Inside Trump’s meeting with Putin… Americast is in Alaska!

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1:09BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin. And I'm going to be telling him, you got to end this war. You got to end it. And he wasn't going to mess with me. He was, this war would have never happened. You know, we had a discussion about... Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine. But they've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely ocean. You know, in real estate, we call it oceanfront property. That's always the most valuable property.

1:44If you're in a lake, a river or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean. That's gone. AmeriCast has come to Alaska. because here we're expecting a big moment. Donald Trump meeting face-to-face in person with Vladimir Putin to talk about the war in Ukraine. This could have huge consequences. All of you remember, of course, Donald Trump boasting about being able to end this war within 24 hours, and we all know that that hasn't happened. This is his first really big attempt at stopping the fighting. So what can we expect from this meeting?

2:23What do you need to know about it? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. President Trump's message is very simple. We are done being taken advantage of. Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people who are scared now. Are you supportive of these onesies? I'm supportive of vaccines. What is happening? Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. This is what victory feels like.

3:07Hello, this is Sarah, and I'm speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska. And it's Anthony. I'm also here in Anchorage, Alaska, in the same hotel as you, but not the same hotel room. Exactly. So we can just about see each other. And we're here, Anthony, aren't we, for a big and important reason. because in about 24 hours time, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will also be here in Alaska meeting face to face. And they haven't done that for a long time, have they? No. The last time they met was at the G20 summit in Osaka in 2019. And of course, before that, they had a one-on-one summit in Helsinki, Finland that was very closely watched.

3:45But a lot has happened since then. Donald Trump lost an election. Donald Trump won an election. Russia invaded Ukraine. This is all hovering over, hanging over this meeting, making it particularly fraught with peril and perhaps in Trump's view and Putin's opportunity. And huge expectations as well, of course, because, you know, they're talking about how to end the war in Ukraine. But Donald Trump has been pretty vague. Well, maybe not vague, vacillating, I would say, in how he has characterized what's going to happen here. Sometimes he makes it sound as though it's a peace summit on a scale with Yalta.

4:19And sometimes he makes it sound as though it's just an initial chat, which he expects very little outcome from. Let's have a listen to some of the things he's been saying about this meeting. There'll be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody to the good for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff. Also some bad stuff for both. So it's good and it's bad, but it's very complex. What's the definition of a good deal? I'll tell you after I hear what the deal is. because there could be many definitions. You know, you're talking about a very large and complex situation.

4:55I tell you, the war that I just settled with Azerbaijan and with, as you know, and Armenia was almost as complex as this one, having to do with routes trade. What was the successful meeting on Friday with Vladimir Putin? Well, we're going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin. And at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made. How will you know that? Because that's what I do, I make deals. Yeah, dealmaker-in-chief, of course, is how Donald Trump loves to see himself and portray himself. He's the peacemaker who can cut these deals that nobody else could, he likes to think.

5:31And yet, as everybody got quite excited about this summit meeting, the White House started really downplaying expectations and saying, look, this isn't a meeting that's going to come up with a peace deal, maybe not even a ceasefire agreement. And they're really talking down what to expect. This was the White House Press Secretary, Caroline Levitt, on Tuesday. The goal of this meeting for the president is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war. But this is a listening exercise for the president. Look, only one party that's involved in this war is going to be present.

6:02And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end. And then the next day on Wednesday, Trump talked about what could be some dire consequences if Russia doesn't agree to ending the war at this meeting. Will Russia face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war after your meeting on Friday? Yes, they will. There will be consequences. I don't have to say there will be very severe consequences. Yes. That's the most dramatic thing we've heard Donald Trump say about this meeting, that there could be very severe consequences for Russia.

6:40Although, I mean, he very clearly did not say what those could be. And it's a little difficult to work out exactly what they could be. That's one of the things that we're going to delve into in this episode as we go through exactly what we can expect to happen and who wants what from the meeting. And I think the first thing to talk about, Anthony, isn't it, is what does Donald Trump want from this? We know he's really, really eager to arrange a peace deal, partly because he promised to in the election campaign, partly because he thinks this is the great strength he brings to the world stage. But he's putting a lot of political capital into this, isn't he?

7:15Yeah. You know, you remember back with his inaugural address in January, he said he wanted his legacy to be as a peacemaker. So I think ultimately that's what he wants out of this. He wants to be viewed by the world and by the American public as someone who came in and fixed this seemingly intractable problem. Something that's been going on, a war that's been going on for years. Now, exactly what he wants out of the two parties and what he wants out of Russia, I mean, that vacillates so much over the past eight or nine months. Back in February, he had that acrimonious meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office.

