Jake Sullivan: Trump’s Stated Goals Were Get a Ceasefire, or Impose What He Called Severe Consequences

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
RADDATZ: “So let’s bring in Jake Sullivan who served as national security adviser in the Biden Administration. Good morning. I want your reaction first to what Marco Rubio just said.”

SULLIVAN: “Well, first I’ll start by saying that diplomacy is hard. When President Trump said he was going to end the war in a day, obviously that was not a credible statement, and it’s been many months and it hasn’t ended. My sympathy goes out to secretary Rubio, national security adviser Rubio, as he tries to work on this. But basically the bottom line is the way to judge in a very straightforward manner whether a summit was a success or a failure is did you achieve your stated goals? And President Trump’s stated goals were simple. Get an immediate ceasefire, and in the absence of a ceasefire, impose what he called severe consequences. Well, the summit has come and gone. There is no ceasefire. There are no consequences. Meanwhile, president Putin had a simple goal. Keep the war going without facing further economic pressure from the United States. And he has achieved both of those goals. On an open-ended basis. As soon as possible isn’t actually a deadline. The deadline President Trump actually gave was this past week where he said if there’s not an end to the fighting, I will impose sanctions. Instead, president Putin seems to have bought time and space to continue his aggression through the way that he achieved his goals at this summit in Alaska.”

RADDATZ: “And specifically some of the things that Marco Rubio said, look, we’re still — we want peace negotiations. Zelenskyy wasn’t there. I mean, Zelenskyy has basically said in the past he would accept a ceasefire, correct?”

SULLIVAN: “President Zelenskyy has very emphatically said a ceasefire should be the first step, then negotiations, then an end to the war and, in fact, he did that at the request of President Trump who called for president Zelenskyy to support a ceasefire, which president Zelenskyy then did. So this was all set up in a very straightforward way. Try to bring Putin to the table to agree to a pause in the fighting so that you can have real negotiations, not give Putin open-ended license to continue bombing Ukraine even as recently as last night, while dragging out these negotiations. Now time will tell. Let’s see what happens here in the coming days. One thing I think secretary Rubio has backwards is the idea additional pressure would hurt diplomacy. From my perspective part of the reason Putin came to Alaska is he’s worried about the possibility of pressure. And if President Trump were prepared to escalate sanctions, squeeze Putin harder, I believe it would give him leverage to bring this war to an end more rapidly, and I hope that when president Zelenskyy and the European leaders are in Washington tomorrow they will discuss with President Trump the need for that additional economic pressure, because that is what is going to get president Putin’s attention.”