Marco Rubio Repeatedly Fumbles Key Question on Trump’s Ceasefire Ask

President Donald Trump entered his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin hoping to attain a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire—only to promptly drop that goal, instead favoring a Putin-approved “peace agreement” with Ukrainian territorial concessions.

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to the airwaves, scrambling to defend the president’s flip-flop—and the disappointing summit more generally—on four Sunday talk shows.

On Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, Maria Bartiromo asked Rubio why the summit hadn’t ended with a ceasefire.

“First of all, if you recall,” Rubio said, “we never said there was going to be a deal coming out of the meeting because the Ukrainians were not there.” He also mentioned that talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are scheduled for Monday.

But prior to the summit, Trump had told Fox anchor Bret Baier, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.”

ABC News’s Martha Raddatz mentioned those comments on This Week: “The president went into that meeting saying he wanted a ceasefire and there would be consequences if they didn’t agree on a ceasefire in that meeting, and they didn’t agree to a ceasefire,” she observed. “So where are the consequences?”

“That’s not the aim,” Rubio said, to which Raddatz pointed out that Trump had explicitly said, “That’s the aim.” Rubio replied that more progress is necessary before Putin and Zelenskiy hopefully meet to “finalize a peace agreement.”

Kristen Welker of MSNBC’s Meet the Press asked Rubio, “Why not impose more sanctions on [Russia] and force them to agree to a ceasefire instead of accepting that Putin won’t agree to one?” (Trump had threatened to do so if the Alaska summit fell flat.)

Rubio dismissed the idea, leading Welker to ask whether Trump had made “empty threats.” Rubio replied that there are already sanctions on Russia and additional sanctions could derail peace talks.

Welker also asked the secretary of state to name “one thing that President Trump is asking Russia to give up in order to get peace.” He refused, saying the negotiations require utmost secrecy.

On CBS News’s Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan asked Rubio about the president’s ultimately empty rhetoric regarding a ceasefire in the lead-up to his meeting with Putin:

The president told … European leaders last week that he wanted a ceasefire. The president went on television and said he would walk out of the meeting if Putin didn’t agree to one. He said there would be severe consequences if he didn’t agree to one. He said he’d walk out in two minutes. He spent three hours talking to Putin, and he did not get one.

Rubio replied that the “goal here” is to reach a “peace agreement,” rather than “to stage some production for the world and say, ‘Oh how dramatic. [Trump] walked out.’” Enough progress was made, Rubio insisted, to continue moving toward an agreement (though he elided Trump’s newfound embrace of a peace agreement instead of a ceasefire).

You may recall that Trump promised to end the Russia-Ukraine War on day one of his presidency. It’s been 210 days.

Donald Trump is furious that the media won’t report on the incredible concessions he’s wrested from Russian President Vladimir Putin—oh wait, there are none.

“I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, ‘We give up, we concede, we surrender, we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles,’ the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday.

“But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, though, Trump has yet to nail down any actual concessions from Putin—just “concepts.” Without going into detail, Rubio said Sunday that whatever Putin had offered during the meeting hadn’t been enough for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, blaming the leader of the invaded country for the summit’s anticlimax.

Trump has been fuming for days over the media’s coverage of his do-nothing meeting Friday with Putin. “These people are sick!” he wrote in another post on Truth Social Sunday.

But as much as Trump would like to pretend, Moscow isn’t looking to cede territory—it’s looking to steal. The U.S. president claimed Sunday that Ukraine could end the fighting immediately if it were only willing to give up on reclaiming Crimea, and receiving a long-awaited NATO membership.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday Putin had agreed that the U.S. could offer Ukraine an “Article Five-like protection,” instead of actual membership into the military bloc. Russia also agreed to implement a law not to “go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty,” Witkoff said. “And there was plenty more.”

But as of yet, no ceasefire agreement or peace deal has actually materialized from the meeting—only the president’s fan fiction.

President Donald Trump raged at Democrats Monday for supposedly cheating in elections in a long and unhinged Truth Social rant—and buried in his tirade is a clear indication of how he hopes to corrupt the 2026 midterm elections at a time when his agenda is nose-diving in polls.

In his screed, Trump rehashed his familiar lies about how mail balloting is riddled with fraud, and promised to lead a new “movement” to abolish it.

But then he added this:

WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.

Trump already unveiled a similar executive order in March designed to change election rules. It would have barred states from accepting ballots mailed on time but that arrive after Election Day and forced state officials to require documented proof of citizenship for everyone who registers to vote in federal elections.

Such changes would have disenfranchised large numbers of voters. Two federal judges blocked it this spring after a coalition of states sued, the plaintiffs successfully arguing that it usurped their authority to set election rules. The administration is appealing.

Trump appears prepared to have a second run at such an executive order. But what’s critical about Monday’s post is he connected this scheme directly to the midterms, inadvertently revealing the real aim behind it.

