Transcript of Press Preview | Friday 28 February

Sky News get the full story first. Is this now all your territory?

Yeah.

The battlefield is outside the barricades. We are in the middle of a forest in a jungle really, and they're attempting to keep these men alive. I'm Stuart Ramsey, and I'm Sky's chief correspondent. It's really dangerous. Many people have died riding it.

Let's take you straight now to Washington Joint Base Andrews right now. That's Marine One. The President has just arrived. He's due to Board Air Force One. He's going to be making his way to Mar-a-Lago. Of course, a couple of hours after that pretty extraordinary meeting that he had with Volodymyr Zelensky. A little bit earlier, He did also make some comments at the White House. We're trying to bring you those, but he is now on his way to Mar-a-Lago. He did make some comments a a little earlier when he was still at the White House. He said, Zelenski did not look like a man who wanted to make peace. Also says, We are not going to keep fighting. A lot of questions now about where this leaves the war in Ukraine, although it has to be said that a lot of European leaders have issued statements in support of Zelenski. Of course, he is due to attend a summit organized in the UK, where European leaders and other European leaders, and Vladimir Zelenskyy, will attend. Okay, so we can now listen to the latest comments that Donald Trump made. Let's listen. Just think of that.

It's going to be a tremendous investment. I guess the biggest investment anybody's ever made in the country at one time, but they're going to be investing a lot of money, 500 billion. We We have many other companies have just announced they're coming in. A lot of it's because of how we're doing. We've done a great turnaround in a little more than 30 days, but the country is really doing well, really doing well. We're respected again all over the world. If you look, we had the Japanese Prime Minister. We had the Prime Minister yesterday of UK, as you know. We had the Prime Minister of India. We have another 20 Prime ministers and presidents wanting to come. And It's very good, very good feeling. I think our country has really turned around. We had a meeting today, as you know, with President Zelenskyy, and I would say it didn't work out exactly great from his standpoint. I think he very much overplayed his hand. We're looking for peace. We're not looking for somebody that's going to sign up a strong power and then not make peace because they feel emboldened. And that's what I saw happening.

I'm looking for peace. We're not looking to go into a 10-year war and play games. We want peace. And it was just my impression that if we do that, if we sign up, he's looking for something that I'm not looking for. He's looking to go on and fight, fight, fight. We're looking to end the death. 2000 people died this week. Soldiers, more than that. But 2000, approximately, people died this week. Young Ukrainians and Russians. And somebody would say, why do you care I care about Ukraine and Russian soldiers. I care about them. I care about everybody. And we're not doing that. Now, if we don't do anything, he's going to have to make peace, but he's dealing with a very weak set of cards. If we sign, he's dealing with very strong set of cards, and then he doesn't want to make peace. So that's where we are. It's very simple. I'm not looking to get into anything protracted. I want immediate peace. President Putin is going to want to make, and he wants to make He wants to end it. And you saw what I saw today. This is a man that wants to get us signed up and keep fighting.

And we're not doing that. Not for this country. So we're setting a lot of records. Economically, we're setting records, and I think every way we're setting records. One of the best is the right track, wrong track. You saw that. We're on the right track for the first time in over 27 years. People are impressed. I'm really impressed with that. The other thing is the feeling about our country. The feeling is great. It's up 48% on feeling on business. And that's the record we've never had. There's never been a record where we've ever gone up that much in such a short period of time. So we're doing really well. And I guess some of you are coming with us. And if you are, I hope you're going to have a good flight. Mr. President. What does Alensky need to do to restart talk with you? He's got to say, I want to make peace. He doesn't have to stand there and say about Putin this, Putin that, all negative things. He's got to say, I want to make peace. I don't want to fight a war any longer. His people are dying. He doesn't have the cards, just so you understand it.

Okay? I can tell you. Mr. President, did you tell Zelensky to leave the White House? I don't have I'm not going to tell you that. Go ahead. I think you know the answer to that. What? Wait, wait.

Do you trust the people who weren't elected?

Look, I don't trust or distrust anybody. I just want to get a deal done. And if the deal happens, good. But you can't embolden somebody that does not have the cards. And all of a sudden that person says, oh, well, now I can keep fighting. We're not going to keep fighting. You're going to get the war done or let them go and see what happens. Let them fight it out. I want anybody that's going to make peace. If he's capable of making peace, which he may or may not be, but I want somebody that's going to make peace. Again, he doesn't have the cards. When we sign up, he's got all of the cards. That doesn't mean he can fight. He's got to stop the fighting, stop the death. He's losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It's time to stop the death. Say it. How long do you think it will take for Glenn to be gone since he went back to go back to the war? Well, he says he wants it now. He wants to come back right now, but I can't do that. They should have an immediate ceasefire, Mr. President. They should have an immediate ceasefire.

