FRANKLIN FOER: I want to play Lindsey Graham's reaction to today's spat.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The question for me for the Ukrainian people, I don't know if Zelenskyy can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States.

Either he dramatically changes or you need to get somebody new.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, Nancy, where does this leave Zelenskyy?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, look, it's unusual for -- we would take offense if another leader came and said you need to change your leadership, right?

We have elections and we ask to be respected.

And so I think in some ways that kind of helped Zelenskyy having a U.S. senator say that you need to change your leadership.

But he goes back to Ukraine without the very thing that he came to get, and so he is politically damaged.

Now, does that mean that there's a change in leadership?

Maybe not.

But he goes in having to now plea with his European partners for support.

He is not has strength as I think he hoped he would be at such a critical time in the war.

But I don't know that they change leadership right away, but perhaps this is the first domino to fall as we start to see changes in Ukraine.

Now having said that, under Ukrainian law, you can't have elections during wartime.

And so, technically, he stays in place, but is he hurt politically, particularly with the war going not as well as Ukraine would like, and facing bigger threats from Russia, very likely so.

PETER BAKER: I think it's important to remember that the people who have been agitating for change and leadership in Ukraine are in Moscow.

FRANKLIN FOER: Right.

PETER BAKER: This has been the Russian line for a while now, and Trump has adopted it.

He came in with his dictators without elections line, which Kremlin playbook.

In fact, Zelenskyy was elected in 2019.

They have not had elections because they are in a war zone, martial law situation, but his approval rating, not 4 percent, like Trump said it was, it's actually 57 percent, which is higher than Trump's.

And I think after this actually probably does rally people to his side in a sense of national, you know, taking offense at the way the president treated him there.

JONATHAN KARL: Well, in the context here of the U.N. vote earlier this week, so the U.N. General Assembly, you know, resolution condemning the Russian invasion on the anniversary of the invasion to see the United States as one of just 14 countries to vote against that, to be with Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Russia.

I mean, even China didn't vote against it.

China abstained.

It feels like we're seeing a fundamental realignment here of United States policy towards Europe and towards Russia.

FRANKLIN FOER: How much closer is Ukraine to collapse tonight after everything that's transpired?

NANCY YOUSSEF: You mean on the battlefield?

FRANKLIN FOER: Yes, does this weekend -- I mean, Ukraine this obviously weekend.

Will armed shipments continue to Ukraine?

I know that's been a question in some of the reporting.

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, right, there's been threats by the Trump administration to suspend it.

Right now, we haven't had weapons going through, not every sort of document has been signed to have those shipments go through the ones that were approved by the Biden administration.

And so whether that will resume at some point remains unclear.

This seemed to have damaged it.

In terms of the war, the war goes on.

Despite everything we've seen today, the war goes on.

And we're not closer to stopping it.

And, in fact, I think what you're going to see is Ukraine depending more on Europe in shipments of weapons to resume.

I think there's a threat that they might have to cease, lose some of that territory, ironically, some of the territory that holds the very minerals that the U.S. was seeking.

And in the longer term, they might have to revert to things like irregular warfare to sustain the fight.

There are some practical challenges.

I don't think either Europe or anyone else can replace the ammunition shortages that we're seeing.

So, they're going to have to make adjustments on the battlefield, but the war continues.

And I think that's a really important part, that despite everything we've seen.

This does not get us any closer to the outcome that everybody said they wanted, which is an end to the war.

FRANKLIN FOER: What Jon just described was this massive realignment that's happening, and you've had Europeans coming here all week, trying to essentially stop that from happening, and in order to get there to be some American backstop.

And we've watched in the aftermath of today the way the Europeans have essentially rallied to Zelenskyy's defense.

Does it feel like the transatlantic alliance just today crossed some sort of definitive threshold?

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, let's just go back to Trump's first term where it felt like the transatlantic alliance was uncomfortable, was nervous.

There was always this sense that Trump was going to blow up NATO or rip up Article 5.

But there was a sense that they could just wait him out and that this whole, in their view, sort of fever dream nightmare would end after four years.

And then Biden is elected.

I was on Biden's first trip abroad where he literally sort of says America is back, right?

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

Trump has now won again.

It's his second term in many ways.

I view it almost like a third term because he lost the White House.

He was at Mar-a-Lago, but he was never really out of power among the Republican Party, certainly, and not even really out of the discussion, right?

So, he's back again.

And I think what you are seeing, and not just today, but even after J.D.

Vance's -- Vice President Vance's speech in Munich, is a sense that this is what it is.

This is the realignment in Europeans are going to have to respond accordingly in a world where they no longer believe they can count on America as an ally.

JONATHAN KARL: You know what's interesting, in the first Trump term, He had a lot of the rhetoric upset our European allies, his rhetoric towards Russia, you know, saying he trusted Vladimir Putin more than U.S. intelligence agencies, the fact that he raised questions about whether or not he would respect Article 5, whether or not he would withdraw troops from Germany, which he floated.

But the actual policy was actually, you know, very tough on Russia, largely led by people like Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, Jim Mattis while he was defense secretary.

What's different here is the rhetoric is the same rhetoric that upset our European allies the first time around, but the policies seem to be going in the direction of the rhetoric.

ASHLEY PARKER: And also just going back to that I spent so much time covering Vice President Pence in the first term where Pence was always dispatched to Eastern Europe to reassure the allies that what Trump was saying wasn't actually going to happen.

Now, compare that with J.D.

