Sec. Marco Rubio, Fiona Hill, Rep. Jason Crow

18:56He cares about political diplomatic isolation, being a pariah state. And he cares about military defeat. Those are the three things that will end this conflict. If he feels pressure on all of those three fronts, and this administration continues to be unwilling to do anything to assert pressure in any of those three areas.

19:13Margaret Brennan:Well, they have put in place some secondary sanctions, at least on India here. And they haven't pulled back. They need Congress to help them repeal a lot of these sanctions. But bigger picture, in hindsight, do you think the United States to date has been too hesitant to actually help Ukraine win this war? President Obama did not send offensive weapons to Ukraine. President Biden was criticized for being perhaps too slow in delivery of certain weapons. There's no doubt. As you know, I was one of the members of Congress that on a bipartisan basis pushed really hard in the first two years of this war under the Biden administration to do more, to do more quicker.

19:50And I was concerned that we were doing just enough to prevent Ukraine from losing and not doing enough to help them win. And I do believe that had we done more and we had done done it faster and that we were willing to be more aggressive in providing aid and support for Ukraine, then they would be in a different position on the battlefield today. But compare that to what this administration has done, which has relieved almost all pressure. Like, look at what happened on Friday. U.S. military personnel in uniform literally were on their hands and knees rolling out a red carpet for the most murderous dictator of the 21st century.

20:25Somebody who is kidnapped and is holding prisoner tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Somebody who started this whole war. This bullsides-ism that the administration is engaging in, that bullsides need to come to the table and negotiate. Ukraine is the victim. They are the victim. They didn't start this war. Russia did. And somehow we keep on acting like Vladimir Putin deserves to be brought out into the open like any other head of state. This is a historic embarrassment and defeat for U.S. foreign policy.

20:56Margaret Brennan:You've served this country in uniform. I wonder, since you sit on the Armed Services Committee, how comfortable you would be with the United States giving this whatever the Article 5-like security guarantee would look like. Is that something you should see boots on the ground to do? I don't think boots on the ground would be the way to go, but certainly the United States has assets and capability that I think are essential to any type of security guarantee. I think Europe has to come forward with the forward presence of military, but we can provide intelligence. We can provide economic support, diplomatic support.

21:29One of the most important things that we can do right now is actually seize Russian assets. This would be huge. This would be a game-changing thing to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and actually create security guarantees and reconstruction for Ukraine. There's over$150 billion of seized Russian assets, and the United States could lead a coalition to seize that money, allocate it towards reconstruction, allocate it towards security, allocate it towards the building of a Ukrainian military that could actually resist Russia going forward, but this administration is unwilling to do it.

22:03Margaret Brennan:Last administration was, too. That's right. They did agree to the legislation. But on the immigration front, you and your fellow Democratic lawmakers are now trying to challenge the Trump administration's policy that requires notice to be given before you visit an immigration facility. You just did visit some. What did you see, and how does that compare to the last administration? There's an ICE detention center in my district in Aurora, Colorado. I have visited that center 10 times now over the last five years. years and oversight of federal facilities is one of the most important things that any member of Congress does.

22:40Air Force bases, military bases, VA hospitals, and ICE detention centers. This administration just tripled the budget of ICE, made it the largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the United States, bigger than the FBI, ATF, DEA, all others combined. And they are putting in roadblocks to prevent oversight, to prevent transparency because they are trying to hide what they are doing. That is unacceptable. So we filed a lawsuit to force them to abide by federal law that guarantees us access.

23:12Margaret Brennan:And we'll see where that heads next. Jason Crow, thank you. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

23:25Margaret Brennan:Welcome back to Face the Nation. Fiona Hill served as the Senior Director for Russia and European affairs on the National Security Council during President Trump's first term. She joins us now from Waterville, Maine. Good morning to you. Good morning, Margaret. Well, Fiona, you were an advisor during that infamous Helsinki summit in 2018. You've spoken about that in the past. I wonder what you think about how this Alaska summit compared? Well, obviously quite different in many respects. Part of it was the fact that they decided to skip the one-on-one meeting and the lunch. I mean, these are usually part of the sort of set of summits like this.

