Former NSA Jake Sullivan on Trump’s Damage to U.S. Standing

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1:28Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump had a very bizarre appearance earlier in the morning on Fox, where he was asked about his taking a call with Putin while European leaders were in the room. And Donald Trump said, I really just didn't want to be disrespectful to Putin. So that's why I walked out and took a phone call with Putin. Here, let's watch this.

1:47Jake Sullivan:During the meeting yesterday, when you decided to call Vladimir Putin, what was the reaction among the other people in the room? And what was what was President Putin's reaction to like being brought into a phone call in the middle of your meeting? Well, I think they expected it. I didn't do it in front of them. I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin. You know, I wouldn't do that because they have not had the warmest relations.

2:12Ben Meiselas:And I wouldn't want to be disrespectful to Putin. And then Fox, which I call state regime media at this point, just starts making up deal stipulations on behalf of Putin that Putin's never agreed to. And they're telling their audience these things like Putin has agreed to Article five NATO like guarantees, security guarantees in Ukraine by Europe, by the United States. And Putin's never agreed to this. Let me just show you that moment here. Let's play this next one. President Putin said no NATO and you said you know we're just going to take that off the table but you did get President Putin to agree to NATO-like protections so tell us about that what does that entail you know they say that that's just not that never happened none of this stuff has ever happened you know as Ann Applebaum says Putin never said he wants a trilateral meeting with Zelensky, never said that he respects Ukrainian sovereignty, never said he wants to end the war, never said he's open to a ceasefire.

3:18Ben Meiselas:He says he wants to eliminate Ukraine over and over again. It's very clear what he's out there saying. So even when they're talking about, he's never said Article 5 like guarantees. You know, Donald Trump sends Steve Witkoff, his envoy, the fifth or sixth visit at this point, a guy with no diplomatic experience. He shows up, just makes up a bunch of things, says that Putin says and Putin's not saying those things. And then Europe brushes and says, you know, Putin's not saying those things. And here we are after Donald Trump saying he was going to bring peace to Ukraine in 24 hours of being elected, where in late August and things are worse.

3:54Ben Meiselas:The attacks on Ukraine by Russia are doubling or tripling as Putin gets more emboldened. And let's bring in Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor in the Biden administration. Jake, it's great to see you. I want to get your take on all of this, especially what you saw yesterday with the European leaders, the coalition of the willing. They're calling themselves that. I'm showing up with Zelensky. What did you make of that, Jake?

4:20Jake Sullivan:Well, look, I think the European leaders understand the situation a lot better than the president does. They understand that President Putin is basically playing a game of rope-a-dope here, which is to try to keep this war going, to try to force Ukraine's capitulation, not to get any kind of real peace in Ukraine, and to get Donald Trump to back off the threats to actually impose sanctions. And President Putin came to Alaska and essentially achieved all that. And the European leaders came basically to try to steer President Trump back onto a better course. But look, at the end of the day, President Putin is kind of sitting in the catbird seat right now because he's not facing additional pressure.

4:59Jake Sullivan:President Trump has given up a call for an immediate ceasefire. And now Putin can kind of stretch things out while his forces continue to bombard Ukrainian cities and the war goes on. And I really worry that President Trump, Witkoff and others are getting taken for a ride here.

5:17Ben Meiselas:You know, they say, I mean, Trump said, what, was it two weeks ago? If there's no ceasefire, if there's no deal, there will be very, very, very serious sanctions or very serious consequences. I'm not going to tell you what there is. Then we had this, you know, in my view, horrifically embarrassing Alaska summit. Nothing comes out of it. And this was, you know, two weeks, 60 days. Give me five more days. Give me two more weeks. Give me four more weeks this Friday. It's just it's just the clown show. I feel it just looks so it just looks so utterly weak. I mean, what message does this send not just to Putin, but to the rest of the world?

5:57Jake Sullivan:Well, look, this is one of those where it's actually pretty easy to make a judgment about how the summit went, because Donald Trump had a very specific purpose going in. I mean, he told Fox News 24 hours before the summit, I want a ceasefire. And if there's not a ceasefire, there's going to be consequences. He walked out of the summit saying, oh, I don't want a ceasefire anymore. And no, there's not going to be any consequences. That is absolute kind of across the board victory for Putin coming out of the summit. Now, there was this question, which you alluded to in your opening comments about whether or not Putin agreed to some kind of security guarantee.

6:34And I completely agree with you that right now it seems Fox News, President Trump, others are

6:41Jake Sullivan:asserting some kind of Russian agreement to a NATO-like Article 5 security guarantee that the Russians themselves publicly are saying they would not accept. The Russians have gone out and said, we're not going to let NATO troops be in Ukraine as part of any peace settlement here. And they've also pushed back on any notion that they're going to make any territorial concession. So what we're seeing is concessions from one side, President Trump, with absolutely no concessions from the other side, the Russians, and the European leaders coming in the middle and just trying to make sure that this doesn't end up being some kind of dirty deal between Trump and Putin cut over the heads of the Ukrainians.

