Donald Trump Says He’s Received Letter From Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky Saying He’s Ready To Negotiate Peace Deal With Russia — Update

UPDATE: Five days after the blowup in the Oval Office, Donald Trump said that he had received a letter from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky saying that he is “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible.”

“I appreciate that he has sent this letter,” Trump said, while adding that he has received “strong sigals from Russia that it is ready for peace.”

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Trump also said that Zelensky was ready to sign a minerals deal. That agreement was put on hold after Trump ordered Zelensky and his entourage to leave the White House after their Oval Office confrontation on Friday.

While it is unclear when Trump received the letter in question from Zelensky, the language Trump quoted exactly matches a posting the Ukrainian leader put up on social media early Tuesday morning.

PREVIOUSLY: Donald Trump vowed to take back the Panama Canal, claiming that a 1970s agreement to hand over the canal to Panama had been violated.

“The Panama Canal was built by Americans for Americans,” he said.

Trump also talked of another expansionist desire: Greenland. He acknowledged that it would be up to residents of Greenland to determine their destiny, but “one way or the other we are going to get it.”

As the speech has gone on, Democrats have been leaving, with a couple of rows nearly empty.

PREVIOUSLY: Donald Trump’s reality TV moment came when he called out DJ Daniel, a 13-year-old boy who has suffered from brain cancer and who has had dreams of becoming a police officer.

Trump had his Secret Service director Sean Curran name Daniel an honorary agent. The moment drew a rare round of applause throughout the chamber.

Earlier, when Trump called for the mandatory death penalty for anyone who murders a police officer, Democrats started to shout, “January 6th.” That was a reference to Trump’s pardon of rioters who injured police officers in the siege of the Capitol.

PREVIOUSLY: Donald Trump told Congress that “we are achieving the great liberation of America” as he touted his border policy.

“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history, and we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossings ever recorded,” Trump said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation to secure the border, but it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”

Some Democrats clapped during moments of his section on immigration, including when he paid tribute to the mother and sister of Laken Riley. But some Democratic lawmakers also booed when Trump referred to “migrant occupation and corruption.”

PREVIOUSLY: In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump once again embraced tariffs, even as the markets have been rattled by the implementation of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them,” Trump said. “Whatever they tax us, we tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

Earlier in the day, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, suggested that a deal could be in the offing to reduce the Mexico and Canada. But no deal was announced.

PREVIOUSLY: As Donald Trump touted his moves to reduce the size of the federal workforce, Democrats seized on one of his remarks.

“The days of unelected bureaucrats are over,” Trump said. A number of Democratic lawmakers then pointed at Elon Musk, sitting in the chamber.

Musk, working as a special adviser to Trump, was not elected but has enormous influence over the government. Trump said he was in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed federal jobs, including workers at popular federal agencies like the National Park Service and those in jobs ranging from health research to food safety.

Musk appeared with Trump on the campaign trail and reportedly poured hundreds of millions into his presidential bid.

PREVIOUSLY: Donald Trump opened his speech to a joint session of Congress by predicting that his presidency will lead to “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.”

“The American Dream is surging—bigger and better than ever before,” Trump said. “The American Dream is unstoppable, and our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again.”

Trump said, “We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in 4 years or 8 years—and we are just getting started.” He even said it was a better start of his presidency than George Washington, while he called Joe Biden the “worst president.”

“The people elected me to do the job and I am doing it,” Trump said, as Republicans stood and cheered while Democrats staged their own kind of protest. They held up signs that read “Musk steals” and “Protect veterans” and “False” as the president spoke.

As Trump boasted of having an electoral mandate, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) rose from his seat and shouted, “You have no mandate.” He interrupted the speech, and kept shouted until Speaker Mike Johnson ordered the sergeant at arms to escort him out.

Trump also declared that he has restored free speech, but that remarks also elicited a Democratic protst, as lawmakers held up signs of “False.” Trump has attacked the media, banning the AP from White House events because the news organization did not change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Trump signed an executive order doing so, but the AP noted that other countries have not recognized the name change for an international body of water.

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