Vance who challenges Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and who goes to Munich to deliver the exact opposite message.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, Peter, where does Ukraine go from here?

I mean, what steps can he plausibly take to salvage his position?

PETER BAKER: I mean, he tried to smooth it over a little bit after he left the White House.

He put out a social media post saying, thank you to America, thank you to the president, thank you for your support, the words that J.D.

Vance felt he hasn't said enough.

He went on Fox News and basically said similar things.

He didn't apologize.

He did say he regretted and was sorry about the exchange, and we'll see.

Look, Trump isn't -- JONATHAN KARL: He didn't say he regretted his part of that exchange.

PETER BAKER: No, that's right.

JONATHAN KARL: He regretted the exchange.

PETER BAKER: I think that, yes, Trump is a volatile guy, right?

And we see with Trump that you can - - you know, he can yell at you one day and then they can pretend it never happened the next, right?

Just last week he said, well, this guy's a dictator.

When we asked him yesterday, or it was yesterday, he said, did I say that?

You know, so he's able to move on in ways that sometimes, you know, other presidents might not be able to.

But he's got it in for this guy.

He just doesn't like him, and he hasn't liked him really for five years, six years now.

It's not just this day.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And I think what we're seeing under this administration is that the policy is driven by those personalities, that if the president likes someone, then America likes them.

If he doesn't like that person, then the United States doesn't like them.

And so that's one of the biggest challenges in terms of trying to repair this.

FRANKLIN FOER: But, Ashley, in terms of Trump's psyche and all of his tendencies, does this feel like a beef that is just etched in stone now?

It's -- ASHLEY PARKER: It feels like a big beef, definitely, right, like the gauntlet has been thrown.

But to Peter's point, again, Trump is so -- as Lindsey Graham often says, Trump likes anyone who likes him.

So, there's a world in which if Zelenskyy could sort of just utterly supplicate himself and kiss the ring, it seems like, frankly, Zelenskyy doesn't have that in him.

You know, as a wartime president who can't accept a deal that just gives Russia all the Ukrainian land that they seized, you know, it's understandable.

But I don't know -- it may be irreparable, but I don't know that it inherently is.

And the last thing that hasn't come up, but I just can't help but think of how this might have gone at least a little differently had all the cameras.

Now, I've been there, and again, that is Trump's way, that's what he likes, but you could have seen this discussion if -- I mean, J.D.

Vance even turns to Zelenskyy and says, you're litigating this in front of the cameras.

Well, to be fair to Zelenskyy, who invited all those cameras into the Oval Office?

But it felt like by the end, and, again, as Peter points out, it starts off tense, contentious, but not quite that.

But when you have the cameras there, I mean, it reminded me, this betrays my age, but of like Jerry Springer Oval Office edition, right?

And once it goes off the rails, then everyone wants to put in their poi and I'll insult the next person and there's no way it was going to end without him getting kicked out of the Oval Office and no lunch for him, right?

That's a T.V.

figure.

That's not a diplomacy figure.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, more recently than Jerry Springer, I mean, when Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were in the Oval Office with Trump and it ended up in a big blow up and a government shutdown that went on some days and eventually some time and eventually Trump had to back down.

FRANKLIN FOER: Do you think -- PETER BAKER: Even that wasn't as nasty though.

It was really striking.

FRANKLIN FOER: In the Fox News interview, it was striking that Zelenskyy decided not to apologize, that he made that strategic decision not to do it.

What do you think his calculation is?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, look, Trump might have seen an apology as a show of weakness.

I'm not sure it necessarily would have worked.

But it was striking.

And Bret Baier in that interview gave him multiple opportunities, you sure you don't want to -- you know, I mean, really gave him the opportunity.

But, look, but Trump does switch on a dime on this stuff sometimes.

I mean, look at the way he dealt with Kim Jong-un, you know, fire and fury, and then suddenly -- but one key point there is, Kim Jong-un did write him essentially love letters.

I don't know if you've seen them.

I've read those letters.

PETER BAKER: Everybody's had them.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, you know -- FRANKLIN FOER: There's an epistolary solution here.

PETER BAKER: The janitor in the West Wing has read those letters.

FRANKLIN FOER: Nancy, I just want -- the Kremlin is expressing unabashed glee.

Dmitry Medvedev tweeted this tonight, that the insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.

I mean, it does feel like the Russians are essentially living their best life right now.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, look, after what happened today, they are in a stronger position.

Where is the pathway where you can see an alliance between the U.S. and Europe and Ukraine?

You're seeing a division at a very time when they are making advances and pushing into Ukraine.

And so for them to see that division led by the United States, I think, if you're Russia, really signaled the thing that they've been trying to do from the beginning.

Remember what Putin said.

We can just wait out this alliance.

And maybe this week indicated that they were onto that something.

FRANKLIN FOER: Peter, you wrote a superb piece titled, in Trump's Washington, a Moscow-like chill takes hold.

What does today say about America and where it's headed?

PETER BAKER: Well, this is the irony, right?

We're talking about.

Putin in terms of foreign policy, but that piece was about domestic policy.

That piece was meant to say that a lot of the things we're seeing in Washington right now remind me anyway of what it was like in the early years of Putin's time in Moscow.

My wife, Susan Glasser, and I were there for those first few years.

You're seeing the chill, the takeover of the press, the intimidation of people, and the fear among people who don't support the president.

FRANKLIN FOER: We need to leave it there for now.

Thanks to our panelists and our viewers for joining us.