President Donald Trump’s nominees consistently engage with Democrats who challenge them in increasingly viral hearing moments that analysts say are not intended as gifts to the media, but red meat for their base.

The media understands Democrats have little power on a Republican-dominated Capitol Hill, according to Bill D’Agostino, senior analyst for the Media Research Center.

‘If you were to watch any given night on CNN or MSNBC evening shows, you’ll find a couple of panel discussion segments that are basically just Democratic strategists and the host talking shop,’ he told Fox News Digital in a Thursday interview.

‘The discussion has focused almost entirely on how can Democrats show their voters that they’re trying to fight this, that they’re trying to make a difference, that they’re resisting the Trump administration.’

Partisan politics has come to a point, D’Agostino suggested, where constituents send Democrats to Washington to stop Trump at every turn, regardless of ideological alignment or differences.

‘Obviously, as the minority party, there’s not much action they can actually offer. So instead, their political futures basically rest on how hard they’re trying to stop Trump.’

One of the most contentious exchanges occurred during FBI Director Kash Patel’s January confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., dug into granular language used by Patel after the Capitol riot in regard to a song released by inmates that featured Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Patel told Schiff he stood by prior testimony that he had had nothing to do with the recording of the song, while the Burbank Democrat grilled him over a comment to former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon about ‘what we thought would be cool… captur[ing] audio’ for the song.

Schiff asked why he said that, and Patel incredulously shot back ‘that’s why it says, ‘we’ [as opposed to I] as you highlighted.’ Patel denied participating in the digitizing of the song.

The exchange was compared to former President Bill Clinton’s grammatical comments about the word ‘is’ during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

During Attorney General Pam Bondi’s confirmation, Schiff was at the fore again, demanding she disclose whether she might prosecute former special counsel Jack Smith over his Trump probe. Bondi repeatedly said she wouldn’t answer hypothetical, and dinged Schiff in response for focusing on Smith while his own California is rife with violent crime.

Bondi also snapped back at Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., after a grilling on the Fourteenth Amendment and citizenship, saying, ‘I’m not here to do your homework and study for you.’

During Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., delved into Hegseth’s multiple marriages and allegations of untoward behavior.

Kaine said Hegseth had ‘casually cheated’ on a former wife shortly after his daughter Gwendolyn was born. Hegseth countered that the situation had been investigated and that Kaine’s claims were ‘false charges.’

‘You’ve admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October 2017. You said it was consensual, isn’t that correct?’ Kaine went on, probing further.

Hegseth also made headlines when he interrupted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., mid-sentence as she criticized the revolving door among military generals, Pentagon chiefs, and defense contractors.

‘I’m not a general, senator,’ he said, prompting laughter in the gallery.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also had several similar moments, including when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., opened his remarks by speaking about the measles and telling the nominee bluntly, ‘You frighten people.’

Kennedy also rejected a line of questioning from Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., claiming that he had compared the Atlanta-based CDC’s work to Nazi death camps.

Outbursts and grilling continued in recent oversight hearings, including this past week when Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., got into a tiff with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about Salvadoran deportee Kilmar Garcia. At one point, Swalwell informed Noem he has a ‘bull—t detector.’

Mark Bednar, a former top aide to ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was one of many ‘sherpas’ tasked with guiding nominees through the confirmation process, including meetings with senators.

Bednar assisted EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin through his process, which, by comparison to others, was mild.

Zeldin’s hearing actually included some bipartisan joking – like when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., riffed that Zeldin’s cell phone rang unexpectedly because ‘the fossil fuel industry’ was calling him after a line of questioning on the matter.

Bednar recounted a loud protester in the hall who remained for some time, offering conjecture that the disruptive woman hadn’t yet crossed any legal lines like protesters actually inside hearing rooms like during Kennedy’s confirmation.

But Bednar said that many of the other nominees faced Democrats who would rather make a show than ‘be diplomatic and deliberative over policy.’

‘I think that is a big indicator to me that the left has no substantive answers for rebuttals to President Trump’s agenda or Republicans’ agenda. And that, to me, is a sign that if you’re a Republican, that that’s encouraging — the public’s on your side, and the far left has been unable to formulate a rational, level-headed response, much less not even be able to articulate one.’

Fox News Digital reached out to other sherpas but did not hear back.

