61. From Reagan to Trump: America’s slow divorce from Europe

The rest is politics.

U.S.

is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

We've been asking you to consider switching energy supplier to Fuse for the last few months by going to getfuse.com/slash U.S.

Politics and signing up using the referral code US Politics.

But look, I get it.

How can you trust a new company with something as important as powering your home?

So don't just take my word for it.

I had to look at TrustPilot to see what people are saying about Fuse's service.

They get 4.7 stars out of five.

There's comment after comment saying how helpful and attentive they are.

People clearly appreciate speaking to a real person rather than one of those chatbots.

There are five-star reviews for their smooth transfer from previous suppliers, compliments about smart meter installations, and I can see the words second to none repeated a few times.

If you go to getfuse.com U.S.

Politics, you're going to save money and you'll sign up using the the referral code US Politics.

You can find out for yourself why customers are so pleased they switched.

Visit getfuse.com slash US Politics for terms and conditions.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

And what was meant to be our Monday live stream, we will explain in just a minute.

I am Katie kay

i'm anthony scaramucci so what happened katty so yesterday we were meant to be doing this rest is politics us live stream for our founding members and first of all i got stuck at the airport in new york and my flight was delayed by two hours but then i would have made it in time to speak to you all for which i am still very sorry and thank you for coming back to us today uh but as we were coming into washington dc we got this announcement over the loudspeaker saying that because of vip VIP activity at Washington Reagan Airport, they were shutting the airport down for 50 minutes and we had to circle, which meant that I couldn't join you all.

VIP activity is basically Donald Trump, and apparently he's starting to use our local airport more often.

And so we can all expect that there.

Anyway, it was the journey from hell, but I'm so sorry that I wasn't here.

And thank you for joining us today.

We've got people with us from Oman,

England, Suffolk, Glasgow, Romania, Sweden, London, Honolulu.

Oh my god, I'm so jealous.

Why can't I be in Honolulu?

Florence, Italy.

You've come in from all over the world and we are so thrilled to have you.

Today,

we are going to talk about

Europe and Trump and Ukraine and the talks that are taking place in Saudi Arabia.

the things that JD Vance said last weekend at the Munich Security Conference and at the pretty clear message from the Trump administration that Europe is now pretty much on its own.

And is Europe up to standing up for its own security in the face of being abandoned by its long-time partner?

This feels like divorce.

You and I have both been through a divorce, Anthony.

I never want anyone to have to go through a divorce.

It's very hard to go through.

And I think the Europeans at the moment feel like they are on the receiving end of their long-term spouse telling them they're no longer very interesting.

They've moved on.

You're way better at divorce than me.

I mean,

you're a best-selling author as well.

I mean, your next book would be about how you hang out with all your ex- you know, people.

I mean, it's fantastic.

I mean, I've never seen anything like it.

There we go.

I mean, can I just say this?

I had your ex-husband and his wife, who are very close friends with you, at my book party in London.

I know.

That was very nice.

Yeah, I was blown away by that.

You should be the ambassador.

You should be the ambassador, okay?

The way you handle this stuff.

But let's talk about this.

Is that really true?

Before we go to the questions and comments section, thank you so much, everybody, for joining.

Is that really true?

Is it over?

Is it a four-year interregnum?

Is it a change in policy because of one man's love affair with Vladimir Putin?

So 85 years of a bipartisan commitment to

a stable and prosperous and peaceful Europe is over?

Or what do you think it is?

I think even if Europe has come to the realization, and I've spoken to several people this week who kind of study Russia and Ukraine and Europe more closely than I do, who have said that actually, although there were audible gasps when J.D.

Vance told Europeans that

what they had to face up to was the threat from within and accused them basically of illiberalism.

He accused European courts of cancelling elections.

He said that the basic liberties of religious Britons were under attack.

And that came on the top of Pete Hegseth saying, listen, we are not going to defend

Ukraine with American troops.

And by the way, if any European troops go in to defend Ukraine, they won't be covered by Article 5 of NATO.