24:09And the press conference obviously was more of an announcement or a set of announcements, presentations by both leaders, much more by President Putin and more of a commentary by President Trump. So there wasn't that free for all of press questions, which I'm sure was a bit disconcerting for you and others who were present there at Alaska. But the optics weren't exactly great as Congressman Crowe has laid out for the United States and for President Trump again. I mean, again, different. But although it was presented as perhaps a show of power by being at a U.S. Air Force base with the flight passing of the B-52s and other fighter jets, it did certainly look much more like a show of appreciation for Vladimir Putin.

24:54And so the optics were really much more favorable to Putin than they were to the United States. It really looked like Putin had set the agenda there, the narrative, and in many respects, the tone for the whole summit meeting.

25:05Margaret Brennan:Well, saying that, you know, the president has a team of advisors around him, And in a traditional administration, those advisers would be setting the policy. They would be planning the optics and they would be thinking through that. Do you think that the president's team set him up for success here? Well, look, it may well have been that one of the demands, because we've heard from Secretary Rubio, which I have to say, I think was a very fair assessment of where things are. So it may well have been that one of the demands by the Russians to make any progress in moving further forward was to actually have that kind of show of pomp and pageantry that basically marks Putin's re-entry into international affairs.

25:47Maybe the Russians said to them in Moscow, either to Steve Witkoff or to Secretary Rubio or to anybody else, that basically they wanted to have a major US-Russia bilateral summit appearance before they would move on to the nitty-gritty of anything else in Ukraine. That's to give them all the benefit of the doubt there. But it all now depends on what comes out of this. And I think, again, Secretary Rubio made it very clear that it's not going to be easy. He was certainly downplaying any expectations of a major breakthrough, but he did say that there was something that might be possible. And I think that's what's going to be the proof of whether this was actually worth all the effort that they went to in Alaska or not.

26:25And as Congressman Crowe said, there's a pretty high bar here because what Putin is doing is pretty brutal. And he's not showing right now any signs whatsoever of giving anything up. Mm-hmm.

26:39Margaret Brennan:The United Kingdom's defense secretary has said that they would be willing to put boots on the ground in Ukraine to help oversee a ceasefire. When you hear these security guarantees being talked about, and the secretary said he is going to negotiate that tomorrow, what should we think, you know, what form is that going to take? What do you think that should look like? Well, look, I think he actually laid this out, and you did too in your questions, And I think Congressman Crowe's made it very clear as well. It has to be a combination of all of the things that we've already heard discussed on the show today.

27:13You have to be able to have some boots on the ground. Congressman Crowe said it doesn't have to be the United States. That's actually the case. But it actually has to be some commitment from the United States to enable European forces to actually hold that territory and to provide some security guarantees for Ukraine. The United States is key in terms of its intelligence, in terms of other enabling equipment and the information and the data that we would need for all of this to make a security intervention mean something. And it's also essential in terms of all kinds of other forms of equipment and defensive weaponry.

27:55We've already heard, of course, about Ukraine needing all kinds of equipment from javelins in the past to patriots now in terms of an integrated air and missile defense system that Ukraine desperately needs. So there's a lot there that we all know needs to be done. And what we really need to see, I think, in these meetings that will take place on Monday and moving forward is a real commitment to the United States to work with Europeans and to work with Ukraine to make this happen. Look, this is existential also for European security. So minimizing the real role of Europe here, be it the United Kingdom, be it Poland, be it Finland, be it France, be it Germany, is not the way to go.

28:36Europe has to have an equal say in all of this. This is about Europe's future and the future of European security, not just about Ukraine's.

28:44Margaret Brennan:I want to ask you about the dynamic between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. You know both men. You've written biographies of Vladimir Putin and, of course, you served under Donald Trump. In one of the Fox interviews that President Trump did, he said that he spoke about mail-in voting in the United States with Vladimir Putin. And during that press address, Putin also claimed that the war wouldn't have happened at all if Donald Trump had been president. I mean, that's a counterfactual, but that's something Trump often says on the on the trail. Why would those things be discussed at all if this was about Ukraine?