Meanwhile, Bednar said that it has been interesting to watch the hearing disruptions evolve into larger scenes with similarly little substance or long-term gain.

I thought I was very rich and pun intended, that Cory Booker delivered a record-breaking speech that the Democrats were basically just grasping for anything to kind of count as a win, even though it didn’t really amount to anything,’ he said, after the New Jersey Democrat held an unofficial filibuster – as there was no legislation being held up – for more than a day.

That speech, however, precipitated several fundraising emails from the left, Bednar said, which bolstered D’Agostino’s claim about playing to the base.

‘If it’s a session day in D.C., and Republicans are in charge, there’s going to be liberal agitators protesting; as the sky is blue,’ Bednar quipped.

Fox News Digital reached out to Schiff for comment but did not receive a response by press time. 

House lawmakers are being summoned to Capitol Hill late Sunday night as Republicans’ self-imposed deadline to pass President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ looms just days away. 

The House Budget Committee is meeting at 10 p.m. for a vote on advancing the wide-ranging legislation toward a chamber-wide vote later this week.

Initial plans to advance the bill on Friday morning were upended in a mutiny by four members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus – Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., all joined Democrats in voting against the bill.

The fiscal hawks are opposed to aspects of the legislation’s crackdown on Medicaid, which Republicans have said they are only trimming for waste, fraud, and abuse. But Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied people are not set to kick in until 2029, and conservatives have argued that it was a large window of time for those changes to be undone, among other concerns.

They’re also pushing for a more aggressive effort to repeal green energy tax subsidies passed in the former Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). That push has pitted them against Republican lawmakers whose districts have businesses that have benefited from the tax relief.

Meanwhile House GOP leaders and the White House have held the bill up as the most significant fiscal reform in decades.

Holdouts were expected to negotiate with GOP leaders in Congress and the White House through the weekend.

‘I really need to see something in writing. You know, we’ve talked enough. They know where we are. And you know, before, if it’s just if it’s the same old thing, that we can’t get [a majority], we’re going to have to pretty much stick with what we have, I’ve got a problem,’ Norman told Fox News Digital on Sunday morning

He said he and other critics of the legislation were asked to meet with House GOP leaders at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

Republicans are working to pass Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party controlling both Congress and the White House to pass vast pieces of legislation while completely sidelining the minority – in this case, Democrats.

It does so by lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, lining up with the House’s own simple majority. The legislation must adhere to a specific set of rules, however, including only items related to federal spending, tax, and the national debt.

Both the House and Senate are dealing with razor-thin margins. That extends to the House Budget Committee as well, where Republicans can only lose two of their own to still advance the legislation.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was confident that Republicans could overcome their differences and stick to their timeline during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

‘The plan is to move it to the Rules Committee by midweek, and to the House floor by the end of the week, as we meet our initial, our original Memorial Day deadline,’ Johnson said.

Johnson said Republicans also ‘have got to compromise’ on Medicaid work requirements, adding he was in contact with states ‘to make sure what the earliest possible date is.’

‘This is the biggest spending reduction in three decades, maybe longer,’ Johnson said.

Norman signaled that significant compromise was going to have to be made on leaders’ parts.

‘Let’s say they want it to kick in, in a year or six months. It ought to be now, but we’ll look at that. We’re not inflexible,’ he said. ‘But the main thing I want to relay, this isn’t the end-all-catch-all-be-all. Nobody would disagree that the tax cuts are good policy, and nobody would disagree with President Trump’s wanting to phase out Green New Deal scam credits. Anyone we want to do it on day one. So we’re carrying out his policies.’

Meanwhile Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, a close ally of Roy’s, took to X in support of the bill after it failed Friday.

‘Critics have attacked the House’s One Big Beautiful reconciliation bill on fiscal grounds, but I think they are profoundly wrong. It is truly historic,’ Vought said. ‘The bill satisfies the very red-line test that House fiscal hawks laid out a few weeks ago that stated that the cost of any tax cut could be paid for with $2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth, but the rest had to be covered with savings from reform.’

Trump blasted the people holding up the legislation as grandstanders in a Truth Social post Friday.

Those rebels and their allies, however, have argued that they are only pushing to fully enact Trump’s agenda.