And Europeans have to accept the very clear message that America is focused on China and not on Europe anymore.

I think that message has been coming from a long time.

And there are several people that I've spoken to to who are either in Europe or study Europe who say that in some ways it was a relief to some Europeans to have the bandage ripped off this.

That they have

Joe Biden was the last transatlantic president America is going to have.

Yes, we've had this relationship for 80 years and we could rely on America's security umbrella.

But I think what Europeans are realizing is that, okay, this could just be Donald Trump.

And as I've said before on the podcast, America first really means Europe last.

He has no love for Europe.

He thinks Europeans have freeloaded freeloaded off America's security umbrella for far too long, and they can't keep dialing 911 Washington every time they have a problem that needs fixing with American military might.

But

even if

we go back from Donald Trump and let's say a Democrat, you know, Gavin Newsom or whoever it is, I'm throwing a name out there, gets elected in four years' time and America has a Democratic president,

America is moving towards focusing on the Pacific.

Barack Obama tried it with the Asia-First strategy.

And it's also the unreliability of America because of the seesawing.

Who's to say that after four years of a Democrat, you don't get another populist in the vein of Donald Trump?

And I think that's what's really disconcerted America's allies at the moment is that

there's not a steadiness.

to American policy at the moment, economic policy or security policy.

There's no bedrock of continuity.

It goes up, you know, it looks like a kind of, you know, when you go and you have an EKG at the doctor's for your heart rate, that's what it looks like at the moment, but your heart is not doing well.

Like Donald Trump's signature.

Right?

It looks like a, you know, bad, looks like a bad thing.

Is that actually why he does so many executive orders rather than go to Congress?

Because he just likes the look of his own signature.

He definitely likes the look of it.

He likes the look.

He likes the look of everything about himself.

But let me,

let me ask you, let's say I opened up the desk drawer in the Lincoln bedroom, and there was a a fact card in there left by Truman, right?

Truman was the last person to renovate that beautiful house.

And in the fact card, it said, protect the West,

block and contain the Soviet Union, or now known as Russia.

Help our neighbors to the South so that we don't have an influx of immigration.

And then the last thing is keep America strong by having a prosperous economy.

And so if you did those four things, you're a great president.

So we don't want to protect the West anymore, Caddy Kay?

I think he has a different concept of protecting the West, don't you?

I mean, I think his concept of protecting the West is make sure we don't have any trade deficits with anybody.

And in order to do that, slap tariffs on people, even if there are friends.

Russia can kind of hang out in Central Europe if it wants to.

And honestly, do we care that much about poland or the baltics uh

seems like that's russia's backyard feels like it's a very long way away and isn't strategically important to america so i i think i think that's the the point of view in this administration and and jd vance and pets pete hagseth just articulated it and those negotiators marco rubio who probably doesn't believe any of this and is trying to soften if you read between the lines of what he's saying down in saudi arabia he is trying to soften some of the kind of rapprochement with Moscow, with the Kremlin,

by saying, look, a meeting is not scheduled yet.

And yes, we are going to consult with Ukrainians.

Not that that's what Ukraine wants.

They don't want to be consulted with.

They want to be at the table.

But that's my sense is that Rubio is trying to soften it because inherently Rubio does believe in American leadership and sees the value of having allies.

When we negotiated the Versailles Treaty at the end of the Second World War, end of the First World War, excuse me,

we asked for reparations.

Remember, they hived off the Rhineland and they were producing goods out of the Rhineland, shipping them to the victor nations.

And,

you know, it was a very harsh treaty.

At the end of the Second World War, We had a very

benevolent treaty.

We founded the UN.

Yes, the Soviet Union took a piece of Eastern Europe, but we tried to keep the West in line.

We had favorable trade terms with people.

We started the Marshall Plan.

What was better for peace and prosperity?

Which of the two ways of going about things historically is better for peace and prosperity?

Well, look,

I think there is a risk that America...

Donald Trump's slogan is going to transform to not from make America great again, but make America weak again.

And that actually you only because I think you you if you hit a problem, a 9-11 event, right?

