Secretary of State Rubio: Not accurate to say we're not engaged with Ukraine

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Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mr. Secretary, first off, congratulations. 99 votes. I guess everyone is behind you.

How does it feel 30 plus days in? Busy. We've been busy. We're doing the work of diplomacy in the State Department. President Trump is not a patient man.

He moved very quickly. He's been given a mandate and he hit the ground running from day one. Going through that, then going through some of the reforms that we're going through on foreign aid and things of that nature. It's a lot of work, but it's been fun. It's been exhilarating.

One thing he said he wanted to do is address the Ukraine-Russia war quickly. We got some news today. First off, it looks like the mineral deal has been done. Can you confirm that? Well, I can't confirm it. Obviously, our Secretary of the Treasury, Besant, is working on that.

He's done a great job of putting that together. So my last indication was that it was very close to the finish line. We were on the, not even the one-yard line. We were like at the half-yard line, almost like when the Eagles pushed the quarterback across.

Tush push thing. So it's close and it's good. Look, it's a good deal. It's an important deal. We still want to end this war. I mean, that's the important thing the President has made very clear. He campaigned on that. If there's a chance to end this war, he wants to pursue it. He views it as a dumb war, a costly war.

It's a meat grinder and it has to stop and we're going to do everything we can, if it's possible, to try to bring it to an end, to a peace that's sustainable. President Zelensky and the President clashed last week. There's no doubt about it. Maybe President Zelensky said some things he shouldn't about the President not being informed and then came back and didn't do the, didn't do the mineral deal, even though the Secretary of Treasury was hoping to leave with it.

So this week is going to be different. It looks like that President Zelensky is going to be here in Washington this week. What can you tell us about that? This is a good deal for Ukraine. I mean, the United States working with them to, you know, after the conflict to be able to utilize their natural resources, not just to pay back the American taxpayer, but to develop the Ukrainian economy. I think it's a great deal for them.

It's the right deal for us. Will there be security guarantees in it? Well, the security guarantees that the United States is now a partner with the Ukrainians and something important. That's going to be making money for us to get paid back for our taxpayers and also Ukraine to build. But what Ukraine needs, people keep using the term security guarantees. What Ukraine needs really is a deterrent.

They need to make it costly for anyone to come after them again in the future. And that can be discussed and it doesn't have to just be America. I mean, the Europeans can be involved in that, but really none of that can be discussed until the war ends. We have to have the war end. And as long as people are being killed, you know, this is a meat grinder and it's a challenging thing because, you know, the Russians have more meat to grind, right?

They're throwing people out there in waves and it's a very, very bloody war. It's a very costly war and it's time for it to come to an end. The president's right. President Trump's right about this.

How much friction is between President Zelensky and President Trump? I don't, you know, people, there's a lot of stuff in the media about it, but in the end of the day, the president's objective is clear. He wants the war to stop. He wants the war to end.

And to do that, you have to have both sides agree to it, right? Now we talked to Zelensky. I think what the president was irritated by, and rightfully so, was this argument that somehow we haven't talked to Ukraine. After President Trump spoke to Putin, which he hadn't spoken to in four years, he picked up the phone.

I was there for both calls. He immediately called Zelensky right away. And then Zelensky met with our treasury secretary. And then he met with me and the vice president.

And then he met with Kellogg. And then, so he has had engagements, constant engagements. I've talked to the foreign minister of Ukraine twice in the last six days. So to say that we're not engaged with them, it's just not accurate. It's not accurate. You sat down in Saudi Arabia and you looked at Lavrov, who's got decades of experience in his position.

You had been there just for a month, even though you got foreign policy experience. What makes you believe that the Russians sincerely want to have this war to end? I don't know. I don't know the answer. What do you think?