‘He campaigned on cutting the Green New Deal. But it’s really a scam…. But this bill to postpone phase-out for seven years, it’s just money we don’t have,’ Norman said.

Economic Policy Innovation Center founder Paul Winfree wrote on X Saturday, ‘Several of the Members of Congress negotiating on the OBBB this weekend are trying to make it even better. In fact, there is a significant group that has been fighting all along to make sure that [Trump] gets the biggest win possible.’

Moving ahead with Sunday night’s vote is a sign of confidence by House GOP leaders, but it’s not yet clear how it will play out. In addition to the Medicaid and IRA differences, Republicans must also reconcile current disagreements with blue state GOP lawmakers over State and Local tax (SALT) deduction caps. 

The legislation raised the current $10,000 cap to $30,000, but a handful of blue state Republicans rejected the compromise as insufficient.

Meanwhile, conservatives in redder districts are demanding deeper pay cuts if the SALT deduction cap was raised.

SALT Caucus member Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., suggested raising taxes on the highest earners to offset the cost – it would likely be an uphill battle to enact, though some conservatives have also signaled openness to the idea.

‘The One Big Beautiful Bill has stalled—and it needs wind in its sails. Allowing the top tax rate to expire—returning from 37% to 39.6% for individuals earning over $609,350 and married couples earning over $731,200—breathes $300 billion of new life into the effort,’ LaLota wrote on X Saturday.

‘It’s a fiscally responsible move that reflects the priorities of the new Republican Party: protect working families, address the deficit, fix the unfair SALT cap, and safeguard programs like Medicaid and SNAP—without raising taxes on the middle class.’

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday defended the ‘aggressive’ timetable he is pushing to advance President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ saying the House remains on track to pass the ‘historic’ legislative package by Memorial Day. 

The House Budget Committee will reconvene at 10 p.m. Sunday night after a vote to advance the more than 1,100-page ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ failed Friday, when five Republicans sided with committee Democrats to sink Trump’s sweeping tax bill. 

‘We’re on track, working around the clock to deliver this nation-shaping legislation for the American people as soon as possible,’ Johnson said during an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’ regarding ongoing negotiations. ‘All 11 of our committees have wrapped up their work, and they spent less and saved more than even we’ve projected initially. This really is a once in a generation opportunity that we have here.’ 

After the bill advances through the budget committee, Johnson said the plan is to move the legislative package to the House Rules Committee by mid-week and then to the House floor by the end of the week ‘so we meet our initial, our original Memorial Day deadline.’ 

‘It’s very important for people to understand why we’re being so aggressive on the timetable and why this really is so important,’ Johnson said. ‘This is the vehicle through which we will deliver on the mandate the American people gave us during the last election. You’re going to have historic savings for the American people, historic tax relief for American workers, historic investments in border security.

‘At the same time, we’re restoring American energy dominance, and we’re rebuilding the defense industrial base, and we’re ensuring that programs like Medicaid and SNAP are strengthened for U.S. citizens who need and deserve them and not being squandered away by illegal aliens and persons who are ineligible to receive them and are cheating the system,’ he added.

Johnson reiterated that making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent by 2026 is critical and stressed that the package also eliminates taxes on overtime and tips – a 2024 Trump campaign promise. He said it also includes new tax relief for seniors on Social Security and cuts taxes on ‘job creators, so that will help everybody across the country at the same time as incentivizing American-made production and manufacturing.’ 

‘This is a big thing. We cannot fail, and we’ll get it done for the American people,’ Johnson said. 

South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman and Texas Rep. Chip Roy are among critics from Johnson’s own party who say the speaker is not serious about cutting spending. They want work requirements for able-bodied adult Medicaid recipients to be implemented sooner than 2029 – a view Johnson told ‘Fox News Sunday’ that he shares, but the speaker added there is concern over the ability of the states to ‘retool their systems and ensure the verification process’ can be enforced. 

‘We’re working through all those details, and we’ll get it done, but I’ll tell you what, this is the largest spending reduction in at least three decades, probably longer. It’s historic,’ Johnson said, adding that the package has the support of Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, as well as ‘nearly 500 organizations across the conservative spectrum’ including fiscally responsible groups who believe ‘that we’ve got to turn the tide in spending.’

