Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion this week that the U.S. could walk away from supporting Ukraine if peace talks with Russia stagnate could serve as catnip for the Kremlin, according to experts who say Russian President Vladimir Putin might choose to smother progress in hopes of getting America to wash ‘its hands of the war.’

WhilePresident Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. may disengage from the negotiations as a last resort if they prove futile, Vance has taken the rhetoric a step further by saying the U.S. is definitely open to doing so. 

‘We’re more than open to walking away,’ Vance told reporters on board Air Force Two on Monday, just moments before a high-stakes phone call between Trump and Putin. ‘The United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.’

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautioned that no one wins if the U.S. steps aside from the talks, except for Russia. 

‘It is crucial for all of us that the United States does not distance itself from the talks and the pursuit of peace because the only one who benefits from that is Putin,’ Zelenskyy wrote in a Monday post on X.

Vance’s remark about abandoning mediation between the two countries would only embolden Russia, even though a lack of U.S. involvement still wouldn’t give Putin everything he wants, according to John Hardie, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia program, a nonprofit research institute based in Washington.

For the moment, Moscow still benefits from U.S. involvement in the talks because the Kremlin wants the U.S. to help advance a deal that benefits Russia and alleviates sanctions, Hardie said.

‘But, for the Kremlin, the United States washing its hands of the war would be the next best outcome if it means an end or reduction to U.S. support for Ukraine, especially since President Trump may well move to normalize relations with Russia anyhow,’ Hardie told Fox News Digital. ‘So the administration’s threat to walk away risks perversely incentivizing Kremlin intransigence. A better approach would be to ramp up the economic and military pressure on Russia if Putin continues to reject compromise.’

Russia still desires normalization with the U.S., which can only happen if the war ends swiftly and relatively amicably, said Peter Rough, a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute think tank. 

‘That reset in relations is a giant carrot the administration is dangling in front of the Kremlin,’ Rough told Fox News Digital. ‘If the U.S. walks away because Russia will not make peace, however, then that carrot disappears as well.’

Rough noted that other administration officials besides Vance, including Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have mentioned the possibility of walking away from a deal, so Vance’s comments don’t necessarily reflect a huge change in policy. And it’s unclear right now what exactly stepping aside would mean.

‘The purpose of those comments has been to impress on the Kremlin that U.S. patience is not limitless,’ Rough said. 

Vance hasn’t shied away from issuing bold foreign policy statements since becoming vice president. From sparring with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in Februaryto appearing to counter Trump when Vance remarked in May that the war in Ukraine was far from over after Trump indicated a deal might emerge soon, Vance has been outspoken in a way most vice presidents haven’t been.

When asked for comment or if there were any concerns about Vance’s Monday statement, the White House referred Fox News Digital to Vance’s office. Vance’s office declined to provide comment when asked if his remarks would encourage Russia to sit the negotiations out and continue its attacks.

‘Fundamental mistrust’

Vance has adopted an outspoken approach as vice president, starting off with his fiery February statements at the Munich Security Council in which he asserted that Europe needed to ‘step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.’ 

That boldness has carried over into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations, where Vance has taken a proactive approach, at times appearing to be forging his own path.  

Vance and Rubio engaged in discussions to end the conflict in Ukraine with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Rome on Sunday, among other issues. Vance and Rubio also discussed the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war with Vatican prelate Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher on Monday. 

Aboard Air Force Two on Monday, Vance said the negotiations had reached ‘a bit of [an] impasse’ between the two countries and that the conflict is not the Trump administration’s war to wage but rather belongs to former President Joe Biden and Putin. 

‘There is fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West. It’s one of the things the president thinks is, frankly, stupid, that we should be able to move beyond,’ Vance told reporters. ‘The mistakes that have been made in the past, but … that takes two to tango.’

‘I know the president’s willing to do that, but if Russia’s not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just going to have to say … this is not our war,’ Vance said. ‘It’s Joe Biden’s war, it’s Vladimir Putin’s war. It’s not our war. We’re going to try to end it, but if we can’t end it, we’re eventually going to say, ‘You know what? That was worth a try, but we’re not doing it anymore.”

Vance’s Monday statement came just before Trump was scheduled to speak with Putin, seemingly undercutting the high-leverage telephone call and also underscoring Vance’s influence over foreign policy matters in the White House. 

Specifically on Ukraine negotiations, Vance has remained outspoken, engaging in confrontation when Zelenskyy visited the White House in February. 

In that exchange, Vance accused Zelenskyy of being ‘disrespectful’ after Zelenskyy pointed out that Putin has a track record of breaking agreements and countered Vance’s statements that the path forward was through diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine. 

‘Do you think that it’s respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?’ Vance asked at the Oval Office meeting. 

