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Unknown A
That's the latest with Doge, and that's actually a good segue, Ryan, into the very latest with regard to Ukraine and the new sort of foreign policy orientation of the Trump administration.
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Unknown B
Yeah. Let's start with this wild post on Truth Social that he then Trump then posted to Twitter. You can tell how much, how excited he is about his different statements, whether or not he moves them from Truth Social over to Twitter. He moved this one to Twitter. Trump is saying here. How's your Trump impression, Crystal?
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Unknown A
But he's saying, not great.
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Unknown B
Think of it. A modestly successful comedian.
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Unknown A
Modestly successful comedian.
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Unknown B
Successful comedian. Volodymyr Zelensky talked to the United States of America into spending $350 billion. So that's not accurate. We talk about it closer to 200 billion. The actual numbers from this German think tank that studies this, it's closer to like 120 billion or so. And a lot of that is what we value or overvalue our weapons stock that we just.
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Unknown A
A lot of that money never left the beltway. Here, right here.
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Unknown B
It's a lot of money.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Either way, he's right. It's been a lot of money to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start. But a war that he. Without the US and quote Trump. Why does he put Trump in quotes? Will never be able to settle. The United states has spent $200 billion more than Europe. Again, according to this German think tank. Actually, the Europeans have spent slightly more, but 60% of our money has been in grants, whereas the Europeans has been in very low interest loans. They're quibbling and fact checking. But anyway, that's. On that point, he says, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization? So. And then he goes into, okay, so here, this is the key part. Zelenskyy refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A dictator without elections.
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Unknown B
Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia. Something all admit only Trump again, in quotes. And the Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Europe has failed to bring peace, and Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going. I love Ukraine. But Zelensky has done a terrible job. His country is shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. So on the things that he says that are correct, at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have unnecessarily died. This is correct. Zelenskyy has canceled elections, which is kind of preposterous because it was the whole, you know, we're fighting for democracy here.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown B
Give him that.
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Unknown A
Biden did not try to achieve peace.
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Unknown B
Biden did not try to achieve peace. And the war does need to end. All those things are true. The attack on Zelensky as this dictator and loser or whatever has sparked a response from, I guess was Lavrov now calling him a cornered rat and is edging. It's one thing, I think Hegseth got unfair criticism for acknowledging outright that, look, a lot of his territory is not coming back. We need a peace agreement and the Democrats beat him up for that. It's like, no, nobody believed that you were getting this territory back.
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Unknown A
That's ok. So it's not like it was an important piece of leverage because anybody honest knew that that was the case.
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Unknown B
To tell the whole world that you think Zelenskyy is this level of a loser does, I think, change the negotiating calculus in a way that is not beneficial to Ukraine. I think that's a fair, I think that's a fair assessment.
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Unknown A
Yeah. And we do have, we can put B1B up on the screen just to reiterate the, you know, the fact check component of this. So this is, according to that German research you were talking about, Ryan, how much the US has contributed versus how much the Europeans have contributed. You can see, you know, I mean, it's a lot of money, don't get me wrong. But it's not. What did you say, 350 billion. He also does.
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Unknown B
You can feel how you want to feel about it, but just at least.
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Unknown A
Know the actual, let's be honest, right, about the amounts. I mean, listen, I want this war to end, right. I think it is disgusting and immoral that the Biden administration blocked the best chance for peace, which at the best terms for Ukraine, which came very early in the war when they had outperformed and caught Russia unawares and Russia had been hit with all these sanctions and they weren't sure how that was going to, whether they were going to be able to really survive that economically or not. Now they've kind of adjusted not to say that it's great, but they know that they can get through that. And you're in this long war of attrition. And so their hand is much stronger now than it was at that time. But we also have to have some commitment to the truth here and to some level of morality as well.
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Unknown A
Like Russia invaded Ukraine, whatever, just NATO Provoked it, blah, blah, blah. I mean, actually, you could put it more on the US's side in terms of the blame versus Zelensky and the Ukrainians.
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Unknown B
100%.
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Unknown A
Yeah. And so to then say, oh, it's Zelensky's fault that his own country got invaded and he's the dictator when, yeah, he should have elections, but you're talking about Vladimir Putin on the other side of this equation. Like, it's just a total inversion of reality and the truth. And I think part of it is, I mean, I think what happened in terms of the sequence of events is Trump came. The Trump administration came to Zelensky with this just like, brazen, colonialist, imperialist plan of like, we're gonna take half of your stuff forever and maybe we'll continue to support you, but then again, maybe not. Actually, this is just basically in repayment for what we've already done. And this is B3B we can put up on the screen. They were able to get the details of this plan and they were so onerous. It was actually more onerous than the terms that were imposed on Germany after World War I is what they proposed to Zelensky.