‘We are. This is our opportunity to do it. It’s once in a generation, as I’ve said, and we can’t squander it,’ Johnson said. 

The speaker said that while he is confident he will be able to reach a compromise on the Medicaid work requirement to squash internal disputes, Republican leadership does not expect a single Democrat to vote for the bill. 

‘Which means that they will be on record apparently supporting the largest tax increase in U.S. history, which is what will happen by default after the end of this year if we do not get this job done. We have to accomplish this mission, and we will.,’ Johnson said.

The release of audio recordings of former President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur have intensified criticism of the administration’s use of an autopen on official presidential orders and pardons.

The damning tapes, which bring Biden’s alarming mental decline into sharp relief, were kept under wraps by Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland. Now that Biden’s cognitive problems have been bared, some are calling for Garland to face prosecution for rejecting Congressional demands to release the tapes when he ran the Department of Justice (DOJ).

‘Key decisions made in the final days of the Biden presidency, including using autopens to issue blanket pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be fully examined. There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions,’ House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., posted to X on Saturday. 

Axios released hours of Biden’s interview with the special counsel’s office on Saturday – a year and a half after the interviews were held across a two-day period in the fall of 2023. The recordings showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau Biden died of cancer. 

The recordings have further bolstered conservative outrage stretching back years that Biden’s mental acuity had cratered and that the Delaware Democrat who had served in the Senate for decades had become a ‘shadow’ of himself and was unfit to lead the country as president. 

The flurry of pardons Biden allegedly signed by autopen in the waning days of his administration included ones for his son Hunter Biden, his siblings and their spouses, retired Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members and staff of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview on Sunday that he has long sounded the alarm over the validity of Biden’s pardons, as many lacked specifically what charges an individual was protected against. Instead, many of the pardons outlined blanket protections, such as preemptively pardoning Milley and Fauci from potential prosecution and blanket pardons for unidentified members of Congress who served on the J6 select committee. 

‘I’ve been long of the position that the pardons, many of the pardons, are not valid based on the fact that they don’t pardon anything. It’s just a pardon for conduct that’s unnamed … it’s further confirmation that the pardons are not valid,’ said Fitton, who had sued for the release of the audio recordings. 

‘A competent president would say, ‘How is it I could pardon someone for nothing?’’ he continued. 

Fitton added that ‘more importantly, Biden should still be prosecuted’ after he was ‘mollycoddled’ by the Biden DOJ during the investigation into the documents he possessed from his days in the Senate and when he served as vice president. 

‘The audio shows he was mollycoddled by the Justice Department, you know, because Hur was working for the Justice Department. … There’s an argument that the records he had as vice president, he could have. But that wasn’t the position of Justice Department. But certainly he didn’t have the right to have those records from his days of the Senate,’ Fitton said. 

President Donald Trump railed on Truth Social that the release of the audio recordings revealed a ‘bigger scandal’ about the use of an autopen under the Biden White House. 

‘Whoever had control of the ‘AUTOPEN’ is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment,’ Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday.

He added: ‘THIS IS WHY THE UNSELECT COMMITTEE OF POLITICAL THUGS, WHO WERE GIVEN A FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON BY THE PERSON WHO WIELDED THE NOW ILLEGALLY USED AUTOPEN, DELETED AND DESTROYED ALL EVIDENCE AND INFORMATION FROM THEIR CORRUPT AND VICIOUS WITCH HUNT AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHER PEOPLE, WHOSE LIVES WERE COMPLETELY SHATTERED AND DESTROYED BY THIS HISTORICALLY CRIMINAL EVENT.’

Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration’s use of an autopen earlier this year and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden’s signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature.

The reports led to speculation that Biden aides had approved of executive orders and sweeping pardons, not the president. 

Hur led an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents following his departure as vice president under the Obama administration. Hur announced in February 2024 that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, citing that Biden is ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

Although a transcript was released, the White House asserted executive privilege over releasing recordings after Garland urged the administration not to release the recordings, according to a letter obtained by Fox News in May of last year. 

‘The audio recordings of your interview and Mr. Zwonitzer’s interview fall within the scope of executive privilege. Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations–in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important,’ Garland wrote in a letter to Biden last year, justifying why the recordings should not be released.  

Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-OH, subpoenaed the Department of Justice in February 2024 for the recordings and other materials related to the interview and investigation, but to no avail. The House voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress over the matter in June 2024. 

Comer announced on Friday that his committee will continue ‘its investigation into the cover-up of Biden’s mental decline and use of autopen’ and the use of the pen when Biden pardoned members of his family.  

‘The American people deserve to know who was actually calling the shots in the Biden White House, because it wasn’t Joe Biden. His mental decline was obvious to anyone paying attention. But instead of being honest, the Biden Administration, Democrats in Congress, and the legacy media lied and covered it up. They gaslit the American people while propping up a man who was unfit to lead,’ Comer said in a press release on Friday, noting that Garland ‘defied’ a subpoena to release the recordings. 

‘Key decisions made in the final days of the Biden presidency, including using autopens to issue blanket pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be fully examined. There are serious concerns that President Biden lacked the mental capacity to authorize those actions. The American people are done being lied to. We’re going to bring the truth into the light, and starting next week, those involved in the cover-up will begin to be put on notice,’ Comer said in a statement on Friday. 

The recordings ‘demonstrate that Biden was completely out of it, and we already found documents that the Biden White House had changed the transcript, edited it to hide this. This is what they were hiding. There’s got to be accountability. Garland should be prosecuted by the Attorney General over the contempt he had for Congress to hide this,’ Fitton said on Fox News last week. 

Fox News host Mark Levin said Garland ‘should be forced to testify before Congress under oath’ over the alleged cover-up of Biden’s health. 

‘Former Attorney General Garland heard these recordings and used lies and deceit to prevent them from being released to the American people before the Democrats nominated Biden. He should be forced to testify before Congress under oath and held to account for his grotesque abuse of power,’ Levin posted to X. 

Hours before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the White House announced pardons for both Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Less than a half an hour before Trump became president, Biden pardoned members of his family, including his brother James B. Biden, sister Valerie Biden Owens, brother-in-law John T. Owens and brother Francis W. Biden. 

The former president had previously issued a ‘full and unconditional pardon’ to his adult son, Hunter Biden, after he was convicted in two separate federal cases last year. Hunter Biden’s pardon covered a 10-year period, between 2014 to 2024, for any offenses he may have committed. 

‘I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny, and they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that’s used correctly. So, I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did. And if they’re null and void,’ Ed Martin said in his final press conference while serving as acting U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. 

Trump claimed on Truth Social in March that Biden’s pardons were ‘void’ due to the ‘fact that they were done by Autopen.’ 

‘The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,’ Trump claimed in a Truth Social post.

‘In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,’ Trump added.

Martin, who will now lead the Department of Justice’s ‘Weaponization Working Group’ targeting political corruption within the federal law enforcement department, added in a media interview earlier this month that he had been investigating Biden’s last-minute pardons. 

‘When [former President] Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, and it turned out that Marc Rich had paid a boatload of money to one of Clinton’s friend’s lawyers. That’s not corrupt, it’s not criminal, because the plenary power of the pardon. But in the case of Joe Biden and his pardons, they were so specific. Back 14 years, covering everything you’ve ever done. And when I say specific, they were broad, but they had time stuff on them,’ Martin said earlier this month, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

‘And that at least leads to questions, because the plenary power’s true. But the question is what is going on here, and I did get responses from some of them and those questions are ongoing,’ Martin continued.

Conservative social media users have sounded off that the recordings show Biden lacked the cognitive ability to know about the pardons or executive orders he allegedly signed off on. 

‘Joe Biden had no clue where he was for most of his presidency… Just listen to Robert Hur’s interview with him… He’s a complete mess. There’s no way Biden knew about the pardons, executive orders and directives coming out of his office,’ conservative X commentator Tim Young posted to the platform.

‘I’d say with the Hur tapes coming out, maybe those pardons can be challenged? Biden was CLEARLY mentally incapacitated,’ conservative podcast host Shawn Farash posted to X. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for comment on the tapes and subsequent backlash on Sunday morning but did not immediately receive a reply. 

Former President Joe Biden’s office confirmed on Sunday that he is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. 

‘Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,’ Biden’s team shared in a statement. ‘On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.’ 

‘While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,’ the statement continued.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com

Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the timing of a potential face-to-face meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin regarding a ceasefire deal in Ukraine in an interview that aired Sunday. 

