Rep. Mike Quigley on Trump’s Capitulation to Putin

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1:19Ben Meiselas:See terms. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure. Right now, get up to 45 % off site-wide, plus get a free professional measure at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. Fox continues to be in a total panic over this disastrous meeting that Donald Trump had in Alaska with Vladimir Putin.

1:57Ben Meiselas:than the meeting that Donald Trump had with the European leaders. And here we are, you know, as we approach August 20th, August 21st, and all of the things that Donald Trump said were going to happen did not happen. He said there was going to be severe consequences, and Putin didn't agree to these things. There's no ceasefire. There's no trilateral meeting scheduled. There's literally, like quite literally none of the objectives that Donald Trump said were going to be achieved were achieved. So then they bring in on Fox, the Treasury Secretary. I'm not sure why he's the guy right now who they have on here, but the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent.

2:35Ben Meiselas:Oh, I think it's Donald Trump thinks that Putin just cares about money. And if we can just do bribe for bribe, maybe that's how it'll be done. They bring in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Bessent goes, it's a great meeting, the greatest meeting ever. Here's what Bessent said on Fox. Here, play this glue. Well, Laura, it goes all the way back to Friday in Alaska because President Trump had a great meeting with President Putin. My take was he had President Putin on his heels for most of the event after the flyover. And then yesterday, a fantastic meeting with Zelensky, then with the Europeans, and then back in the Oval, he had a call with President Putin.

3:15Ben Meiselas:And I'm very optimistic that they'll be able to have a bilateral meeting. A bilateral meeting happened in Alaska, a trilateral meeting. You think Putin wants to meet with Zelensky? That's been tried multiple times. Zelensky said, I'm ready to do it. And I'm sure we all watch that. Absolutely. Donald Trump had Putin on his heels. Why do they just say the most brazen and ridiculous? How do they do it? It's a talent. Like, how does he get up there and do it? Like, literally. And then you have Besant talk about, you know, look, what we all know is that Trump had a strategy and he executed that strategy.

3:51Ben Meiselas:And Laura Ingraham now pretends that Putin agreed to Article 5 like NATO security guarantees when Putin and Russia said they absolutely don't agree to these things. Here, play this clip. Why didn't you do it yesterday? So NBC's take on what happened yesterday is that the president was susceptible to total flattery, that that the European leaders were there wooing him, that Zelensky put on the suit. And it was thank you, sir. Thank you, sir, for all your effort. And that's the only reason President Trump was as magnanimous and as open to security guarantees and so forth. You were there. Tell us what we should understand and take away from what happened.

4:33Ben Meiselas:Well, again, let's go back to Friday because the security guarantees go back to Friday. President Trump's meeting with President Putin in Alaska. And if President Trump has wanted to end this conflict, it never would have started if he had been president. And he convinced President Putin about the security guarantees that it is a what the Europeans call. No, he didn't. He didn't. He didn't do that. That didn't happen. That never happened. Putin's not agreeing. Putin's state regime media there says that that didn't happen. But here's what Jesse Waters is saying. This is how Fox wants to portray the meeting with our European allies.

5:14Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. The Europeans were sitting around the Resolute desk yesterday like they were waiting for class to start. Trump was giving Europe a geography lesson. He even put up the big, beautiful map and sent it home with Zelensky as homework. If Zelensky can read a map like Trump can read a putt, we'll have a deal in no time. Well, how about Donald Trump making a phone call to Putin while he's with the European allies? This is how it's framed by Scott Besson, that Putin said, you can call me tomorrow or call me in the next 15 minutes. And then Donald Trump rushed and said, let me call you before you go to sleep.

5:48Ben Meiselas:Daddy, here, play this clip. And as I said, I'm optimistic. Was Putin up waiting for the call? Did you get the sense? Well, the president gave him the option. I could call you, sent a message. And Putin said, well, I'll be up for 15 more minutes or you could call tomorrow. And I think Putin wanted the call that night. So that shows he was eager to hear what the president had to say. The way that the media... Let's bring in Democratic Congress member Mike Quigley from Illinois, 5th Congressional District on the House Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. It's great to have you here.

6:30Ben Meiselas:I mean, I show you those clips. I mean, just they're talking about a meeting that maybe they wished happened, but that's just not what happened at all. I mean, what do you make of those clips I showed you just where we're at now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine? I think the way Trump world works is you and I grew up with, I'll believe it when I see it. I think now we live with, I'll see it when I believe it. I mean, forget the reality that's in front of you. It's what you want it to be. Whatever you want it to be that's what it is because Trump said so. I think we're also on the perch of a new era here.

7:07Forget the Truman Doctrine. Forget the Reagan Doctrine, right, which was we will always help our allies against Soviet aggression at the time. Now the Trump Doctrine. The Trump Doctrine is the U.S. will be tough until it's not and that the invader of a sovereign democratic country will be rewarded for their invasion with the land that they took and their war criminal president will not be held accountable. That's kind of the sum and substance of this. There is nothing that should give anyone any hope that there's going to be a resolution for this. And look, we all want peace, but this is appeasement in the worst form.