7:48Over the past couple of months, we've seen Donald Trump get more frustrated with Vladimir Putin and talk about deadlines that he's going to be imposing and expressing disappointment and anger with the strikes on civilian targets in Kiev and other places within Ukraine. We had just last week a supposed deadline for new sanctions on Russia, new secondary sanctions that we're going to kick in on Friday. And then coming into this week, Donald Trump, obviously, the fact that he's having this meeting shows a certain amount of optimism and hope that that he can reach an agreement with Vladimir Putin.

8:24Those secondary sanctions have been put on hold. And he seems to be hopeful that this will create some sort of a breakthrough. And then for most of this week after that, it's been downplaying expectations that this is a feel out meeting the way Donald Trump described it or a listening session, as Caroline Levitt called it. It's just kind of a whiplash back and forth trying to figure out exactly what they want to get out of this, what they think they can get out of this. And let's talk about what leverage Donald Trump has to try and get Vladimir Putin to make a deal. You talked about those secondary sanctions, which he had said would kick in last week.

8:59And that is putting tough sanctions on countries that buy oil from Russia, because that's how Russia is sustaining its wartime economy. And that's largely India and China. He put 50 % tariffs on India. He's held off doing anything with China. And I guess he's keeping that as a threat in his back pocket. I don't believe that he would do that because that would push the oil price really high. I mean, maybe$150, certainly over$100. And one of Donald Trump's big priorities for the American economy is a low oil price, cheaper energy that's better for business, for manufacturing and the things he's interested in.

9:35So I'm not quite sure how much of a threat that genuinely is. There are already American sanctions on the Russian economy itself and not a huge amount of business that's done between the two. And I feel Donald Trump gave away some of his leverage by agreeing to this meeting without getting any concessions out of Vladimir Putin first, because coming to America, being seen to join the American president on the world stage during a joint press conference after their meeting, that's already a win for Vladimir Putin. And Donald Trump didn't get anything for that, did he, Anthony? Yeah, Sarah, it kind of feels like Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, back in his first term, where he, you know, the United States has been holding off on having any kind of meeting with him, saying he has to do something, make some kind of concessions in order to get the prestige of a one-on-one meeting with the American president.

10:20And then Trump went ahead and had those meetings, had a couple of those meetings, had there was all these talks of breakthroughs and then everything kind of fell apart and went back to where it was before with UN getting what he wanted. And maybe the same thing is is going going on here with Putin. Putin gets this welcome back onto the community of nations. He gets to meet with the president of the United States on American soil here in Alaska. And and that will be enough for him. And he won't make any kind of other concessions. But you're also right about those secondary sanctions. The ones on India don't kick in until September.

10:56So there's still a lot of runway for them to get put on hold. He hasn't touched China at all. He warned in the Oval Office when I spoke with him last Wednesday that there were a lot of sanctions coming, but none of those secondary sanctions showed up. I think Turkey's another big oil buyer from Russia that hasn't faced any sanctions, even talk of sanctions at this point. And the reason why Joe Biden didn't do it, as you rightly point out, is because that would drive the price of oil sky high. And will Trump really be willing to take on that pain in order to punish Russia? I don't think there's anyone here that thinks that.

11:28So I can't imagine that the Russians are all that worried about it either. Now, Anthony, we don't know for sure, do we, whether or not Donald Trump listens to America's, but he might as well. because he has anticipated the exact conversation that we're having right now. And he had already put on Truth Social a post from himself saying that the very unfair media is already at work on my meeting with Putin. Constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who, of course, used to be his ambassador to the UN. John Bolton said that even though the meeting's on American soil, Putin has already won.

12:01What's all that about? We're winning on everything, says Donald Trump, and the fake news is working overtime. So, yeah, so he's telling us off for saying that he's not going to win a good deal here. But of course, yet again, that post doesn't actually say how he's going to get this particularly great deal out of Vladimir Putin. He goes on to say, if I got Moscow and Leningrad free as part of the deal with Russia, the fake news would say that I made a bad deal. Of course, it hasn't been called Leningrad at St. Petersburg now for decades. But once again, Donald Trump stuck in the 1980s and his view of geography as well as his view of politics sometimes.

12:35But that is the big question. Did Donald Trump give away some of his hands by talking about land swaps and what those land swaps would be as as what Russia wants in order to end this war? And if there is Ukrainian land that has to be given to Russia, is that something that the Ukrainians are going to go along with? I mean, that's a fundamental divide in keeping this war from being resolved. And the fundamental hurdle that Donald Trump is going to have to clear here is going to have to find a way to convince Putin to end this war. That's probably going to involve giving up Ukrainian land. And the Ukrainians and Zelensky just don't want to do that, even if they get some ocean front land back like Donald Trump promised, the Black Sea, this prime waterfront real estate.