Almost immediately after the U.S. signed a minerals deal with Ukraine on May 1, Vance said the war in Ukraine wouldn’t end in the near future, despite the fact that Trump indicated the previous week that an agreement was on the horizon. 

‘It’s not going anywhere,’ Vance told Fox News on May 1. ‘It’s not going to end anytime soon.’ 

Still, he characterized the agreement as ‘good progress’ in the negotiations. 

Trump’s talk with Putin

Trump and Putin spoke over the phone Monday to advance peace negotiations to halt the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, just days after Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey to conduct their first peace talks since 2022. 

After the call, Trump said both countries would move toward a ceasefire and advance talks to end the war. 

Meanwhile, Trump has suggested continued U.S. involvement may not be a viable option moving forward, but he has been reticent about specifics on what would actually prompt him to walk away from the talks. For example, Trump said on May 8 in an interview with NBC News that he believes peace is possible but that the U.S. wouldn’t act as a mediator forever.

‘Well, there will be a time when I will say, ‘OK, keep going, keep being stupid,’ Trump said in the interview. 

‘Maybe it’s not possible to do,’ he said. ‘There’s tremendous hatred.’

Still, Trump signaled that the U.S. would take a backseat in the negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv after his call with Putin. 

‘The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know the details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,’ Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social. 

Trump has continued to distance the U.S. from the conflict, and he later described the conflict as a ‘European situation.’ 

‘Big egos involved, but I think something’s going to happen,’ Trump told reporters on Monday. ‘And if it doesn’t, I’ll just back away and they’ll have to keep going. This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation.’

Trump also doubled down on extracting the U.S. from the war, claiming it didn’t involve U.S. personnel. 

‘It’s not our people, it’s not our soldiers … it’s Ukraine and it’s Russia,’ Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday while hosting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sanctions against Russia could ramp up in the event Russia fails to cooperate. 

‘President Trump has made it very clear that if President Putin does not negotiate in good faith that the United States will not hesitate to up the Russia sanctions along with our European partners,’ Bessent said Sunday in an interview with NBC. 

Vance has previously said the concessions that Russia is seeking from Ukraine to end the conflict are too stringent but believes there is a viable path to peace and wants both to find common ground. 

‘The step that we would like to make right now is we would like both the Russians and the Ukrainians to actually agree on some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another,’ Vance said at the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington on May 7.

Russia’s demands include Ukraine never joining NATO and preventing foreign peacekeeper troops from deploying to Ukraine after the conflict. Russia is also seeking to adjust some of the borders that previously were Ukraine’s.

When history gazes back upon the presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, one question will stand out: Who was really running the country? Because it certainly wasn’t the so-called commander in chief.

But perhaps, it wasn’t really a question of who. Maybe we were governed by something much closer to an invisible hand of wokeness. Maybe we were governed by a twisted worldview, not a conspiracy or solitary figure.

It is reasonable, and almost comforting, to believe that Barack Obama or some other Democrat luminary was sitting at the center of the political universe like Vishnu, myriad arms pulling levers and flicking switches. But the reality might be far more troubling.

The reality might be that progressive politics have created a self-perpetuating deep state bureaucracy that, left unchecked, couldn’t care less who sits behind the Resolute Desk.

There are a handful of behind-the-scenes power brokers, hiding from public view of late, who clearly had a lot of sway in the Biden White House: Chief of Staff Jeff Zeints, longtime ally Mike Donilon, Senior Adviser Anita Dunn, and the ever-present Susan Rice.

But in all likelihood, they were not running some textbook conspiracy theory to rule in Biden’s name. In fact, the entire Biden administration looks more like a broken play in football; It really was just trying to stay on its feet.

It is telling that the front-facing cabinet members of Biden’s, unlike his hotshot behind-the-scenes team, were feckless, awful and never fired for anything.

Watching our current Secretary of State Marco Rubio cross swords with Democrats in his Senate testimony this week couldn’t help but remind us of someone like hapless Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, sitting in those same rooms, like a scolded child unable to mount a defense for his open borders.

Or how about Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who seemed to have a special Zippo lighter designed to let him fire up conflagrations from Ukraine to the Middle East? Or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — when he was available, of course — whose Afghanistan withdrawal made the Keystone Cops look like the A Team?

For four years this ‘aw shucks’ brigade of midwits was allowed to drive our nation off a cliff precisely because nobody was actually in charge.

When the border was a mess and Mayorkas embarrassed himself on the Hill, what would be the process for firing him? The boss is oblivious. Who would actually care enough to go after him? None of the insiders I mentioned above. It wasn’t their legacy, wasn’t their problem. So no accountability.

No. We were governed by a set of progressive assumptions, much like the invisible hand of the market that Adam Smith wrote about. In progressive politics the questions simply answer themselves. It is a system.

