Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of a world-historical day in Washington to an end. We will continue to chronicle the major events in the second Trump administration for you in real time in the days ahead.
Here are a few of the day’s big developments:
Donald Trump cut talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy short following heated exchanges in the Oval Office during which the US president and his vice-president, JD Vance, falsely accused Zelenskyy of being “disrespectful” and not thanking the US for its support. European leaders promptly rallied behind the Ukrainian president in a show of unity after the joint press conference was canceled and he left the White House early. No mineral deal was signed.
Documents seized in an FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago were returned to Trump, the White House said. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told reporters traveling with Trump to Florida on Friday that classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago in 2022 had been returned to Trump and were loaded on to Air Force One for the trip.
Trump “asked Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to depart the White House”. Speaking to reporters on Friday night in Washington, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump had “asked Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to depart the White House” after their contentious exchange in the Oval Office. She also noted, with disapproval, that Zelenskyy had refused Fox anchor Bret Baier’s invitation to apologize to Trump on the air.
Trump said Zelenskyy needs to stop saying “all negative things” about Putin. On his way out of the White House, Trump was asked: “What does Zelenskyy need to do to re-start talks with you?” “He’s gotta say: ‘I want to make peace,’” Trump replied. “He doesn’t have to stand there and say about: ‘Putin this, Putin that’, all negative things.”
Brian Glenn, an ardent Trump supporter who covers the president for the rightwing network Real America’s Voice, played an important role in turning the mood in the Oval Office sour. Glenn, whose questions to Trump are often invitations for the president to attack his political enemies, was called on by Trump early in the meeting with Zelenskyy, before it got contentious, and he chose to confront Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit.
Federal employees could get another email on Saturday requiring them to explain their recent accomplishments, a renewed attempt by Trump and Elon Musk to demand answers from the government workforce. The second email will come from individual agencies that have direct oversight of career officials, rather than being sent by the Office of Personnel Management as with the first email. It’s unclear how national security agencies will handle the second email.
Trump was sued by the Democratic party over a recent executive order it says violates federal election law by giving him too much power over the independent federal election commission. The lawsuit objects to an 18 February order giving the White House more control over the election commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other traditionally independent agencies that normally operate day-to-day at arm’s length from the president.
The Social Security Administration is preparing to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000, AP reported. The workforce reduction could be as high as 50%. Around 800 employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency, are reportedly also going to be forced out.
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Bannon riles up Trump's base against Zelenskyy: 'a bad guy, he's not to be trusted'
While recent polling shows that 47% of Americans have a positive opinion of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and just 28% have a negative one, the belligerent way in which Ukraine’s president was confronted and scolded on Friday by Donald Trump and JD Vance will not surprise one segment of the American public: Steve Bannon’s viewers.
Bannon, whose podcast is the centerpiece of the rightwing Real America’s Voice television network, has been railing against Zelenskyy for years, casting him as a villain.
On Friday, he told viewers that the confrontation in the White House was entirely Zelenskyy’s fault. “Zelenskyy is just a bad guy; he’s not to be trusted,” Bannon said. “Now you understand why Zelenskyy’s at 16% in the polling in Ukraine and the reason he hasn’t had an election,” Bannon added, citing an entirely incorrect number that is nearly 50 points lower than in actual surveys.
“He’s a bad guy. He essentially lied about the perfect phone call President Trump had in August of 2019,” Bannon added, referring imprecisely to the July 2019 phone call between the two leaders that prompted Trump’s first impeachment. In that call, Trump told Zelenskyy that, in return for the Javelin anti-tank missiles Trump boasted on Friday about having provided to Ukraine, Zelenskyy needed to do him “a favor” by opening a baseless investigation into Joe Biden, his son Hunter and the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had meddled in he 2016 election.
The views from inside that media bubble perhaps also explain why the White House, on its official X account, proudly posted a photograph of the moment the US vice-president asked the Ukrainian president during the meeting: “Have you said thank you once?”
Zelenskyy, for the record, has frequently expressed thanks for US support in the war to defend his country against the Russian invasion.
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