63. Will Trump Make Europe Great Again?

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Hello and welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

I'm Kathy Kaye.

And I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

It's always nice to be with you, Katie.

What are we talking about today?

First of all, hold on a second because we have people from all over, which is so fun.

We've got Karen joining us from Germany.

That's great, Karen.

We're going to be speaking about the German elections.

In the second half of this, we have Linda from Delaware joining us.

Another Clara is also in Hamburg, Germany.

And we have Fiona, who's joining us from Bermuda.

I'm sorry, Fiona, we're not going to be talking about Bermuda's politics, but...

We're kind of envious that you are joining us from there.

You just said,

you just had an election there, actually, in Bermuda.

Well, so we could do that.

No, we couldn't.

We could talk about the sun and how much we'd like to be there.

Anthony's just got back from the Caribbean, so he's going to be particularly jealous.

So, we are

doing this live stream on Monday morning here in Washington, D.C., 11:30.

That's afternoon for our friends in the UK who are streaming from there.

It is great to have our founding members watching us live from wherever you're joining us.

Do put your questions in the comments, and we'll get to those as we go through the podcast.

And then, of course, this will air for the general public on Tuesday.

If you want to watch live again next time, we're going to be doing more of these every Monday, just sign up at the restispoliticsus.com.

And we are going to be talking today about

the Ukraine situation and Europe.

And I think we have spoken about this recently, but so much is happening and it's so decisive the way that Donald Trump is breaking from Ukraine and this deal that, as we are talking, the Ukrainians are trying to go through the finer points of it and feel like if it's any deal at all, or if they're just getting robbed,

and what this impact is from the Europeans.

But I have a question which we can get to, which is actually, is all of this going to make Europe stronger?

I mean, if we get making America great, maybe this is the chance to make Europe great too.

And then we'll talk about those German elections as well.

But okay, I have a question for you, Anthony.

On Ukraine.

Is this actually on Iraq?

Do you remember who Baghdad Bob was?

I actually don't remember Baghdad.

So

who was Baghdad Bob?

At the beginning of the.

I remember Chemical Ali.

Chemical Ali.

So Baghdad Bob was famous with the us in the press corps because he was the guy in about early 2000s as America was preparing its shock and awe campaign against Iraq, who was wheeled out to talk to all the journalists who were in Baghdad to try and put the position of the Iraqi regime, of Saddam Hussein's regime.

And he was actually a smart guy who would literally, as you would say, turn himself into a pretzel to try to justify what was happening and to try to kind of explain Saddam Hussein and what a wonderful guy Saddam Hussein was.

And I listened to the Sunday shows, the political shows here over the weekend, and I listened to one administration official after another do exactly what Baghdad Bob.

had to do at the beginning of the Iraq war.

And they had to just, these people like Mike Waltz, who had to kind of say, defend President Trump's assertion that

Zelensky is a dictator, but also that it was not Russia who started the war.

And you've got this kind of white is black, black is white moment happening in the regime.

And it is a reflection of how afraid Republicans are and how terrified these members of the administration are as they try to do what they know Donald Trump wants for them.

but in so doing, they are patently having to say things they know aren't true.

And I just was struck by listening to Pete Hegseth when he was asked, you know, who,

who, you know, do you accept that it was Russia that was the aggressor here?

And his answer was, it's complicated.

It's really not very complicated.

I mean, Russian tanks rolled over the border and tried to get to Kyiv and wanted to take Ukraine in three days.

And then you had Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, saying, look, there's no need to get into a characterization of who invaded who.

You invaded, you didn't.

It's not useful.

Except that actually, it's the whole premise of this situation.

I mean, it does reflect Donald Trump, who was on Brian Kilmead's show on Fox News.

I mean, even on Fox News, being pushed five times, Brian Kilmead.

pushed Donald Trump to say that Russia was the aggressor here, that Vladimir Putin was the aggressor here.

And on the very last time, Trump said okay yeah they invaded but that's not important it wouldn't have happened if i hadn't done it he also said he was sick and tired of hearing it sick and yeah tired of hearing it so i mean does this matter does it matter that these people in the administration i mean i suppose the question is does it matter in this stage of the war where the deal is kind of on the table

Does it matter that the United States is now taking a position that it doesn't matter who the aggressor was?

