back with us, journalist christina ruffini and ambassador steven pifer.rtant conversations are about to get underway. this is pretty much just a ceremonial reception, right? >> i mean. >> they've got to kind. >> of nail this down. look, they're not expecting to announce an actual agreement today. they're hoping to agree on a framework. but the thing that zelensky really has to try to convince president trump is to put in there some sort of security guarantee, which is the whole point of this, right? why would you sign away this, this development deal for these natural resources if they're not getting something out of it now? so far, the white house and president trump have said if there's security guarantees, that will be europe's problem, that will be up to europe. but obviously that's something that they're going to need to hammer out. we talked earlier. we've been seeing a change of tone from president trump regarding the war in ukraine this week. and, you know, you just saw him warm welcome there. he got the trump finger gun point and showed him off t

steven pifer was the us ambassador to ukraine under president clinton.ation could be handling the conflict between russia and ukraine better in some ways. i would like to start with some comments from president donald trump this week and the fact that he said that he held a phone call with russian president vladimir putin and afterwards he said peace negotiations will start, in his words, "immediately". what did you make of that when you heard it? i think there are some basic mistakes being made by the administration. first of all, before talking to vladimir putin, the president should have spoken to zelensky, the ukrainian president, to understand where ukraine has flexibility and does not have flexibility. next he should have talked to european leaders because the administration expects europe to be playing an important part in the settlement. then he should have built leverage before talking to vladimir putin. i'm concerned that they have got the diplomatic order here very much out of sync in a way, and that will make their job more difficult. if they

ambassador steven pifer, appreciate you sharing your point of view. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> coming up, this is a move that's raising eyebrows. the words transgender and queer have been removed from the stonewall national monument website. we'll discuss why the national park service made these changes. >> the boeing 747 has crashed in the lockerbie area., trying. >> to find out the why of it became everything. >> nothing is what it seems in the lockerbie story. >> lockerbie, the bombing of pan am flight 103 sunday at nine on cnn. >> who has more subscriptions? >> we're a package deal, baby. and your subscription is my subscription. all right. we have about 100. but with experian app, they can help cancel those subscriptions that we don't even need. >> very helpful. >> download the experian app now. >> when caroline has a cough, she takes robitussin so she can have those one on ones again. >> hey, jim, can we talk about casual fridays? oh, sure. what's up? >> get fast, powerful cough relief with robitussin and find your voice. >> here's

also with us is steven pifer, former us ambassador to ukraine under president clinton. he is also a nonresident senior fellow at the brookings institute. richard, what's. >> this back. >> and forth? the president of the united. >> states more than once. >> calling the president of ukraine a dictator. how is that playing out there? >> well. >> ukrainians don't want to be in this fight. ukrainians don't believe that they started this fight. they don't believe that there is a back and forth. the way it's seen here is that president trump has gone on the offensive, that president trump has decided he's trying to harm zelensky. he's trying to take him down a notch. he's trying to perhaps force him to the negotiating table or force him to be more flexible. and what president zelensky's office believes is that this goes down to that deal. you were just talking about that that that mineral deal and a senior ukrainian official described the scene to me. he said that the treasury secretary came. president trump's treasury secretary had a letter and wanted the ukrainians to sign i