Well, I think we're going to test it. We told them, do you guys want to end the war? Do you want to continue? If you want to end the war, we can talk about what it would take to end it from their perspective. If you want to continue on the war, just tell us now. And they agreed to a follow-up where we're going to send, you know, teams of diplomats to meet with theirs to sort of talk about what it would take to end the war. If what they insist on is unrealistic, then we know they're not real about it.

But we have to test that proposition. We need to know, and the president wants to know early in his presidency, are the Russians interested in ending this war or are they not? You know, Donald Trump is a deal maker. President Trump's made deals his entire life. He's not going to get suckered into a bad deal. He's not going to get tricked into endless negotiations. But he does want to be a peacemaker, not just a deal maker, but a peacemaker. And President Trump is testing whether the Russians are serious or not.

So the answer to your question is, we don't know, but we're going to find out. But we know this. It's easier to have a ceasefire than it has to end the conflict. Because you remember in the 90s, we promised if they give up their nuclear weapons, we'd watch their back. That didn't work out. And the 2014 ceasefire, that didn't work out.

They have an invasion in 2022. McCrone just came down and said, I sat for seven hours with Vladimir Putin. And when I left, he totally flipped on everything we discussed and he invaded Ukraine anyway.

How does that make you feel confident that he would ever agree to anything that you could, that'd be sustainable? Well, first of all, with all due respect to President McCrone, he's not President Trump. President Trump is a different person, very different, also represents the United States, which I think is the only country in the world. And President Trump is the only leader in the world that could actually get Putin to agree to a peace.

If it's possible, the only one who can do it is President Trump. So I think there's a big difference there. Again, this is not about having confidence in the Russians.

This is actions. Either they're serious about stopping the war, and we'll know that when we engage them pretty quickly, we'll know. If they're making maximalist demands that they know can't be met, then we know they're not serious about it. But we have to test that, right?

It's the only way you're going to find out if this is possible or not. And we were very clear with the Russians. There was no negotiation.

We didn't sit down over a map and start drawing lines. What we said is, if you're interested, we can't do anything with you. We can't cooperate with you economically.

We can't engage with you on a bunch of other things. But they want that. Well, maybe. We'll find out, right?

I mean, I'm sure they want it, but they can't have it. That can't happen until the war ends. And that was our point.

If you want to have closer cooperation with the United States on a bunch of other issues around the world, both geopolitical and economic, that war has to end. And so we need to test to see how serious they are about it. And that's what we're doing. And that's what the president has asked us to do. And that's what we're going to try to do here. Senator Rubio called Vladimir Putin a thug.

You still feel the same way? But at the end of the day, what we feel about Vladimir Putin is irrelevant to achieving a peace here. What we're trying to do now is get people, we have to be grownups here. We're trying to get people to a negotiating table. You don't get people to a negotiating table like Vladimir Putin by calling them names, by being antagonistic. This is a costly war. It's cost billions of dollars for the United States, billions of dollars for Europe.

Three million Ukrainians no longer living in the country. So this is not a PR thing. This is not a political campaign. This is real world. Every day, this war goes on for another year, like some people say it should. That's thousands of dead people.

So this is real stuff. We have to be serious and mature about it. And in the work of diplomacy, you don't get someone to the table, right? I can't attract someone to sit down at a table and tell us what they're interested in doing about ending a war if we're insulting them.

No matter how we may feel about them, I'm sure they've said very mean things about me, but we want to get this thing done. We want peace. Do you think it was necessary to take out of the UN resolution talk that Russia did invade Ukraine and start this war? So what is the UN? The UN's usefulness is to promote peace, to end wars.

And so I go back to the same point I made. To put a resolution out there that condemns Russia, no matter how people may feel about it, is to basically invite them not to sit at the table, to argue nothing's changed. Why are we going to negotiate with you? We're trying to get them to a negotiating table so we can test whether they're serious or not about peace. And I think anything that's unnecessarily antagonistic is going to keep them from negotiating.

