121. Inside Trump’s Explosive Shouting Match with Zelenskyy

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Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US.

I'm Katie Kaye in Washington.

And me, Anthony Scaramucci, in lovely New York.

New York City.

Are we going to have a socialist mayor here?

What do you think?

I think you are going to have a Democratic socialist mayor who tells everybody that he's actually now running as a Democrat.

But yes, I saw the debate between Andrew Cuomo, who's now running as an independent, the former governor, and Zoran Mamdani.

And I don't think that Andrew Cuomo did what was needed to shake Mamdani's lead.

He really would have had to land a punch or two, and he didn't manage to do that.

Metaphysical punch, of course, we're now nice and peaceful in America.

Governor Cuomo was on your show, Morning Joe, this morning.

How do you feel he did there?

I don't think he's doing enough.

I think he comes across as a little old school.

What do you think?

I know you're a fan of his.

I'm probably too biased, you know, because obviously I'm a supporter of his.

But

yeah, I mean, I think that we're in a different era.

People like podcasts.

People like soundbites on Instagram.

People like TikTok.

And Mondami understands that better than anybody.

And Mondami, remember something, Caddy.

Mondami has a great smile.

Trump can get away with a grimace because of this long-standing relationship he's had with the media and the name recognition.

But Obama, Mondami, they have...

great political smiles and don't kid yourself they go a long way with people we were texting earlier this week you and i after the New York debate for Mayor.

And I also thought Mamdani made a smart choice by going on Fox News.

And he had a civilized, smiley, to your point, interview on Fox News.

He was pressed on quite a lot of issues, and he didn't lose his cool.

He kept getting back to the issue of affordability, which is, I think, why he's ahead in the polls.

But if he'd been, as I said to you at the time, if he had been a really stellar politician, he would have answered the questions and had a civilized and smiley conversation.

And he's slightly ducked quite a lot of the hard questions, I felt.

I think there's still a lot that he hasn't answered, but let's see how he does, because he's going to be New York City's mayor, it looks like.

Okay, so before we go to our topics, I'll just point this out.

Mayor Koch was ahead of Andrew Cuomo's father, Mario Cuomo, for the governorship.

This is going way back into 1982.

He had a nine-point lead going into Election Day.

There was no governor, Ed Koch.

So we'll have to see what happens.

It'll all depend on turnout.

But if the older people turn out, which they did not do in the primary, but if they turn out, it'll be a much closer election than people think.

We'll see.

Can you give us a little scoop on how Cuomo is feeling?

I think he's recognizing now that Sliwa is not coming out.

That's the Republican who's polling at 18.

So if you added Sliwa's numbers to Cuomo's numbers, they beat Mondami.

And so people have asked Sliwa to drop out, but Sliwa's not dropping out, Caddy.

And it's a good segue for what we're going to talk about today because I think the Republicans want Mandami.

Trump has told them that he would be the gift that keeps giving.

The further to the left that the Democratic Party goes, the better for the Republicans.

And so Trump is telling people, let him win.

And so Sliwa has been told by Trump, stay in that race.

You'll block Cuomo from winning.

And they won't get their moderate voice back.

They'll lurch even further to the left.

And Trump will then take it out on New York City, and he will use whatever power he has to make life difficult for New York.

He killed the cross tunnel.

He got on the news and said Schumer's worked on this for 20 years.

It's now terminated.

And by the way, that hurts the entire infrastructure and the entire rail system.

And again, I guess I'm a little bit New York-centric.

We put a lot more money into

the federal government from our tax levies than we get back.

And so New York sort of felt like they were owed that.

But, you know, Schumer's passed his sell-by date.

He doesn't have the effectiveness that he once had.

Right around the country, there's a new generation of Democrats saying it's our turn now.

Okay.

Well, that was your little update on the New York Mayor's Race, everybody.

And of course, we'll do more on that because I think Mamdani is such an interesting character and what he represents for the Democrats is such an interesting moment.

But we are today, we are going to talk about all of these no-kings protests and what we think they meant.

Close to seven million people marched right across the country in big cities and small towns to push back against the executive power grabs from the Trump administration and his crackdowns on dissent.