13:18I don't think that's what Zelensky necessarily is fixated on. is the Donbass, the eastern part of Ukraine that is rich in minerals and rich in industry and people that they don't want to give up and that they've been fighting over now for upwards of 10, 12 years. It's not just in the invasion. That has been contested for quite some time. You mentioned, Anthony, Donald Trump's sort of slightly old-fashioned view of world geography and also of international diplomacy. And some of this really strikes me as being incredibly 20th century. I mean, this is like the end of the Second World War, isn't it, when you had the American president, the leader of the Soviet Union and Winston Churchill together in Yalta, actually now in Russian-occupied Crimea, ironically, dividing up Europe and, you know, redrawing the borders of countries who were not represented at the table in this really kind of, you know, old-fashioned view of great powers carving up the world.

14:11And there's a sort of a slight sense of that here as well, that that's how Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin see the world, that they should get to run their own spheres of influence and do what they want there. That's what Zelensky's huge fear is, isn't it? So that's why the European leaders have intervened kind of on Ukraine's behalf and had a video call that included Donald Trump yesterday. How were your calls this morning with European leaders? And was it your call not to invite President Zelensky to your meeting with Putin? No, just the opposite. No, no. We had a very good call. He was on the call.

14:44President Zelensky was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly. No, it was always going to be I was going to meet with President Putin. And then after that, I'm going to call the leaders and President Zelensky. I'm going to call President Zelensky and then I'll call probably in that order the leaders. Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump, you know, for all of his criticisms of Europe actually sounded pretty upbeat about that meeting. And after the fact, the European leaders like people like Emmanuel Macron in France were talking optimistically about having gotten Trump to see their view of any kind of a land deal has to involve Ukraine and that Ukraine is the one that gets final say over whether whether it cedes any land to Russia or not.

15:28But you're right. It does feel feel like the Cold War in that the United States and Russia are sitting down are going to be sitting down across a big table and negotiating about major global affairs. Feels like the end of World War Two, feels like the end of World War One, when the Western powers divided up the Middle East. And we know how those those map lines drawn in a conference room far away from the Middle East ended up affecting world politics and regional politics for a century afterwards. So there is a danger, and the Europeans recognize it, a danger to just having Trump and Putin in a room, just the two of them with translators, no one else in there for the first part of this meeting behind closed doors, what they could say, what they could agree to.

16:09And when Donald Trump comes out of there, they're worried and Ukrainians are worried that he could say, I have a deal here. This is the one that Russia will agree to. It involves this, that and the other. They have to take it or leave it. And if they leave it, then the United States is going to wash its hands of this conflict. no longer support Ukraine, no longer care about it, and kind of leave the Ukrainians to their own fate. A diplomat told me earlier this week, Anthony, you can tell me whether or not this is true, that the first time Trump met Putin, he was happy to rely on the Kremlin translator during the conversation between the two of them.

16:42He didn't bring in his own American translator. I mean, that sounds like absolutely breathtaking naivety when you're meeting the Russian president. Can that possibly be true? That's what I've heard as well. And I mean, it could very well be true. I wouldn't be surprised. Donald Trump doesn't know how the rules work in these things, especially not in his first term. And so he could have just sat down. I know he sat down in a room with just translators, whether it's just the Russian translator. I think I did hear something like that. So, you know, this time around, it's going to be something similar.

17:11It will just be translators. I assume there'll be an American translator in there this time as well. But the full meeting with larger delegations isn't going to take place until after that one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump. And as you heard Trump say in that clip we played earlier, Trump thinks he can figure out whether Putin is serious about this within the first two minutes. You know, is Trump willing to get up and fly out and walk away and wash his hands of all of this and say Putin doesn't want to make a deal within two minutes? That would take a lot of guts. But then, you know, I mentioned the Kim Jong-un meeting that Trump had.

17:45And in Singapore, he essentially did that. He essentially got up and left and didn't have a deal. And despite all the attention being paid to that meeting between the two men when Kim Jong-un didn't make the concessions Trump wanted, he got up and left. You mentioned earlier, Anthony, how he has been sounding frustrated and impatient with Vladimir Putin because he speaks to him on the phone, thinks that they've agreed something to do with some kind of peacemaking, and then Putin bombs Kiev or another Ukrainian city, and there's lots of civilian casualties. And Trump gets upset about that. He really doesn't like the idea of people being killed by this.

18:18You can tell that that's real and quite personal for him. But his impatience with Vladimir Putin never seems to last very long. He'll be lashing out at him and then the next week saying quite sympathetic things. Whereas with Zelensky, even when occasionally, you know, they made up a bit after that spat in the Oval Office, you can sense when he's talking about him, he doesn't like Zelensky and he just doesn't have the same level of sympathy for him as he does for Vladimir Putin. And you can't help but imagine that these personal feelings he seems to have towards both the men are going to color what comes out of this?