Who came to America's rescue?

Who came to America to contribute to America, right?

It was NATO forces.

They went to Afghanistan.

They lost

their sons and daughters in Afghanistan to help America.

Let's say there's a pandemic, a global pandemic.

We're sitting here at the moment with a measles outbreak in Texas and an avian flu outbreak

in the United States.

Something of a global nature demands some kind of global response.

And you are better off if you have your friends on your side.

But that's not the way clearly that this administration thinks about it.

Yeah,

listen, it's just very dangerous, though.

I mean, so

to me, I am mad.

I got the country, it's all about me and this country, and you've treated us unfairly, so we're going to create reciprocal tariffs, which is not in the interests of American CEOs.

We're going to withdraw from Europe.

Europeans are now expecting tens of thousands of troops, which have acted as a deterrent since the Second World War, out of NATO, U.S.

troops being withdrawn.

They're negotiating in Saudi Arabia right now without the Ukrainians there.

So Donald Trump and Russia are going to decide the Ukrainian war ending without the Ukrainians.

That's fairly Prussian, right?

Is that the 18th century?

Is that the 17th century?

What century is that?

You cited Sait Pico for us last week.

And this feels a little like let's come.

By the way, I didn't, of course, I didn't pronounce it right.

So sorry about that, everybody.

I'm doing my best, okay?

When you get, you know, Caddy's been to my house, okay?

When you've been raised like me, you're just so so grateful that you can speak some level of the English language, okay?

You'll come out of the English language

far better than anybody else.

Caddy has met all the knuckle-draggers in my family and

smashed my Lamborghini at the same time.

But, Caddy, I know we got to move on.

I know we have to move on, but just one last question, okay?

Yeah.

What is, get in the mind of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, raised in the Bush administration, mentored by Jeb Bush,

a Cuban American who understands freedom and the projection and the help of freedom almost as well as any public servant in America right now.

Okay, go.

How is he squaring the circle with Donald Trump?

Look, I think

in the first Trump administration and in this Trump administration,

and in the Republican Party in the Senate, and you know them and I have spoken to them too, you have people who say, if I am not there, then the risk is somebody more extreme gets elected.

So I think Marco Rubio is thinking, as Secretary of State, here I am.

I realize that there are people in the Trump administration, the Pete Hegseffs, the Tulsi Gabbards, who's now Director of National Intelligence.

Stephen Miller is probably in that group.

People around Donald Trump who are saying, look, just let's cut them loose.

We've spent far too much money in Ukraine.

They've tried to do this deal that the Ukrainians have rejected to get $500 billion worth of Ukrainian rare earth minerals as payback for what America has done so far for Ukraine, which the Ukrainians apparently, and Besson, I've heard, was shocked by this, said, No, thank you.

That's not a deal we're going to take.

But they basically want to get what they can out of Ukraine as payback, but give Ukraine nothing else.

And

I think Marco Rubio thinks, well, look, I can be here as the intermediary and actually try to come up with a deal that means that in

three to four years' time, when Russia has resupplied its military and its economy is doing better, it won't try to take the rest of Ukraine, which is probably the reporting is from American intelligence sources that what Ukraine would still like to, what Russia would still like to do.

So Rubio probably sees himself as the softener.

He sees himself as the person that can get the better deal, as he sees it, than would be the case if it was just the hardliners.

I would say that's how he squares it.

All right.

I know

we're going to go to something else, but

our producer, Dominic, would like me to talk a little bit about Cuba.

So, just 30 seconds on that.

We had a ton of refugees leave Cuba after the revolution.

They ended up in Florida, most of them in Miami, and they became strident, strident right-wing conservatives.

And they've really big Cold War warriors, and they are grounded in this sort of doctrine of containment.

They're grounded in sort of the helping of Europe and to defeat communism and push back Russian aggression.

Obviously, the Russians took over the island of Cuba with the help of Fidel Castro in the 1960s.

They still have some influence there, although it's waning.

And so, Rubio comes from that.

