Former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera slammed the president on Friday for his “shameful” face-off with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The veteran newscaster and longtime Republican was once a close friend of President Donald Trump, but turned against him after bearing witness to his “irrational behavior” and “narcissism.”
Rivera called the so-called Ukraine-U.S. peace talks “scripted,” and said Trump unfairly “ambushed” Zelensky during the volatile showdown.
“I just could not believe what I was seeing,” he told NewsNation’s Connell McShane. “It was President Trump at his worst, President Trump as an ill-mannered bully insulting a war hero.”
The explosive exchange was also on par with Trump’s melodrama, said Rivera, who suggested that the whole thing was constructed to make Zelensky look bad and Trump look triumphant.
“People will die as a result of this catastrophe because there won’t be aid flowing, I believe, as necessary,” he added. “This will interfere with real life. This wasn’t just theatrics.”
The shouting match happened days after the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, in which thousands have died and millions have been displaced.
Rivera, who ditched Trump years ago, said the Trump administration “scripted” the whole exchange. And he should know. Rivera met Trump over 50 years ago and was once his close companion. For decades, they maintained a friendship, and Rivera said he supported the president despite not voting for him in 2016.
But it wasn’t long before the rift between them grew. Rivera told Interview Magazine in 2020 that he was “uncomfortable” with Trump’s refusal to concede the election. He claimed Trump started hanging around a “motley” crew of bad apples and grew more and more “radicalized.”
“Then, of course, you get to January 6, when it seemed to me that he incited and then unleashed the attack on the United States Capitol, the soul of our democracy, in his flamboyantly irrational and illegal assault on democracy itself,” Rivera said at the time. The day after, he began calling for Trump’s impeachment.
“It was the end of our friendship, the end of the relationship, and it was a great loss to me,” he added. “But he demonstrated then he was a sore loser who could not be trusted to honor the Constitution.”
In 2024, Rivera publicly endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s attacks on Zelensky—from calling him a “dictator” to blaming him for the war—stand in stark contrast to his chummy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rivera said that Trump tried to humiliate Zelensky by weaponizing his lack of English fluency and by bombarding him with insults.
“I think they went in there with the intent of making Zelensky look bad,” Rivera said, adding that Vice President JD Vance was a “disrespectful neophyte” who contributed little to the negotiations.
Peace was out of reach as a red-faced Trump insisted Zelensky was “gambling with World War III.”
The outcome of the argument might be “catastrophic,” the journalist said, especially for the countless families split apart by war.
Trump broke with years of precedent by deserting the country during its time of need, ignoring Zelensky’s plea for “lasting peace” and prompting applause from the Kremlin’s spokesperson.
Despite the high stakes, Trump left viewers with a cheap joke: “This is going to be great television, I will say that.”