That was the other thing. He didn't want to do about ceasefire. A ceasefire could take place immediately. A contract, if you want to end the war, you sign up an agreement, that's going to take a period of time. It takes time. I want it to end immediately. And I think if you had a ceasefire, it would be a ceasefire, a real one that would end it. But he doesn't want to do that, that's fine. Do a better deal. I want it to end immediately. I want a ceasefire now. He says, Oh, I don't want a ceasefire. Well, all of a sudden, he's a big shot because he has the US on his side. Either we're going to end it or let him fight it out.

And if he fights it out, it's not going to be pretty.

Because without us, he doesn't win. Let me tell you. Are you considering high-volved military paid to be trained? It doesn't matter what I'm concerned. I'm just telling you, you saw what I saw today.

That was not a man that wanted to make peace.

I'm only interested if he wants to end the blood jet. Thank you very much, everyone. That was Donald Trump speaking We're speaking at the White House a little bit earlier, and there is Air Force One with the President taking off and heading for his summer home, his Florida home in Mar-a-Lago. Now, obviously, he spoke about the meeting that he had with Vladimir Zelensky. He said Zelensky came with a weak set of cards that he, Trump, wants immediate peace, and so does Putin. He also said to the Assembled Press, You saw what we saw today. He wants to continue fighting. He also mentioned that it was time to stop the death and that Zelensky wanted to come back to talk, but he couldn't come back now, and that what Zelensky has to say is that, I want to make peace instead of bad-mouthing Putin. That you can't embolden someone who doesn't have any cards, and I want anyone capable of making peace. Those are the comments from Donald Trump. Hello there. You're watching the press preview.

A first look at what's on the front pages as they arrive.

It's time to see what's making the headlines with the Daily Mirror columnist, Susie Boniface, and the political commentator, Benedict Spence. They'll be with us from now until just before midnight. Let's take a quick look to see what is on some of those front pages. Well, one story dominates the Financial Times, the describes today's meeting between President Trump and Zelensky as having broken down an acrimony. The I call it a shouting match in which Mr. Trump tried to humiliate his Ukrainian counterpart on live TV. Here's The Express, their headline Bust Up leaves Trump's peace talks in crisis. The Telegraph quotes the US President as telling Mr. Zelensky, make a deal or wear out. The Mail calls the confrontation a spectacle to horrify the world. Now, according to the mirror, it was a situation of shock and war. The Times has the simple headline, Meld down in Oval Office. The Sun dubs Mr. Trump's residence, The Fight House. We are joined tonight by Susie Boniface and Benedict Spence. Welcome both. I think I must have watched the bits of that news conference. It wasn't even a news conference, it was just a meeting. We never got to the news conference five or six times, and it really was astounding.

Something. Susie, if I can just start with you, just your reaction to what you saw. Well, we've been talking about it for a couple of hours, so I think we've hit levels of hysteria and black humor about it, which probably isn't quite how people at home are feeling about it.

But the The mail headline has taken the temperature correctly. It is just horrifying to most people, I would have thought, regardless of how you vote, how you feel. The top of the mail page there is saying, How to tell you if you're drinking too much. How to tell if you're not drinking enough, is you're still remembering this and watching it play out again and again and again. It's horrifying because earlier this week, whether you like Trump or not, I was of the opinion that, well, perhaps he has actually managed something good with all His talk and his talk and his tripe. He has actually dislodged a logjam, a war that was stagnating, support that was stagnating. He's invigorated it. He's moved it on. In the week, the meetings with Macron. The meetings with Macron and then Stum. Things seem to be all right, Trump and mad, but moving towards a positive place. It was maybe going to get there. Yesterday, with all the stuff, I went, Why me? We've actually managed to pull this off. We might... All right, that's okay. Then today, it's just gone bang. It's like you've had an estranged family member, a bitter row, and you finally got everyone back around the table again for Sunday lunch, and everyone's just said, This will be fine.

Let's just all not mention that thing. Something's happened. It's been very tense. Something's just gone bang, and it's all got worse again, and I can't really see a way out of it.

Benedict, I'm guessing behind the scenes, confrontations like this probably happened, but it was the fact that happened in front of cameras.

Yeah, I think the intervention of J. D. Vance was particularly unhelpful in the way that it was... I think actually the word smarmy is probably quite helpful in that it was almost a point scoring exercise, almost as if to say, Well, Russia has been bad, but look at what you've done as well, and I'm going to prove that how clever I am. Any particular points he made that you- The point that he made about propaganda exercises, about massage and casualty figures and stuff like that. I mean, it's a war. People do this. But I think we're all pretty firmly on... Well, at this stage, most Western countries have decided what side they are on. They are on the side not of the aggressor, but of the side that would like to maintain its sovereignty and its liberty. I think that that was in particular bad taste from JD Vance to do that. What I thought was very telling was the way that he It's framed it as, You come here to the oval office and you disrespect the United States, talking very much in an imperial manner as if you ought to be deferring to us.