No, no, I think it matters because, I mean, this is right out of the, see, I thought when I read things like Animal Farm in 1984, I thought that these were allegories and warnings.

But there was a group of people that thought that these were playbooks and manuals on how to deal with things.

And so if you read Orwell as a manual, then you're supposed to tell lies when you're a strong leader.

You're an autocratic leader.

You tell lies.

And so you get enough people to believe those lies.

And so I guess the real question is, is Donald Trump a cult leader?

Yes or no, Gattika?

I don't know.

I would not, I don't use the term cult leader because I associate cults with kind of religious movements.

I mean, I'm thinking, what was the name of that cult?

Jim Jones.

Jim Jones, exactly.

And then there was the one down in Waco as well, right?

I think that is is a cult leader.

I think there is a cult of personality in the Mag of movement.

I think that he is, for some reason, Donald Trump has a huge amount of power in the Republican Party and seems to be

rephrase the question.

Let me rephrase the question.

You know me, I'm always the one that doesn't like to use this extreme term.

We've had this discussion about fascism.

You're like the Dominic Stanbrook.

You're much more put together than Dominic, by the way.

But anyway, you're, you're and i love dominic although anyway all right but let's go back to this is donald trump somebody

that people listen to and they'll believe whatever is coming out of his mouth

yeah i think i think people who follow

tomorrow that vladimir putin was an awful person who invaded ukraine and should be hammered and i think that would then be the narrative okay all right and then then, by the way, Pete Hegseth and Walsh and all these guys would go on the air and say that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think they would.

So, so, I mean, there's a lot of questions here.

So the question is, like, let's say he's not a cult leader, but he's somebody that knows that he can lie with impunity and get a very large group of people to believe that lie.

Is that right?

Yeah, that's a very good question.

Okay, so then

lying makes sense for him because he's trying to get a deal for Vladimir Putin

better than Joe Biden would like for Vladimir Putin, better than Western European leaders would like for Vladimir Putin.

He's trying to get that deal.

And so therefore to lie and get a very large group of people to believe the lie is going to work in his favor.

Is that not right?

Or am I not seeing it right?

So I, yeah, I think you're on to something there, which the senator from Oklahoma, Republican who's very close to Donald Trump,

talked about on one of the Sunday shows on Meet the Press this weekend.

And he said that Donald Trump needed to be, effectively, he was saying Donald Trump needs to be in the strongest possible position to negotiate this peace.

And therefore, what he says is acceptable because it's giving him strength.

He didn't quite say it's okay for him to lie, but he did say people should back off what Donald Trump is saying about who's a dictator and who invaded who, because that weakens Donald Trump's position.

Now,

I think if you are at this point,

if you are prepared to compromise reality and fact so much

in order to put yourself in a strong position, you're probably actually not in a very strong position.

Because Donald Trump can negotiate whatever he wants, but the Ukrainians have to accept it.

And the Ukrainians have to stop fighting.

They have to put down their weapons.

And the risk for Donald Trump here is that he negotiates whatever he thinks is a good deal for him.

And actually, the Ukrainian public says, we're just going to have a guerrilla war, right?

Okay.

We may not be having US intelligence, which they desperately need, and obviously U.S.

arms supplies, which they desperately need, but they'll get some from the Europeans.

And there's no guarantee that they accept, the public accepts whatever deal he thinks he's imposing on them.

You know,

this is a related topic, but I want you to answer this as well.

It's three years since the war started.

We're on the anniversary of the war starting.

Has this worked out for Vladimir Putin?

Has this been a good war for him?

I think it's too early to determine that.

I mean, the obvious answer is right now, if we're going to do the checks and balance of this, you know, run up the accounting, you get your little calculator out and you say, say, how many people have I lost and how much damage has this done to my economy?

Then your kind of accountant is saying, your national accountant is saying to you, what the hell?

You know, you've decimated the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people.

And by the way, you've cost us a fortune.

And the Russian economy is on the point of looking seriously damaged by this.

But Vladimir Putin isn't thinking about what the accountants are saying right now.

He doesn't have to do his tax return on this this year.

He's looking at what happens in three or four years' time when he rebuilds.

