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CNN’s Abby Phillip Suggests Trump Needs To Be Treated Like Child By European Leaders To Help Ukraine

Screenshot/YouTube/Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway

CNN host Abby Phillip suggested on “Pivot” Tuesday that President Donald Trump needs to be coddled by European leaders in order to help Ukraine in its war against Russia.

After Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, the U.S. president hosted many European leaders at the White House on Monday to discuss ending the war, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Phillip said on the podcast, which was recorded on Monday ahead of the meeting, that the fact that it happened on such short notice indicated the European leaders’ panic level.

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“I think it’s extraordinary that this is even happening. I mean, think about the fact that you have a phalanx of European leaders getting on planes at a moment’s notice to flock to Washington to give Zelenskyy backup in this meeting with Trump,” Phillip said. “That’s a level of concern that I think some people say hasn’t been demonstrated since 9/11.”

“And it reflects a deep worry about Trump’s decision-making and his need to be surrounded by a certain point of view in order to come to what they view as the right conclusion,” she continued. “So I think that alone, I mean, says a lot.”

CBS News host Margaret Brennan also asserted on “Face the Nation” that European leaders wanted to join Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy to ensure that the U.S. president did not bully him into agreeing to a disadvantageous deal for Ukraine. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed her claims, calling them a “stupid media narrative” and clarifying that the Trump administration had invited them.

“We’ve been working with these people for weeks, for weeks on this stuff,” Rubio said. “They’re coming here tomorrow because they chose to come here tomorrow. We invited them to come … The president invited them to come.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who served under former President Barack Obama, praised the meeting on Monday.

“I think that was a very positive meeting. And whoever had the idea to bring all these European leaders together, in addition to President Zelenskyy, that was a brilliant, brilliant idea,” McFaul said. “And having it come so quickly after Alaska was also very important, because now they’ve changed talking points here … this is very positive progress.”

Phillip was also among those in the corporate media who appeared fixated on Trump rolling out a red carpet for Putin when they met in Alaska on Friday.

“I think it’s a visual that, you know, our reporters in the region say is just rubbing Ukraine the wrong way,” Phillip said. “To roll out the red carpet for a man who is wanted for war crimes against Ukraine in what might be a negotiation, is something that is not going to be received well there.”

During Trump’s first term, he successfully got the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco and Bahrain to join the Abraham Accords and formally normalized relations with Israel.

In his second term so far, he has helped broker peace between India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Moreover, the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. The Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Iranian government all have generally claimed that the strikes caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program.