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Unknown A
And Zelensky very gingerly was like, well, you know, we're going to have to think about that. And I don't think that's going to totally work out for us on our end. And if you put B3 up on the screen, like, it's not just my theory that that's what pissed off Trump and led to him calling Zelenskyy a dictator and a loser and all this stuff. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz says that his relationship, Trump's relationship with Zelensky soured over his refusal to sign that rare earths mineral deal the US has proposed. Waltz, quote, I think the frustration really stemmed just in the last week from this bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over presentation of what we see as an absolute opportunity. That's to have the US invest in Ukrainian infrastructure, to have them grow both their minerals, their natural resources, their oil and gas.
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Unknown A
We look at the type of aid the Europeans are providing, it's often in the form of loans. It's being repaid with the interest on seized Russian assets. We believe the American taxpayer deserves to recoup much of their investment. So we propose this totally extractive, exploitative, quote, unquote deal to the Ukrainians, which again, doesn't even promise that we provide them with future military aid. They get effectively nothing, no guarantees for the future out of it, except the sense that, ok, well, if we're there, we're probably going to protect our economic interests in the future from a Russian invasion. That's what they would theoretically get out of it. Zelensky's like, I don't think we can go down that path. And now Trump does a total 180, whereas previously he had actually been pretty friendly towards Zelensky and Zelenskyy had gone down to Mar a Lago and all that sort of stuff.
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Unknown A
So I mean, that's what caused this turn. But in addition, Trump has signaled he's talks all about William McKinley, which is really the sort of start of brazen American imperialism. And he has obviously talked about, I'm going to take Greenland, I'm going to take Canada, I'm going to take Panama, I'm going to take Gaza, I'm going to take half of Ukraine. He does not think that there should be any real, like international rules, guidelines, norms, et cetera, surrounding what great powers can do. I mean, he truly believes in this, like might makes right. If you want it and it serves your interest, you're just going to take it. And so I don't think he has any philosophical or moral objection to Putin seeing Ukraine and being like, well, I can take it and so I'm going to. And so I think that's, you know, that's part also of what plays into this dynamic that's now playing out with him and Zelenskyy and Putin.
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Unknown B
Right. And so in a, you know, there's a lot of talk about the unipolar world of American hegemony evolving into a multipolar world. And the advocates of the multipolar world, of which I would say I'm actually one.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Don't often talk about the side effects of it, which are each pole in the multi pole is basically told by the other multi polls. Okay, that's your area. And so that's where you get this, the Monroe doctrine and the McKinley really expanding on it to saying, okay, we're not a hegemonic world power, but we're going to compete with Spain and Britain and France. And so we're going to go take the Philippines and we're going to try to take Cuba and we're going to take Haiti is ours, Latin America. So that's our orbit. And so it's actually completely intellectually and geopolitically consistent to say that you're against this kind of kinetic World War 3 with Russia and China, but you're also fine with smaller wars of conquest. Canada, Mexico, all the bullying that you see, messing around with Ukraine kind of cuts against that, because Ukraine in a multipolar world would clearly be in the Russian orbit.
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Unknown B
But he's going back to his businessman thing like, well, we spent all this money, so therefore we deserve all of this stuff. But what triggered that Trump post was kind of the first overt criticism that Zelensky had offered. So, yeah, so he, he gets this offer. You have to give us 50% of your country because it was reported as rare earths. But as, as you noted, it's more than that.
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Unknown A
It's their, their ports, it's their economy, pretty much everything.
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Unknown B
Because they, yeah, you're not going to get 500 billion out of the ground. Yeah, out of there. So then he leaks it to the congressional delegation that went to Kiev and says, look what they're trying to do, and I'm not going to sign this. So then it leaks out, and then Zelensky calls reporters in and we can put up, I think it's B2. Zelensky calls reporters into his palace and tells them, I would like to have more truth with the Trump team, and then says that the president was living in a, quote, web of disinformation. So he's not criticizing Trump directly. He's basically doing the thing where the king is. He's saying the king is being misled by his advisors who are lying to him. Trump took it personally and then goes hard at him with that true social post that he then moves over to Twitter to make sure nobody missed it.
