President Donald Trump, ready to wrap up his Oval Office meeting Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asked for one last question from the reporters gathered in the room.
That's when Vice President JD Vance jumped in instead, responding to a previous question about Trump's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin by praising Trump's diplomatic approach to the war in Ukraine.
His comments yielded a sharp rejoinder from Zelenskyy, steering an already tense discussion into an unexpected, full-blown, high-volume argument for the world to watch.
For the next seven minutes, Vance and Trump exchanged increasingly heated words with their visitor. Vance accused Zelenskyy of being disrespectful in the White House, of not being thankful enough for U.S. assistance and of embarking on a “propaganda tour.”
Zelenskyy pointedly questioned Vance’s authority on Ukraine, asking if he’d ever been to the country, prompting Vance to reply that he’d “watched and seen the stories.” Then Trump tagged in, coming to his vice president’s defense by demanding that Zelenskyy be more thankful and asserting that the Ukrainian leader was “gambling with World War III.”
It was, in the words of Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and State Department appointee during Trump’s first term, “a horrible day for the peacemakers.”
It was also a sign of how Vance, who as a senator was known for his opposition to U.S. aid for Ukraine, is asserting himself on matters of foreign policy immediately as vice president. Earlier this month, Vance made waves at the Munich Security Conference with a speech that took sharp aim at other world leaders. And on Thursday, the day before tangling with Zelenskyy, Vance mixed it up in an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — albeit in a much lighter tone.
“Look, I said what I said,” Vance responded Thursday when a reporter asked him about his comments in Munich that were critical of alleged free speech violations in the United Kingdom.
Starmer replied politely: “In relation to free speech in the U.K., I’m very proud of our history there.”
The confrontation Friday with Zelenskyy was far frostier — spurred not by a reporter’s question but, according to those close to the vice president, by Vance’s desire to push back on what he believed was Zelenskyy’s inappropriate behavior in a diplomatic environment.
“The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy,” Vance said after pre-empting Trump’s attempt to field one last inquiry from the media. “We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.”
Zelenskyy then asked for and received permission to address Vance directly, noting that Ukraine had previously made diplomatic agreements with Russia that were then violated.
“He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners,” a visibly agitated Zelenskyy said, referring to Putin, who has been at war with Ukraine for three years. “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?”
Vance shot back that it was "disrespectful" for Zelenskyy to "come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media." Things only got more tense from there.
An earlier meeting Friday between Zelenskyy and senators was “very bipartisan and very supportive,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said. Asked about the more rancorous tone in the Oval Office, Whitehouse said: “That’s what you get for letting Vance in the room.”
A source familiar with the planning for the Trump meeting said there was no predetermined strategy for Vance to confront Zelenskyy the way he did. Vance, the source added, felt compelled to respond after finding Zelenskyy needlessly provocative in his demeanor.
“No one expected Zelenskyy to come in there and act entitled,” said this person, who added that the expectation was the Oval Office meeting would go off like a typical bilateral meeting.
Another source familiar with Vance’s thinking going into the meeting said: “I don’t think anyone expected [Zelenskyy] to walk in there and act like such a petulant child.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has supported sending aid to Ukraine, called Zelenskyy’s meeting a “complete, utter disaster,” saying that “the way he confronted the president was just over the top.”
Graham also said he was “very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country.”
Vance’s long-standing views on Ukraine aid are well-established, and Zelenskyy in the past has made no effort to hide his disapproval of the vice president, having called him “too radical” in an interview last year with The New Yorker, when Vance was running on Trump's ticket.
On Friday, Vance called back to a visit Zelenskyy made ahead of last fall’s election to Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania — a trip that Republicans have characterized as a sign of support for the Democratic ticket. Zelenskyy visited a munitions factory in Scranton and met with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, at the White House.
“You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” Vance told Zelenskyy. “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.”
The adversarial tone reminded some observers of Vance's Munich speech.
“I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from and of course, that’s important,” Vance said there, addressing European leaders. “But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me ... is what exactly you’re defending yourselves for?”
Bartlett, who resigned from the first Trump administration on Jan. 6, 2021, over Trump’s response to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, acknowledged that Zelenskyy “may have come in, possibly, with the wrong posture.”
“It just shows how personality is critical to policy, and how one bad meeting, you know, can be so potentially damning in history,” Bartlett said.
“There are plenty that will see Vance as being wildly inappropriate, even stepping over the president,” Bartlett added. “And there are plenty that feel as if Vance said what needs to be said for the past three years.
“And it seems, regardless of where anyone comes down, the vice president was very eager to make this point,” Bartlett continued. “It was an echo of his speech at Munich, it echoes his online persona, and you saw the personification of it now in a critical, tense foreign policy situation.”
