Feud - Brennan vs. Rubio

**Jason Hammer** (0:02)
You're listening to the Hammer and Nigel Show.
My name is Nigel, Jason Hammers here. It's funny when these news anchors think they know more about foreign policy than their guests that they have on it, especially when those guests happen to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio. You mentioned a feud, right?

**Nigel** (0:24)
Yeah, it's not like this is some random congressman or just some mover and shaker in the political world. This is a guy with a title. This is a guy who sits in the meetings with the things that Margaret Brennan is disputing.

**Jason Hammer** (0:41)
He's got a cabinet position.

**Nigel** (0:42)
Right. Margaret Brennan from CBS News thought she knew more about the Russia-Ukraine talks than Marco Rubio does.
Brennan was trying to push some BS narrative that the talks were falling apart. And, you know, oh, you're only bringing in some people to make sure that Zelensky gets bullied. It's so ridiculous. She tried to pull this with Marco Rubio and Marco didn't take the bait.

**Margaret Brennan** (1:15)
You know, there is concern from the Europeans that President Zelensky is going to be bullied into signing something away. That's why you have these European leaders coming as backup tomorrow. Can you reassure them?

**Marco Rubio** (1:27)
No, it isn't. That's not why they're coming as backup. That's not true. They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied.

**Margaret Brennan** (1:35)
In fact, they're coming here tomorrow. Well, that February Oval Office meeting in front of television cameras, where President Zelensky was dressed down.

**Marco Rubio** (1:40)
Do you know how many meetings we've had since then?

**Margaret Brennan** (1:42)
Oh, no, I know. And I was just up in Alaska watching the one with Vladimir Putin, where red carpet rolls rolled out.

**Marco Rubio** (1:48)
No, but it was with Zelensky. We've had more meetings. We've had one meeting with Putin and like a dozen meetings with Zelensky.
But that's not true. They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied. They're coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans. We talked to them last week. There were meetings in the UK over the previous weekend.

**Margaret Brennan** (2:04)
And they said President Trump is going to demand a ceasefire.

**Marco Rubio** (2:07)
As early as Thursday. But you said that they're coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied. They're not coming here tomorrow. This is such a stupid media narrative. They're coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal. We've been working with these people for weeks, for weeks on this stuff.

**Jason Hammer** (2:23)
And how are you going to protect Zelensky from getting, quote, unquote, bullied anyway? Like, are they going to stand in front of them with their arms crossed?

**Nigel** (2:31)
European hitmen are going to stand there to make sure he's treated fairly.
It's such a stupid narrative. Exactly what Marco Rubio said. It's a stupid media narrative that old mags Margaret Brennan bought hook, line and sinker. Now again, she can get away with that stuff when she's talking to some dumb, lower level congressmen, somebody that's not in these meetings. Marco is not only there, he sets up the meetings. He knows what's going on. Here's a little bit more.

**Margaret Brennan** (3:04)
The president told those European leaders last week that he wanted to cease fire. The president went on television, said he would walk out of the meeting if Vladimir Putin didn't agree with them. He said there would be severe consequences if he didn't agree to one. He said he would walk out in two minutes. He spent three hours talking to Vladimir Putin, and he did not get one.

**Marco Rubio** (3:20)
Our goal here is not to stage some production for the world, to say, oh, how dramatic, he walked out. Our goal here is to have a peace agreement, to end this war, okay? And obviously we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase. If not, we wouldn't be having Zelensky flying all the way over here. We wouldn't be having all the Europeans coming all the way over here. Now understand and take with a grain of salt, I'm not saying we're on the verge of a peace deal, but I am saying that we saw movement, enough movement to justify a follow up meeting with Zelensky and the Europeans, enough movement for us to dedicate even more time to this. You talk about the sanctions. Look, at the end of the day, if peace is not going to be possible here, and this is just going to continue on as a war, people will continue to die by the thousands. The president has that option to then come in and impose new sanctions. But if you did this now, the moment the president puts those additional sanctions, that's the end of the talks. You've basically locked in at least another year to year and a half of war and death and destruction. We may unfortunately wind up there, but we don't want to wind up there. We want to wind up with a peace deal that ends this war, so Ukraine can go on with the rest of their lives and rebuild their country and be assured that this is never going to happen again.