They were running on a kind of anti-oligarchy type banner.

Meanwhile, Mr.

Trump shared an AI video of himself, literally as a king, quite a few of them actually, with a crown on it.

We can get into that later.

We will look at whether Donald Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act as part of this discussion.

And then in the second half after the break, we are going to talk about the latest round of not very good talks in the Oval Office from Ukraine's point of view and the shouting match that erupted between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky on Friday and what that means for Ukraine but first of all Anthony I hear that you're a communist and that must be a pretty weird position for you to be in.

So do you want to explain what's going on, please?

I took the MSNBC picture.

Some are disputing it now.

They're saying it was a 2017 picture, but there's a very large protest in the city of Boston related to the president, sort of the things that he's doing from an authoritarian perspective.

And I said, and I do believe this, they're going to run up against something.

He's going to get himself in trouble.

There's a reverse Tea Party movement forming.

So the No Kings movement is sort of a populist movement, in my opinion, believe it or not.

Because if you look at the people that are going to the rallies, it's, again, populism, but it's left-leaning populism.

And it's sort of a counterdote to what Trump is doing.

And I said, if they're not careful, the Trump coalition is very fragile.

He's polling at 37%,

despite all their rhetoric and all the stuff that he's doing.

And so if they get another leader in there that can galvanize people, they'll crush the Trump movement.

Yeah, so what happened with your run-in with Laura Luma?

Laura ends up tweeting me and says, well, why do you support communism?

Did it look like communism?

It looked like a whole load of grannies carrying sort of NPR bags and, you know, families.

It really did not look like a bunch of Antifa communists to me.

So 100%,

okay, you and I would have been the youngest people in a lot of those protests.

Okay.

Except for the kind of little families.

I saw quite a few kids in there, too.

But you know what I'm talking about.

There were zero arrests.

You couldn't have been more peaceful or sort of, you know, just did not look like a threatening crowd.

Our international listeners, when I was a kid, they used to have on the soap operas when I was home with a sore throat or at least faking a sore throat, used to have a vitamin called geratol.

This was for geriatrics.

I felt like that, I felt like that was sponsored by the No Kings rally was sponsored by geratol.

You know, I mean, guys, you got to get some younger people out there.

But this also speaks to where Trump's got it wrong.

It's not Sorro-sponsored people.

He would have had younger people in the mix.

It's just an older group of people that are very frustrated by Trump's actions.

But it was, we should definitely say it was super peaceful.

I mean, I think in New York, they literally had no arrests, which is remarkable when you've got crowds of 100,000 odd.

And this is the mistake that Trump is making, because if you're going to shoot artillery over the I-5

to try to scare people under the supposed 250th anniversary of the Marine birthday, I mean, guys, what are you doing?

Let them have their peaceful protests.

But you see, but they don't want that.

There's an impunity, there's a cruelty, there's a meanness, there's an un-American approach to this.

Now, since Laura Loomer's in the mix, let's just address her.

Like her or not, she is well researched.

She's a tough investigative journalist now.

She ran unsuccessfully for the House.

I don't know that I would actually call her a journalist.

I'm going to push back on that.

Okay.

I don't think she's

an influencer with opinions, but I don't know that she's a journalist.

Okay, well, let me put it this way.

She digs up dirt on people.

Yes.

In my industry, we would call that an investigative journalist.

In your industry, you're going to be defensive about that, which is fine.

But, you know, she's tough.

And I know her a long time because she was a younger person.

She's 31, 32 years old.

She was a 20-year-old volunteer back in the day when I worked for Donald Trump.

So,

you know, listen, here's the other thing.

A lot of people, this is a very polarized country.

Trump wants that polarization.

He wants the binary stuff.

He's got Caroline Levitt saying that the base of the Democratic Party is Hamas and they're anti-American and they're terrorists.

But Laura Loomer is on Trump's side.

But I like the engagement with Laura Loomer because I hate to engage.

I know you love it.

Yeah, because I'm an engagement sort of a person.

I want to engage the left and the right, and I want to see if we can dial down some of the tribalism.