7:54And the reason we were helping and are trying to help Ukraine is the same reasons we fought the Second World War, prevent a sovereign democratic country from being wiped off the face of the earth, with the recognition that Putin's aims go well beyond Ukraine, so that this is a strategic as well as a moral imperative for us, and one we're failing at miserably right now.

8:18Ben Meiselas:It seems that if we were to report accurately on what's taken place Friday, earlier this week with the European allies, what we're seeing across Ukraine, in Kiev, in Sumy, in Kharkiv, in Zephrushchev, things are worse. Things are appreciably worse. Like to me, that's just what the objective data is. Putin is emboldened. The attacks since Trump has been in office and the killings on innocent Ukrainians have doubled or getting higher. And we are further away from peace because Putin got what he wanted. Legitimacy, no ceasefire, continue the war. And now you see Russian tanks having American flags on them.

9:04Ben Meiselas:And the Russian military bloggers are bragging about that as a troll. That's how I see it. You're closer to the ground. How do you see it? Are we in a worse position now with these meetings? We're in a far worse position because it's bought Putin time. Putin has always understood that he wins a war of attrition, not just because he has six times the manpower, but because he treats his troops like cannon fodder and he can run 40 percent of his economy into this war machine. And he knows one thing. Putin understands strength and he doesn't see it in Trump. He sees a president that's never stood his ground.

9:48Right. There are six deadlines that were passed. President Trump has never even said who he wants to win this war. So he's given Putin every opportunity to continue this war. When Zelensky was in D.C. and I've been to Ukraine five times since the war started, he's always said, help us win quickly because he understands why that matters. And the fact that the president will never say who he wants to win and that that we're not going to promise NATO. And when they say Article 5, but it doesn't involve our troops and it doesn't involve NATO, I'm not sure what they're talking about, but hollow promises and words that only encourage Putin to go on.

10:36Ben Meiselas:So what can we do? I mean, once upon a time, you know, this was a bipartisan issue. You still have some Republicans who definitely are out there supportive of Ukraine, but they do it and they create a fan fiction of what Donald Trump says that really doesn't meet the statements that he's making. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing when you go, well, Donald Trump said he didn't say those things, but I don't know if that's you tell me. Yeah, well, look, there's a core group of Republicans who, I think, McCall, Fitzpatrick, French Hill, Bacon, who are true believers in the Reagan doctrine, and they're trying.

11:25Maybe half of Republicans in the House would vote for another military supplemental to arm Ukraine as it needs to happen. But the rest, you know, not so much. So your question, what can we do? There's still a lot we can do. There's somewhere between$5 and$8 billion of Russian assets frozen in the U.S.,$300 billion in Europe. We should seize those assets and use them to help Ukraine defend itself and to help Ukraine rebuild after this conflict is over. And if there's a bipartisan bill to put additional sanctions on Russia, but really punishing secondary sanctions on those countries still trading with Putin, funding this war machine.

12:18Those are two pretty strong things we could do in addition to saying, hey, what would a new supplemental look like? Putin is willing to do a lot. But I think he has a breaking point. Trump, when they talk about ending this war, Trump could have ended this war showing Putin again, the only thing he understands, and that's strength and resolve.

12:42Ben Meiselas:Before we go, anything you think that's not getting enough coverage out there, whether it's about Ukraine or just another thing that you're seeing out there that you're like, I think is just important. We have six million subscribers here just from your vantage point. I want people to remember when we started this conflict and I was in Ukraine the first time and I stood on the battlegrounds and I stood on the mass graves when the maternity hospital was flattened. I talked to the families that had their kids stolen by Russia, taken there, tens of thousands of them, and heard of the bloody war crimes.

13:25we asked what was victory, right? And victory was security guarantees and not fictional ones, helping Ukraine rebuild after the war, holding Putin accountable for his war crimes and getting the territory back. Now we're down to talking about maybe one of those. The rest of the tyrants of the world are watching eagerly to see what we do. And when they see Trump's NATO ambassadors say that no big chunks or sections are going to be given away that haven't been fought or earned on the battlefield. That's Trump's NATO secretary saying, in effect, that Putin has earned that land because he won it on the battlefield.

14:10Well, I'm sure Beijing will find that very interesting as they look again towards Taiwan.

14:17Ben Meiselas:And just Xi Jinping's testing Donald Trump on that, too, saying don't allow the Taiwan president to land in New York and go to Central America. And Trump like stopped the guy from like going. It was crazy. I mean, just Trump. Trump's a tough guy when it comes to going after some some kid who's undocumented. Right. He can take their mother away from them. Right. Break a window in a car and take their mother away. Screaming. Right. He's a tough guy there. But when he comes up against somebody who's tougher than him, this president is a wimp. Congressman Mike Quigley, thanks for joining us. Anytime.

14:55Ben Meiselas:Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.

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