7:20Ben Meiselas:Now, walk us through what we are seeing, though, in Europe with the coalition of the willing. You know, Europe, it seems very intentional and purposeful. How Zelensky messages things, how Europe message things. Ukraine and Europe always the same at this point. Like you're not doing a deal with Ukraine without Europe. Europe is Ukraine. Ukraine is Europe. And that seems to be in every message and every post. and the visuals of them all going together. Walk us through that, because that seems very meaningful, and it's been developing over time with its kind of most recent manifestation in what we saw yesterday.

8:04Jake Sullivan:Look, I think the Europeans have both an immediate tactical purpose and then a broader strategy. The immediate tactical purpose is to try to get in the room with President Trump after he's in the room with President Putin because President Trump tends to listen to the last person he was in the room with. So they wanted to come very shortly after he had seen President Putin just to make sure this didn't go down a really disastrous road. But the bigger strategy is they're ultimately trying to convince President Trump that it is Putin who is the obstacle to peace. So they're trying to set this up and say, okay, you know, you want to end the war, fine, we're with you.

8:45Jake Sullivan:Let's do it. Let's make sure that President Putin agrees to the following things. And if he doesn't, then you got to join us in imposing sanctions. So they're essentially, I think, quite skeptical that Putin is really serious about doing a deal here, much more skeptical than President Trump is. But what they're hoping to do is work with the Ukrainians and amongst themselves to basically paint Putin into a corner so he can no longer effectively play the rope-a-dope game that he's been playing so well with President Trump over the last few days. Let's see if that works. But that's their strategy.

9:19Jake Sullivan:They're very clear-eyed about this, and they're going to do their best to get Trump onto a different course than he's been on, especially coming out of the Alaska summit.

9:28Ben Meiselas:What are you seeing geopolitically as well taking place with Donald Trump's trade wars against the world, Donald Trump's capriciousness And, you know, Xi Jinping will call Donald Trump, don't let the president of Taiwan land in New York in part of a flight to Central America. Donald Trump attacking Brazil for a criminal prosecution of an insurrectionist president. You know, more people, more countries looking now to China, China being emboldened. What are you seeing just in addition to, I think, the American weakness in Ukraine right now? What are you seeing internationally?

10:09Jake Sullivan:You know, it's interesting. Over the last few years, what we have tried to do as the United States is align with all of our democratic allies and partners to have a common strategy to de-risk from China, to make sure China couldn't engage in economic coercion, couldn't dominate our economies, couldn't militarily aggress against its neighbors. What you're hearing now from the Europeans, who obviously play nice in the Oval Office, but what they're saying behind the scenes is, we actually have to de-risk from the United States. We can no longer trust America. And that's true now increasingly of countries around the world, especially our longtime Democratic friends and allies, the countries we should be working with against the likes of Russia and China, and instead who are now working together to try to basically reduce their exposure to America.

10:59Jake Sullivan:That's going to weaken us in the long run. It's going to undermine American credibility. But equally importantly, in the all-important competition with China, it's going to mean that we have a lot fewer cards to play over time. And China's watching all this and saying, hey, man, this is pretty awesome. They had a 10-year strategy to try to divide America from its allies. We're accomplishing that strategy for them just in these last few months of the Trump administration, and they just can't believe their luck. Yeah.

11:30Ben Meiselas:So the European allies, they'll show up in the Oval Office. Prime Minister Carney of Canada will show up and, you know, say the nice things. Anthony Albanese in Australia, you know, hey, too bad we couldn't meet, you know, OK. But but behind the scenes, you know, there is this de-risking, but but a coordinated effort to create a new structure. And, you know, it just seems, you know, while Donald Trump, what he posts this morning, you know, I hate windmills or whatever the stupid thing is. There's a real and you see it active strategy of countries to say where we're moving beyond the United States and what that means.

12:11Ben Meiselas:What else are you concerned about just generally looking forward right now from what you're observing that you think maybe needs more attention?

12:20Jake Sullivan:Look, I think one of the dominant issues over the course of the next 10 years is who's going to win the race in artificial intelligence. Will it be the United States or will it be China? And what I see from this administration is basically handing advantage after advantage to China, starting with this computer chip, the H20, which is vital to any strategy China would have to be able to catch up to the United States in the AI race. And what the Trump administration has basically said is, sure, you can have it as long as I, we get a 15 percent cut. It is a complete strategic own goal. And I think it could have long term consequences for America's technological leadership in the world.

13:02Jake Sullivan:And that's going to have an impact on all these other countries as well, because they're going to look at this and say, look, we got a hedge between China and the United States when it comes to AI and other advanced technologies. We're not just going to squarely be part of the American team. And I think that is a huge giveaway that we are going to struggle to deal with over the course of the next few years. And it doesn't seem that even Republicans who strongly oppose this are willing to speak up to get President Trump to reverse course.