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday while returning to Washington, D.C., from Abu Dhabi that no peace in Ukraine would be reached until he met with Putin in person. The president added in a Truth Social post on Saturday that he planned to speak with Putin on the phone on Monday, followed by a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some NATO leaders. 

Meanwhile, Rubio — who attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass in Rome on Sunday — said the Vatican has offered to host a direct meeting between Ukraine, Russia and possibly other parties. 

‘Obviously, the Vatican has made a very generous offer to host anything — by the way, not just a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, but any meeting, including at a technical level, you know — any meetings that need to be hosted, they’ve expressed a willingness to do so. So it’s a very generous offer that may be taken up on,’ Rubio told CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ in an interview that was recorded on Saturday. ‘I mean, it would be a site that all parties would feel comfortable. So hopefully we’ll get to that stage where talks are happening on a regular basis, and that the Vatican will have the opportunity to be one of the options.’ 

Rubio had a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Saturday after Putin was a no-show to a face-to-face meeting the Russian leader called with Zelenskyy in Turkey last week. Despite Putin’s absence, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations did agree to a prisoner exchange of 1,000 people from each side, though a broader ceasefire or peace deal failed to materialize. 

CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Rubio if he spoke with Lavrov about lining up a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin. 

‘Well, we talked about a variety of things,’ said Rubio. ‘I wanted to get his readout on his view of how the talks went yesterday. They were not a complete waste of time. For example, there were 1,000 prisoners that are going to be exchanged, and that, from a humanitarian standpoint, is very positive. He explained to me that they are going to be preparing a document outlining their requirements for a ceasefire that would then lead to broader negotiations.’

Rubio said the Ukrainians will be working on their own proposal coming soon, and he hoped proposals from both sides would be ‘serious and viable.’

‘So we’ll have to wait and see. But he wanted me to know, and he communicated in our call, that their side will be working on a series of ideas and requirements that they would have in order to move forward with a ceasefire and further negotiations,’ he said.

Rubio said the U.S. is ‘testing’ whether the Russian are just ‘tapping’ them along, as Trump has suggested could be the case. 

‘On the one hand, we’re trying to achieve peace and end a very bloody, costly and destructive war. So there’s some element of patience that is required. On the other hand, we don’t have time to waste,’ Rubio said. ‘There are a lot of other things happening in the world that we also need to be paying attention to. So we don’t want to be involved in this process of just endless talks — there has to be some progress, some movement forward. And if at the end of this, in the next few days, we get a document produced by both sides, and it shows that both sides are… making concessions and being realistic and rational in their approach, then I think we can feel good about continuing to remain engaged.’

‘If, on the other hand, what we see is not very productive, perhaps we’ll have a different assessment. I also agree that, ultimately, one of the things that could help break this logjam — perhaps the only thing that can — is a direct conversation between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. And he’s already openly expressed a desire and a belief that that needs to happen, and hopefully that’ll be worked out soon as well,’ he added.

Pressed on whether the in-person talks between Trump and Putin were being planned, Rubio reiterated that the president had already made that offer publicly. 

‘The mechanics of setting that kind of meeting up would require a little bit of work, so I can’t say that’s being planned as we speak in terms of picking a site and a date,’ Rubio said. ‘But the president wants to do it. He wants to do it as soon as feasible. I think the Russian side has also expressed a willingness to do it. And so, now it’s just a question of bringing them, bringing everyone together, and figuring out where and when and that meeting will happen and what it will be about.’

Rubio joined Vice President JD Vance in meeting with Zelenskyy at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Rome on Sunday. 

Vance and Rubio later met with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for discussions on trade, the war in Ukraine and NATO spending, according to a spokesperson for the vice president. 

‘The individual countries within Europe are important allies of the United States. But, of course, we have some disagreements, as friends sometimes do, on issues like trade, and we also have many agreements and many things we can work on together, and I’m looking forward to the conversation,’ Vance told reporters at the top of the meeting. 

After the meeting, the vice president’s office released a statement saying that ‘the leaders discussed their shared goal of ending the bloodshed in Ukraine and provided updates on the current state of negotiations for a ceasefire and lasting peace.’ 

Fox News’ Meghan Tomes and The Associated Press contributed to this report.