Trump’s new rant says he’s going to “lead a movement to get rid of” mail balloting, then later says this “movement” will begin with his new executive order—a strong indication he will try to ban vote-by-mail by executive order.

Voting rights advocates have long expected him to attempt something like this, perhaps by arguing that vote-by-mail is a threat to national security. That’s because Trump’s argument for his previous executive order failed in the courts after judges affirmed that the Constitution authorizes states to set the “time, place and manner” of elections.

Now Trump might try something new. “It sounds like he will try to ban all mail-in balloting through executive order, and he’s going to have to find some other rationale for such a sweeping presidential action,” said Pooja Chaudhuri, a lawyer at Democracy Defenders Fund, which represented other clients challenging the March executive order.

For instance, Trump might argue that “mail-in ballots are so fraudulent that they undermine the institutions of this country,” Chaudhuri continued, and that “the president must get involved. This would represent an enormous abuse of power.”

There is overwhelming evidence that any fraud in mail balloting is limited to nonexistent. Indeed, it’s now beyond obvious that the pretext is the thing to watch. Trump is manufacturing a fake justification for nixing vote-by-mail because he believes (probably wrongly, but never mind that) doing so will help Republicans in the midterms. That he openly linked his announcement to the 2026 elections shows he isn’t even bothering to hide the scam any longer.

“If they are going to try to stand for election integrity, it hurts them to point out that this is directly related to the 2026 elections,” said Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy at the Center for American Progress. “It exposes that this is not about election integrity and national security, it’s about election rigging.”

It’s no accident that this comes even as Trump is expanding the use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and other cities, based—again—on a manufactured pretext, this time about crime. At bottom, Trump’s rant clearly signals his intent to use presidential power in every conceivable way he can to swing the midterm elections against Democrats. This could include ramped-up military maneuvers in Democratic strongholds or in swing areas—whether to intimate voters or to fabricate a crisis atmosphere meant to help Republicans—as well as whatever limits on voting he can impose, all justified with pretexts that he invents out of nothing.

We all need to be ready for this. Fortuitously, Trump has told us himself exactly what he intends to do.

You’ve heard of “concepts of a plan”; now get ready for “concepts” of a concession.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio faltered Sunday during an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation when asked whether Donald Trump had won anything during last week’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We’re looking at Russian troops and strikes intensifying. Did you hear anything from Vladimir Putin that indicated he is willing to make a single concession?” host Margaret Brennan asked.

“Well, I think there are a couple—I mean, there were not enough for Ukraine, if not we would be announcing a peace deal this morning—but certainly there are some things we noticed, changes,” Rubio replied. “There are some changes that I think are possible. I think there’s some concepts discussed that could potentially lead to something.”

Here, Rubio does exceptional work demonstrating that adding a bunch of words to an answer doesn’t make it not “no.”

The secretary explained that there was a difference between what a leader promises versus what they deliver. Now, who does that remind you of?

“It isn’t real until it’s real,” Rubio added. If the secretary’s statements are anything to go by, it seems that Trump wasn’t able to secure anything from Putin—but he did cave to some of the Russian president’s major demands.

Ahead of his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other European leaders Monday, Trump claimed that Ukraine could end the invasion today for the small, small price of Crimea and the country’s long-awaited NATO membership.

Surprise, surprise: Donald Trump is ready to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to block Ukraine from joining NATO—and to keep a slice of stolen land.

Ahead of his meeting with European leaders Monday, Trump put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to end the invasion of his own country by handing over seized territory and dropping his dreams of belonging to the powerful military alliance.

“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday night.

NATO had originally promised membership to Ukraine in 2008. After the bloc reupped its offer in 2021, Russia demanded that Ukraine be forbidden from becoming part of the military alliance. Also note Trump’s casual Russian propaganda in his post: At least two soldiers (one from each side) were killed as part of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN earlier Sunday that Putin had agreed that the U.S. could offer Ukraine an “Article Five-like protection” but not the real thing. Russia also agreed to implement a law not to “go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty,” Witkoff said. “And there was plenty more.”

In a statement Sunday, Zelenskiy seemed less than convinced. “It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. But there are no details how it will work, and what America’s role will be, Europe’s role will be and what the EU can do, and this is our main task, we need security to work in practice like Article Five of NATO, and we consider EU accession to be part of the security guarantees,” he said.

Zelenskiy and other European leaders are expected to meet with Trump Monday afternoon. Once again, Trump has preempted peace negotiations by showing his entire hand.

But Trump’s likely been planning to fold to Russia for months. In April, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told U.S. allies that liberating all Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine was “an unrealistic objective” and pulled back from America’s push to have Ukraine join NATO, in compliance with a long-standing complaint from Putin. Hegseth later walked back his comments somewhat, but Trump still defended Hegseth’s initial words as “pretty accurate.”