Why would Mayorkas let the southern border become a turnstile for foreign gang members? Because first and foremost, we must think of the innocent migrants, even if the cruel open borders policy is getting many of them trafficked.

Why couldn’t the Biden administration back off of the hill of men playing in women’s sports when everyone without pronouns on their business card knows it’s absurd? Because progressive ideology dictates that the oppressed must be right.

Why was the Biden administration unable to forcefully call out antisemitism on our college campuses? Because Jews are now white-adjacent and privileged. 

We were governed by a set of left-wing assumptions.

Think about what almost happened. Even if Democrats had somehow gotten Methusela Biden over the finish line, with his new cancer diagnosis, we now know we would have wound up with Kamala ‘I’m not taking questions at this time’ Harris as president.

Could there be a better example of the fact that, to Democrats, it doesn’t matter in the slightest who is actually in charge?

We do not have two functioning political parties today. We have the GOP and a Democrat Party that is like the Borg from Star Trek, it speaks with a single voice that is somehow always dead wrong.

There is a reason that we have a president. Leadership matters, and in the last 120 or so days, from securing the border to securing trade deals, President Donald Trump has exemplified just how crucial his job really is.

In retrospect, we look back on four years of Biden’s presidency and ask ourselves, what the hell just happened?

What happened was a reign of woke policy agendas that flooded our border, inflated our prices, wrought war across the globe and infiltrated Catholic churches looking for fantastical right-wing extremism.

We may never know exactly what happened, but one thing we do know. It can never be allowed to happen again.

It’s the first time in nearly a decade that a special counsel is not investigating something related to a sitting or former president, but the remnants and revelations of past special counsel probes continue to break through the news cycle.

Every attorney general-appointed special counsel since 2017 has now released their reports, issued their indictments, received their verdicts, shuttered their offices, disassembled their teams and returned to their government or private sector roles.

Essentially, they’ve all moved on. 

First, in 2017, there was Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating whether members of the first Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Then, in 2019, there was Special Counsel John Durham, who was investigating the origins of the Mueller investigation and the original FBI probe into then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign. 

Soon, it was 2022, and Special Counsel Jack Smith began investigating then-former President Trump for his alleged improper retention of classified records held at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his presidency. Smith also began investigating events surrounding the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Next up, in 2023, Special Counsel Robert Hur was appointed and began investigating now-former President Joe Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records, which occurred during his vice presidency as part of the Obama administration.

Later in 2023, David Weiss, who had served as U.S. attorney in Delaware and had been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018, was appointed special counsel to continue his yearslong investigation into the now-former first son.

At this point, those investigations have all come to their resolutions: Mueller, in 2019, found there was no collusion; Durham, in 2022, found that the FBI ignored ‘clear warning signs’ of a Hillary Clinton-led plan to inaccurately tie her opponent to Russia using politically funded and uncorroborated opposition research; Smith, in 2022, charged Trump but had those charges tossed; Hur, in 2023, opted against charging Biden; Weiss, in 2023, charged Hunter Biden, who was convicted and later pardoned by his father.

But the curiosity surrounding those investigations that dominated headlines for the better part of a decade remains, largely because of so many loose ends and the prevalence of unanswered questions.

A trickle, sometimes more like a flood, of information and news related to those probes continues to seep into the news cycle.

On Friday night, audio of Biden’s interview with Hur was made public. Hur closed his investigation in 2024 without charging the then-president and infamously described him as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.’

Some congressional lawmakers had demanded the release of the audio of Biden’s interview amid questions about the former president’s memory lapses and mental acuity.

The audio – as expected, based on the transcript of the interview released in 2024 – showed Biden struggling with key memories, including when his son, Beau, died; when he left the vice presidency; and why he had classified documents he shouldn’t have had.

In a throwback to another special counsel investigation, the United States Secret Service last week paid a visit to former FBI Director James Comey after he posted a now-deleted image on social media that many interpreted as a veiled call for an assassination of Trump.

Comey on Thursday posted to Instagram an image of seashells on the beach arranged to show ’86 47′ with the caption, ‘Cool shell formation on my beach walk.’

Some interpreted it as a coded message, with ’86’ being slang for ‘get rid of’ and ’47’ referring to Trump, who is the 47th president.

Comey later deleted the post and wrote a message that said, ‘I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.’

Comey was the FBI director who, in 2016, allowed the opening of the bureau’s original Trump-Russia investigation, known inside the FBI as ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’ Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Days later, Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take over that investigation, thus beginning the string of special counsels.

Durham investigated the origins of the FBI probe and found that the FBI did not have any actual evidence to support the start of that investigation. Durham also found that the CIA, in 2016, received intelligence to show that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia; intelligence that the FBI, led by Comey, ignored.