But that's not going to happen anytime soon.

It won't happen during the Trump reign.

I think you're right.

Seven million people don't turn out for nothing.

When you look back at 2003, there were really very small anti-war protests in Iraq when there were huge protests on the streets of Europe.

Look at 2008, you had some Occupy Wall Street protests, but not very much.

There were huge protests in Europe.

And so to get 7 million Americans out protesting, there is something going on.

There is a certain level of dissatisfaction, and you can see that in the poll numbers.

And I do think that trump would be wrong to just dismiss this as a soros funded group of communists because in 2009 when you had all of those tea party protests barack obama did just that right the obama white house and the democrats dismissed those tea party protests as koch brothers funded these are big republican donors saying these were just funded by the koch brothers and they kind of poo-pooed them Now, guess what happened?

In the midterm elections, they got what Obama then called a shellacking, which I love that word.

I had to find an excuse to use it.

But anyway, the Democrats got hit hard because actually, those protests were a sign that a lot of Americans didn't like Obama's expansion of government, the way he was expanding the American government.

And I think if Trump ignores these protests, then let's see what happens to them.

But that's not an insignificant number of people, right, that came out.

And just saying all of those protesters say hate America because they don't agree with me.

And I thought what the speaker, Mike Johnson, said, Anthony, I don't don't know what you made of that, but this idea that if you are with us, you love America, but if you are against us, you hate America.

I mean, that's sort of where we've got to in the country.

There's something else going on.

So I want you to imagine King Charles having an AI video of himself flying around in an F-16,

dropping

excrement on people.

Okay, so, or Kier Starmer doing that.

What if Albanese did this as an example?

Just I I want you to imagine somebody other than Donald Trump on the world stage.

So this is a complete mockery of the institution of the presidency.

And so, listen, you travel around the world.

You know, I travel around the world.

It's hard for people to understand, rational people.

It's very hard for them to understand.

And yet, There's 35, 40% of the people in the U.S.

that love this behavior.

They think think it's great.

We're owning the libs.

We're dropping excrement out of a plane where Donald Trump is wearing a crown, or we're showing various memes of Trump.

There's a kind of coarseness that people like.

We want to trigger people.

Like the young Republicans' texts, actually, in a way that we spoke about last week.

But it's all related.

It's all part of the same thing.

It's all related.

So I actually went back to that

and I went through some of the texts.

Okay.

It is way worse than you and I reported, Katie.

Okay, it's way, way worse.

I mean, this is misogynistic, it's racist, it's

anti-Semitic.

And hey, come on, guys.

Come on, guys.

You're not joking.

When you're saying that you're joking, you're not joking.

Ask any comedian about the fine line between comedy and truth.

You know, it's like when you're telling me that you're going to bring Michael Lewis on, as an example, if I

get sick,

ever do that to you.

Would I do that to you?

That's not a joke.

I mean, Fiona, our producer, she knows it's not a joke.

I mean, as an example.

So

when you're right there between the truth and humor, people know the difference, Gatty.

I just pointed that out to you.

And J.D.

Vance, by the way, has become the number one person in the administration who is saying, we're just, you know, having a joke.

We're just having a joke.

We're just performing.

Have more of a sense of humor.

You know, I looked back to see what former presidents have said against protesters.

Bill Clinton in 1996, after the contract with America, he didn't go out and say that protesters hated America.

George W.

Bush, when there were some protests in this country and in other countries, even though those protests were small, you know what he said about the protests about the Iraq war?

Democracy is a beautiful thing that gives people a right to express themselves.

Right?

That was George W.

Bush.

That was his view.

Barack Obama didn't go out and say that the people who were protesting in 2009 were hateful people or that they hated America.

The closest that we came to that was Hillary Clinton saying that supporters of Donald Trump in 2016 were a basket of deplorables and the right understandably went crazy over that.

So now Mike Johnson is just doing the same thing, calling these hate America marches.

I mean, it's like, if you're George Santos, you can get away, former Congressman George Santos, you can can get away with wire fraud, because Donald Trump will put out a truth social post.

He will pardon you and get you out of prison.