We're going to find out soon enough. But what everyone needs to remember here, the goal here is not to help Russia. The goal here is to end a war that is costing the lives of thousands of people, destroying a country. Every day that goes by, the cost of rebuilding Ukraine gets higher and higher and higher.

Who's going to pay that? But is it worth noting that Ukraine has outstripped everybody's expectations, killed over 800,000. There's been casualties of over 800,000 for the Russians.

They have to bring in North Koreans. They killed just about all of them. There's no dispute. There's no dispute. The Ukrainians have been very brave. They're fighting for their country. They've exceeded everyone's expectations, especially the Biden administration.

They've done incredible stuff. But at the end, what we're trying to point to here is that this war has to come to an end now. We're three years into the thing and it needs to stop. And we can do that and also recognize their bravery. Also, just the Ukrainian parliament just voted to keep President Zelensky present throughout the war.

So the talk of him being a dictator probably isn't accurate, right? Well, ultimately, the bottom line here is that they've got their system of government. They'll have to handle that internally. What we're focused on here is ending the war. That's it. That's all the thing that matters is can we end the war?

Is it possible? If this war doesn't end, then this administration is going to, we're going to go back to Congress and ask for more money for Ukraine. It was hard enough to pass that the last time.

And even the Europeans are telling us they're going to have trouble with it. So we need to bring this thing to an end. Right.

But how it ends would really dictate if it starts again. Absolutely right. It's got to be a sustainable end to the war. I'm Dana Perrino. This week on Perrino on Politics, I'm joined by former GOP strategist and host of The Rich Zeoli Show, Rich Zeoli. Available now on FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Must listen to podcasts from Fox News Audio. Germany had a big election. President Trump congratulated the new presumed leader, although it's going to take months for them to form a government.

His name is Frederick Mertz. And he said this, I would never have thought I would be saying this on TV. But after Donald Trump's remark last week, it is clear that the government does not care much about the fate of Europe. My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that step by step we can really achieve independence from the US. He says in its current form, NATO in its current form is in jeopardy. It's time for the European nations may have to establish an independent European defense capability.

Your reaction? My reaction is NATO is not in jeopardy. The only thing that puts NATO in jeopardy is the fact that we have NATO allies who barely have militaries or whose militaries are not very capable because they've spent 40 years not spending any money on it. We've been NATO and all President Trump has argued is what every president, every American president has argued for the last 30 years and that is these are rich countries. These are rich countries, especially in Western Europe. They have plenty of money. They should be investing that in the national security and they're not. You have countries spending one and a half percent, one percent of their economy and we just can't keep subsidizing that. It's not fair and it's not sustainable. That's what puts NATO in jeopardy is that we don't have allies in some cases. Now others have done it. Poland, Czechia, there's a bunch of countries that have done it but some have not and these are rich countries.

Germany, France, we know this so that has to be fixed. I would also say that you talk about the comments of the new German leader because in the middle of a campaign people say things. I think there's a little bit of hysteria last week. This was after he won.

Okay well there's a lot of hysteria going on you know. But does he miss reading? As far as you're concerned he thinks that the U.S. wants out of Europe, do your own thing.

Is he misreading Donald Trump? We're not saying do your own thing. We're saying do more. It's their continent, right? Why should we not be? Why is it unreasonable for the United States to ask rich European countries to invest more money in their own national security? What can't continue to happen is the United States basically is their security blanket so they only spend two percent on defense and then build up this massive social safety net. Well you know of course they can.

Of course they have universal everything because we've basically been their security. That's not sustainable. It's not a partnership.

That's a dependency and that's not good for Europe either. What a start you've had. 30 plus days you've been to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

In the beginning you got six nations there central and South America. There's a message and it seems to have been our border matters. Let's establish some relationship because we got to get control of our southern border and you got to control yours. What did you walk away with?

What was your message? Well we walked away from the following. All those countries you mentioned in Central America are all migratory routes. That is the route that people take to get to the southern border, right?

