ASHLEY PARKER: And another surprise out of the White House this week was Trump changing his tone on Russia and specifically really changing his tone on President Putin.

I mean, it was not even -- it feels like years ago, but it was not even five months ago that Trump got so upset with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, that he essentially threw him out of the White House before he had time to eat his scheduled lunch.

So, let's just take a quick trip down memory lane.

DONALD TRUMP: You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN President: I'm not playing cards.

DONALD TRUMP: Right now, you don't your playing cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY; I'm very serious, Mr. President.

I'm very serious.

DONALD TRUMP: You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You are gambling with World War III.

ASHLEY PARKER: But on Tuesday, Trump had this to say about Putin.

DONALD TRUMP: We get a lot of (BLEEP) thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth?

He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

ASHLEY PARKER: So, Peter, what has changed?

Has Trump come around to Zelenskyy?

Has he soured on Putin?

Is it something we can't even fathom yet?

PETER BAKER: Yes, it's really fascinating.

You know why Zelenskyy got under Trump's skin at that thing a few months ago?

Because he was telling him Putin is going to shovel a lot of B.S.

your way, that you cannot trust Putin.

And Trump took offense at that.

He says, no, that's just not true.

In effect, what he's saying is, I've been through so much with my friend, Vladimir Putin.

We went through the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax together, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And now what Trump has discovered is what Zelenskyy told him is basically right.

You cannot assume that Trump - - that Putin is your friend, you kind of assume that he wants a peace deal because he doesn't.

He's made that very clear.

Now, you know, it's striking to hear Trump say what he said this week because of ten years of bromance between the two, right, which is still seemingly inexplicable to a lot of people.

Why would Trump be so favorable toward Putin for so long?

Has he come around to believe what everybody else already believed, which is that Putin is not his friend?

ASHLEY PARKER: Which his in own intelligence services had been telling him since his first term for the better part of a decade.

PETER BAKER: And his friends, like Lindsey Graham and other Republicans, would tell him, you know, Marco Rubio used to be a hawk, he would have -- the old Senator Rubio would've told him that, I don't know about Secretary Rubio.

Now, does that mean that they'll stay, you know, estranged?

We've seen with Trump before.

Of course, he has -- you know, he goes in and out with people, right?

He gets mad at people and then they're back into his orbit.

So, if they had a deal next week of some sort that Trump could tout, he would suddenly be friends again, probably with Putin.

But it is interesting that he's learned that Putin is not the guy he thought he was.

And it is important to remember that Trump thought they were so close that he could snap his fingers and have a peace deal within 24 hours.

He told everybody, not even after his inauguration, he said he could do it before his inauguration, and he has discovered otherwise.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, Nancy, I mean, one thing that was striking was Trump says this, but this week after Trump's comments, Russia and Putin ramped up their attacks on Ukraine.

I mean, can you take us through why Putin still seems to feel so emboldened?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, so what's happening on the ground is we've seen a huge uptick of the use of drones and missiles on the capital, killing at least 14, literally hundreds of drones.

And then today, we saw an attack on a maternity hospital in Kharkiv.

And this is -- when I give you a sense of sort of the level, the ramp up, we've seen more drones used in some cases in one day than all of last year by Russia.

And what that does is really overwhelm the air defense system of Ukraine at a time when the U.S. has withheld the air defense missiles that would protect the capital in other parts of the country.

And I think he's doing this in part because he sees a Ukraine that is increasingly vulnerable because it's drawing down on the U.S.-provided air defense missiles and potentially sees a divide between the United States and Ukraine in terms of the promise of enduring support, that these attacks have happened more on the capital have been so aggressive and have really forced Ukraine to make big decisions about what air defense capability they're going to use to try to protect the capital has been challenging.

ASHLEY PARKER: You mentioned those defensive weapons, which Trump just sort of reauthorized the shipment of, but those had been stopped briefly by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it is worth noting, without telling Trump what he was doing.

They're now back on, but this sort of on again, off again defensive weapons dance, I mean, what does that reveal about fissures between the President and Hegseth, fissures in the administration?

Nancy, just let's stick with you for a second.

Explain what we should take away from that.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Just a little background, under the Biden administration, there was a promise of consistent weapon shipments to Ukraine, and those were supposed to run out about the summer.

And so this was one of those shipments in which, and it included things like Patriot missiles, Hellfires, GMLRS, key weapons systems and missiles for Ukraine.

And so we heard at the start of the month that the secretary of defense had suspended those seemingly without telling the president.

The president said he didn't know.

It's not even clear whether the whole shipment was suspended.

When you ask at the Pentagon, shockingly, you can't get a clear answer on what was suspended, why and what is resuming now.

So, then we heard from the president, I don't know, but I want to resume them.