Whereas most people, I go back actually to something that the The Singaporean foreign minister said a couple of weeks ago, which says that the US no longer posits itself as a liberator or a guarantee of freedom. It is a landlord that is now demanding rent from its former allies. That, I think, is very much the tone that is being set not just with Ukraine, but with Canada, Mexico, Denmark, whoever it might be. It is coming around, it has got the collection tin, and it is rattling, and it is saying, You owe us stuff. That doesn't sit very well, I think, with most European states, especially with Ukraine, which is down the barrel of a gun, literally from the Russians. But it should be a real wake-up call, really, after everything else that's gone on to most European nations. These are not necessarily your friends in the White House anymore. They might talk a good game, but actually, they are interested in very different things to what you are.

Let's just pull up the front page of The I Weekend. Another headline, Shouting match in oval office, Trump tries to humiliate Zelensky live on TV. Susie, I'll start with you, but a question to both of you. Do you think Zelensky played it badly? We all know what Trump, perhaps J. D. Vance is a bit of a surprise, but we all know what Trump is like. Should Zelensky have been more patient, do you think?

Look, Zelensky, there's two things that went into this. The first is that Zelensky, I think, walked into the oval office ready for a fight. He went in armed with photographs of atrocities, he said, were caused by Russians and showed them to the cameras. Now, to do that when you know you're having your little 10-minute press thing in there with the President is just asking for conflict, and that is we must have security. We cannot have compromises with people like this, showing the pictures. I think Trump realized at that point, if he hadn't done previously, that this man was not going to sign the deal. If you're going to come all this way and have all this effort and not sign the deal, Trump's going to look bad. So Trump and then Vance decided to tag team and just take him out and humiliate him. I think that's what happened. But also, we've got to remember that a lot of this stuff starts back in 2019, when Trump was President last time, and he rang up Zelensky and said, I'm withholding $400 billion worth of aid unless you can find evidence that Hunter Biden is corrupt and has been doing stuff in Ukraine he shouldn't have been.

Zelensky couldn't find that evidence, didn't find evidence because it doesn't exist. Then subsequently, Joe Biden won the election, and Trump was impeached for trying to get a foreign country to interfere the US election. He's never forgiven Zelensky for that. He, too, started on this foot of going, I hate this guy before you've even started the meeting. So they're both ready for it to go. But basically, this is a gangster with a grudge because this guy didn't whack the guy he wanted him to five years ago.

I think there is some truth in that with Trump. When it comes to Vance and the rescues of the the MAGA movement of the Republican Party, I think that they have gone back in time to a period of US isolationism. The whole make America great again is not so much about asserting American dominance on the world stage. It is about retreating back into America's own sphere of influence. I think that that's, from a personal perspective, I think it's a very foolish thing to do. They have accepted and embraced the multipolar moment, almost as if they're saying, Yes, China and Russia can have a slice of the pie, and we're fine for that to happen. I think that that's a lot of what is informing the decisions that are being made now in this Trump administration. I think that Trump's own ego absolutely informs a lot of this. But what stands out to me is Vance, who I think will be the President of the United States at some point, and that is the ideological future of the movement going forward. That is very much looking at the US no longer as the global empire that is able to assert its dominance on the world stage, but actually looks at countries like Russia and China and says, Well, this is our sphere of influence, and this is what they get up to.

If we We can take a slice of this Ukrainian pie, we can take some of their natural resources, that's fine. But these are the things that are entirely up for somebody else. It's that way of almost positioning yourself saying, The Russians are bad, but also you've done some bad things, and this is not entirely to do with us. That is what I think stands out to me. It is a very, if you like, pre-Second World War American attitude to say, Oh, well, there are good people and bad people on both sides. That is an incredibly foolish thing to do. If you want your way of life to continue, worldview. You cannot accept people who have entirely different worldviews just rampaging around the world and doing what they want. That is inevitably what will happen. Again, it seems that we're repeating that American attitude towards geopolitics, that you can just allow other people to do what they want.

But do you think tempers flared? I mean, they obviously did, but do you think any of it was planned?

I think what JD Vant said was certainly planned. I think he probably prepared that. I don't think that Donald Trump's response-Not specifically that JD Vant. As I say, I think the whole trying to needle Vladimir Zelensky by calling him effectively a propagandist, because we've had the whole thing of Trump saying, You're a dictator, and then going, Did I say that? I don't remember. That doesn't sound like me. But then turning around and saying, Oh, well, it's propaganda. We all know what that means. It's effectively accusing somebody of lying about war crimes, about atrocities, which we all know are going on. But to cast doubt on the suffering of Ukrainian people to say, It's not entirely true, though, is it? You're making it up. There are some aspects of it, of course, Of course, the Ukrainians are massaging casualty figures, of course, for good reason.