Why?

Because Donald Trump says he votes Republican every time.

Okay, but Katie, Hillary Clinton calls people a basket of deplorables.

The right goes crazy.

Everybody's hair gets on fire.

Caroline Levitt from the White House

with a big smile on her face.

Is saying what?

Go ahead.

Tell us what she's saying.

Oh, she said, she said that the democratic base is

hamas

i'd have to see the whole quote but it's basically terrorists you've got it terrorists they support hamas

and they're anti-american and they hate america and they hate america so so let me ask this question why not the outrage

Okay, why not the outrage?

That is a quote-unquote deplorable moment for them.

Okay, right.

She's more or less saying that, right?

They have a devil's ideology.

They're a policy of hate.

The Democrats' main constituents are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.

And nothing on the left, no discourse you say.

Well,

hold on a second.

Yes, there is something on the left.

Seven million people turned out and protested.

And the wrong direction numbers, is the country going the right direction or the wrong direction?

69% of Americans say it's going the wrong direction.

So you don't get Democratic leadership capitalizing on this, I think, because I think if they were smart, they would probably just stay focused on the question of affordability, which is actually what Americans seem to be focused on.

But you do get the American public telling pollsters.

they don't like the direction of the country, giving Donald Trump, you said it just now, a 37% approval rating, and turning out on a Saturday in their millions to say, we don't like this.

So in a way, they are speaking.

Okay.

Okay.

But I'm going to make the statement, and you can agree or disagree,

when the right gets pissed off,

they galvanize and they stick together.

The Ted Cruz people line up with the Donald Trump people.

When the left gets pissed off, you have sleeves of pissed off.

Bernie Sanders' sleeve, AOC's sleeve, Andrew Cuomo's sleeve, Gavin Newsom's sleeve.

They don't coalesce the way the Republicans do.

And if I'm wrong, please push back.

Am I right?

I think you're right.

And I think part of the reason, I don't know if you read Maureen Dowd's comment, column this weekend about, she was really referring to the Pentagon, but saying they're fready cats.

I think you could use that expression for Republicans.

You and I both hear on a regular basis from senior Republicans, Republican senators, who tell us they really don't like what Donald Trump is doing, but do they say anything in public?

No, they just fall into line.

And so you get this sense of Republican cohesion dominated by the fact that they're afraid of Donald Trump.

They're afraid of cats.

And so it looks like they're all singing from the same hymn sheet.

And until they break ranks and say enough, and the issue which they might break ranks over, I think is the issue we should talk about next before we go to a break.

I wonder whether if Donald Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, which he has spoken about now twice and J.D.

Vance has confirmed that it is something that he is thinking about.

Would that be something that would break the Republican Party?

But first, tell us what the Insurrection Act is, Mr.

Scaramucci, since you played a lawyer on television and actually studied law.

Yeah, but it's interesting.

So the Insurrection Act has been used before.

You know, John Adams used the Insurrection Act.

Woodrow Wilson.

Eisenhower used the Insurrection Act.

So what is the Insurrection Act?

Basically, there's two things.

There's two pieces of it.

The Insurrection Act is the President says there's unrest or potential insurrection that's going to happen that gives him or her, but for now just him, the right to deploy the National Guard to supersede anything that's going on at the state level.

So, conjoined to that is something called the Supremacy Clause.

And we've talked about that a few podcasts ago.

What is that?

It's basically that the federal laws have supremacy over the state laws.

And so, you know, he lost the case against Gavin Newsome because he couldn't prove that the deployment of the National Guard into Los Angeles met the criteria of the Insurrection Act.

But it generally says that they are not allowed to carry out civilian law enforcement duties except in times of emergency.

And so the court felt that that didn't apply in Los Angeles.

So Trump is a little vexed by this.

He can say, and you saw Governor Pritzker with his bulletproof vest on, talking about the war-torn area of Milwaukee playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, you know, with all that great sarcasm, which proves the point that you don't have a full-on insurrection going on that would meet the criteria of the Insurrection Act.

So, the question, though, really is:

do they care?

