How Fox News almost brokered an arms deal between Trump and Zelensky

For one mad moment at the White House on Friday, it seemed as though a Fox News correspondent might be in a position to broker an arms deal between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

As the US leader forced his Ukrainian guest to endure yet another impromptu, 38-minute made-for-TV news conference, even before the two men had spent a single minute engaging in private discussions, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy was centre stage.

He asked Trump whether he might agree to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles that would allow Zelensky’s armed forces to attack deep into Russian territory. “What’s going to happen if the United States is in a conflict, and we need the Tomahawks?” Doocy inquired.

“That’s a problem”, said Trump, indicating afresh that he is currently unwilling to accede to Zelensky’s demand for the long-range cruise missiles. “We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other weapons that we’re sending to Ukraine”, he continued. “One of the reasons why we want to get this war over is exactly that… it’s not easy for us to give massive numbers of very powerful weapons. So that’s one of the things we’ll be talking about.”

Zelensky, by now a wily veteran of the President’s on-camera White House antics, then saw his opportunity and intervened. “Of course, we want to finish this war,” he assured Trump. “But you don’t use just Tomahawks”, he observed, “you need thousands of drones” to work alongside the Tomahawks. As Trump listened, Zelensky appeared to propose a deal: noting that Ukraine produces thousands of drones for its own military purposes, he suggested that they might also be of assistance to the United States. “We can work together, we can strengthen American production”, he posited.

Doocy, finding himself in the midst of the negotiation, asked Zelensky if he was “suggesting some kind of a trade. If President Trump okays Tomahawk missiles… then you would authorise some kind of exchange with the US?” Zelensky immediately answered in the affirmative.

The Fox News correspondent then asked Trump if he was up for the exchange. “They make a very good drone”, he said of Ukraine. But then, realising he was painting himself into a corner, he cited his “responsibility to make sure we are completely stocked up as a country, because you never know what’s going to happen… we’d much rather have them not need Tomahawks”, he said, in an effort to shut down the discussion.

There were other extraordinary moments as the press pool, made up almost entirely of pro-Trump propagandists, peppered the two leaders with questions. The representative of a streaming channel operated by Mike Lindell, the pro-Trump, election-denying pillow salesman, asked Zelensky if he would be willing to give up his efforts to join NATO. The Ukrainian leader made it clear that if he is ever going to abandon Kyiv’s aspirations to join the transatlantic alliance, that decision will not be announced in an on-the-fly exchange with a far-right, pro-Maga video network.

Next, it was the turn of Brian Glenn, White House propagandist for “Real America’s Voice TV” and the boyfriend of Republican congresswoman and noted conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene. “You will go down as the peacemaker, no doubt”, he promised Trump. “You will resolve this war”, he predicted. He then asked Zelensky, “How confident are you, hearing his success rate solving these prior wars, that he can get this war solved?”

“I think we began to understand each other”, said Zelensky, eight months after Trump berated him and told him he lacked “the cards” to beat the Russians. “I know that the President is briefed very well about the situation on the battlefield”, he said. “I think it really helps when you know a lot of … details about one or another war, it helps a lot. But, we are still in a war”, he shrugged.

Late in the photo op, a legitimate journalist asked Trump whether he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was “trying to buy himself more time” by agreeing to yet another face-to-face summit meeting, to be held soon in Budapest. “I am”, conceded Trump. “But I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well…I think he wants to make a deal”, the US President predicted, as he has done on countless, fruitless previous occasions.

Wrapping things up, Trump insisted that “we have a chance of ending the war quickly if flexibility is shown”. But underscoring that Zelensky would be leaving Washington without any of his much-desired Tomahawks, he then said: “We don’t want to be giving away things that we need to protect our country.”

At last, the cameras were escorted out of the Cabinet Room. But Doocy lingered. “Mr President, what’s for lunch?” he asked. “I don’t know. Join us if you’d like”, joked Trump, as collective mirth broke out around him.