They start in the Darien Gap in Panama. They work their way you know sometimes through Costa Rica, oftentimes through Guatemala and El Salvador and they work their way up towards the United States. So our border in many cases when it comes to mass migration begins there.

So we want countries to cooperate in stopping it. In addition a number of these countries, I add Honduras now to the list, a number of these countries have now agreed not just to take back repatriation flights of their own nationals but to take third country. Meaning people from other countries who basically enter the United States illegally we can send them to those countries and they have a choice.

They can go back to their home country or they can go to these countries. These are powerful tools and that's why you're now seeing historically low numbers under President Trump. Do you think it has a lot to do with your visits? Well I think it has a lot to do with President Trump.

It has to do with the fact that people that were coming here realize that this isn't Joe Biden. Under President Trump you're not just going to be able to come in claim asylum and stay forever. And so we are literally in some of these countries, I had a call yesterday one of these countries, they now have people doing u-turns, right? They were on their way here, they realized okay they're not playing around anymore, President Trump is serious and they've done a u-turn. They're trying to go back to their country. We're seeing that happen and that is as a result of President Trump's very clear leadership on migration.

You have an expertise in Central and South America. One area in which you focused on was Venezuela. It's got to be a regime change.

There still isn't. The election was a sham. By Rick Grenell going down there and pulling out hostages which is great and having them take in their citizens is excellent.

Love the result. But are you legitimizing an illegitimate leader? No. A thug down there?

No, no. Venezuela has that regime which is what controls that territory, Venezuela, has an obligation under the law, under international law, under recognized covenants of every law to accept their foreign nationals who are lawfully and illegally in another country. Okay if an American is illegally immigrates to Venezuela or Panama or Costa Rica we have an obligation to take them back if they deport them to us. The same is true and so Rick went down there to basically tell them you need to take these people back and you're going to come get them and they have. They've had they flew to Honduras last week and picked up a bunch of these gang members, trained Aragua gang members and we need you to release these Americans.

And he went down asking you know we thought maybe five he came back with six so that's it. That's what the trip was about and that's what it needs to be because Venezuela, remember Venezuela stopped taking migration flights, deportations because they wanted to blackmail Joe Biden. Donald Trump's not going to be blackmailed. President Trump will not be blackmailed by them and so that's what that trip was about. Maduro should go in your mind still? I continue to believe that he's a horrible dictator who's instilling all kinds of instability. Are you demanding he leave? Well we're going to work on that policy because I'm going to tell you something he is allowing Iran to operate out of Venezuela, he's allowing the Chinese to operate out of Venezuela, he's threatening his neighbors in the region, he has flooded us with gang members, flooded us with these trained Aragua gang members that are in this country doing terrible things. Why would we want something like that to be there? We're not going to discuss publicly what our work's going to be in that regard but he remains the same threat today that he was two years ago, three years ago, four years ago.

That's going to have to be dealt with. Have we allowed over decades China to make their way into Central and South America? Is Panama an example of that? Yes. We've just not put enough attention in our own backyard. Is that what you heard when you went there?

It is. I mean a couple things, they're corruption, right? The previous president, two presidents ago, those people are all wrapped up in a web of corruption. In fact he's standing trial in Panama now for that. So they bought their way like they've done in many parts and you wake up one day and realize they control both of the ports of entry to the Panama Canal, they control the cranes, they have a huge presence there and I'm very happy that after our visit, I think the same day I was there, Panama became the first country in Latin America in the western hemisphere to get out of the Belt and Road Initiative and I think there'll be more news coming up soon with regards to Panama, all positive for America. Our admiral who runs southcom was down there last week signed the cyber security agreement with them because the cyber vulnerability of the canal is also very serious. You guys had a very good special on Fox Nation about the Panama Canal and the threats you imposed there. So I think that this is something you're going to see a lot more news on in the next few months. We go down there and we make demands but they also look at us I hear and you tell me and say where have you been?