He gave an interview to NBC, in which he said, we are actually going to resume this shipment of defensive weapons and NATO's going to pay for it.

Now, technically NATO can't pay for it, but NATO members could.

And so we're looking now to see if that's going to happen and what that package looks like.

The problem is so many people focus on the shipment and what Hegseth said to me, what's critical is once you start turning weapons systems on and shipments on and off, it is very hard for Ukrainian military planners to defend themselves.

You know, when you turn off a missile system, there's a lot of logistical changes that happen.

Ukraine might move a system from one part of the country to the other, when two days later, the U.S. turns it back on, those systems are still on trains.

They're having to reconfigure their battlefield to this on and off approach to U.S. shipments.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And you're giving us an explanation of us now seven months into this conflict in Trump's term, but Peter had mentioned that Trump had said he was going to do this on day one.

And, Zolan, I'm curious, I know you had some reporting on this.

Trump actually believed this.

Can you just explain why he believed this?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: I mean, I don't know about the 24 hours.

To have talked to people who really think that Trump did think that his close -- that his relationship with Putin, that Putin's -- that the fact that Putin favored him over other candidates, that he could use, that leverage, his deal-making leverage, to get a deal here.

And what he has found out is that embracing Vladimir Putin comes with few results, right?

It comes with few actual, productive results here.

And it's something that, yes, you know, he was saying to those around him, but his Republican allies, you know, were also telling him in recent weeks that they could all be getting played.

This was something that Senator Graham said as well, who's put forth a sanctions bill that we still don't really know if the White House supports at this point, it would impose sanctions on Russia.

So, you know, he has had reminders that Putin could be playing him this entire time, and now you're starting to see the frustration really bubble up to the surface after a lot of the hyperbolic rhetoric that we saw during the campaign.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Zolan, I'm so glad you brought up the sanctions bill, because I think despite what we heard from the president to me, we will not know if there's a real shift unless two things happen.

One, we actually see weapons and defensive systems going to Ukraine and the president signs that sanctions bill.

That is a tangible example of the president saying, I am fed up of Putin.

Words are one thing.

But those are the two things on the table right now that would signal that actually the U.S. is shifting its position.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: And after he posted on true social.

That Putin had gone crazy after or lost his mind after one of Russia's aggressive attacks on Ukraine, I asked him outside of Air Force One if he supported his own allies' sanctions bill, and at that point he did not say one way or the other.

He said, I after read it.

I'm not sure.

He didn't answer the affirmative.

He's been asked since then as well.

Still, we have not had that outright support for the bill.

PETER BAKER: Well, that sanctions bill has a cost, because what it does is it tries to cut off the oil supply to places like China.

It doesn't want other people to buy Russian oil.

That's fine.

But if you take that oil off the market, it means prices go up.

And that's why Biden's administration wasn't willing to do that.

They did a whole lot of other sanctions, but they weren't willing to take all the Russian oil off the market because of the price at the gas pump.

And Trump is very sensitive to the price of the gas pump and bragging in recent days about how it's lower than it had been.

To sign that bill and then effectuate those sanctions as a risk for his domestic support.

TARINI PARTI: He has signaled that there might be a big announcement coming next week.

So, I think the early indications are that he might actually support the sanctions bill and, well, that remains to be seen, but maybe he's made that calculation that, you know, it's worth the risk.

PETER BAKER: There is a waiver in the bill.

He couldn't because he may go and sign it and use it as leverage maybe to get Putin back to the table, but -- NANCY YOUSSEF: And there's a political cost as well, right?

There are 86 signatories to the bill.

This issue, the support for Ukraine, has become a bipartisan issue.

He has faced criticisms from within his own parties.

So, you're right, there's an economic cost, but he's also facing a political one.

PETER BAKER: That's right.

ASHLEY PARKER: And, Peter, beyond the sanctions bill, right, it feels like Russia has been by the United States given the ability not to lose but not the ability to actually win.

What would be required to actually allow Ukraine to win if that's what Trump even wants to happen?

PETER BAKER: I mean, the truth is United States provided tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons under Biden who's willing and wanted to help Ukraine, and still, as you say, didn't go as far as some people thought they should go.

The idea that Trump and this Republican Congress is going to go further than that seems unlikely, which is what Putin is gambling on.

Putin is gambling that, that Trump is going to walk away, that Trump doesn't really care about Ukraine, that Trump actually has other fish to fry with China and trade and tariffs.

And that's why he thinks that he can continue to stiff Trump because then he will have the upper hand in Ukraine.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Particularly on foreign policy too, is when we see that the president wants to lean into issues that are a win, not intractable.

ASHLEY PARKER: Exactly.

There's a lot to discuss, but unfortunately we have to leave it here.

Thank you all for joining me, to our guests.

And thank you to our viewers at home for watching us.