Donald Trump and Marco Rubio pull in opposite directions

Washington: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent all day telling TV interviewers that high-stakes negotiations to end a war are best done behind closed doors. Then his boss opened Truth Social.

Rubio was doing the rounds on the Sunday morning political talk shows, politely declining invitations to reveal what was sought from Russian President Vladimir Putin when he met US President Donald Trump in Alaska, or what Putin was willing to give up, if anything.

“These peace deals, these peace agreements and negotiations, they don’t work when they’re conducted in the media, either through leaks or through lies,” Rubio told This Week on ABC. “They don’t work if you go out and say aggressive and abrasive things about one side or the other – because then they just walk away.”

On CBS’ Face the Nation, he said: “We’re not going to negotiate this in the media … There’s no conditions that can be imposed on Ukraine. They’re going to have to accept things, but they’re going to have to get things, too.”

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And on Fox Business, Rubio said: “If one side gets everything they want, that’s not a peace deal. It’s called surrender. And I don’t think this is a war that’s going to end any time soon on the basis of surrender.”

All told, Rubio was clear and consistent throughout his major television appearances. This was a difficult negotiation between two warring parties that were not inclined to make concessions, he said. The US was doing its best to mediate a conflict it was not directly involved in, and meeting Putin was not a sin – in fact, it was crucial, and Trump was the only one who could do it.

He actually made a fairly persuasive case about the realities of diplomacy and the need to give it a chance.

But then on Sunday night (Monday AEST), Rubio was majorly undercut by his boss when Trump – amid a burst of social media activity – put Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on notice.