And for him, and he has always spoken about this right back since the 1990s, the value of having Ukraine

is worth almost everything, right?

I mean, it's a bit like the Trump administration, people who said there is no price on securing the southern border.

It is worth everything.

Well, for Vladimir Putin, I imagine he would say that this was worth the cost of what it's got to because it's such a kind of emotional historical issue for him.

And it's also possible that in three or four years time, he's managed to rebuild the Russian economy enough.

He's managed to rebuild the Russian military enough that he can not only go back and take the rest of Ukraine, but he could go back and have a try at something else too.

All right.

One last thing, if you don't mind.

And you know, I love saying one last thing.

So let me just.

Yeah, okay.

So one last thing for you.

You're the president.

You're the president of the United States.

Okay.

The war is about to start.

You pick up the phone and you call Vladimir Putin.

You say, listen, I'm I'm about to make a speech very similar to Roosevelt's speech.

Remember when Roosevelt said, well, I've got a house on fire.

My neighbor's house is on fire.

I'm just going to lend them my garden hose.

And the Americans said, yeah, that's what you should do.

And that's how the Lend-Lease started with the Brits to help the Brits in the war.

But what if Biden had gotten on the

Oval Office speech and said, listen, my...

My neighbor is going to be trespassed upon by his neighbor.

And trespassing is not what Americans don't like trespassing.

Go to Texas.

They're loaded with guns down there.

They don't like trespassing.

So my neighbor is about to be trespassed on.

So here's the deal, Vlad.

You come into that area and only in that area, not in your sovereign area, we're going to attack you.

We're going to hit you with surgical missiles.

We're going to try to not kill your troops.

And we're going to kill every piece of weaponry.

that enters the area until you stop doing that.

And oh, by the way,

if you don't have the war, we're going to offer an economic package because we're going to have to give this money to the Ukrainians anyway.

And,

you know, you probably, we should knock this off.

You should probably get back into the G8

and let's knock off the hostilities.

But just let you know, you cross the border.

We're going to hit you surgically.

And it's going to be a NATO group of people.

How would that have gone down?

Would that have been a bad thing to have done at that time?

Would that have been, well, the U.S.

is at war with Russia.

But again, it's a trespass.

You're trusting.

I'm not attacking you on your sovereign land.

I'm not attacking you.

I'm truly not trying to hurt your troops, but you're trespassing on someone's property, and we would like you to leave their property.

I like that.

We would like you to.

Dave said, please, as well.

Well, yeah, but if you're not going to do it, it's okay.

We're going to hit you with these

surgically targeted targeted cruise missiles.

Well, because,

I mean, I think that in my conversations with people from the Biden administration, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago, I do think there is a realization that they were too afraid of the domino theory.

The reason they didn't do that was because they were genuinely afraid that Vladimir Putin might launch some kind of a nuclear weapon.

either in Ukraine or potentially in Eastern Europe.

And that's why they didn't do it.

And that's why they under-resourced Zelensky in the early stages of the war, why it took them so long to give Zelensky what, and maybe, you know, maybe Donald Trump would have had a more maximalist position.

And it's impossible to know now, whether Donald Trump would have said, actually, you can have, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this big

and make sure Vladimir Putin.

I mean, he always says this would never have happened under him.

I don't know that that's necessarily the case, that it would never have happened under him.

Okay, I want to, we're going to talk about Germany too, but Peter Griff has a super interesting question.

Given the Starlink communications and US intelligence support, could Ukraine continue to hold off Russia if the US withdraws?

And I think the Starlink issue is super important.

I mean,

I know that the Europeans can resupply some stuff.

My understanding, ammunition and some hardware, and the Danes are already and the Dutch are already supplying planes.

But Ukraine really needs that satellite communications and it really needs America's intelligence support.

Both the Americans and the Ukrainians deny that it is happening, but we do know that the Americans have been giving Ukrainians intelligence on where they can hit Russians and Russian forces.

So what happens if America what happens if Donald Trump says, okay, that's it, you don't take this deal, giving me $500 billion worth of your minerals in perpetuity, right?

for generations to come, they would be having to hand this over and I'm pulling everything out.

I mean, that is potential, that's the disaster scenario.