29:23Exactly. Well, look, this is Vladimir Putin, as usual, trying to manipulate U.S. domestic politics. I've seen him do this over and over again, including at Helsinki, when he set the president off, not in the press conference, but before that, in a whole diatribe against his political enemies because Putin deliberately asked him about this. So Putin knows that President Trump wants to have an acknowledgement of his self-assertion that the war wouldn't have happened had he not had he been in the presidency. And so Putin's giving him something that plays well for President Trump in his own domestic environment.

29:57It doesn't play well in the international environment where people know things are much more complicated, but it's basically a gift and a concession to President Trump himself. And Putin wants to sow chaos in the American electoral system ahead of the midterms. So, of course, he's laid into this whole issue of mail-in voting. And President Trump asserted in his Fox News interview that there are no countries in the world that allow mail-in voting. Well, Russia allows mail-in voting. And if everybody wants to go out and look, they can look for themselves. In 2020, President Vladimir Putin signed into law Russians being able to vote by mail and also on the Internet.

30:34And more than 30 other countries also allow some forms of mail-in voting. So it's just not true that other countries, including Russia, don't use this. It's a pure, blatant piece of manipulation. And that's the kind of thing that Putin likes to do.

30:48Margaret Brennan:And of course, I don't think you would endorse the outcome of that voting system and that those elections are rigged in Russia, correct? Of course. And I mean, basically, Putin wants to see us tie ourselves up in knots between now and the midterms. He's trying to sow chaos and he's just basically used his time with President Trump to push that along. It's again, it's a diversion. It's a distraction really from the negotiations on Ukraine because Putin doesn't really want to give anything up. So he gives up basically something that plays well in the political arena for President Trump and something that actually plays very badly for the United States in its own political arena, which is the mail-in voting point that he made.

31:30Margaret Brennan:Fiona Hill, always appreciate your analysis. Thank you for joining us today. We'll be right back. During our trip to Alaska last week for the Trump-Putin summit, we talked with Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan about the strategic military importance of Alaska. We began by asking about potential offers to Putin to get him to end the war in Ukraine. The Telegraph was reporting offering Putin a chance to invest in the natural resources off of Alaska's coast in the Bering Strait. Are you comfortable with that? Well, look, we have plenty of American investors and our allies who want to invest in Alaska's natural resources.

32:12We're having a boom here. We don't need Russian investments. We don't need Russian money. They're a competitor of ours when it comes to energy and natural resources and critical minerals. So I doubt that's on the table. And I would not support that.

32:29Margaret Brennan:Your colleague. By the way, just on that point, though, a contrast. You might remember last time I was on your show, we talked about the Biden administration. I want to talk about this. with this great state of ours shutting us down, right? I mean, that was 70 executive orders to shut down, exclusively focused on Alaska, shut down our resource development economy. Our own federal government, the Biden administration sanctioned my state more than they sanctioned Iran. What we're seeing with President Trump and his administration is a complete 180 on that. Unleashing Alaska's resource potential has been a huge focus of the president since day one.

33:08Margaret Brennan:So you mentioned how furious you were with the Biden administration for the executive actions. They said they were taken to protect natural resources. They said land conservation was necessary and the indigenous population here really wanted it. You called it a lie. I did call it a lie. It was a lie. And you said it was national security suicide. Trump has already reversed this. But are you at all concerned that there are short-term benefits to your state financially, but longer term, real damage to the environment here? No. Look, Alaska has an incredible record of being able to develop our resources and protect the environment.

33:50You walk around here, you see what a pristine, beautiful environment we have here. But we know we need jobs, we need natural resource development, so we can do both. The entire north slope of Alaska, the Inupiat community, across the board was against what the Biden administration did, which was lock up the entire National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, which was set aside by Congress to develop our resources. And then he had the audacity to say, hey, I did this on behalf of the Native people. That was not true at all. It was outrage.