Okay,

and

if they don't care, are they going to invoke the Insurrection Act anyway and then disavow the court orders?

Because every one of these governors is going to sue them.

And since the facts are the facts, Caddy, they'll lose in court, but what difference does it make?

Will they still press the Insurrection Act?

So what say you?

Do you think they actually have the gumption to do that?

And to now cross over into full authoritarianism?

I mean, I think if the it was interesting reading some kind of fairly conservative lawyers over the weekend who were raising the very real possibility that Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act, which, as I understand it, is much broader than the laws that he is invoking up until now to use the National Guard around the country.

I think there's a phrase in it that says that the President can use armed forces as he considers necessary, which basically kind of means anything, right?

to enforce laws against obstructions or assemblages.

So he could use it under almost any circumstances.

And you could see him, if he wanted to use it, using it to monitor polling stations to say that the country was unstable.

And I think that is a way in which

I have always been fairly optimistic that you have a midterm election, you have a 2028 election.

But I think if we have an insurrection act in vote, the 2026 midterm elections would no longer be free and fair elections because you would have this intimidate, if for no other reason, you would have this intimidating force of

the military around polling stations,

which they're otherwise not allowed to do.

I don't know if he's going to do it.

I mean,

I think

he has said he's considering it.

JD Vance says he is considering it.

Are they saying that to troll the liberals and to get everybody's, you know, in a froth and to own the libs yet again?

Or are they saying it because they're genuinely considering it?

I think we can't ignore the possibility.

And then, you know, what do you think?

Is that the point at which Republicans say, hold on a second, there is no insurrection?

It's such a good question.

And obviously, I don't know the answer, but I want to provoke people to think about the following.

If I'm J.D.

Vance, do I want him to implement the Insurrection Act or not?

So I'm going to say no to that, Caddy.

Hear me out for a second, and then please, I'm going to say no.

I'm going to say I calmed down Elon Musk.

He's not starting the America Party.

I've got Elon Musk and deep-pocketed Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, and others on my side.

I'm going to be the presumptive nominee in three years' time.

And I'm going to run the card table and own the Libs because the Libs are in complete and total disarray.

And then we can take another cut at the

authoritarian apple in the next term, where I'm a younger, fresher MAGA type of a person.

So I'm going to say Vance does not want it.

That it's just a step too far, you you reckon.

A step too far for Vance.

Too politically risky.

So now my question to you then is, what about Trump?

I don't think Trump cares about J.D.

Vance and what happens to J.D.

Vance.

Well, I know that, but what about him wanting to do that?

I think he is more likely to want it.

He doesn't really care.

Aprèmoire de Louge.

He doesn't care what comes after him.

He might even prefer a Democrat over J.D.

Vance.

I agree with that too.

Let me jump on that for a second.

Here's the narrative.

Caddy, they were nothing before I arrived on the the scene these times and they will be nothing after i'm gone

after i'm gone there is there is no trumpism there is only trump okay right okay so you you see that right go back to trump's thinking about the insurrection act go ahead well i can see from his point of view he felt he was really pissed off that he missed an opportunity in 2020 to crack down on the black lives matter protests he doesn't want to be impeached so actually the election he cares about is not the 2028 election it's the 2026 election And if he has to find a way and he is doing everything he can, and we spoke about this last week, Republicans are doing everything they can around the country to limit access to voting

beyond the case that's in the Supreme Court and redistricting, then I think that the Insurrection Act would be one more way he can put his finger on the scales of the midterms.

I do think that that would be a bridge too far.

I do think that if I was watching the No Kings rallies, I do think that, wow, if I really go pull the grenade pin on the Insurrection Act, this could blow up in my face.

It could blow up on my face.

It's like

the good news about the country is that it's not Turkey or Hungary where there's enough people in the country that actually get the Constitution enough where they would like to continue with the Constitution.

And that was my point to Laura Laura.

I'm not a communist, but I believe in a decentralized government.

It is what's made us, Caddy.

It's what's made us successful.

So, anyway.

Talking of communism, we are going to come back and talk about Russia and Ukraine.

So, we're going to take a quick break, but stay with us for that.

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics US.