You know there was a gap. We need aid and you have not really paid much attention. Yeah well do you plan on addressing there is there a comprehensive policy to get China out and be more attentive? Well the good news about both Costa Rica and Panama is they don't need aid.

They really don't need I mean they want to partner with training like they want us to help train their police forces and things of that nature but these are not recipient countries for the most part. They're very pro-American. You got in the president of Panama you know we've got a problem with the canal situation. He's a pro-American president. President Costa Rica is a pro-American president. President Bukele in El Salvador pro-American president. We had a good meeting with the president of Guatemala. The president of the Dominican Republic pro-American president. So what I would say is what we haven't done is we haven't paid attention to pro-American allies in the region.

We've almost ignored them and in some cases we've even punished them. We've had administrations like the Biden administration that criticized Bukele and called him a dictator and all kinds of things like that when he's actually pro-American. And the biggest joke is Brazil where this Lula is a criminal convicted criminal. He's leading that country.

Bolsonaro who is pro-west and pro-US seems to be looking a looming arrest and that has allowed China to get a foothold there but I want to talk about what else you did and what the president did. He's declared MS-13 and TDA terrorist now and these cartels. Correct. Terrorist networks. Does that allow us to go after them like we do al-Qaeda and ISIS? That allows us to obviously we have to cooperate with the countries that we're working. We've been working very closely with Mexico. We want them to do more. I know Pete's been talking to them.

We're going to have meetings with them later this week as well. We'd like to work with Mexico to go after these cartels because they're a threat to the Mexican government not just to us and some of that work's already happening. In the case of train de agua this is a vicious one of the most vicious criminal gangs in the world.

Right. Okay these guys from the military we had them in Guantanamo. We sent them to Guantanamo. Guantanamo to Honduras.

The Venezuelan regime picked them up from there. These guys in Guantanamo the military police are saying these are some of the toughest people. They're tougher than the al-Qaeda guys in the prisons. Well you have KSM and all these other guys. Yeah these guys are even tougher than those guys. They're even worse than those guys. They're very dangerous gang.

We've seen it in our streets. So you need permission from their government to take them out. I don't think we were asking Yemen, Sudan, Syria if we have to take out ISIS and al-Qaeda in the country. We just hit them right? The United States has a right to defend its national interest at every point.

If our national security is being threatened it doesn't matter where it's coming from we have a right. We're doing it but we never did that before. Well but what we want is we want to work with the Mexicans.

We want to work with them to go after because they're on the ground. What have they told you Mr. Secretary? Look we're going to find out. I mean so far there's good signs. There's some good things we've never seen before. We've seen the numbers at the border come down. We want them to do more but they've deployed what 14,000 of their national guard to their border. We've provided them information about certain cartel leaders and they've gone after them but you know we got to keep this going. This isn't like a one week or one month thing.

We got to make sure this is enduring. Everyone who's decided that it matters to them who cares about drugs coming across our border, fentanyl coming across our border knows the precursors are in China. They could stop in a second.

They go to Mexico to the cartels and they come across our border and Mexico blames us for wanting to begin with. That to me is a non-starter. I don't know about you. So how do we stop this? China could stop it tomorrow. Well they could and a couple things. The Chinese would tell you if you were with them here today they'd say well we don't have a drug problem.

What do we care about precursors? They're not drugs right but they could stop it if they wanted to. You have to wonder in some cases is this a deliberate thing? Like are they flooding us with fentanyl?

Like their own version of the opium war. In reverse right and are they doing this on purpose? You know you have to wonder. I mean I'm just saying. But do you really wonder or do you know? Well we can't prove that they're doing it on purpose but boy it looks like it.