34:23Margaret Brennan:So for activists or for those concerned about the damage here, you say they just don't know what they're talking about? Well, I say a couple of things. There's no place on the planet that has higher standards on protecting the environment than us. And if we need American energy, why would we go like the Biden administration did, begging from Iran, Venezuela, places that have no environmental standards when you can get it from America, from American workers with the highest environmental standards any place on the planet? And secondly, when you have resource development, particularly in our rural communities, you see life expectancies increasing.

35:03Margaret Brennan:So in this region, the Arctic is of supreme concern from a national security perspective. The ice is melting. Yes. Majority of scientists attribute that to global warming. But the end result is there's a potential for an Arctic area for trade routes. Correct. Also tapping into the natural resources there. How does the United States gain an edge in dominating that? Well, look, it's a great question. It's really important. You're mentioning trade routes that are opening up. We've already talked about natural resources, which are huge up in the Arctic. And what we need to do is recognize that we're an Arctic nation.

35:44We're an Arctic nation because of Alaska. And look, this has not always been a priority of previous administrations. What we're doing up here, we're rebuilding our military. The one big, beautiful bill certainly does it. As I mentioned, Alaska exudes military might. We're the cornerstone of missile defense, and we're going to be the cornerstone of the president's Golden Dome initiative. We are the hub of air combat power. You're seeing them flying over here. We have over 100 fifth-generation fighters based in Alaska. We have a brand new U.S. Army Airborne Division up here. So we are building out our military, which is great, but also building out our Arctic capabilities.

36:24And again, in the one big, beautiful bill, almost$26 billion investment in the Coast Guard, which is the biggest investment in the Coast Guard in American history by far. 16 icebreakers coming with that, 22 cutters, 40 helicopters, a bunch of shoreside infrastructure. A lot of that's going to be in Alaska to defend the Arctic. And we need to defend the Arctic because, as you and I have talked about, the Russians and the Chinese are in our waters and in our airspace all the time, including doing joint operations up here, which is unprecedented. I wanted to ask you about that because the war in Ukraine has hurt Russia's finances, made it more dependent on Beijing, including when it comes to exploring up and around the Arctic.

37:09Margaret Brennan:They had a joint bomber task force come here pretty darn close. Oh, they were in our AIDAs, as we call it. The Air Defense Identification Zone. So are you concerned this actually becomes a flashpoint? I think this is already becoming a flashpoint. I mean, the number of times that the Russians and Chinese are doing joint strategic bomber task forces in our airspace and joint naval task forces in our EEZ, in our waters. In the economic zone. Yes. That's happening on a regular basis now. That's unprecedented. They don't do joint operations anywhere else on America's borders. That's for sure. Well, the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee says there is far more needed for the U.S.

37:58Margaret Brennan:military than what has been provided by the White House in their budget. We need to do more and we certainly need to keep it above 3 percent of GDP and growing towards 4 or 5 percent of GDP. It's a dangerous world right now. But this one big beautiful bill, the Budget Reconciliation Bill, does a lot for our military right now on urgent needs. Shipbuilding, as you and I have talked about. Our Navy, our ability to build ships has completely atrophied. Weapons and ammo systems, the Golden Dome. I know you have your own proposal. But has the Pentagon told you what the Golden Dome is? I mean, I've been working on this with the Pentagon.

38:35on this is missile defense that is a layered missile defense. So what that means is right here, like I said, you have the ground-based missile interceptor, the missile interceptors in Alaska. You have all the radar systems in Alaska that protect the whole country in terms of ballistic missiles. We have new threats. We have hypersonics. We have drones. We have, heck, even we've seen it here in Alaska, spy balloons. What we need to do is upgrade the system with what's called a layered defense, not just the ground-based system here, but you work it more with different systems, Aegis Assure, THAAD, and then including space-based systems, both for tracking and intercepting.

39:21And you do that with an open architecture in terms of software to integrate those systems. So I am very familiar with what the Golden Dome is doing, and I'm leading the effort in the Senate on it. And by the way, my state is the cornerstone of all the missile defense right now and will continue to be so.

39:41Margaret Brennan:You can find more from our interview with Dan Sullivan on our website, facethenation.com, and our YouTube page. We'll be back in a moment.

