(Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer Thursday night to discuss her bipartisan Congressional delegation to Ukraine earlier this week and rebuke President Trump’s comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that align with Russian propaganda talking points. Shaheen, a top member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, also spoke about how the across-the-board cuts and potential firings at the U.S. Department of Defense weaken the lethality and readiness of America’s military. Click HERE to watch Senator Shaheen’s full CNN interview. 

Key quotes from Senator Shaheen: 

• On President Trump’s false comments that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is a “dictator,” Shaheen said: “Well President Trump is just wrong. He’s factually incorrect. […] We just returned, as you pointed out, from Ukraine where we saw the courage and the resilience of the Ukrainian people. […] Senator Tillis and I just went to the floor of the Senate to talk about what we saw in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where the Russians came in, they held siege in that town for 33 days. They indiscriminately shot civilians, in fact, that was the target of what they were trying to do. […] That’s the person that Donald Trump wants to give away the store to. You never start a negotiation by giving away all your leverage at the beginning and that’s what Donald Trump is doing.” 

• On Speaker Johnson’s comments that there is “no appetite” for another Ukraine aid bill in Congress, Shaheen said: “Well, I was at the Munich Security Conference with a bipartisan delegation. […] We met with President Zelenskyy. We talked to him about how the war is going. […] We talked about how we are supporting Ukraine. We want to continue to equip the country. We want to ensure that they have leverage as they’re going into any negotiation with Russia and we want to make sure that Ukraine is at the table for any negotiations.” 

• On U.S. Secretary of Defense Hegseth making broad cuts and potentially firing high-ranking generals, Shaheen said: “You know, he talked a lot about wanting to restore lethality to our military. Well, what he’s doing now doesn’t improve the lethality, it doesn’t improve the readiness, it just creates political divisions at a time when our military’s strength has been that it is not political. Secretary Hegseth is introducing politics into the military in ways that are not good for our national security.” 

• On mass firings of federal workers, Shaheen said: “It’s unfortunate that this has been an indiscriminate effort led by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who has multiple conflicts of interest as he’s looking at what he wants to do with government programs and people. And the firings have been not based on expertise or experience or what we need, it’s just been an across the board.”