I don't think Zelensky can say yes to that.

I could say no to that

because of this.

Well,

I have to see what this new chancellor in Germany comes up with.

But yeah, the Starlink thing would be a real big blow to them.

I'll take the other side of that for a second.

I'm not really sure how he can accept that either, though.

You know, at the end of the day, what is he going to do?

He's going to give half of the wealth of his country away to the American president that's blackmailing him.

So this is the...

With no guarantees of future aid.

Of course.

And this is the problem that's happening right now.

Trump is trying to shift the world from the free world protecting itself and helping its allies to this, I guess, multipolar world where him and the Russians

you know, the strong are going to take advantage of the weak.

And if you're in a weakened position and I'm in a strong position, I'm going to hurt you.

And Caddy, I'm telling you,

study history, when the strong move on the weak, the strong always lose.

Okay, they may not lose in that moment.

They may win the battle, but they lose the war.

The weak are going to get together and they're going to knock out the strong.

And it's a really, really bad long-term strategy to do what Donald Trump is doing or suggesting to do.

His attitude is: well, we should have all the oil in the Middle East.

We should have all these rare earth minerals.

Why supply them?

You're supplying them because you're trying to keep them free because they're guardians of the free world.

There's 5.7 billion people that live in autocracy.

No, of course, the Ukrainians should give us something at some point.

And I understand there's some forgivable loans and non-forgivable loans, but we're in it together to defend you and to reject totalitarianism around the world.

Trump is not suggesting that.

I think it's a very bad long-term strategy.

He doesn't see this as any benefit.

Okay, as the boss of breaks, we're going to take a quick break and then talk about the German elections.

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I think what was super interesting about what happened in Germany, two things were interesting.

Obviously, how well the AFD did.

And I know Alastair Campbell, our colleague on the Rest is Politics, has been travelling around Germany.

So it's very interesting to hear what he has to say about this.

But how well the AFD did in the elections and what that means for other European countries.

And is that an echo of some of the far-right sentiment that we're seeing here and the causes for how Donald Trump even got re-elected here around immigration, the economy, uncertainty, distrust of institutions,

people feeling anxious, but also what the new chancellor to be Mertz said when he said

straight after the vote, I mean, super undiplomatic and blunt, I mean, almost Trumpian in his bluntness, that Europe now has to find a way to beef up its own security

and

not have to depend on the United States.

And it more importantly, that it has to do so fast because the Germans are not known for moving very fast on building their coalitions or on beefing up their security.

But right now, you've got the incoming chancellor saying this has to happen.

He declaring that Europe needs to become more self-reliant.

I mean, I think he spoke of the kind.

I mean, so here's

a thought I had listening to the German election results and watching what's happened, this stunning kind of vault-fast that Washington has executed vis-a-vis Europe over the last week, is that this could end up making Europe stronger again.

And that what Donald Trump is doing is actually the push that Europe needed to take care of its own defense.

I don't love the way he's doing it.

I don't love the bullying, especially not of Zelensky and of Ukraine.

And I think this deal looks like extortion.

It's not really a deal at all.

It's just steal.

But the...

If you look at the reaction from the Germans, Germans was the weak link in European security.

And now here you've got a new German elected politician leader saying, we have to do this and we have to do it fast.

And I don't know if that's what Donald Trump intended, but I think it could have a very

important impact for Europe.

What do you think?

No,

I do think that.

I also think that the rise of AFD has to be a concern.

Now, some people are saying they were trounced in the election, but I don't see that.

I don't like the slope of movement of the AFD support.

And so I guess

if we had the new chancellor on our podcast, my first question would be: how do you stem that support?

Because, you know, you've got, I don't know, you tell me.

I mean,

there's white supremacy laced in that.

There's Nazi-like behavior laced in that.

And there's an American president not on watch anymore.

I think the German chancellor is correct in saying that we can't consider the Americans, at least this group, they'll use his exact words, at least this group of Americans as our allies anymore.

Yeah, he said this American government does not care for Europe.

Yes,

this group of people.

He was very clear, saying that there are people in the United States that do care about Europe and want there to be solidarity with Europe, just not this group.

And so what I would be worried about if I was the German chancellor is a lot of culture comes out of America, whether we like it or not.

