Vance Reveals Exact Moment When Zelensky’s Oval Office Meeting Derailed

Vice President JD Vance, in an interview Monday with Fox News host Sean Hannity, gave his version of how the Oval Office meeting between him, Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went downhill.

Vance, whose first reaction when the meeting was brought up was to laugh and call it “great TV,” claimed he initially wanted to defuse things.

“For the first 25 or 30 minutes, [Trump] tried to bend over backwards to be gracious and kind to Zelensky, even when Zelensky was kind of needling him...[and] saying things that I thought were untrue,” Vance claimed. “The president just tried to be diplomatic, right? I think that’s his natural instinct in that situation.”

When things “really went off the rails,” Vance said, was after his response to a question from a Polish journalist. 

“Something about my answer just really set Zelensky off, so then he came at me...and then I went back at him,” he went on.

The vice president said he tried a couple times to “defuse the situation” at first by suggesting to Trump that maybe the discussion should be carried out behind closed doors.

“I tried again to say maybe we should have this conversation in private, and the president was like, ‘Nope, actually, I don’t want to have it in private anymore. I want to have this actual conversation in public for the American people to see,‘” Vance said.

Criticizing Zelensky for having “a lack of respect” and “a sense of entitlement,” Vance went on to reiterate many of the Trump administration’s public statements on funding for Ukraine and about Zelensky himself. 

Vance also invoked Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a frequent supporter of aid to the beleaguered Eastern European nation who suggested after Friday’s meeting that a peace deal would require Zelensky to change “dramatically” or step down. 

“My message to Zelensky is, when you’ve lost Lindsey Graham, that means you need to come to the negotiating table,” he said.

Vance added of Zelensky: “I really don’t care what [he] says about me or anybody else, but he showed a clear unwillingness to engage in the peace process that President Trump has said is the policy of the American people and of their president.”

“That’s the real breakdown,” he said. “I think Zelensky wasn’t yet there, and I think frankly now still isn’t there, but I think he will get there eventually. He has to.”