We're going to talk about Ukraine and the very unhappy meeting that happened between Donald Trump and President Vladimir Zelensky at the White House on Friday.

The FT, to give them their credit, was the first to report this.

It sounds like it was, at least it was behind closed doors, but it was a very unhappy meeting.

At one point, according to the FT, Donald Trump tossed aside maps of the front line of Ukraine and said that he was sick of seeing maps.

He said, This red line, I don't even know where it is.

I've never been there.

And he insisted that Putin wants Zelensky to surrender the entire Donbass region to Russia.

This is the region that Russia has been trying to get in its entirety from Ukraine for 11 years and has so far failed to do so.

And Putin apparently told Donald Trump on a phone call last week that he wants Ukraine to surrender the entire Donbass region or else he's going to hit them hard and destroy the country.

Anyway, it sounds like, and I've had, by the way, this meeting, the fact that this was a very bad meeting confirmed to me by some European officials who said it really went badly.

I think one of the interesting things here is that

Donald Trump, for all his volatility, and as one person said it to me, you know, last week, who's in the national security side, said

the trouble with trying to deal with Trump is that he's so emotional and he's so volatile.

But actually, when you think about this one issue, Anthony, and I was texting with a Senate foreign relations staffer this morning about this, and they were saying, what's in fact striking is how consistent Donald Trump has been on Russia, as they said, across time and space.

You know, there's the odd blip, but it's really one of the very few issues where he always seems to land in the same place, which is on Vladimir Putin's side.

Now, I know you have your theories about why that is.

I don't know exactly what the evidence is on that or what it may or may not be, but I think we can see that this was not a good week for Zelensky and it was not a good week for Ukraine.

They're not going to give up fighting.

They're not going to give up Donbass.

But Donald Trump once again gets Putin in his ear and says, says, okay, the Russians say their economy is doing great.

The Russians say they want the whole of Donbass.

Otherwise, they're going to destroy your country.

Zelensky, you just have to accept this.

I don't think Zelensky is going to accept this, but it puts Zelensky in a very bad position, I think.

It's interesting because I think Trump is doing massively and beautifully.

Let me explain why.

It's not a bad week for Zelensky.

It is a bad year for Zelensky, and it's a bad four-year presidential term for Zelensky, Western Liberty, NATO, and Ukraine.

And so let me just explain why.

Number one, Trump's move, remember, Putin is the judo guy.

So what do you do in judo?

You use the force of your opponent to defend yourself.

And Trump is using verbal judo here.

Let me just explain why.

He will stall, stall, stall, then slam.

So he'll stall.

Well, maybe we'll give tomahawks.

We'll stall.

We'll say something at the UN recognizing that the Russians are actually getting decimated, and he knows that they're getting decimated.

He also knows their economy is falling apart.

So he'll say those things, and then people will be around the table going, oh, finally standing up to Putin.

Yeah, and he's finally getting, oh, you see, Trump is not the pushover, and he's not the cipher of Vladimir Putin.

He's not being played.

Not being played.

See, look at the example.

He just mentioned tomahawks.

And then,

when push comes to shove, stall, stall, stall, slam Zelensky, slam Ukraine, slam the ideas of the West.

In my mind, despite the puffery and bluffing, Trump has been broadly consistent throughout the whole second term.

I am with Putin, but for the bluffing and pupping.

And I let Vlad know every chance I can that I am with him.

Who started the war, Caddy?

Let me ask you a factual question.

Who started the war?

Everybody knows that Russia invaded Ukraine and tried to take Kyiv in three days and failed.

Have you ever heard Donald Trump say that to anybody?

No.

That Russia started the war?

No, Donald Trump's argument is that Ukraine was dumb to stand up to Russia because they didn't have enough missiles and so they weren't going to win.

And in his kind of, you know, might is right worldview, if you're the weaker country, you're stupid to get yourself into a war, even if the other side has

attacked you, right?

I mean, is that that's how he sees the world?

It's not to me how he sees the world as much as he sees whatever Putin wants to the extent I'm capable inside the political system I'm living in.

I'm going to give Putin whatever he wants.