Rubio knows that if we don't fight totalitarianism abroad, he knows from his own life experience and his own heritage that it can happen to you.

It can actually happen to your family.

See, the indifference here is when I watch Stephen Miller on TV or I did it, hey, it's somebody else's problem.

You know, the domino is not going to hit me.

Okay, but the Europeans are seeing, how far is the Ukraine from Paris?

It's a two-hour flight?

Yeah,

probably Kiev to from London, it's about a three and a half hour flight.

So yeah, probably about two and a half from Paris.

So we're talking about New York to Chicago, New York to maybe Minneapolis, something like that.

And it's very close.

And the Europeans are looking at this and saying, okay, this guy wants to stay in power.

And the way he stays in power, he's read George Orwell, well, we're going to have a forever war.

We're going to keep pushing, keep pushing.

Why is the Polish government at 5% on the NATO spending?

Because they're right there.

Yeah, and they're very worried.

Yeah, and I think, look, I mean, when you talk to the people that cover Russia and Ukraine and are really steeped in this, they do.

And there's a question here from Daniel Wood that I think is interesting.

Will the sidelining of the EU and UK by Trump, instead of weakening the alliance, actually lead to a stronger Europe militarily, diplomatically, and economically?

Now, we had that meeting in Paris on Monday while I was circling over Washington, D.C., and it did feel like the Europeans weren't able to agree on very much.

But I think there are people who are seeing this as an opportunity for the United for the European Union and for Britain as well to realize that it has to do something.

They do have things.

They have the capability.

They've matched

the United States so far in terms of funding for Ukraine, even though most, I think, Americans in the Trump administration wouldn't voice that.

They have done.

If they said to the Ukrainians, okay, we are going to finance you to hold the defensive lines.

We're not going to give you offensive weaponry, but we are going to give you what it takes to hold a defensive line.

That, I'm told, would cost about $25 billion a year.

That would be something that the European Union could do.

They are stepping up their military production capacity, having let it neglect decline over the last, since the end of the Cold War.

They really are ramping it up fast.

And they do also have one big point of leverage, which is this $300 billion

in Russian reserves that the Europeans are holding.

And that is not leverage just with Russia.

That's leverage with the United States as well.

And Europe's sanctions over Russia are also leveraged with the United States.

A couple of people said to me, although Donald Trump's known for the art of the deal, he's not dealing here.

I mean, if you were playing poker, would you sit there with your four aces on the outside?

No, right?

You wouldn't.

play your aces straight off and let everyone know what you had.

I'm revealing the fact that I don't play poker here, but you wouldn't let people know your hand.

He's already given away major points in the negotiation.

So he's gone to Saudi Arabia with not very much more to give away to the Russians.

And there's an interesting, you know, an interesting kind of lack of art of the deal going on here.

But I don't understand why.

Maybe they think that it's because they don't care on the outcome.

So they just want to get this done.

Well, I think they've made that clear.

I mean, I don't, again, I think we, the 4D chess argument, I think, is nonsensical.

I've been in the room with these people.

It's not 4D chess.

It's Trump's whims.

And right now, he's siding with Elon Musk more than he's siding with Steve Bannon for now.

But Trump's attitude is

it's very

walling off America.

It's an isolationist attitude.

But there's a gentleman by the name of Bill Flint that's commenting here, which I want to address, if you don't mind.

As an ex-soldier who served alongside U.S.

comrades, I have often found it difficult to understand why an American soldier should die for a continent that did not take its own security seriously.

Okay, so this is a great comment.

I just want to respond, and then Caddy, you can respond.

So, Bill, this is a great comment, and that is the narrative, and that's particularly the narrative on like places like Fox News.

But to really understand the history of it, I would recommend some books by John Gaddis.

The United States, rightly or wrongly, told the Europeans to stand down on a military buildup.

The United States, particularly with Germany,

they basically, Eisenhower was like, look, I do not want the West German government rearming, and it will be way better for the United States to run this for Europe.

And so now, are we neglectful the same way we were on trade, Caddy, where we should have right-sized that over the years?

