 lives last week.
“There is a very direct connection between the policies of the last administration and short-staffed air traffic controllers. That has to stop,” Vance told Bartiromo.
The host also asked Vance about Trump’s mention of progressive DEI policies in connection with the crash between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that crossed its flight path on Wednesday night.
In a Thursday press conference concerning the crash, Trump specifically mentioned the previous administration’s DEI standards implemented government-wide but also at the Federal Aviation Administration as potentially contributing to the crash, stating, “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. What matters is intellect, talent. The word ‘talent.’ They have to be talented geniuses. We can’t have regular people doing that job. They won’t be able to do it.”
Bartiromo gave Vance the chance to elaborate on the president’s remarks.
“So the president’s been very clear about this. This is not saying that the person who was at the controls is a DEI hire. But let’s just say, first of all, we should investigate everything, but let’s just say the person at the controls didn’t have enough staffing around him or her because we were turning people away because of DEI reasons,” he told the host.
The VP also shredded the legacy media for grilling Trump over his suggestion.
“And by the way, it’s so funny to me the media has picked up on this. Not you, of course, Maria, but others have picked up on this. The president made very clear that he wasn’t blaming anybody, but he was being very explicit about the fact that DEI policies have led our air traffic controllers to be short-staffed,” he said.
“That is a scandal. Thankfully, it’s a scandal that the president has stopped,” Vance added.
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