A Trump-Zelensky blow up, a spending bill, anger at Musk
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
Some House Republicans are getting nervous. They’re worried that passing President Donald Trump’s budget proposal could mean cuts to popular programs like Medicaid. They’ve also gotten an earful from voters angry at Elon Musk who are packing congressional town halls.
Senior politics reporter Aaron Blake unpacks the drama with congressional reporter Marianna Sotomayor and congressional economics correspondent Jacob Bogage.
Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and mixed by Ted Muldoon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Aaron Blake, senior politics reporter and host of our weekly politics roundtables here on Post Reports. |
| 0:09.5 | It's Friday, February 28th. All right, we're going to do things a little bit differently today because I wanted to get to some breaking news first. |
| 0:17.2 | This happened after we recorded our roundtable on Friday morning. And what happened is one of the |
| 0:23.5 | most contentious exchanges between world leaders that we've ever seen. This played out at the White |
| 0:28.6 | House this afternoon in front of the cameras, and it was an encounter that, as my colleagues at the |
| 0:33.0 | post put it, could determine a generation of war and peace in Europe. Okay, so Ukrainian president |
| 0:40.2 | Volodymyr Zelensky came to Washington. He was sat in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump |
| 0:45.2 | and Vice President J.D. Vance this afternoon. And he was there to urge Trump not to abandon |
| 0:50.5 | Ukraine in its war against Russia. The meeting starts off cordially. One thing to remind you of |
| 0:56.1 | is that Trump just last week had called Zelensky a, quote, dictator. And not only that, Trump also |
| 1:01.6 | blamed Ukraine for starting the war, even though it was Moscow that invaded Ukraine. So anyways, |
| 1:07.8 | the meeting starts out fine, but pretty quickly, Vance and Zelensky engage with a bit of a disagreement about the role of diplomacy in ending the war in Ukraine. |
| 1:17.5 | Vance suggested that the administration is pursuing a diplomatic approach, but Zelensky suggested that diplomacy hasn't always worked with Russia, and he pointed to examples of Russia |
| 1:29.1 | agreeing to things and then backing off of them. So we'll pick up the tape right there and play |
| 1:34.0 | a big chunk of this so you can get the full flavor for what transpired. Do you think that it's |
| 1:38.6 | respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration |
| 1:43.7 | that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country. |
| 1:47.0 | A lot of questions. |
| 1:48.0 | Let's start from the beginning. |
| 1:49.0 | First of all, during the war, everybody has problems. |
| 1:53.0 | Even you, but you have nice ocean and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the |
| 1:59.0 | future. |
... |
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