Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has been one of the most outspoken advocates for supporting the Ukraine war effort, said he was “devastated” by the heated exchange between President Trump, Vice President Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House Friday.
Graham, who had advocated for the United States to share Ukraine’s mineral wealth in return for its ongoing assistance to the war effort, said the meeting was an “absolute, utter disaster” and any prospect of a deal now appears to be dead.
“Devastated. Everything I … have been working for to try to get a new relationship with the United States around a critical minerals deal beneficial to both of us was completely obliterated today,” Graham said on Fox News’s “America Reports.”
Graham, who met with Zelensky on Friday morning along with Democratic Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), said he had urged the Ukrainian leader to “stay on message” and “be grateful, be thankful.”
The South Carolina senator advised Zelensky not to press for U.S. security guarantees during the Oval Office meeting with Trump.
Graham said it’s now a major question whether the United States can continue to support Ukraine if Zelensky remains president.
“The question for me is, ‘Is he redeemable in the eyes of Americans?’ Most Americans witnessing what they saw today would not want Zelensky to be their business partner, including me, and I’ve been to Ukraine nine times since the war started,” he said.
Graham said Trump was “upbeat” about the potential minerals deal before the meeting.
He said Zelensky needs to apologize to Trump or “accept the consequences.”
“What I want him to do, I guess, is just to say, ‘I screwed up big time for my country and for the U.S. relationship and if I had to do it over again, I’d have done it differently and I’m sorry,’” Graham advised.
“If he can’t say that, then Ukraine you need to either send us somebody new we can deal with or just accept the consequences,” he said.
Trump scolded Zelensky for not showing enough gratitude for American support in the war, warning him: “You’re right now, not really in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position.”
“You’d don’t have the cards right now,” he added bluntly.
Zelensky shot back: “I’m not playing cards.”
The meeting got so tense that national security adviser Mike Waltz asked the Ukrainian delegation to leave and the White House canceled a planned signing ceremony for the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal.
Coons and Klobuchar, who met with Zelensky along with Graham and later posed for a selfie at the White House, had a starkly different reaction to the meeting.
Klobuchar challenged Vice President Vance for asking Zelensky if he had ever “said ‘thank you’ once” for U.S. military and economic aid.
“Answer to Vance: Zelensky has thanked our country over and over again both privately and publicly. And our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe. Shame on you,” she posted on the social platform X.
Coons said Zelensky deserved better treatment.
“Every time I’ve met with President Zelensky, he’s thanked the American people for our strong support. We owe him our thanks for leading a nation fighting on the front lines of democracy – not the public berating he received at the White House,” he posted on X.