Should we have said, okay, like your iPhone gets an upgrade from iPhone 1 to 16?

Should we have gotten to the Europeans 10, 15 years ago and say, look, we're not shouldering this anymore?

But no American statesman wanted to do it.

Bill Clinton said he didn't want to do it for the same reasons that Eisenhower pointed out.

But I get Bill's sentiment.

So I don't know.

What's your reaction?

No, I totally understand

Bill's sentiment.

And my husband, who served in the British Army

before the end of the Cold War and was posted in Germany where they were known as the 92nd Boys, because if there was a nuclear attack that's how long they would have lasted.

Thank God there wasn't.

And they did work alongside their American counterparts.

But you know the feeling,

the feeling was that America was in Europe after the end of the Second World War to protect America from the Cold War.

That's why the bases were built up.

Then the Cold War ends 1990 and you have a decade of kind of peace and prosperity.

and everybody loves the United States.

And then you have 9-11, right?

And after 9-11, that was not the time that America was going to pull back from offering Europe its defense umbrella because European countries were fighting alongside America in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So there was, in a way, this is a delayed process.

This process of cutting from Europe and forcing the Europeans to do what they are now finally doing

was delayed by 9-11.

and then presumably by the invasion of Ukraine.

I mean, I think Joe Biden was never going to cut from Europe, but you could see that Barack Obama was already starting to shift America's attention.

He wanted to shift America's attention to Asia if that was going to be possible.

For those of you listening, we are going to take a quick break and then we will carry on with our conversation about this very sad divorce.

This is a paid ad for better help.

In moments of stress, we tend to turn to whoever's in reach, that flatmate in the kitchen, the barista on a slow morning, the stranger who simply asks you how you're doing.

It can help, but being heard isn't always enough, and the more confidently people speak, the more we mistake it for wisdom.

But if you're dealing with anxiety or loss or something that's been weighing on you, what you need isn't noise, it's actual experience, somebody who really knows their craft.

BetterHelp has spent over a decade helping people find that match.

A short questionnaire sets your preferences and they'll connect you with a therapist who fits.

It's completely online, it's fully flexible.

And if your first counselor doesn't really feel right for you, you can switch at any time.

There's no pressure, no extra cost.

As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp gives you access to credentialed mental health professionals with a wide range of expertise.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash tripus.

That's betterhelp.com/slash T-R-I-P-U-S.

There's another question that I want to deal with here that I think is also interesting.

Mark James is sent this one in.

If the Russian economy is tanking, which is what my understanding is, that is happening, both the economy is tanking and the military is very stretched.

And if the Ukrainians can make it until the fall, actually, Ukraine starts looking like it's in a much stronger position than it does at the moment.

And Russia starts looking like it's in a weaker position.

So Mark is asking if the Russian economy is tanking, why does Trump need to be so conciliatory at this particular point?

And I want to ask, get you to answer that, because I know that you have thoughts on Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Well, we, you know, and I've said it many times on this podcast, Mark, we could never figure it out.

H.R.

McMaster, myself, General Kelly.

What is this with Vladimir Putin?

You know, now there were, the kids said,

Eric and Don Jr., that they got a lot of their money from them.

There's been investigative journalists that say that money got pumped into Trump's condominiums from the oligarchs, that he had not met Vladimir Putin, but he had a lot of arrangements and loans and things like that from the Russians.

And so, you know, he sees Vladimir Putin as a...

another person that could potentially help him make money and he likes the Russian culture.

I don't know the answer.

I don't know

what they have on them.

I don't think it's a pee-pee tape.

And by the way, at this point in Trump's life, given everything that's happened to him, I don't even think that's the best.

I'm not even going to explain the PP tape.

You can look at it.

No, there's a theory that at his Miss Universe pageant, he was with a few hookers that,

Caddy, I mean, come on.

What do you want me?

Just telling the people what they need to know, Caddy.

Okay.

I mean, so

to me, I don't think it's any of that.

I think that it is

something that happened with the Russians, where Trump is either afraid of the Russians or he's beholden to the Russians for some reason.