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Unknown B
And so we have now we have members of Congress, Republicans being asked to reckon with the question, is Trump a dictator? And let's put the poll up first before we have that. This is pretty funny and something that people should remember. Americans have a plus 19 positive view of Zelensky, minus 2 of Trump, minus 63 of Putin. Of these three characters, Zelenskyy is by far and away more popular.
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Unknown A
By the way. I mean, people are also pointing out, like, Zelenskyy's favorability rating in Ukraine has fallen, but he still has a higher favor. I think he's like 57% favorability in Ukraine, so higher than Trump among his own countrymen, and even more significantly above Trump in terms of our population and the way that people here feel about him. I mean, it is kind of funny. One of the things that was always noteworthy to Sager and I is that even in spite of all, and I do think that Ukraine and Trump positioning himself as like, quote, unquote, anti war, I think that helped him a lot in the election. But some of Biden's best ratings always came on his quote, unquote, handling of Ukraine. He was, like, still underwater, but by less than in other various areas, because I think there is a deep, like, American instinct of wanting to stand up for the little guy and feeling like.
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Unknown A
I mean, and plus decades of Cold War ideology about Russia being the big bad guys and, you know, the villains in the Rocky movies and whatever, that goes pretty deep. And so when you see a poll like that, it is a bit of a reality check about the kind of political forces that Trump is playing with here as he overtly sides now with Putin in these negotiations.
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Unknown B
I mean, and I hope that out of this, Trump is able to get some peace deal. I worry that the viciousness of it at his own ally is going to undermine his ability to do that. But we'll see. Like, it's. It's still alive. It's still a live question. And at least he's trying. But like we said earlier, Biden didn't even try. Yeah, Biden. In fact, the Biden administration, you know, thwarted efforts to try to get to a peace deal, and hundreds of thousands of people are dead since then. But one of my favorite things in Washington is John Thune getting asked about what Trump is up to.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
On a daily basis.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
So let's see how John Thune, Senate leader, responds to the question of whether Zelenskyy is a dictator.
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Unknown A
Would you call Ukrainian President Zelenskyy a dictator, as President Trump has?
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Unknown C
Well, I. Like I said, the president speaks for himself. What I want to see is a peaceful result, a peaceful outcome. And I think right now there's a negotiation going on, and let's see where that ultimately leads. Hopefully, it'll get to the outcome we all want to see.
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Unknown B
And then you don't have many moderate House Republicans left. And the definition of moderate has shifted as the actual moderates have kind of been run out of the party or become Democrats. A kind of conservative who works with Democrats is Don Bacon in Nebraska. Usually faces a somewhat close election. He was asked about this. Let's roll. Roll Bacon here.
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Unknown D
Stick up for what's right. And so I wanted to be very strong in my words today because this Republican does not agree with what the president said. Russia's on the bad side here, and we need a president that has moral clarity when it comes to this war. And right now, I had hoped the president would step up and be better than Joe Biden. I felt like Joe Biden was slow and getting weapons there. He was using rules of engagement that restricted Ukraine. It was really feeding the gridlock. Now, I had hoped that this president would step up and try to finish this war in the right way, not in an unknowable way. And this is what we see today is not a noble course of action.
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Unknown B
I guess the only thing I'd say to that in Trump's defense, somebody at this table's gotta do that, is there. Has there ever been an American president that nobly ended a war like, we don't end wars with much nobility? And the kind of security establishment is always claiming that they are for ending wars after they've already ended, and that they were for ending the war that you ended, like, let's say, Biden in Afghanistan, but not the way you did it.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown B
When they stood in the way of ending the war the entire time. So you can, I think, agree with the comments, like, on the surface, but I think they're obscuring a real reluctance to actually engage with a peaceful exit, which is not to defend ignobility.
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Unknown A
Right. Well, the other thing that does just make me a little crazy about all of this is, like, I think partly because of the Russiagate hysteria in its first term, like, liberals will be surprised to learn that Trump pursued a very hawkish policy vis a vis Russia, and specifically with regards to Ukraine. You know, he armed Ukraine in a way that Obama was unwilling to, because Obama feared this sort of conflict and provocation of Russia. And Trump, in spite of rhetoric that was sort of like Putin curious or Putin friendly or whatever, what his administration actually did was quite militaristic and quite hawkish. And so that's also why I find it outrageous for him to then, at this point, after you helped create the conditions that provoked this reaction from Russia. And Russia, you know, Putin is his own. Has his own agency, and he did his thing, and it was illegal and he shouldn't have done it.