On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama on a plan from one of Clinton’s campaign foreign policy advisers ‘to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.’ 

Biden, Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were in the Brennan-Obama briefing, according to the Durham report.

After that briefing, the CIA properly forwarded that information through a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL) to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok with the subject line ‘Crossfire Hurricane.’

Fox News first obtained and reported on the CIOL in October 2020, which stated, ‘The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate.’

‘Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,’ the memo continued. ‘An exchange (REDACTED) discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.’

By January 2017, Comey had notified Trump of a dossier, known as the Steele dossier, that contained salacious and unverified allegations about Trump’s purported coordination with the Russian government, a key document prompting the opening of the probe. 

The dossier was authored by Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence officer, and commissioned by Fusion GPS. Clinton’s presidential campaign hired Fusion GPS during the 2016 election cycle.

It was eventually determined that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie.

Durham, in his report, said the FBI, led by Comey, ‘failed to act on what should have been – when combined with other incontrovertible facts – a clear warning sign that the FBI might then be the target of an effort to manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes during the 2016 presidential election.’

But that intelligence referral document is just one of many that tells the real story behind the investigation that clouded the first Trump administration. 

And Trump has taken steps to ensure the American public has full access to all the documents. 

Trump, in late March, signed an executive order directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. 

The FBI is expected to release those documents in the coming weeks. 

As for the other special counsels, Smith recently had his own moment in the news cycle.

FBI Director Kash Patel on Thursday disbanded a public corruption squad in the bureau’s Washington field office. That was the same office that aided Smith’s investigation into Trump.

As for Weiss, after the release of the Biden audio tapes calling further into question the former president’s mental acuity, some, including Trump, are now calling for a review of the pardon of Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felony firearm offenses stemming from Weiss’ investigation. The first son was also charged with federal tax crimes regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. Before his trial, Hunter Biden entered a surprise guilty plea. The charges carried up to 17 years behind bars. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16, 2024, but his father, then-President Biden, pardoned him on all charges in December 2024.

Trump alleged in a Truth Social post in March that former President 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 wrote.

‘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.

Weiss, in his final report, blasted then-President Biden’s characterizations of the probe into Hunter Biden, which Weiss said were ‘wrong’ and ‘unfairly’ maligned Justice Department officials. He also said the presidential pardon made it ‘inappropriate’ for him to discuss whether any additional charges against the first son were warranted.

President Donald Trump evoked Elon Musk during his Oval Office meeting with South Africa’s president on Wednesday, during talks about the ongoing attacks white farmers in the country are facing.

Trump went back and forth with President Cyril Ramaphosa over whether what is occurring in South Africa is indeed a ‘genocide’ against white farmers. At one point, during the conversation, a reporter asked Trump how the United States and South Africa might be able to improve their relations. 

The president said that relations with South Africa are an important matter to him, noting he has several personal friends who are from there, including professional golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, who were present at Tuesday’s meeting, and Elon Musk.

Unprompted, Trump added that while Musk may be a South African native, he doesn’t want to ‘get [him] involved’ in the ongoing foreign diplomacy matters that played out during Tuesday’s meeting. 

‘I don’t want to get Elon involved. That’s all I have to do, get him into another thing,’ Trump said to light laughter. ‘But Elon happens to be from South Africa. This is what Elon wanted. He actually came here on a different subject — sending rockets to Mars — OK? He likes that better. He likes that subject better. But Elon’s from South Africa, and I don’t want to talk to him about that. I don’t think it’s fair to him.’

Musk, who was present at the Oval Office meeting Tuesday, has been an open critic of his native-born country’s government and has described the ongoing conflict there as a ‘genocide.’

Ahead of the meeting with Ramaphosa earlier this month, Musk-owned X garnered backlash over its AI chatbot, Grok, providing unsolicited responses about attacks against white farmers in South Africa. 

Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which makes the technology for Grok, said following complaints that an ‘unauthorized modification’ to Grok’s algorithm is the reason why it kept talking about race and politics in South Africa, according to the Associated Press.

Donald Trump Jr. is not ruling out the possibility of a political future, but asserts that he has no interest in making a run ‘anytime soon.’

At the Qatar Economic Forum, he fielded a question about the possibility of running for office after his father steps down. 

During his response he did not close the door on the prospect, saying, ‘I don’t know. Maybe one day… that calling is there.’

But he asserted in a post on X that he is not at all interested in pursuing office in 2028.

‘And FWIW, I’ve always said, while I’ll never 100% rule it out down the line, I have ZERO interest in running for office in 28 or anytime soon,’ he said in a portion of that post.

Donald Trump Jr. is President Donald Trump’s eldest child.

The president just began his second term about four months ago.

There have been two father-son pairs in U.S. history who both served as president: George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and John Adams and John Quincy Adams.