And by the way, we know this, Caddy.

The Russians have paid a lot of social conservatives and a lot of media influencers.

You know, Kevin McCarthy said that Donald Trump was on Putin's payroll.

Does everybody remember that in 2016?

So he's doing things that Vladimir Putin would want him to do.

A real American strategist would get to Putin and say, hey, man, this is going to end and you're going to walk back some territory.

I think the Crimea is probably over at this point.

And like other wars have ended, you're going to cede some territory.

But this is a sovereign country.

And maybe there's a 10-year guarantee they don't enter NATO, but it's not a permanent promise.

That's all you had to do.

He's going to give them the whole store.

And Zelensky is going to say, hey, I'm sorry, we're not going to do that.

Now, the question is, what will the Europeans do?

How will they respond?

See,

my thing with the Europeans is that they've got too much bureaucracy, and they're not really as coordinated as they need to be.

There's no president of Europe.

They're not thinking about it like Churchill once wanted, the United States of Europe.

And there's a president of Europe that's there's a European standing army and there's a president of Europe.

Right.

And remember, you know, you know, I

not to get into this, but the country that can fire the most people can hire the most people.

And if you can't fire anybody, then you can't hire anybody.

So if you're in France and you want to hire somebody, like, holy shit, I can't hire this person because I may never be able to fire them.

Okay, can I?

And so you got to be really careful with this stuff.

You guys have really killed your economic growth of all this bureaucracy.

Can I just get back to Putin's stuff, though?

Because I think there may be another reason that Donald Trump

seems to be giving away the store to Vladimir Putin and generally seems to have some kind of affinity with him, as we saw from that Helsinki conference.

And that is that there is a, Putin has a very anti-woke agenda.

And this administration is very driven, particularly with Elon Musk and J.D.

Vance, and you heard it in J.D.

Vance's comments,

with sort of anti-wokeism.

And a lot of what J.D.

Vance was saying, and a lot of what Elon Musk has said when he's been cozying up to the AFD

is that Europe has become too politically correct, too liberal, too anti-religious,

too secular.

And I think while Donald Trump is not a religious person, he does like the anti-woke stuff and he gets that from Vladimir Putin, particularly on the issues of gender and gay rights.

I mean, Vladimir Putin is very conservative on those issues.

And I think there is an affinity there almost that he has kind of culturally with the way that Vladimir Putin, you know, it's the the strong, we've spoken about this before, this idea of a strong country, of projections of strength, of masculinity.

I mean, it's almost a kind of zeitgeist that Putin projects that Donald Trump and Elon Musk and to some extent J.D.

Vance appreciate, and they don't see it in Europe.

And so I think there is a cultural affinity there as well as just a kind of a hard line security and it's too hard to fire people in France.

Not to be incredibly cynical, but I would say follow the money.

There's a money trail somewhere in there that would make it make more sense.

Let's think,

this question here is also interesting.

How much of MAGA, this is from Vic Hannally, how much of MAGA is really just Trump and will be unsustainable for anyone but him, even Vance?

When DeSantis tried it in the primary, he bombed.

And I want to kind of, as we close out this live stream, I wanted to bring Vic's comment up because this is the question that we're always asked.

And I think it gets gets us back to the beginning of this discussion.

Is America permanently changed in the direction that we have seen over the last month?

Or is this a blip?

And whoever replaces Trump as leader of the Republican Party, which, however little Trump might want to acknowledge this, is going to happen in about five minutes' time, because that's the speed with which politics moves in Washington,

will they have his ability to do what he's doing?

I don't think so.

I think this is Trump.

I think America is shifting.

America's less Europe focused, but the MAGA stuff

is about Trump.

Well, I mean, that's why I started the live cast by saying, is this a four-year interregnum or not?

I don't think any of those guys can take on the personality cult and execute it the way Donald Trump has.

And remember, he's had five decades in the public eye.

He's the most famous person in the world.

None of those guys are.

And they're moral weaklings.

Whatever you want to say about Donald Trump, Donald Trump is consistently amoral.

