Let's turn now to one of the country's leading historians on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

who has written widely on Ukraine, Russia, and this war. Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of

History at Yale University. Thank you for being with us. From your perspective as one who has written

extensively on Ukraine, its struggle for independence, its role in European

geopolitics. What did you see in that spectacle in the Oval Office earlier today?

Well, what you see is that the present United States has a little bit of trouble controlling

political reality once he gets beyond the United States. The premise was

that we are working towards a peace arrangement between Russia and Ukraine. But thus far, all we have

done is make concessions to Russia. That's all we've done.

And then the second thing we've done now was we brought the Ukrainian president to the White House and tried to humiliate him.

So we've created a situation where we have favored the aggressor and weakened the defender.

You can't really get to peace on that logic.

You have to do exactly the opposite.

There's a lot of wisdom in what Representative Lawler just said, but in order to have the right

people at the table, though, you have to have the right balance of strength.

And encouraging the aggressor and attacking the country that's trying to defend itself

is not going to get you there.

Well, after the meeting, the White House put out a press release with the subject line,

President Trump and VP Vance are standing up for Americans.

To hear White House officials tell it, they got what they wanted out of this meeting.

From their view, it was a projection of strength,

and that Trump and Vance,

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