America's greatest export is its culture.

And you have the American president now exporting these hard right ideas.

You've got the American leadership exporting this idea that it's the weak

are going to get vanquished by the strong.

This is just an antithetical message from the last eight decades of American leadership.

And so then the question is,

how do you countermand that?

And then how do you deal with that as it's affecting your own society?

Because whether you like it or not, Donald Trump has influence in these countries.

Yeah,

which is why you've got

Emmanuel Macron in the White House today.

I'm glad somebody gave you a cup of coffee, Anthony.

Sorry, Anthony's just having a coffee break, but we know he didn't make that cup of coffee.

Somebody just gave it to him.

Look at the trust, but verify.

Yeah, see that.

I got that from the Reagan Library, Gatty.

See that?

I'm going to drink it now.

Emmanuel Macron, what I get to talk while I drink my coffee that was made for me.

That was made for you and passed to you.

Emmanuel Macron turns up at the White House.

I don't know if he was even given a cup of coffee because Donald Trump didn't.

Thank you, honey.

Thank you.

Italian mama's boy.

All right, guys, keep going.

I think my son once came in and gave me a cup of coffee on the course of this podcast.

It wasn't well made, though.

Your stun made it.

I guarantee you, it wasn't well made.

Okay, keep going.

So Emmanuel Macron turns up at the White House.

Donald Trump doesn't even bother to come to the front door to greet him, which is the protocol of what you do.

Sends a signal in and of itself, right?

It's a kind of classic bully move.

Keir Starmer is going to be at the White House this week.

And I think the question for the Europeans is, do they all try to appease Donald Trump in the way that all those cabinet members and Republican senators are doing?

Yeah.

because they're worried about what he might do to Europe?

Or do they act strong in the way that the Chancellor, new incoming leader of Germany seems to be doing, saying, actually, okay, you know what, we can't just keep bending over backwards to appease Donald Trump.

We have to find a way to unify.

And what I hope is that when you've got Emmanuel Macron, Kier Starmer, you've had Donald Tusk, the president of Poland here, that what they need is not three separate voices or four and throwing the Germans, but actually some some kind of unified voice.

And if Europe could find some kind of coherent unified position, look, it's a huge trading bloc.

It's a massive economy.

There are three pillars in the world.

There's China, Europe, and the United States.

If they could actually have some kind of unified position, not just on Ukraine, but on tariffs and trade generally, then this could be a moment where actually Europe could stand up to Donald Trump.

I mean, the only thing I would say is that it's not just Donald Trump, though, Anthony exporting these ideas.

The seeds in Europe are giving growth to these ideas separately from the US.

I mean, there's so much discontent in Germany about stagnant economic growth, about influx of migrants, about green energy policies.

And I think you're those, that's giving rise throughout Europe.

That's not just a Donald Trump export.

I think that kind of slightly doesn't take account of the fact that

this is a global issue, and the people who are trying to from the center trying to fend off the extremes on either the left or the right need to acknowledge and find some kind of response to those concerns where whether they're in germany or in texas

yeah well i think i think that you're bringing up a brilliant point and i think that this is what guys like donald trump and elon musk rely on they rely on fracture and fragmentation and so if you've got starmer Macrone,

you pick the people.

If they're not singing out of the same choir book, that's good for Donald Trump because he wants everybody to be shooting off in different directions while his team is organized in one direction as sort of a battering ram.

But

I think the, I want to just go back to this sentiment.

Okay.

And Mark Carney said this, by the way.

It broke my heart when he said it.

But he said, you know, we're no longer allies.

We're just your neighbor to the north.

And, you know, that broke my heart when he said that.

And Mark Carney's a tough guy.

That's how Canadians feel right now.

There's questions in the block here where people are saying, well, do you think

Carney could roll Trump if he got in the position of being the prime minister?

And the answer is yes, because they wouldn't anticipate Carney's smartness and his toughness.

And he would roll Trump.

But what I would say to all of them, get together, get off the same sheet of music.

And maybe that music is, hey, okay, I got it.

You don't want to be our friends anymore.

That's fine.

We'll fend for ourselves, but it's also going to cost you.

It's going to cost you economically.

It's going to cost you.

