Hot Mic Catches Trump Giving Orders Seconds After Reporters Left Bombshell Oval Office Meeting
President Donald Trump was caught on a still-hot microphone giving instructions to his staff seconds after reporters left the Oval Office following Trump’s brutal blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump and Zelensky met in the Oval Office Friday after weeks of tension over public comments between the two. That meeting devolved into a stunning outright shouting match when Zelensky angered Trump, and ended with Zelensky being ejected from the White House and the diplomatic world in a state of shock.
That meeting has dominated the news ever since, with some observers theorizing that Vice President JD Vance and Trump planned to attack Zelensky all along and waited for an opening to accuse him of insufficient gratitude. Trump officials deny this.
Trump officials have pushed out their own version of events to reporters with anonymous accounts of the aftermath of the meeting. From The New York Times:
After the meeting blew up, Trump administration officials regrouped and ultimately decided to tell Mr. Zelensky to leave, according to a person with knowledge of the events. Two officials were dispatched to inform the Ukrainians, who were waiting in the Roosevelt Room. One Ukrainian official proposed a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky to calm things down, the person said, but the Americans said no.
From CNN:
A rattled Ukrainian delegation — including the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova, who stopped taking notes during the meeting and simply placed her head in her hands — left the Oval Office to regroup in the Roosevelt Room, just down the hall.
Huddling with his own key advisers to assess the situation, including Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump was enraged, saying he felt disrespected by Zelensky’s tone.
“Zelensky played it as wrong as he could play it. He came into Oval acting like a tough guy. It didn’t play well. Everyone in the room felt insulted,” one US official said. “Now Zelensky will have to figure out how to fix this on his own. We can’t fix it for him.”
The White House live feed continued for about a minute after reporters filed out, but the audio featured only banter between journalists as reporters made their way around the Rose Garden.
Other feeds cut off just as reporters exited, but one pool feed continued to monitor audio from the Oval Office on one channel, offering a few-seconds-long window into the aftermath of the meeting. Some of it is difficult to make out, but Trump can clearly be heard referencing the Roosevelt Room:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You’re right, maybe we should (INAUDIBLE). Let’s have a little something.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’ll uh–
UNIDENTIFIED: Especially if we’re gonna–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Would you bring them to the Roosevelt Room, (INAUDIBLE).
