CNN host Kaitlan Collins checked Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday after he echoed President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hasn’t been grateful to the U.S.
Trump and Vance, during a contentious White House meeting, publicly berated the Ukrainian president for being “disrespectful” and “not acting at all thankful” of the U.S. support for Ukraine amid its war with Russia.
Collins, moments after Rubio suggested that Zelenskyy be “thanking” Trump for his efforts to end the war, tossed to several clips of the Ukrainian president showing “gratitude” to the U.S. during trips to Washington in recent years.
“Thank you for both financial packages you have already provided us —,” said Zelenskyy during his 2022 address to Congress.
“All my appreciations from my heart, from the heart of Ukraine, all Ukrainians,” he told former President Joe Biden at the White House in 2022.
“So what can I say to American people in English, my English is poor, to say all my messages and all my thanks to you,” Zelenskyy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during a 2023 interview.
Zelenskyy — who has publicly thanked the U.S. and its officials, includingTrump, on dozens of occasions in recent years — left the White House early without signing a rare earth minerals deal on Friday. He later took to social media to thank Trump and America for its support.
Collins pressed Rubio on Trump and Vance’s claims, “Do you think you can make the argument that he hasn’t said thank you?”
Rubio responded, “Well, I think the vice president said he hadn’t said it today, he hadn’t heard it today in that meeting.”
He continued, “And we were hoping that that meeting would begin by, ’Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you, we wouldn’t even have a chance to negotiate a peace [deal] without the help you gave us.”
He then emphasized that Trump provided “help” to Ukraine in his first term.
“So he should have been grateful for that and grateful for what we’re doing now,” Rubio later said.
Elsewhere in his interview with Collins, Rubio declared that Zelenskyy should “apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became.”
“There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic. Look, this thing went off the rails…,” he said.