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Ukraine Agrees To U.S. Proposal For Immediate 30-Day Ceasefire; U.S. Stocks Plunge As Trump Threatens New Tariffs; Musk Admits "Great Difficulty" In Juggling Responsibilities; Trump And Musk Appear At White House Amid Market Turmoil. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired March 11, 2025 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:41]

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Hello. And to -- our welcome to our viewers all around the world. I'm Erica Hill joining you from New York this afternoon. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

We begin with the breaking new, a potential breakthrough to ending the three-year war between Russia and Ukraine. U.S. officials say Ukraine has agreed now to an American proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire. It also comes with an immediate resumption of aid and intelligence sharing.

This follows more than eight hours of negotiations in Saudi Arabia today, again also announcing that this would immediately lift that pause on intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine. The U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says the next move here in the peace process belongs to Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We'll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes. That they'll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court.

And -- but again, the president's objective here is number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end. And I think today, Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Our international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, joining me now from London.

This is quite the development today, obviously, Nic. How much surprise was there that when they came out, this was the announcement that, in fact, we heard from Secretary Rubio and from Mike Waltz?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah, I think yes, on the one hand surprise, but perhaps not because Ukraine was in a very difficult position. They needed to get the resumption in the immediate terms of the military aid and the intelligence sharing. I think it's an important caveat here that Mike Waltz said that that what Ukraine will get is, is what is in the current scope of the PDA, what's in the pipeline that was authorized by the president right now?

It seems to indicate the potential that this tap could be turned off again in the future. I think it's very significant that President Zelenskyy has -- has -- has said very clearly that Ukraine wants this. It accepts it. It sees it as the way forward.

But now, he says it's up to the United States to convince Russia, he said. And as soon as they do, then the guns will go silent. Then, then, then we can have this 30-day ceasefire. It's light on detail as well. Mike Waltz said that this will -- you know, what was discussed was providing the guarantees for prosperity in Ukraine and what Ukraine has really wanted are the guarantees for security.

Are the two entwined? Possibly so, because we heard in the communique there that both President Zelenskyy and Trump have instructed their officials to move forward with the mineral deal, which would give the United States commercial interests on the ground, potentially with a desire to protect them.

But all of this is sort of speculation. And -- and it would also be speculative to begin to wonder how this can be put in place so quickly and who would oversee a ceasefire. You know, what sort of group might do that? How many, how many people would it take to do that?

All of those very big and deep and difficult to answer questions and potentially for -- for further stages of negotiations. But very clearly, Ukraine and the United States have now positioned this, that Ukraine is on board for the ceasefire and the focus is on Russia and getting Russia on board. And that may take more than an eight-hour meeting, which is what happened in Jeddah today.

HILL: Yeah, understandably. And one would imagine that this is maybe not -- even if Russia were to be on board, it is not something that Vladimir Putin would want to jump on too quickly, if nothing else, but for perhaps to make people wait it out a little bit, give that pause.

You know, as you mentioned, Nic, you talk about the comments from -- from Mike Waltz talking about the long term prosperity, I'd written down and listening to that, too. He said that there was a discussion permanently ending the war, but also including guarantees for, in his words here, long term security and prosperity. And that word stood out to me because, as you point out, Ukraine has said very clearly for so long as we have heard from European leaders, security guarantees are going to be essential here.

I wonder if we'll hear that word more, if maybe in some ways that was a slip of the tongue.

ROBERTSON: It's not clear. Look, I mean, what Ukraine wants in terms of security guarantees in its ideal world is something that's utterly unpalatable to Russia. They want to be admitted to NATO, which President Trump said that's not about to happen anytime soon.

[[15:05:04]

So the fallback position is that they would that would have something that approximates to that, because to get the peace that they want, lasting, durable peace that recognizes Ukrainian sovereignty, all the words that we've heard, they have to be able to -- to have a position on the ground backed by the United States, Europeans and others that will deter Putin from having another go at taking more of Ukraine.

And when it comes to Russian negotiations, Russians are very, very skillful at negotiations, have attended many that they've been involved in, not least Minsk 2, which was 2015, and the last time that there was a negotiation that Russia was involved in over the future of Ukraine, they're very hard to pin down. They have a very maximalist position. They don't budge from it. They try to force other concessions.

What's happened in conversations that have gone on behind the scenes about this, that may have laid some of the groundwork. We don't know.

It was interesting, though, today that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitored the last ceasefire in Ukraine, their chief was in Moscow today. So the timing of that is quite interesting, and it perhaps hints that they would be part of a monitoring group potentially on the ground. Russia has worked with them before. They've worked with Russia and at times they found it very threatening and dangerous because when they were on the Russian part of the control, part of the territory, if you will.

So, even that relationship is not an easy one and not a given one. And what is clear to me is there is a lot of work that needs to be to be done. And on the security question, to provide that security that Ukraine wants, it is -- it is, in its simplest terms, deterring Russia from attacking Ukraine ever again. And that's a pretty high bar.

HILL: Yeah, yeah, it certainly is. And we know -- we know the understandable skepticism, skepticism that exists for Ukraine given -- given what came out of Minsk, for example.

Nic, really appreciate it as always. Thank you.

I also want to bring in now my colleague Alex Marquardt, who's joining us from Jeddah.

From there, where these talks have wrapped up just a short time ago. So coming out, Alex, walk us through. I know you had questioned Secretary Rubio initially after they came out and made those remarks about this proposal.

Was this a proposal from Ukraine or from the United States ultimately?

ALEXANDER MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think this was one of the biggest surprises in that we heard Secretary Rubio saying that he was going to come here and listen to the Ukrainians. And then we kind of got the sense that they would take those ideas to the Russians and try to bridge the gap. Instead what happened is, is the U.S. essentially took this position from Ukraine, that there should be what the Ukrainians said should be a partial ceasefire. And the U.S. said, in fact, we want it to be a complete ceasefire immediately along the entire front line. All of the guns should fall silent. It shouldn't be just a question of

long range missiles or an end to the fighting in the Black Sea, which is what Ukraine had proposed. And so I was trying to get a sense from Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, of how this proposal had essentially morphed. And what they said was this was essentially our stance is that in order for there to be a more comprehensive peace deal to be negotiated, there has to be an end to the fighting.

And so they want this to go into effect immediately. And they said very clearly, the onus is now on the Russians. The ball is in the Russian court. And so, we are seeing a bit more of an aggressive tack being taken here by the Americans towards the Russians. The -- the Russians have been taking a very firm line in terms of not really providing any, any concessions or at least not seeming to want to. So it will be very interesting to see what the Russians say in response to this.

We do know that Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, is heading to Moscow later this week. Whether he meets with President Putin and gives him the proposal, then remains to be seen.

The other big part, the other big news here, Erica, is that lifting of the pause of the military and intelligence assistance that is vitally needed by the Ukrainians. This will come as a huge relief. We thought perhaps that is something that could have happened coming out of this meeting, perhaps in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. Instead, it is going to be immediately lifted.

So a real win for the Ukrainians on both those fronts. And now a lot more pressure on Moscow to respond to this formidable insistence by the U.S. that there should be an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine -- Erica.

HILL: What is behind -- I'm not sure if you know, Alex. So, my apologies for putting you on the spot. But in terms of this shift, in some ways, in posture, we saw slightly different comments from President Trump right over the last couple of days toward Russia. And even what we are seeing today, the fact that were hearing from Marco Rubio saying the only the only way to end this right is with Russia and saying, now well know what the impediment is. Basically, the ball is in Russia's court here.

[15:10:02]

Is it as much of a shift as it seems publicly?

MARQUARDT: It is an evolution. And I think it remains to be seen how much of a shift it is. Of course, there has been widespread criticism of the Trump administration from the Ukrainians, from the Europeans, from Democrats, that too many concessions were being given by Trump to the Russians.

They had ruled out, for example, American troops in Ukraine, ruled out NATO membership. They had -- for Ukraine. They had had that meeting with the Russians a few weeks ago. So, it seemed like the approach towards the Russians was a bit more of

a carrot than a stick. But you're absolutely right, Erica. In the past few days, we have seen a tougher approach, a bit more of that stick.

We heard President Trump talking about the possibility of tariffs and sanctions against Russia. That's something we hadn't really heard him talking about before. Now we're hearing Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz saying the onus is on Russia, that they will be the impediment to peace if they don't accept this.

So it does appear right now, Erica. And, of course, these things are incredibly fluid, as we've seen in the past few weeks, that Ukraine is getting back into the good graces of Washington and the Trump administration after that extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office. And now the pressure is being put on Russia.

But I think we really need to see how the next few days play out. This message we're told about this ceasefire is going to be communicated at a number of different levels by all those top Trump administration officials to their Russians, their counterparts. So the spotlight really is on Moscow to see how they respond to this, Erica.

HILL: Yeah, absolutely. And we'll be watching intently. Alex, really appreciate it. Good to have you there on the ground. Thank you.

Also with me this hour, Kevin Liptak joining us, of course, with more reaction when it comes to what were hearing from the White House, joining us from Washington now.

Has the White House weighed in at this point?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, I'll tell you, the president is on the south lawn right now kicking the tires on a Tesla, which is a whole separate thing. But he brought up this Ukraine issue on his own. He said that there was a ceasefire. He said it was just agreed to a little while ago.

And he says hopefully, Russia will agree to it. And I think this part is interesting. He was asked whether Zelenskyy, who he had that oval office fracas with about two weeks ago, would be invited back to the White House. And he said, sure, absolutely. And so I think that's pretty notable.

You know, in that press conference, Rubio and Waltz were asked whether the relationship between these two presidents, which had seemed to bottom out after that incident in the Oval Office, could be improved. And Rubio essentially punted. He said that this isn't about, you know, drama queens. It's not about the relationship between these two presidents that it is really about peace and that they were not focused necessarily on these interpersonal ties between the two men, even though members of Trump's own administration had suggested that Zelenskyy may need to step down because he was not in a good position to communicate and to liaise with the current American administration.

But now, Trump is saying that, yes, Zelenskyy would be offered an invitation back to the White House, which I think is notable. You know, this relationship had really bottomed out. It had been, you

know, so essential, I think, for them to have a good meeting. And that just didn't happen. But obviously, Zelenskyy put out this message last Tuesday saying that he regretted what happened. President Trump took that very well. In fact, his own advisers likened it to an apology. It was not actually an apology, but certainly it was to Zelenskyy's own advantage that they interpreted it that way.

And now Trump seems to be very ready to put that relationship back on track. I think the bigger question, perhaps, is how he approaches Putin, as Putin is now put on the spot to try to either accept the terms of this ceasefire or come up with his own plan that would be acceptable to Trump for this war to end.

And so that, I think, will be perhaps the more important relationship going forward, as Trump applies his own sets of pressure on the Kremlin and on Moscow to accept the terms of this cease fire.

HILL: Yeah, absolutely. Kevin, really appreciate it. Thank you.

Stay with us. If you're just joining us, of course, we are following the breaking news out of Saudi Arabia. This news of an agreement announced by the U.S. with Ukraine, an agreement to end the war. We'll see if Russia can get on board.

Much more on the other side of this break. Stay with us. You're watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:17:27]

HILL: I'll bring you back to our breaking news at this hour. A potential breakthrough to ending the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. According to a joint statement from Washington and Kyiv, Ukraine has agreed to a U.S. proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire. Here's a little bit more of what we heard from the U.S. national security advisor just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE WALTZ, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: The Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear that they share President Trump's vision for peace. They share his determination to end the fighting, to end the killing, to end the tragic kind of meat grinder of people and national treasure that's happening on the front in Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Joining us now to discuss, Oleksiy Goncharenko, who's a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

It's good to have you with us. I mean, first of all, just your reaction to this.

OLEKSIY GONCHARENKO, UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER: Great, great news. I hope that all of this will go to the result. We need peace in Ukraine. We are not ready for any surrender, but we really need peace.

And now, we will see a true face of Putin because Putin doesn't want any peace. And now the hard part starts because now the Putin should be pressured, pressured and leveraged to get to a real negotiation table to stop fighting, to stop shooting right now.

But I hope that President Trump will succeed, to pressure him and to make him to accept this.

HILL: To your -- to your point about the hard part beginning now that pressure will be on Putin will be on Russia. Are you concerned about some of that, though, coming back on Ukraine as this deal is hammered out?

GONCHARENKO: What for? What's the reason? Rubio, Waltz are absolutely clear. Ukraine is ready for peace. We are following our American partners in this.

So what for to pressure us? And very good news for Ukraine that military support and intelligence sharing is not on pause anymore. So it restarts. It's very important. And it's, by the way, the only way to really press Putin because he understands only the language of force.

HILL: How important do you think that part of this -- of this agreement is when it comes to putting more pressure on Vladimir Putin, the fact that aid and intelligence sharing -- that pause will be ended immediately?

GONCHARENKO: It's super important because, as I told you, he understands only the language of force. And I think that President Trump should be ready not just to restore it, but to increase the support if he really wants to make to make Putin to agree on this, because I think Putin will now do everything he can to prolong, to win some time and all this stuff. And he shouldn't be given this time.

HILL: So do you think there should be then a timeline, a deadline almost put on this for Putin?

GONCHARENKO: Absolutely. I think it should be. I think it should be given some time. Okay. You need several days. I don't know, one week, but not something you will think about it for months. In other case, it's nonsense. So it should be just a days in which Russia should agree. And if not, then it should be everything. More sanctions, seizure of Russian assets, finally giving more weapons to Ukraine. It was only such language Putin understands.

HILL: Oleksiy Goncharenko really appreciate you joining us. Thank you.

GONCHARENKO: Thank you.

HILL: We are also following breaking news out of Canada today after back and forth tariff threats and tariffs that frankly sent markets sharply lower today. The U.S. commerce secretary and the premier of Ontario now say they

will meet on Thursday to renegotiate the free trade treaty, known as the USMCA.

Ontario is also suspending an electricity surcharge to three U.S. states, this after President Donald Trump threatened to double tariffs on aluminum and steel in just one social media post. The U.S. president has made some of his more extraordinary threats, yet vowing to double those tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50 percent starting at midnight, also talking about shutting down the Canadian auto industry and once again calling for Canada to be the 51st state.

Well, you can see how investors reacted to all of this. Not favorably. Canada is responding as well. The head of the Canadian province of Ontario has, in just the past few minutes, offered to put some retaliatory measures, as I noted on pause.

Here's a little bit more of what the premier of Ontario said in just the last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUG FORD, PREMIER OF ONTARIO: Well, just a little while ago, I had an opportunity to speak to Secretary Lutnick, and Secretary Lutnick has sent out an olive branch to us to come down and immediately meet with him, meet with the whole trade administration and discuss the future, rather than waiting until April 2nd, threats going back and forth, tit for tat. I've agreed to suspend temporarily, and we always have that tool in our toolkit until we sit down. And over the next day or two, I'll be heading down to Washington, along with Dominic LeBlanc, and we'll have a good discussion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Now, meantime, the White House says whatever the market reaction, President Trump will be unwavering when it comes to facing down Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: President Trump believes in reciprocity, and it is about dang time that we have a president who actually looks out for the interest of American business and workers. And all he's asking for at the end of the day are fair and balanced trade practices, and unfortunately, Canada has not been treating us very fairly at all over the past several decades.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Matt Egan joins me now with more to discuss.

I mean, the whiplash continues at this point, Matt. Given where we stand, we just heard form the premier, from Doug Ford there, what does this mean practically speaking moving forward?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Erica, don't blink because you're going to miss another major development in this trade war. It feels like on almost hourly basis, there's another tariff that is threatened, there's retaliation that is readied, and there's negotiations. I mean, it's really hard to keep track off.

Thankfully, we're finally getting some signs of de-escalation, right? The fact that the premier of Ontario was coming out and saying that he's to meet with commerce secretary that they're going to talk about the USMCA trade agreement and a renegotiation there, and that they're suspending this 25 percent surcharge on electricity sent to three U.S. states.

That, of course, is very good news. And we did see the market respond favorably. The market is down. The Dow is off by around 250 points, but it is near the highest levels of the day on these headlines around the latest between the U.S. and Canada. You can see there, down about 0.6 percent. No rebound though, from yesterday's very steep sell off, which wiped almost 900 points out of the Dow.

So investors really do remain very focused on the trade war, on tariffs. I talked to market veteran Art Hogan and he said to me, he said, look, this market is just blatantly sick and tired of the back and forth on trade policy. He said it feels as though the administration continues to move the goalposts.

And of course, the issue here for investors is they're trying to understand where company costs are going to be and where the companies are going to be able to put their prices, but they don't know the answer because no one knows where tariffs are going to be.

The same issue, of course, for small business owners who are trying to manage through this crisis. You know, they're having a hard time just keeping up with the latest developments, let alone planning how to navigate the tariffs themselves.

So look, it's good news. Of course, that there's some better relations here between the U.S. and Canada for the moment. But look, the uncertainty remains and it feels as though we're going to end the day with really more questions than answers at this point -- Erica.

HILL: Yeah, absolutely. And I know there were some questions at the White House press briefing a short time ago. There have been questions of the White House about whether this is starting to maybe influence at all President Trump's decisions, given what we're seeing in the stock market. It does not seem to be, Matt.

EGAN: Well, that's right. I mean, one would have thought that maybe after yesterday's steep drop in the market, that the president would take a different approach when it comes to tariffs, but that was not the case, right? I mean, he came out this morning on Truth Social threatening, this massive escalation with Canada by making tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum go up to 50 percent.

So it doesn't seem as though he's ready to back down at all on that front. And the White House is arguing that the president's not really looking at the stock market. We know that during his first administration, he looked at the stock market very closely as kind of a real time barometer of his success, even though markets are very fickle, right? Sometimes, they're very short term focused.

They -- they're not really the way you should be managing the economy. But the message from the market in the last few days has been that investors just don't like all of this uncertainty and chaos, and -- and they need clarity. I do wonder, though, if you saw a few more days of steep losses in the market. No rebound.

At some point, I think the White House would have to pay attention to that, because even though the market is not the economy, there is an economic impact, right? I mean, if you're a CEO and you see your stock price going down by 10 percent, you might be hiring fewer workers or laying some off. You might put off some of those investment plans.

And of course, if you're a consumer, you were thinking about buying a car or going on vacation, but you see the value of your 401(k) going down -- again, there's an economic impact there -- Erica.

HILL: Yeah, there certainly is. It is definitely hitting people. I mean, I'm certainly hearing. I know you are as well, Matt. Appreciate it. Thank you.

EGAN: Thanks.

HILL: Well, President Trump has pledged to help one particular person suffering from Monday's sell off, Elon Musk. Right now, Mr. Trump is on the White House lawn with the Tesla CEO talking about his plans to buy a new car today to show support for Musk, a new Tesla car, of course.

Musk lost around $29 billion on Monday, according to Bloomberg, after shares of Tesla fell 15 percent. On that same day, X suffered a wave of outages, which Musk claimed was due to a cyberattack. All that, of course, coming after one of his SpaceX rockets blew up over the Caribbean last week.

All in all, perhaps not the best few days for the world's richest man, and he admitted to Fox Business he's struggling to juggle it all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KUDLOW, FBN HOST: How are you running your other businesses?

ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE: With great difficulty.

Yeah, I mean --

KUDLOW: But there's no turning back, you're saying?

MUSK: I'm just here trying to make government more efficient.

KUDLOW: You're going to go another year?

MUSK: Yeah, I think so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Hadas Gold joins me now. It was interesting to pause, even just that we saw from him there, Hamas.

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that big sigh, you know, before he continues on after explaining how much difficulty he's having trying to run these businesses. Tesla, of course, has been the focus of so much of this in recent days just because of the stunning drop in its stock prices. We're seeing its sales plummet, especially in Europe. We're also seeing, of course, Tesla cars, individual cars being attacked as well as dealerships being the target of protests and attacks.

Much of this is connected to Musk's connection to the Trump administration and to DOGE. But there is of course, still some competition from other electric vehicle manufacturers. But then just in the last few minutes, they just wrapped up that event at the White House where Donald Trump came out to the front with a bunch of Tesla cars with Elon Musk, and actually one of Elon Musk's children, and where they said that president Trump was going to be buying a Tesla car.

This was in support -- show of support for Tesla in the face of these slumping sales. You know, Musk has defended Tesla, saying much of this is just attacks from liberals. And he has said on X that he thinks the share price will be fine in the long term.

But we are starting to hear from some analysts who are saying, you know, listen, if you want Tesla to be successful, Elon Musk, you need to come back and become a CEO. Wedbush analyst saying Musk needs to step up as Tesla CEO at this critical juncture.

[15:30:04]

They said that in a nutshell, the word balance has been missing with Elon Musk and his ability to run Tesla.

At the same time, as you noted, we saw X suffered that cyber attack yesterday. X went down for several hours. Elon Musk saying its a cyber attack. We've spoken to some cybersecurity experts who said it's a bit early to try and say exactly what happened, but it did show some of the hallmarks of what's called a distributed denial of service attack. That's when hackers just try to overwhelm a system.

Elon Musk, in that Fox Business interview, made a reference saying that some of the IP addresses for this attack came from what he said was Ukraine. But I do want to note it is very easy to spoof an IP address, essentially your address of where you're coming from. Hackers can do this very easily. So we need to see some more information from Elon Musk.

And then, of course, there was that SpaceX starship explosion late last week, the second such explosion with debris raining down across certain islands and across the ocean in just the last three months. Elon Musk taking that one in stride, saying that it was just a minor setback. Of course, Elon Musk has a lot of experience with SpaceX rockets exploding, especially in their early years. They almost failed in their first few years before becoming a very successful space company -- Erica.

HILL: Yeah, an important point.

Hadas, appreciate it. Thank you.

Stay with us. We'll be right back. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Back now to our breaking news, Ukraine has agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire as the fighting against Russia rages on. This follows a day long peace talks held Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at the conclusion of those talks, saying the ball is now in Russia's court.

[15:35:01]

A joint statement from U.S. and Ukrainian officials says, quote, the United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace.

Here's more from Secretary Rubio.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: We'll take this offer for now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court.

And -- but again, the presidents objective here is number one above everything else, he wants the war to end. And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for "The Washington Post".

Max, always good to see you. And you were the perfect person to get your pulse on this.

How do you think this is, sitting at this moment inside the Kremlin?

MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, I think this is very good news from the standpoint of the United States and Ukraine and not so good news for the Kremlin. I mean, I'm actually a little bit shocked because this is the first time since Trump came back into office that his administration actually seems to be working with Ukraine instead of against Ukraine. And what they've actually done here is to put pressure on Russia, whereas previously all of the pressure Trump had been exerting had been against Ukraine.

I mean, you saw, of course, that meltdown in the oval office that President Trump and Vice President Vance had when President Zelenskyy visited, which led to the cutoff of U.S. aid and U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine. That was basically giving Russia a pass and allowing Russia to continue attacking Ukraine with impunity.

Now, there has been a decided shift with Secretary of State Rubio saying that the administration is going to turn on the intelligence sharing and turn on the military support for Ukraine once again.

And now, President Putin and the Kremlin is going to have a difficult decision to make. Is he going to agree to the ceasefire? Or if not, he's going to have to explain why not. And this has the potential for the first time, to draw -- to drive at least a small wedge between Putin and Trump.

HILL: There was a -- there was a question to Secretary Rubio about what the deadline would be for Putin in terms of weighing in on this proposal. He said simply, I want an answer as soon as possible.

How do you see this playing out in terms of that timeline?

BOOT: Really hard to know. I haven't seen any indication so far that Putin is willing to declare a ceasefire. In fact, everything he's saying and doing suggests the opposite. I mean, he's been stepping up attacks on Ukraine, which you can understand from his perspective, because he thinks that Ukraine was weakened by the U.S. aid cutoff and so he could attack with greater freedom.

And in recent days, and in part perhaps because of the U.S. cut off of intelligence sharing, Russian and North Korean troops have been advancing in Kursk, driving back the Ukrainian forces, even though in Donetsk and eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians have managed to stall or even to stop the Russian offensive.

So it'll be interesting to see how Putin reacts because from his military calculations, he might very well think that he needs to keep attacking to maintain the advantage in Kursk. He's not going to want to let the pressure off the Ukrainians. But if he keeps on attacking again, he's -- he's risking getting crosswise with -- with President Trump, who until now has been his greatest ally.

So I look -- you know, you hate to see it for the Kremlin that kind of dilemma. But, you know, it's about time that the -- that the U.S. started working with the Ukrainians and applying some pressure on Russia instead of working with Russia to apply pressure on the Ukrainians.

HILL: Does it surprise you at all how quickly that dynamic did shift?

BOOT: It does surprise me. It reminds me a little bit about your previous segment, about all the shifts that Trump has had in the trade wars, or the tariffs that he keeps declaring and then taking off, or saying he's going to dial them back. He is very predictable and mercurial and -- and he loves to zigzag.

I don't think that there is much of a grand strategy here, but he keeps -- you know, he's very hard to pin down. Just as soon as you see him doing one thing, he does another. And -- and so, I think people don't know what to think on the, on the trade and tariffs. And it's hard to know what to think on, on, on the Ukraine war either.

But at least this is the first thing that Trump has done that I think unequivocally helps Ukraine and hurts Russia.

HILL: Yeah, certainly. It'll be interesting to see moving forward. To your point, as you and I discussed a fair amount during the first Trump administration. Of course, Donald Trump has said that's part of his strategy is he wants to keep people guessing. So we'll see.

Max Boot, good to see you. Thank you.

BOOT: Thank you.

HILL: For additional perspective now on these breaking developments, including Saudi Arabia's role in these talks, I want to bring in Fawaz Gerges, who's the author of what really went wrong, the West and the failure of democracy in the Middle East. He is, of course, also a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

You know, it's interesting, as I was preparing to talk to you a couple of hours ago, it was going to be a slightly different segment. And then we, of course, heard from Secretary Rubio.

[15:40:01]

We heard from Mike Waltz.

As we look at all of this, though, the role of Saudi Arabia, the location of these talks, the way all of that came about, can't be ignored. What or how much of a role, if any, do you believe the Saudis may have played in what we saw today?

FAWAZ GERGES, AUTHOR, "WHAT REALLY WENT WRONG": Thank you for having me.

First of all, I mean, think of how many times the U.S. secretary of state thanked the Saudis for hosting -- for hosting the talks. He went out of his way during the press conference to say, thank you, Saudi Arabia, for doing so.

The reality is Saudi Arabia has scored a major coup by being selected as the venue for the American, Russian, Ukrainian talks. And this is a major victory for the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman. He has been trying to position Saudi Arabia not only as a pivotal regional player, but as a global player.

As you well know, and your viewers know, he has already promised to invest more than 1 trillion U.S. dollars in the U.S. economy in a stroke, turning himself as Donald Trump's most favorite -- favorite leader in the world, by far.

I mean, the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, has Donald Trump's attention. He has tremendous foreign policy leverage with Donald Trump. And I think what we have seen in the past few days, I think Saudi Arabia now has the trust not only of the United States, but even of Russia and Ukraine as well. As, you know, the Ukrainian president visited Saudi Arabia on Monday and talked with Mohammed Bin Salman. And my take on it, even though we didn't, we don't really have any major leaks. Probably he impressed on the Saudi crown prince to really put a good word with Donald Trump about you know, the way forward.

HILL: So perhaps -- perhaps that had a major influence here. But in terms of putting in a good word with Vladimir Putin, how much sway does he have there?

GERGES: This is the beginning. This is work in progress.

I think what happened in the past 24 hours is that the Ukrainians played their cards very well. They have been mentored very well by the French and the British after that disastrous meeting in the White House.

The reality is the Ukrainians have accepted all of Donald Trump's conditions, that is complete ceasefire because they wanted really a partial ceasefire. So we have to wait and see, because even if the ceasefire takes place, even if Putin accepts, agrees to the complete ceasefire, the devil lies in the details.

And in fact -- in fact, contrary to what you have heard a complete cease fire plays into Putin's hands. He wants to freeze the battle lines. He has made major advances. In the meantime, he can really basically focus on investing in his army and really preparing for the second round if and when the talks fail, because obviously there are the divide between the Ukraine and Russia is very huge.

But the reality now, I mean, the Ukrainians kicked the ball into Putin's court and we have to wait and see how -- how Putin will basically behave. My take on it is that the Russians will play for time. They will try to postpone the inevitable because they're making major progress in their areas, in -- in their home towns. They want to really encircle and basically destroy the Ukrainian forces who occupy a major foothold in Russia.

HILL: Yeah, a lot to watch in the coming days and weeks, that is for sure.

Fawaz Gerges, always appreciate your insight and your expertise, thank you.

Still ahead here, the global celebration of freedom. It is My Freedom Day. We're going to take you live to a school in Atlanta where they're celebrating today the freedom to learn.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: I want to bring you now right to the -- to the White House, where President Trump is speaking, Elon Musk by his side.

Let's take a listen.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Getting our jobs back. And one of the things I'll say, by the way, speaking of Tesla, he manufactures more cars. I mean, he opened this incredible plant, one of the largest plants in the world in Texas. Could you talk about that, Elon?

MUSK: Yeah. It's worth noting that the Tesla cars have the most U.S. content of any cars on the market. So they're the most American made. We -- we have the biggest factory and the most advanced automotive factory in Texas that we've opened and continued to expand.

And so this is very much a -- it's -- it's a -- these are great products. The model S has won best -- best car ever, you know? So all these cars have won incredible award. So they're great cars and they're American made. And I think, you know, try it. You'll like it.

TRUMP: And I'm just saying beyond the cars, they're great. But we have to celebrate somebody that has the courage to do this. He could have said, I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to get involved. Let the country go to hell. He didn't want to do that.

And remember, he's going to find and we're up to almost $500 billion worth of waste and fraud and abuse, $500 billion. We give -- we're giving $2 billion here, $2 billion there, not millions. It was a bet. If it was $1 million or $2 million, that's a lot of money.

But we're talking about billions of dollars being given to defunct, you know, scams given, given to people with no -- with nothing. They have nothing going. They open up a subchapter S corporation and they put $2 billion into it from nowhere. And we've caught a lot of them.

I wish we could catch all of them, but we've caught a lot of them. And he's been largely responsible. So we have to celebrate him. And it's not that he's conservative. I don't even know if he's conservative.

I will tell you this. I've been doing this for -- I've known him for a pretty long time. He endorsed me. I didn't know him that well when he endorsed me. But in the time I've known him, he has never asked me for a favor. He didn't ask me for this.

I said, you know, Elon, I don't like what's happening to you. And Tesla is a great company. I don't like what's happening. It's from our standpoint, American cars, American made. He employs thousands of people.

He's got -- at the same time, he has the most modern plants in the world. I said, I don't like what's happened to you. I'm going to do it. I didn't even know he was going to come.

He's never asked me for anything. He endorsed me and he never asked me.

[15:50:02]

I didn't even know he was going to endorse me. The guy has never asked me.

He's not saying -- in fact, I could go a step further. I ended the electric mandate. Okay? I ended the electric mandate and I figured, when's this guy calling to raise hell with me? And he never called. I mean, he never called me.

If I were him, I would have called. So because he's probably even better than I am.

REPORTER: Mr. President, is he rubbing his Elon Musk rubbing off on you? Is electric then the way to go?

TRUMP: It's not that -- I'm not. This isn't for electric or gas because people have their choices.

MUSK: Yeah.

TRUMP: I'm just saying that I know people that have these cars. I know one man. We see him all the time. He's constantly. He has five of them.

MUSK: Yeah.

TRUMP: He thinks it's great -- and he was a big guy for Ferraris and other things. And he says, man, this. It blows them away.

I know other people. They have 3 or 4. They love them, they love them. And some people like the gas and they should have their options. I'm all about options, but I'm telling you, I ended the electric mandate and I was waiting for a call.

I said, did Elon call yet? They said, no, sir. The next day. What about Elon? Did he call?

He never even mentioned it to me, never complained until this moment. I'm just bringing it up. Who would do that?

He has never asked me for a thing. And he's built this great company. And he shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot. He's an incredible patriot. And I don't even know if he's a Republican. I really don't.

MUSK: Mr. President, Mr. President --

TRUMP: Well, I'm not sure if he.

REPORTER: Tesla stock is also --

TRUMP: You're going to have drops and markets are going to go up and they're going to go down.

MUSK: Yeah. But you know what? We have to rebuild our country. Our country has been stripped of its jobs of its factories. And I'm tired of seeing where they build apartments, cheap apartments in an old broken down factory.

But you have factories all over the place that are empty from many decades ago, and we're going to change it around. And it's all taxing policy. You know, it's really a policy because we have great workers, great people. It's really a policy of of taxing and incentives. And I'm bringing the incentives back. And I'll tell you what, numerous

plants and I don't want to mention specifically, but I'll mention this one. Numerous plants in Mexico and other places that were under construction or soon to be under construction are now coming here, and they've dropped that because it was unfair what was happening.

Mexico, they were building cars. They were selling 'em into the United States with no tax, no nothing. And in the United States, we were allowing them to take our jobs and take our factories. And we don't do that anymore.

Now, from a president, it would be a lot easier if I just coasted for another four years. I would have been an eight-year president. I had the best economy in history in my first four years.

I would have done very well with this one, and I had a decision to make. Do I want to do this or do I not? Do I want to do it right? The right thing to do is what we're doing. We're going to get our jobs back, and we're not going to be laughed at.

Now, I will say this that already Canada and I respect very much, as you know, there's a very strong man in Canada who said he was going to charge a surcharge or a tariff on electricity coming into our country. He's -- he has called and he said he's not going to do that. Okay? You're not going to do that.

And it would have been a very bad thing if he did. And he's not going to do that. So I respect that. But we were just informed that he's not going to do that.

Look, we've been treated very unfairly by Canada. We've been treated very unfairly by Mexico, but we've been treated very unfairly by every country all over the world. The European Union is horrible, horrible. And we're going to get it back. And I have a choice. I could just coast and eventually there'd be a blow up down the road, maybe a long way, but we owe $36 trillion and we're going to get it back.

We're the biggest, we're the best -- and I'm very optimistic. I have to tell you, I'm very optimistic about the country, much more optimistic this way than if I did it the easy way. I could have done it the easy way. I could have coasted.

Biden left us a mess. He left us tremendous inflation, tremendously high costs of products. He left us a mess. But he also left us a mess with millions of people that poured into our country that are criminals.

Millions of those people happen to be criminals, and we're looking for them all over the place. We're looking for them. And Homan and Kristi are doing an incredible job. But he left us a horrible situation and we're changing it.

But one of the things were changing is we're going to make our country really wealthy again. We're going to bring our jobs back. Right now, we're like a chicken that's being plucked at from all over the world. We're not going to let that happen anymore. REPORTER: Mr. President, Mr. President --

TRUMP: But very importantly, and I said it. Ukraine, cease fire, Ukraine, cease fire. Just agreed to a little while ago.

Now we have to go to Russia and hope president -- hopefully, President Putin will agree to that also. And we can get this show on the road.

[15:55:01]

We can get -- we can get this horrible war where 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers a week -- every week, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 sometimes, I get the reports. And they're not American soldiers, they're Ukrainian and they're Russian.

But people are being killed outside of that. People are being killed in the cities as things explode throughout the cities. And we want to get that war over with. So I think -- I think it's a very big -- I think it's a big difference between the last visit you saw at the oval office and the -- so that's a total ceasefire. Ukraine has agreed to it, and hopefully Russia will agree to it.

We're going to meet with them later on today and tomorrow, and hopefully, we'll be able to wipe out a deal. But I think the cease fire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that will be great. If we can't, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed. Lots of people.

REPORTER: Is Zelenskyy invited back to the White House?

TRUMP: Sure, absolutely.

REPORTER: Mr. President, you mentioned the ups and downs in the stock market. You said it'll go up, it'll go down. But do you and your tariff policies right now bear any responsibility for the turmoil we're seeing this week?

TRUMP: No, Biden gave us a horrible economy. He gave us horrible inflation. And I think the market was going to go very, very bad. If anything, I have a lot of very smart people, friends of mine and great businessmen. They're now investing because of what I'm doing, because long term, what I'm doing is making our country strong again, financially strong, militarily strong and strong -- if we want to get away.

Remember this -- we have wars. When I left, we had no wars. We didn't have Ukraine and Russia. We didn't have October 7th.

We didn't have that disaster that took place with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And you look at what's happened there. We caught the major terrorists, which Biden wouldn't have caught. Why didn't he catch him?

I caught him five weeks into the presidency. I caught the man responsible for abbey gate, and he's going to pay hell right now. He's a bad dude. He's a bad guy. But we didn't have these problems. I had no inflation. I had a great

economy.

He gave you high prices. You couldn't buy bacon, you couldn't buy anything. And also, I inherited a situation with eggs. The price of eggs was through the roof.

Well, now the price of eggs has come down a lot. Interest rates have come down. Gasoline prices have come down. It's all coming down. It's all a beautiful thing.

I can do it the right way, the wrong way. We're doing it the right way. And I have tremendous confidence in this country and the people of this country tremendous conf -- much more so than if I sat back for four years and had a good time in the Oval Office.

I want to look at cars.

MUSK: Mr. President, I have an announcement to make that could be helpful.

TRUMP: Go ahead.

MUSK: I want to say as -- as a function of the great policies of President Trump and his administration and as an act of faith in America, Tesla is going to double vehicle output in the United States within the next two years. Double.

TRUMP: That's a big deal. That's great. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: And by the way, he makes one car. This one I don't understand. This one I don't want, but that's okay.

Without a steering wheel. It comes out next year, right?

MUSK: Yes.

TRUMP: Tell me -- explain that please.

MUSK: Yeah. So, well, the cyber cab starts production in Texas next year. And it's self-driving. We have so much confidence in the self- driving nature of it that it will actually not have a steering wheel. It will not have tootles (ph). It'll either self drive or not drive at all, but it'll self drive.

REPORTER: President Trump --

TRUMP: And I'm going to pass on that.

REPORTER: Before this event today, when's the last time you bought a new car?

TRUMP: Well, I buy a lot for -- through my children because they run the company now. I used to buy a lot. I haven't bought a new car in a long time.

REPORTER: What was your first car?

TRUMP: The only thing I know -- the only thing I know is The Beast. I got a big car with very thick windows and thick side panels.

REPORTER: Is that going electric?

TRUMP: But we buy a lot of -- we buy a lot of cars. Actually, I bought this one for Kai.

REPORTER: Do you remember your first car?

REPORTER: The Ontario premier calling you and giving you his decision about the electricity surcharge, and you said you were pleased about that.

Will you make a different decision now about the tariffs on Canada? Will you reduce it?

TRUMP: But probably so, yeah. It was -- he was a gentleman. He was a gentleman.

Look, I said it before, we give Canada $200 billion a year. We subsidize Canada between all of the things we give them and trade. We give them -- we don't have to have cars made in Canada. We don't have to have lumber from Canada.

We have tremendous lumber. We have tremendous trees. All I have to do is unfreeze them from some of the restrictions that were put on. I can do that with an executive order.

We don't need energy. We have more energy than anybody else in the world. So we spend $200 billion a year subsidizing Canada. We don't have to do that.

And frankly, the way that gets solved is Canada should honestly become our 51st state. We wouldn't have a northern border problem. We wouldn't have a tariff problem. They don't have much -- they spend very little, as you know, the least of almost anybody on military. And we spend the most of anybody on military.

We have a great military. I rebuilt --