So when the Republicans come to me and they start hitting me that I'm not helping Zelensky and they start explaining to me the national security reasons why I'll poo-poo them temporarily.

But,

Vlad, let's meet in Hungary.

I just got to let you know whatever you want, I am going to do.

But you're a politician too, Vlad.

So it's okay with you, right?

If I say we're going to give tomahawks but not give them, if I say we're going to do this but not do that, it's okay with you because I'm going to give you exactly what you want.

If that is the sum of the relationship, and everybody's confused by this relationship, Anthony.

I mean, I speak to people in British intelligence european officials here in you know up in the senate i speak to republicans in the senate about this everybody is slightly mystified by this relationship if that were the case why has he

done even as much as he has done why has he been sharing intel with the ukrainians that allows them to hit with inside russia why not just pull the plug right at the beginning it's a great question because he has to

because you have to make people mystified.

First of all, why are they mystified?

They're mystified because an American president is kow-towing to a Russian president.

So that's mystifying.

And so he has to do enough to keep them mystified so that they don't go into the declarative statement: hey, the guy's got something on him.

And what is it specifically that he's got on him?

Maybe Mussad knows.

Maybe MI6 knows.

Maybe the CIA knows.

But you got to stay in the zone of mystification

by doing enough so that Caddy will come on the podcast and say, well, he is supplying this.

He is giving them satellite technology.

He is green lighting European weapons shipments, but they're not coming from him.

So he is signaling to Vlad, guy, come on, man, help me out here.

I am doing everything that you want inside the

guardrails of my own political system without me getting ousted.

And oh, by the way, you want me.

You don't want a Ronald Reagan cold warrior in this position.

You don't want a tough ass Jack Kennedy Democrat in this position.

You want me, your boy.

You want me, who's going to kowtow to you?

Okay, I don't know, Anthony, honestly.

I mean, I've asked a lot of people this, and I don't know whether the Russians have something on him or not.

I just, I haven't found the reporting.

I haven't found the evidence.

So I don't know.

So I'm agnostic on this.

Do you think you know what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump?

We were talking about journalism and the definition of journalism and investigative journalism.

I'm not an investigative journalist enough to really know.

I'm not.

So I'm not going to suggest that I know and here's the smoking gun.

I'm not going to suggest that.

But

I am reasonably street-smart guy.

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood.

I've seen the spectrum of life enough to to know that he's got something on him.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist, okay?

When the obvious is obvious, it's obvious.

And so the question now is, I can't, if I'm MI6, I'm at dinner with Katie Katty, how am I going to get myself in trouble?

I'm going to tell her what I think is on him.

I can't do that.

I'm not going to breach establishment protocols.

But I am telling you, I am telling you that the steel dossier to me,

which was successfully discredited by the hard right, I thought they did a brilliant job of tearing Christopher Steele apart and trying to discredit him and finding a few holes in the thing to discredit him.

But I think there were things left out of the Steele dossier.

And I think the Steele dossier,

to me, is more true than it's not true.

That's what I honestly think.

And so it's right there and there that there's a connection, there's a money laundering connection, there's a connection with the Russian oligarchs, which is tied back to Putin, and I think they got something on them.

And again, I don't know what it is, but last time I checked, we haven't released the Epstein files here in the U.S.

Last time I checked, we're not letting the woman that just won the special election in Arizona get sworn in because she would be the vote at the Epstein files.

So, we're going to do everything we can

to

let the Epstein files sit out there for as long as humanly possible.

It was interesting that hearing with Pam Bondi on the Epstein files.

I did think it was interesting when one Democratic senator raised reports

of photographs of Donald Trump with young, semi-dressed women, I think was how he described it.

But for a senator to say that in a televised hearing, I thought was interesting.

And then, of course, there's obviously been a lot blown up in the UK

this week with Prince Andrew having his title of the Duke of York stripped from him over the Epstein issue and

allegations from one of the girls who was a victim, who's now dead, Virginia Geoffrey, saying that there were kind of orgies with young girls and Geoffrey Epstein and

Prince Andrew.

