Burbank, CA — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined Jake Tapper during CNN’s coverage of the United States’ summit with Russia to discuss President Trump’s concessions to Vladimir Putin ahead of the meeting aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, blasting Trump for abandoning Ukraine by ruling out its future in Europe and opening the door to giveaways of territory before the summit began.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On Putin’s ability to manipulate Donald Trump into a potential agreement:
I’m really deeply concerned about what comes out of this. We saw in ‘Trump 1’ that disastrous summit in Helsinki where the President took the Russian dictator’s side over our own intelligence agencies. I would hate to see a repeat of that on the way to the summit. He’s saying that he’s not there to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine. He’s praising the Belarusian dictator, and I am concerned about how easily he could be manipulated by Putin. If Putin praises him, if Putin offers some kind of a joint oil or mineral exploration in the Arctic. And Trump thinks that, hey, this is his ticket to some kind of a deal and some kind of a Peace Prize. He never really has seemed to have support for Ukraine in his bones. It has to be forced on him. So I’m deeply worried about what could come out of this and, you know, ideally it would be a cease fire, but I suspect that whatever Putin suggests, you really can’t count on.
On what a potential peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine should include:
I’m all for any attempt to bring an end to the bloodshed, but what would have been, I think, a far more successful strategy for the President was to have Ukraine’s back, to be leaning into providing material and military support to Ukraine, to give Ukraine the resources it needed, to take out the trains carrying fuel going to the front, which have continued to feed the war. But this is not what the President’s done. The President said, essentially, Ukraine won’t be part of NATO. He’s dealt away a terrible concession even before there’s any kind of negotiations. The Vice President today in saying that, you know, we’re done with providing military support for Ukraine. How is that facilitating a successful negotiation? That’s essentially giving up both the military support, NATO membership, indeed, the President talked about land swaps, giving up potentially territory of Ukraine even before you sit down at the table.
On Trump’s pre-concession that Ukrainian territory would be ceded to Russia:
I wouldn’t concede territory. I wouldn’t concede NATO membership. I wouldn’t concede anything. Russia invaded Ukraine. It has murdered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, and our position going into any negotiation should be, we stand firmly with Ukraine. We stand with our European allies. And much as I wouldn’t have the President make any territorial concessions before there is an agreement resolved between Russia and Ukraine, I wouldn’t make those concessions either. So that’s not the posture I want to take, or that I think the President ought to take.
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