13:30Ben Meiselas:Are you surprised about that? A lot of these issues you would think would be bipartisan, but they seem to be very politicized now in ways that are harming our country. That's the strange part about it.

13:43Jake Sullivan:You know, it's interesting. I especially almost have a twinge of sympathy or feeling bad for Marco Rubio, who, you know, as a senator, was out talking about the threat Russia posed, how we should support Ukraine, the challenge that China posed, how we had to stand up in this AI competition. And then you see him operating as Secretary of State saying the exact opposite. And you go down the line of Republican senators, real hawks on China and Russia, real stalwarts when it comes to supporting NATO on a bipartisan basis. And they're nowhere to be found, or even worse, they're out touting what President Trump is doing as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

14:23Jake Sullivan:It is a bizarre turn of events. And if you just play the split screen of quotes from like a Ted Cruz, you know, it just there's a kind of slavish fealty to anything President Trump does, no matter how outlandish and absurd. And I think that this is a problem because on a bipartisan basis, Americans should be stepping up and saying we need strong allies. We need to hold our adversaries accountable and we need to project American strength on the world stage.

14:52Ben Meiselas:Okay, one of the strangest things, I've got you here, so I've got to ask you these. How often do I get Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, otherwise, does that work? These trade deals that Trump announces that aren't on pieces of paper, that he just does via social media posts, and then it gets reported as, okay, I did a deal, but there's literally no documentation for any of it. Have you in your entire career ever heard of anything like that at all? That's a deal via a social media post with no, there's no document. Nobody, nobody knows about it at all. And terms are just made up. And what are the implications of it?

15:28Jake Sullivan:Never seen it. And, you know, we've already immediately seen the implications of it. Just take Japan, for example. He goes out and says, we got this deal with Japan. Japan's going to pay this amount of money. I get to decide what happens with the money, et cetera, et cetera. And the Japanese come out and say, no, that's not our understanding of the deal within hours. So if you don't actually put the terms down and get both sides to sign on the dotted line, then you're going to have profound misunderstandings about what the terms actually are. And at the end of the day, huge elements of this will never get implemented.

16:01Jake Sullivan:And that's a problem because here you have the president touting all these so-called successes. But then our trading partners saying basically our understanding of the deal is totally different from that. and we're not bound to the kinds of claims that President Trump is making in his social media posts. This is no way to run a railroad and it certainly isn't going to serve the interests of the U.S. All it's going to do is end up with these tariffs at heightened levels that are going to directly increase the costs of goods that Americans buy and take more money out of their pocketbooks with these just kind of vague promises of what we're getting on the other side of it.

16:39Jake Sullivan:And I, you know, I've never seen anything like it. And I think it is not a way to do business.

16:45Ben Meiselas:I got to ask you, what do you think about what's going on with India? Donald Trump said that the first deal that he was going to make was with India. I'm best friends with Modi. And then he just started taking credit for resolving the India-Pakistan war, which is a very big, sensitive topic for India. He's saying, you did not do that. Stop taking credit. He does that every day and that like, you know, hurts their hurts everything there. And it's like crushes them. That's not good. That's not true. Donald Trump took like his family to Bitcoin from the Pakistani Bitcoin sovereign fund. And they brought in the general from the Pakistan to be there.

17:19Ben Meiselas:And India is like, what the hell are you doing? And then meanwhile, you still have Apple building new factories because Tim Cook came in with a gold bar and he's building the factories in India. What do you make of what's happening there?

17:31Jake Sullivan:I think this is one of the more underreported stories in Trump's foreign policy, and I'm really glad that you raised it. On a bipartisan basis, going back decades, the United States has worked to build its relationship with India, the world's largest democracy, a country that we should be aligned with on technology and talent and economics and so many other issues, and aligned with in dealing with this strategic threat from China. And we had come a long way on that. And now, in no small part, I think, because of Pakistan's willingness to do business deals with the Trump family, Trump has thrown the India relationship over the side.

18:13Jake Sullivan:That is a huge strategic harm in its own right because a strong U.S.-India relationship serves our interests. But imagine every other country in the world, your Germany, your Japan, your Canada, you look at that and you say that could be us tomorrow. And that only reinforces your view that you've got to hedge against the United States. And having all of our friends and countries around the world decide they just can't rely on the U.S. in any way, shape, or form, that is not in the interest of the American people long term. Our word should be our bond. We should be good for what we say. Our friends should be able to rely on us.

18:50Jake Sullivan:And that has always been our strength. and what's happening with India right now has huge direct impacts, but it also has this reverberating impact across all of our relationships and partnerships in the world.

19:03Ben Meiselas:Jake Sullivan, I appreciate anything else we missed that you want to get out before, before we leave or do we hit it all?

19:08Jake Sullivan:It's a big world. So there's a lot more to say. I'll have to come back at some point in the future and, you know, hit the next 10 topics that, uh, that we didn't get to today.

19:16Ben Meiselas:Well, Hey, I really appreciate you sharing your wealth of knowledge with us. It means a lot. Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor. Thank you as always. Thank you.