The question would be whether there were other clients that were given that special treatment by Geoffrey Epstein as well.

So, you know, the Epstein stuff is still unresolved.

We don't know what's in those files.

We're waiting for it.

And we don't know exactly what it is that the Russians have or don't have, if it's compromat over Donald Trump of some sort.

What we do know is that this is none of this is good for Ukraine.

They have been getting hammered over the weekend even with their infrastructure being hit.

And Donald Trump doesn't seem to want to do very much about it.

Maybe he's just incredibly frustrated that he can't fix it.

He thought it was going to be easy.

I was going to do it in day one.

It clearly wasn't done.

He doesn't know why he can't do it, and he's just prepared to give Putin what he wants in order for it to end.

So, Caddy,

you got the British ambassador lost his job.

Yes or no?

Yes.

A prince in the royal family has been defrocked effectively.

Yes or no?

Yes.

So, and what's going on here in the U.S.?

Anything?

Nada.

Any been anything been to anybody have any hit to them?

No.

Nope.

The DOJ is going down and chatting with Ghelane Maxwell, who they've now put in a prison camp, not a secure prison.

So you're the journalist.

I just play one on television and podcast.

So are you telling me you don't know what it is, but if I said to you, what is the probability there's something,

you can't say that it's zero, right?

Or you would say it's zero?

No, I would not say it's zero, but I think you would say it's 100%, and I would say it's some other.

I wouldn't say it's 100% because I don't know.

Okay, so not 100%.

So, what could be motivating President Trump to kowtow to Vladimir Putin?

There are other things that he tends to think democracy is weak and a bit soft.

He likes strong men generally.

He likes she,

he likes Erdogan, he likes Kim.

He has said he likes the authority that they have.

He likes the anti-woke stuff, the anti-gay stuff.

There's a sort of machismo about Putin,

kind of hyper-masculinity about Putin that he also likes.

He does believe in this strong nation theory of the world, that the world should be run by strong powers and weak powers should suffer what they must.

And so Ukraine was stupid to try and stand up to Russia because it wasn't going to win, he felt.

They didn't have enough weapons.

So they should have just given in.

In Donald Trump's worldview, in the kind of zero-sum worldview, they should have just given in.

And And I think Zelensky, because of the Russia impeachment investigations in the first Trump administration, Zelensky, he's always hated Zelensky for that, and Zelensky's role in not giving him dirt on the Biden family.

And I think he also doesn't like kind of Zelensky's kind of rather sort of, he thinks he's arrogant and cocky and didn't wear a suit to the White House.

And there's a whole load of reasons he doesn't really like Zelensky.

Zelensky seems to irritate him.

I think those are, it's possible the Russians also have something, but I think those are also all factors in this equation.

Listen,

you're a more reasonable person than me, and I respect your rationale and your reasonableness, but I don't really give a shit about that.

He's got something on him.

Okay.

I'm just telling you.

And there's no way somebody like Trump, because I know the son of a bitch, he wouldn't be acting this way.

Look, he wants to flex and intimidate everybody.

He wants to push and shove everybody.

Remember when he pushed that world leader at NATO here?

Remember when he he was in the city?

I don't see him pushing and shoving she.

Yeah, well, you're not going to push him.

I don't see him pushing and shoving Kim.

But he doesn't, but she don't own him.

She don't own him.

He doesn't get in there and bark for she and be his lapdog.

He don't own him.

But Putin owns him.

And so there's a reason why.

And so someday we're going to find out, Caddy.

Someday we will.

And then you're going to call me.

Hopefully.

I want to get the call from Caddy Kay.

And let me

call me.

You can call me day or night, Caddy.

If it's the other way around, I want that call back again.

Oh, that's the end of it.

We can't prove that, though.

If we never know, then we'll be able to.

We'll be noticed.

Okay.

Exactly.

So you'll have to let me know.

We're going to leave it there.

Hello, this is Caddy.

I'm just letting you know that we finally figured out what it is.

Oh, my God.

That will be the day, Caddy Kay.

That will be the day.

You will record that tape and hold it over me forever.

No question.

Thank you very much for listening again.

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