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Unknown A
But, you know, it was foreseeable, ultimately, this outcome, like, you were part of creating these conditions, and now you want to turn around and blame Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Like, it is disgusting. It is outrageous, and people should feel, like, disgusted and outraged by that. And it also, you know, it also does make it so, as you're pointing out, Ryan, that in terms of the dynamics of this negotiation, it does not. It doesn't. Does not make them simpler. It makes them more complex, actually. And it certainly makes it so that whatever Ukraine is going to end up with at the end of the day is going to be worse than what they may have ended up with if Trump had taken a different course here.
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Unknown B
Yes, yes. Everyone waving the Ukrainian flag over the last two years claiming to be supporting Ukraine, you know, has left them in a worse situation than they would have been otherwise. We don't have time to get into this deeply, but just wanted to finish with the context of all of this. Put up B7 here. This is a New York Times piece from yesterday about the headline, Trump eyes a Bigger, better Trade deal with China. You know, Trump really is projecting the idea strongly that he wants to reorganize the world order and wants better relations with Russia, which presumably the idea is to, like, drive a little bit of a wedge deeper into the relationship between Russia and China and then to cut a big deal, almost a G2 situation with China, to say, look, we're willing to, like, back off the idea that we're going to be a hegemon, and let's see how cooperation works out rather than aggressive or actually, like kinetic competition works out, as the Times points out.
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Unknown B
He's bitter. Trump's always bitter, but he's bitter in particular about he thinks Biden didn't carry out the deal that he cut with China in 2020, where China was supposed to buy another $200 billion worth of US goods, balance out the trade deficit, and he thinks they would have if he were still in power. So now he's going to go back and, you know, cut a cut, a broad commercial diplomatic deal that involves, you know, reducing nuclear weapons and spending and military spending, which to me, great. If he could pull this off, you know, go for it.
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Unknown A
This could be one of the areas where Elon as CEO, dictator king, is actually beneficial since he has so many business interests in China.
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Unknown B
It's one way of putting you.
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Unknown A
It may actually be that that's part of what has shifted Trump in this direction because he had a much more. Well, and it's still. I think it's still very much up in the air because there are different ways you can do multipolarity. Right. One is, and Ben Norton's been writing some about this, the Chinese have sort of laid out their principles of they want equal treatment for all countries, respect for international law, multilateralism. They want openness and mutual benefits. So not this idea of, like, a new Cold war and we're in competition with you. Right. So not a return to those, you know, Soviet versus US Dynamics, which led to untold number of, you know, proxy wars. It was not like we avoided the giant conflict with them, you know, the big hot war that ends the World. Yeah, but it was not like it was a conflict free.
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Unknown B
Right. Tens of millions died, violent deaths.
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Unknown A
Yes, exactly. So, you know, there's that way of doing multipolarity which many people within the Trump administration, including Marco Rubio, like, he is a China hawk. He has a sort of like, you know, hawkish, historically aggressive posture towards China. Sees it as a competition. Has talked about the acquisition of Greenland in this sort of like cold war way of. This is a way to check China. And if we don't take it, then China's going to take it. And we need to make sure that we can own the Arctic as the ice melts and these shipping lanes open up as a result of the climate crisis. So that's one way. And the other way would be to have these sort of, you know, more mutually beneficial cooperative relationships where you're not just directly competing with each other around the world in all these proxy fights and building up your military aggressively, et cetera, et cetera.
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Unknown A
So I think it's still very undetermined which direction Trump is going to decide to take. I don't know that he really knows either.
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Unknown B
Yeah. And if somebody's gonna shake it up like that, it would have to be Trump. Cause the entire Washington blob, the national security establishment, has spent decades invested in American hegemony. That's where their careers are, that's where their lives, that's where their professional lives are based. So they're going to, you know, they're going to go down with the ship. I think the key takeaway to me from Trump's tweet about Zelensky, you know, Trump is a. Which everybody says about him, whoever talks to him last, you know, he's very easy to be influenced. Yeah. He is clearly surrounded right now by people who hate Zelensky.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
And have a hostility towards the whole Ukrainian project. That's what's reflected in that tweet, which.
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Unknown A
Is a very like Internet brained take, honestly.
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Unknown B
Yeah. And so that, so that is a window into who's influencing him right now, which was suggestive of where this is heading.
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Unknown A
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
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Unknown E
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Unknown A
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Unknown E
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