Donald Trump's anchor is amorality and is consistently threaded.

Those other guys are garden variety politicians where they're trying to act moral with lots of equivocation.

And so that sort of weather vein spin that goes on with those other politicians makes them less effective.

You know, Donald Trump, people look at him and say, yeah, what is the least moral thing that this guy could do in this situation?

That's what he's probably going to do.

And he's actually very, very consistent with that.

And it's almost part of his brand.

Yeah.

Why do you think Donald Trump doesn't like

Vladimir Zelensky?

I was just wondering that as you said that.

Is it that when you talk about people being moral and focused on a mission and focused on principles,

is that why he doesn't like Zelensky?

Because in some ways, you could see Donald Trump admiring Zelensky, admiring his.

He doesn't like Zelensky because Zelensky didn't play with him.

Hello, how are you?

You've got stuff on Joe's.

That's my perfect phone call.

And

I need to get that stuff from you.

And if you do that, I'll send the Hi Mars and I'll send the anti-tank ballistic missiles to you that you need.

And yeah, see, people don't remember that we used to call this thing porcupine.

That was the defense term for it.

1994, they gave us the weapons.

They gave us the nukes.

And we put this Operation Porcupine in place with Ukraine.

And we sent them reams of weapons and reams of stuff and training and said, you know, don't have to join NATO.

Don't worry.

You're a sovereign nation and we're here to protect you.

Give us the nukes, right?

They were the sixth largest nuclear country.

And that was working.

But then he slowed down the arms shipments, Donald Trump did,

because

Zelensky didn't want to play ball with him.

He wasn't ready for that bribe.

Okay, so you have to remember something.

If you're tough and moral, Donald Trump hates you.

If you're tough and amoral, you're in the pantheon of the access of Donald Trump.

And so Zelensky, whatever you think of his shortcomings, and I'm not saying he's a perfect person, but he's hung in there.

He was at the Munich Security Conference three years ago, and he said he was going to hang in there.

People were offering him asylum.

And he's been very brave,

personally, very brave.

He has hung in there, and he has tried to forge a coalition for his people to keep his country sovereign.

And

he's also done something that's very embarrassing to Putin.

He's exposed Putin.

Putin's got 1981 Red Dawn machinery in his weaponry, and Putin's emptying the prisons to fight Zelensky.

And so we've learned a lot about, you know, Ash Carter, the legendary Ash Carter before he died,

I was with him.

He was former defense secretary.

He said, wow, they've really exposed the weaknesses in the Russian army.

Okay, yes, I'm talking about the conventional forces.

Obviously, they have nuclear forces, but once you use the nuclear, it's over for everybody.

So let's just hope that we continue never using them.

One little tidbit that I've been told by somebody who has been a close advisor of Donald Trump's on the Ukraine issue is that Trump respects the fact that Vladimir Zelensky has never released the audio of that phone call in which Donald Trump asks Zelensky for dirt on Joe Biden as they are running against each other in the 2020 election.

And

he doesn't want, apparently, he does not want that phone call to get out.

Now he's been elected, maybe he doesn't care, but he didn't want it to get out before.

And he did respect

Zelensky hasn't he doesn't, but that's that's that's in the wheelhouse of Zelensky.

You could predict that.

He's like, hey, I don't want to be involved with American politics.

I need America's support as a Western leader to help me fight off a totalitarian on my border.

It's coming across my border trying to kill my people and want to take the freedom away of my people.

And by the way, they take my freedom away.

The dominoes are going to keep hitting.

We are going to leave it there.

But thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for the questions.

Keep sending them in.

And we will be back next Monday.

I promise you, I won't be on a plane.

I will not be delayed.

We'll be back at the same time, 3 p.m.

Eastern time,

8 p.m.

UK time,

9 p.m.

continental time.

I feel like I should go around the world because I know you are joining us from all over the world.

Some of you are joining from New Zealand.

I think it's your breakfast time, but thanks for joining anyway.

And we will be back next week on Monday for another YouTube live stream.

Thanks very much.

Thank you guys for being with us.