And by the way, you're bluffing a little bit because your hand is not as strong as you think it is.

Yeah, you got a very powerful economy.

But there's been a sea change sentiment in the market the last 30 days.

I think you told me, Caddy, or somebody mentioned to me that in town hall meetings, Republicans are going back to their districts

in Georgia and in Ohio.

And actually in other places across the day, they've just come back this weekend.

You can see the video.

Now, some of them may be Democratic voters, but some of them are Republican voters.

And they're not loving what they're seeing with the Doge stuff.

And we'll talk more about that, by the way, on the podcast later this week.

So I would say to these leaders, he's got a hand.

Some of it is a bluff, but you have a hand and your hand's not great, but it's way better consolidated.

It's way better if you start passing cards to each other to form your hand.

And I would push him.

If I were them, I would push him.

And

listen, I mean, this is something I disagree with.

You know, I get all kinds of BS on Twitter saying, well, this is the vox populi, as Musk says.

This is the voice of the people.

But what's also embedded in the voice of the people is the dissent.

What makes America strong is dissent against the majority.

What makes America strong is that because it's a republic, the dissenting forces in America have been empowered to try to liquidate some of the potential extremis.

And

I think those of us that are in dissent need help from our European friends.

You know, that would be my message to the European Union.

We need help from you.

You mentioned that his hand is not as strong as he thinks it is.

And I had a very interesting conversation with a senior Wall Street executive this weekend, and you mentioned the markets having a market shift.

This is a guy who had been very bullish on the economy when before Trump was inaugurated and what Trump would do and who said to me this weekend, he's going to cause a recession.

And it was totally unnecessary.

And he's going to do it and he's going to pay the price.

Well, Steve Cohen, my buddy, the hedge fund manager, believes that.

He went to that Saudi Arabian conference in Miami and said, this sort of stuff is going to put push us into a recession.

I just want to respond to Mark.

You know, I want to respond to Mark here.

He says he disagrees with me and he believes that the populism came out of Europe.

And I want to cede that point to Mark.

I think

he's right about that.

And so let me rephrase it.

Let me say that it's feeding on each other now.

It may have come out of Europe and some of the strategies have been adopted.

And certainly Victor Orban is like the offensive coordinator for Donald Trump and his team.

They use him as a guide.

And so I agree with Mark on that.

But let me rephrase it.

I think, Mark, it's in a circular loop now.

I think it came out of Europe and it's gotten regurgitated and sort of remixed in the United States and it's pumping back into Europe.

You can point to 2008, the financial crash.

You can point to the Syrian war.

You can point to large influx of migrants across the border.

You can point to the 1990s and free trade agreements and start seeing, you can find the seeds of this populism in europe and in america uh

going back many years we're we are going to leave it there but before we do so i have to take this one from matteo bonalumi who i'm thinking is actually italian about your coffee the cup is too big for an italian american i was expecting

an americano okay and there's this

a real even an americano wallab liaison's coming in here's nino asking me do i live in the united States or do I just

speak to the United States?

And Nino,

sono tute italiano, but yes, I do live in the United States and I'm a high taxpayer.

I'm a New York resident.

Yep.

And I'm a high tap, very proud to pay my taxes here in the United States.

But

you like the fact that I'm well tanned in February because you're probably American, Nino.

And these Brits try to pretend that they're not highfalutin, But we are self-acknowledged.

I'll just say that.

We are self-acknowledged high-faluters.

As a good Brit, as a good high-falutin Brit, my coffee would be a proper little espresso because it is after midday, and no Italian in their right mind would ever be caught having milk or anything good.

I'll leave you with this thought here, okay?

Trust but verify.

Trust but verify.

Those were the old days, Caddy, when

we brought Ronald, Ronald Reagan, the actor.

Remember that from back to the double espresso.

Yes.

Remember Remember that bet.

Ronald Reagan, the actor?

Yeah, but Ronald Reagan, the actor, turned out he's a pretty good statesman.

Fiona's inviting us to Bermuda, so we'll do the podcast from there one day.

Okay, guys, we will see you.

Thanks so much for listening.

Thank you so much for being founding members.

We'll be back next Monday with another live stream.

And of course, we'll be back later in the week with our podcast.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, guys.

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