Not even Donald Trump’s most loyal henchmen are denying that Vladimir Putin is effectively in charge of the president’s proposed peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker admitted on Fox News Business on Tuesday morning that there’s “some truth” to claims that the Russian dictator hasn’t made a single concession during the months-long negotiations.
The initial draft of Trump’s 28-point peace plan—presided over by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff—was slammed by bipartisan lawmakers over the weekend as a complete cave-in to Putin.
It involved Ukraine handing over territory to Russia, ending its hopes of joining NATO, and inviting Russia to rejoin the G8—and has even been accused of being written in Moscow before being presented as a U.S.-led proposal.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since revised a new, 19-point plan that Ukraine has tentatively agreed to, CNN reported.
On her show, Mornings with Maria, host Maria Bartiromo played Whitaker a clip of Fox News analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who slammed Putin’s win-win situation.
“Putin, he hasn’t given up one concession in all of these months we’ve been negotiating with him,” Gen. Keane said. “And why hasn’t he made any concessions? Because he sees that the more the war gets protracted… the more the killing goes on, he believes he can weaken the resolve of the United States and its leadership,” he added.
When Bartiromo pressed Whitaker, who has previously been lauded as an aggressive media surrogate for Trump, he conceded that it wasn’t a false claim.
“There is some truth to what the general says,” said Whitaker, Trump’s former acting Attorney General in his first term.
“But let’s remember there’s no perfect answer to this situation,” he went on. “Russia invaded Ukraine almost four years ago now… neither side is gonna get what they want,” he added, referring to a proposal described by GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick as “nothing more than Russia’s absurd wish list that should be dismissed and shredded for the garbage that it is.”
Whitaker added: “This is where we end up—negotiating a peace deal from reality, we can all live in a what-if world, but we have to live in the real world.”
Many members of Trump’s own party have cast doubt on his administration’s ceasefire plans.
“The initial peace proposal pushed by [Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff was a surrender document for Ukraine that would have left it at the mercy of Russia for decades to come,” Rep. Don Bacon wrote on Monday. He welcomed Rubio working with the Ukrainians and said, amid negotiations, that the plan was getting “better.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a Yale law-school buddy of JD Vance’s, has taken center stage as the man delivering the latest Ukraine peace proposal to the Russians.
Trump has a long history of letting Putin get what he wants. The president rolled out the red carpet for his Russian counterpart just three months ago for a flop summit in Alaska.
From their meeting, Trump largely came away empty-handed—aside from a puzzling Putin lecture about eliminating “all the primary root causes” of his full-scale assault on Ukraine.
Then, Trump was forced to cancel a planned meeting with Putin in Hungary to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Publicly, Trump chalked up the blunder to “bad timing,” even as top White House officials privately acknowledged that the tone of the meeting’s arrangements had doomed the talks before they even began.
“I’m not gonna be wasting my time,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in October when asked if he’d consider rescheduling the meeting with his Russian counterpart.
“I’ve always had a great relationship with Vladimir Putin, but this has been very disappointing,” he said. “I thought this would have gone long before peace in the Middle East.”
The MAGA leader pledged on the campaign trail more than a year ago that he would secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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