But- Yeah, but you raise the point. There are around 20,000, at least, if not more, 10 times that, children that have been forcibly abducted, forcibly adopted. America is one of the countries that has signed up to a coalition to make sure those children are repatriated, and very few of them have found a legal route home yet. Most of them have got a new name, and they're living in Russia, whether they like it or not. Now, if any other country in the world had had 20,000 or more children forcibly abducted and renamed and rehomed. I mean, there is no way that Trump would be okay if that was American children that were in Canada or in Mexico. He pointed that out, and it's quite reasonable to point that out. Their It should be no peace with a country that has done that unless returning those children is part of the deal. That has to be part of it.

He was trying to point things like that out, and then he gets asked about what he's wearing and why he's not wearing a suit.

Exactly. I said, Why haven't you said thank you?

Like he's some four-year-old child. He's also said thank you many, many times to the Americans, just not in that particular way.

It's entirely, as we were touching on, it's very facile. If your country is at war and you are trying to broadcast the message to people that I'm at war, And there are multiple threats to my life and that I'm a war leader, and that I'm not necessarily the slick Washington figure or something like that. Well, why would you expect it to be wearing a suit or something like that? It's And again, to go back to what Vance was saying, it's disrespectful for you to turn up in the oval office. This is about imperialism. This is about asserting your dominance, which is desperately ironic, given that that form of imperialism is what the Republican Party accused the Democrats of doing and saying, well, you're trying to create color revolutions around the world and trying to create this new image of what you believe the West should be, to then reimpose that very same sense of imperialism saying, well, you're effectively an extension of our empire. You should be kowtowing to it.

These guys I feel a bit different about Kings than the people who created the Republican Party. But the whole situation was, I think they both went into it prepared for a fight to start with. If someone turns up in your doors and you go, Oh, you've dressed up, then you're plainly just waiting for it. You hate each other to start with. You're looking for a problem. It's the opposite of when Macron or Stama went there where you're trying to find some common ground. They went into it in a different way, and then it's absolutely just ramped up. Clearly, Trump has He has lost his temper at some point. He is clearly shouting. Zelensky has also lost his temper. He is trying to shout over Donald Trump, and anyone knows that's just not going to get you anywhere.

But what I would say is, after this many years of war, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for Donald Trump, and I have all the sympathy for Vladimir Zelensky. If anybody is allowed to lose his temper in this situation, it's absolutely him.

And the disrespect to call him halfway across the planet, to sit him in there and lecture him about not having more respect for you because when you've literally been in the job five minutes and said, We're going to cut all your funding and we're going to make you.

He's going to be heading back, Zelensky, back to Europe because, of course, there's that summit on Sunday here in the UK called by Keir Starmer. Let's just look at a few from pages at the Daily Express, Bust Up Leaves, Trump's Peace Talks in Crisis. Benedict, where do you think we stand both between Ukraine and the US, but also these talks about Europe?

I mean, this is part of the difficulty about all of this, which is that Europe... How many years are we now into this conflict, three years. Three, exactly. There has been no real shift in Europe's attitude towards its own defense. If you were to look at this very neutrally and say, Okay, do the United States have a point? That is the point that they do have, which is that European countries are not taking their own defense seriously. We're still here with a war in mainland Europe, and we still have European nations dragging their feet over what this means. We still have Britain dragging its feet over actually what its own defense actually means. This doesn't just boil down to how much you spend on the Ministry of Defense. It comes down to food policy. It comes down to energy policy. Actually, Russia does not fight wars in a conventional sense. It does gray zone warfare very well. And yet we still have all of these countries going, Well, this is a bit tricky, isn't it? It's not a serious approach.

Susie, we're going to have to leave it there. For now, we will, of course, be talking about this again in V11. For the moment. Susie and Benedict, thank you. Now, let's take a look at the weather.

A bright start and always a warm welcome. The weather, sponsored by Qatar Airways.

It's the start of the meteorological spring. This weekend, it'll be mostly settled with overnight frost and fog possible. There'll be a wet start in the northwest, but it will be dry elsewhere with a widespread frost. Expect some freezing fog patches, too, mainly across Eastern England. Now, that fog will lift through the morning to leave plenty of sunshine across England and Wales. Elsewhere, though, it will be cloudier with rain easing southeast, but northern and central Scotland and northwest Ireland will turn drier and brighter.

A bright start and always a warm welcome. Qatar Airways sponsors the weather.

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Sky News get the full story first. Is this now all your territory?

Yeah.

The battlefield is outside the barricade. We are in the middle of a forest in a jungle, really, and they're attempting to keep these men alive. I'm Stuart Ramsey, and I'm Sky's chief correspondent. It's really dangerous. Many people have died.