18:53Yeah, you know, Donald Trump's politics is personal and his business dealings are personal. His diplomacy seems to be personal. And if he strikes it off with a world leader, if they treat him the way he wants to be treated, if they present themselves and look like the kind of person that he admires, has the strengths that he admires, I think that definitely helps get an inroad. Not all the time, because Modi, the prime minister of India, apparently had a very good relationship with Donald Trump. That didn't stop these new sanctions from being kicked into India. So it doesn't get you all the way, but it definitely gives you a leg up.

19:28And if you get under Trump's skin for whatever reason, whether it's Zelensky or Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, former prime minister of Canada, that is a big hill to climb back up again. Once you kind of get on Trump's bad side, it's not a good place to be and it's a hard place to get out of. This bromance, this kind of fascination that he has for Vladimir Putin is such a source of endless speculation. And of course, America has been very, very familiar with the kind of admiring things he's said about him before and the flattering way in which he treats Vladimir Putin. But I keep asking people in the sort of foreign policy space in America, what is it?

20:05Why does he seem to kind of fancy Putin so much? And nobody's really been able to give me an answer that kind of explains why he seems to be so endlessly forgiving of him. Because it's one thing to say, well, he admires a strong man, a strong leader who's been at, you know, the top of Russia for so many years and years. But, you know, this is the president of the United States. He doesn't need to be awed by anybody, really, or impressed by Putin's power or economy. I mean, what is it that causes this fascination? Yeah, I mean, that is the big question, right? And he has ties. It goes back to Russia.

20:40Prior to his presidency, he'd been looking at Moscow for land deals. The beauty pageant, the Miss World, Miss Universe beauty pageant that he helped organize was hosted in Moscow decades ago. And of course, if you talk to some people who have conspiracy theories about some sort of compromising material that Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump, they They will talk your ear off if you bring it up. And that's what, in their view, colors Donald Trump's actions. But there's also a strong leader that Donald Trump tends to admire. And also, you know, if you look beyond just Donald Trump, a lot of conservatives, a lot of people in Donald Trump's base admire Russia.

21:21They admire what they view as a kind of an ethno-nationalist state, one that has conservative Christian, Orthodox Christian, but Christian nonetheless values that they stand up for. It's not weak. It's not susceptible to kind of the idiosyncrasies and decadence of liberal society. Donald Trump does kind of feel out where his base is. And if his base is pro-Russia, then that may be also a bit of a pull of gravity on Donald Trump to be more sympathetic to Russia as well. Now, we had a question on WhatsApp that goes to some of this. One of our AmeriCastors asked us, given the alleged depth of business connections between Trump's White House team and the Russians, is Trump a lame duck with regard to peace in Ukraine?

22:06Do these connections explain why Trump is so reticent to impose sanctions on Russia? That's a good question. What business connections are there between some of the Trump administration and Russia? Well, I think there are oil connections, there are land connections. I don't think there's anything really big that Donald Trump has actually gone through with that ties Donald Trump to Russia. There was a lot of focus on banks that had Russian ties that were lending Donald Trump money in the early 2000s when Donald Trump was in financial trouble. Also, Russian people, Russian oligarchs who had real estate connections to some of Donald Trump's properties in New York.

22:44But I'm not sure at this point there's really much economic ties between the United States and Russia or between even Donald Trump's people and Russia. It seems like if you were looking for business ties, economic ties that might create appearances of conflicts, looking at the Middle East and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, that seems like a much more potentially dangerous area for Donald Trump to be involved in and it would color his foreign policy. Well, that's a very good point, Anthony, because remember, we saw Eric Trump sweeping through all of those Middle East states that Donald Trump was then about to visit a few months ago, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, doing business, signing deals for new Trump towers, new Trump golf courses, just as his father, the president, was about to fly in and have these big diplomatic meetings.

23:33So that's much more obvious business ties than they necessarily are with Russia. But there's other business, diplomatic business, to be done with Russia. It's going to be very interesting, I think, to see if Vladimir Putin tries to put on the table talks about nuclear weapons and whether or not he wants to try and tempt Donald Trump with some kind of new nuclear weapon disarmament deal of some form. And the Arctic, you know, here we are in Alaska, the only bit of America really that's in the far north here. And we know that, you know, there's shipping trading routes coming into place now that the ice is retreating and more of the sea is opening up.

24:07There are mineral rights in the Arctic. There's going to be a real scramble there. And it's something that Russia and America are both very interested in. Putin and Trump are very interested in. I wonder if Putin will try and sort of, you know, sidetrack him onto discussions about the Arctic. But yeah, we shouldn't get too sidetracked when we've got AmeriCastor questions to answer. Here's another one we can go into. This is a voice note from Lynn in Eversham Worcestershire. I got that right, right? Worcestershire? Like the sauce? Is it Worcestershire? Ignore the R completely. The R does not exist.