It really does. I mean they know these guys are operating and they don't. I think they're holding it over our head too right. They're saying well we'll help you with this if you don't put tariffs or you don't do something else but we can do more. So as an example when I was in Guatemala we've trained their police department. It was one of the waivers I issued on foreign aid and we've trained their police department to spot the precursors because one of the ways they do it is they bring it through Guatemala and then up into the United States and into the labs in Mexico that are making these pills and the Guatemalans themselves we've trained them and equipped them to be able with our DEA to be able to identify the precursors and pull them out. I'd much rather disrupt it there than when they're in the lab already in Mexico.

It's almost too late. So these are good things that we want to continue to do but look at the end we're being flooded. It's coming through there and it's also coming through the border with Canada. You've called China the most dangerous near-peer adversary the U.S. has faced ever. So we need concrete steps to face off with them who clearly are building up their military to face off with us as sophisticated as possible. What is your plan? And they have told us by 2027 they're taking Taiwan. Daily incursions. What could you do about it? How committed is you and the President of the United States to defending Taiwan?

Well a couple points. The first is there's three things we have to do when it comes to look China's going to be a rich and powerful country no matter what we do that's what we're going to have to deal with that but we have to deal with the reality what we cannot have as a world where China is so powerful we depend on them and that's right now where we're headed unfortunately that's going to change it's going to change under President Trump. Number one is we have to have our own domestic capability if you don't want to depend on China you better be able to make it for yourself and we've allowed way too many industries to fall into the hands of the Chinese everything from rare earth minerals to pharmaceuticals we have to have a domestic capacity and it's one of the ideas behind the tariffs that the President is pursuing writ large that's why people say we'll only put tariffs on China well that's not enough because China has factories in other countries all over the world and they flood us with those products that's so we have to have our own domestic capacity. Number two is we have to have we have to be present in the Indo-Pacific they're trying to drive us out we have a strong relationship we are a Pacific nation we are and so we have relationships in the Pacific and we're not going to abandon those Japan South Korea you mentioned Taiwan we have a long-standing position on Taiwan that we're not going to abandon and that is we are against any forced compelled coercive change in the status of Taiwan that's been our position since the late 1970s and that continues to be our position and that's not going to change and then the third is you know and it's outside the purview of this department at state but we have to have military capabilities that allow us to respond to the threat that China's posing and we need to be concerned we have our aircraft manufacturing our ship manufacturers they are not keeping pace China can build 10 ships before we can build one that's a very serious vulnerability that cannot continue and obviously I know Pete has a plan for that and the President has a plan for that and they're working on it and if there's uh if you get woken up at two o'clock in the morning to this morning and it is we we have reason to believe that China is taking Taiwan right now what does America do well America has existing commitments that it has made to prevent that from happening and to react to it and that would be executed on and that's those are the standing and the Chinese are aware of this as well but but again let's hope that doesn't happen and the best way to prevent that from happening is to have the capability a strong leader in the White House which we have President Trump and the capability military capability to respond if the Chinese know we have the ability to respond then they may do that if they know we don't have the capability to respond or we have a weak leader and they may test it and we just don't want to get to that point it would be a terrible thing for the world and it would be a bad thing for China too by the way and I know we got to go but you're let will you say that to your counterpart in China well we have and they know that's our position you know they're mad you only have the job for 30 days I know but we've I spoken to the foreign minister one time you know and and I think we've made clear what I said is China's gonna we have to have relations with China we're not saying we don't we have to they're a nuclear power they're the second largest economy in the world the second most populous country in the world so we have to deal with them but that maybe most populous maybe I don't know them in India are pretty close but we have to have a relationship with them however it has to be a balanced relationship it cannot be one where they become dominant because then we are going to have a conflict and we don't want that we'll be bad for the world we bad for the world and I think the best way to avoid that is a strong America which is what we're getting under President Trump I'm Dana Perino this week on Perino on politics I'm joined by executive vice president at targeted victory matt gorman available now on foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts must listen to podcasts from fox news audio listen to the show ad free on fox news podcast plus on apple podcast amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts you