Former national security adviser John Bolton said the Saturday meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Rome is a \u201csignificant\u201d step toward reestablishing a better channel of communication between the heads of state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the meeting was significant. I think this is a significant step back toward sensible conversation between the two leaders,\u201d Bolton, a frequent Trump critic, said during his Saturday appearance on CNN.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cboth the president’s spokesman and [the] Zelensky spokesman said it was productive. So, I think you’ve got to consider it good. It doesn’t necessarily mean much progress, but at least they’ve broken the image of what happened in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, so that’s a plus,\u201d referring to the late February blowup between<\/a> the two leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump and Zelensky had a brief one-on-one meeting<\/a> in Rome before attending Pope Francis\u2019s funeral. It was their first in-person huddle since the contentious spat in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n \u201cGood meeting. We discussed a lot one-on-one. Hoping for results on everything we covered: protecting lives of our people, full and unconditional ceasefire, reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out,\u201d Zelensky said after the meeting. \u201cVery symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump later Saturday wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be \u201ctapping me along\u201d in light of recent deadly strikes the Kremlin\u2019s military launched on several Ukrainian cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a>. \u201cIt makes me think that maybe he doesn\u2019t want to stop the war, he\u2019s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through \u2018Banking\u2019 or \u2018Secondary Sanctions?\u2019 Too many people are dying!!!\u201d<\/p>\n Bolton, who has previously been <\/a>critical<\/a> of the administration\u2019s approach to facilitating a potential peace agreement in Eastern Europe, argued Trump\u2019s recent criticism of Putin does not necessarily represent a \u201ctone shift,\u201d but said the Kremlin leader needs to be careful not to overplay his hand with the commander in chief.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has a short attention span, so for that period of time, that was the kind of message that he wanted to send. I do think that Putin has to be careful about overplaying his hand with Trump,\u201d Bolton said Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTrump can change his attitude toward people, but Putin has gotten so many concessions from Trump already that even though Zelensky is apparently, and the Ukrainians are poised to give their alternative possibilities for how this might proceed,\u201d he added. \u201cReally, the advantage is overwhelmingly on the Russian side now, so Putin doesn’t want to mess that up, but I still think he’s got plenty of room to play with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former national security adviser John Bolton said the Saturday meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Rome is a \u201csignificant\u201d step toward reestablishing a better channel of communication between the heads of state. \u201cI think the meeting was significant. I think this is a significant step back toward sensible conversation between the two leaders,\u201d Bolton, a frequent Trump critic, said during his Saturday appearance on CNN.\u00a0 He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gogetterlifestylebrand.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}