39:51Margaret Brennan:We turn now to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reports that the total number of starvation-related deaths has now risen to 250, including 110 children, seven of those deaths in the last 24 hours. World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres joins us this morning from Jerusalem. He visited Gaza late last week. Good morning. Good morning. It is rare to get a look inside of Gaza, the IDF does not allow journalists in to freely report, but they let you in. What did you see? It was a day trip. I was able to go early in the day and leave before sunset. And I visit our main, one of our two main kitchens inside Gaza in Der Balá.

40:44And I was able to visit the few warehouses we have there, the bakery, the kitchens, and spending a day trying to see what else the teams need, what else we need to be doing, how we are going to be increasing the hot food and bread that we are producing right now. So, So I used was a day, again, to show support, to see on my own and assess the situation of our own kitchens. And that's what I have to report about that.

41:19Margaret Brennan:The UN says that there is starvation happening in Gaza. Israel's prime minister says there is no starvation. What's real? Obviously, there is always a gray area. But we are making boxes for children that we know they are in very special needs situation. I saw those boxes being made with the name of every one of the children. We need to remember that during many weeks, no food was going inside Gaza. And this is to 2 million people. So in the places we know we are feeding, we are doing around 200 ,000 meals a day. but this is only 10 % of the need. That's what we are trying to increase. I can say that where we are, obviously people are being fed at a very minimum.

42:13It's not everything they should be receiving, but at the very least, they're receiving a piece of bread and a piece of food. But we need much more aid. We need to make sure that the aid is never interrupted again. We need to make sure that the flow of trucks keeps happening. We need to make sure that we have safe roads so those tracks can reach their intended delivery place. We need to make sure that all the NGOs that are actively trying to do the best they can to take care of people inside Gaza, and this is beyond food, obviously medicines, etc., etc. We need to make sure that the aid is massive enough that we don't get to those moments where in some areas, like in the north that is still very difficult to reach that we know that people are desperate for food.

43:02Margaret Brennan:You mentioned for many weeks no food was allowed in. That was a government policy. There was a blockade for many months. That is now lifted officially. But as you say, your organization wants to scale up. You're trying to produce one million meals a day in Gaza. Can you get the fuel in to do that? Can you get the food in? Are Israeli officials giving you a green light? Well, it's a million because we are an organization that we specialize in emergencies and in food. But obviously, we are requesting that all the NGOs that are participating in feeding are giving more access, including us and other organizations like ANERA, which was one of the organizations we work with that they've been in Gaza for many, many decades and many others.

43:53We need to make sure that everybody has access. For that, we need a lot of things. The trucks inside Gaza, we need to remember that the trucks come from outside Gaza and there they are put aside. And then we need to reload the trucks that are inside Gaza. This takes time. We need more trucks inside so the tracking company can have enough people and enough trucks to have a constant flow. I have to report that yes I saw a good flow of tracks going in around 150 to 250 tracks are going in every day but even I would say that this is not enough. We need to make sure that we massively increase, that we massively make sure that nobody has to be walking for miles to try to reach a place where they can find a plate of food or use a bag of rice.

44:43We need to make sure like what World Center Kitchen does. At one moment, we had, you know, 100 to 100 kitchen partners. We need to make sure that we are cooking where people live. We need to make sure that we are feeding them where people are so that people don't have to be, again, living their neighborhoods, living their tents and walking for hours back and forth only to try to bring a little bit of food back home.

45:08Margaret Brennan:Jose Andres, thank you very much for your time this morning. We'll be right back. That's it for us today. Thank you all for watching. Until next week. For Face the Nation, I'm Margaret Brennan. Today's guests were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council, Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, Colorado Democratic Representative Jason Crow, and World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres. The senior executive producer of Face the Nation is Mary Hager, and the executive producer is Anne Hsu. This broadcast was directed by Shelley Schwartz.

45:44Margaret Brennan:Face the Nation originates from CBS News in Washington. For more, we're online at facethenation.com and on YouTube. We're also rebroadcast on our CBS News 24-7 streaming network at 1230 on Sundays, and we're available through our apps, CBS News and Paramount+.