David E. Sanger

that they began to sit and talk to the Ukrainians.

They never talked to the Europeans.

And then, of course, the document leaked.

And as soon as it did, it triggered that uproar.

The Europeans felt cut out by President Trump yet again.

The Ukrainians felt betrayed yet again.

And the Russians were celebrating because the early version of the document looked like their wishlist.

Well, you're certainly right, Rachel, that the Ukrainians came in and were consulted, but they came in very late.

It was only about a week before the actual document leaked out.

And so the version that we all saw last week really didn't reflect the Ukrainian point of view.

Now, there are two ways to interpret that.

One is that they hadn't had enough time to begin to go back and forth and amend the document.

That's the version of events that administration officials have put out.

The other way to look at it is that this administration fundamentally has run out of patience and sympathy for the Ukrainians here, that the president believes that they're going to have to give up land sooner or later, so they might as well just get accustomed to that.

And of course, you've got some split views within the administration.

Vice President Vance made clear through the entire campaign that he doesn't particularly care about Ukraine.

He just wants to make sure the United States gets out, isn't sucked into another forever war.

Marco Rubio, on the other hand, as a senator, voted to aid Ukraine and spoke out quite vociferously about the need to defend Ukrainian democracy.

It was only after he entered the administration that he began to adopt President Trump's view, as you would expect an administration official would.

I'm not sure that's entirely right, Rachel, because Marco Rubio's true views seem to pop out when this document leaked last week.