209. Netanyahu Vs Zelensky: Who Has Trump’s Ear?

0:07Anthony Scaramucci:It was a big week in Washington for two wars, Iran and Ukraine, but the power balance isn't what you'd expect. The winner was clearly Zelensky, who's learned to speak both Trump and D.C. The loser was the vice president, who's got saddled with the one war that's going wrong. And could Gavin Newsom's decades-old affair with a staffer derail his presidential ambitions? Welcome to The Rest is Politics US. I'm Katty Kay. With me today is Sam Stein. Sam and I share the pleasure of White House coverage, having reported for the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, Politico. Is there any job you haven't done in Washington, Sam?

0:45There's a few, but I'm trying to get to all of them.

0:48Anthony Scaramucci:You're trying to get to all the media outlets. You are now, of course, with The Bulwark. It's great to have you back on the program. Thank you for doing this again. Anthony is somewhere off in Hawaii sunning himself. Oh, nice. I know, nice, right? I am in London where it is so hot that I should be sunning myself, but I'm sitting and trying to find any fan I can in the house. Okay, so I wanted to talk about this week. I think it is worth us talking about all the visits that have been going on in town. I thought it was so striking. You had Bibi Netanyahu and Wladimir Zelensky visiting Washington.

1:19Anthony Scaramucci:and just to watch the power balance between these two men in terms of presidential favors having shifted. And you could kind of almost feel it in watching. For a start, the president, who loves to have meetings with cameras and subject his visiting heads of states to all sorts of undignified displays of power in the Oval Office, decided to have both of these meetings behind closed doors. Interesting who was and who wasn't at those meetings. But you could just tell that Wladimir Zelensky came into Washington on a totally different kind of wave of popularity, even within the White House, than he did certainly back in February of last year.

2:00Anthony Scaramucci:And that Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who's come into town with nobody really wanting to meet him and everybody blaming him for having dragged America, whether it's fair or not, into a war against Iran. And watching that power bounce, I thought, was interesting. What did you make of it? Well, first of all, I have some insider knowledge as to why the cameras were not there. They just have too many gold fixtures now in the oval. They can't fit the cameras in there at all. Or the gold kind of reflects off the cameras and blows the light bulbs or something. Yeah, it creates a weird lighting situation.

2:30Anthony Scaramucci:I can see that. It's tricky. Best to not bring cameras in there. It did obviously mean like you. The first thing that came to my mind was the infamous Zelensky Oval Office meeting the You Have No Cards meeting where J.D. Vance was kind of pugilistically put in that place to basically embarrass Zelensky and admonish him and go after him. And this is not the case, this go around. J.D. wasn't even in on the meeting as far as we can tell from the one photo that the White House released. J.D. was not in the meeting with Zelensky, but he was in the meeting with Netanyahu. Interesting in and of itself, I think.

3:08Yeah. And I think, you know, you kind of try to read the tea leaves a little bit with these things about why suddenly Zelensky seems to have some favor in the administration, why Netanyahu is seemingly out of favor or has less so. And, you know, maybe sometimes the Occam's razor explanation is the right one and usually is, which is that things are going well for the Ukrainians and they're not for the Israelis. And Donald Trump likes to be associated with more positive campaigns than negative ones. And I do think on the Netanyahu front, and we can get to the Zelensky front in a little bit, but on the Netanyahu front, I do think there's a real frustration, not just with the president, but his aides, over what's happening in Iran that they blame on Netanyahu.

3:57It's been reported and seems corroborated that Daniyahu talked him into doing a lot of this and has continuously talked him into upping the ante with respect to Iran. And Trump very evidently is just so tired of the war and is desperate for some sort of off-ramp. He did an appearance on Fox News prior to the meetings where he kind of outrageously said that Lindsey Graham's dying wish was to get a peace deal, which doesn't strike me as something Lindsey Graham would say on his deathbed. But he also openly said, you know, Netanyahu wants me to just keep bombing.

4:32Anthony Scaramucci:And look, J.D. Vance was on Joe Rogan, right, a couple of weeks ago. Yes. I mean, actually accusing people within their system. He didn't say he was accusing Benjamin Netanyahu. He didn't go quite that far. But he did say that he was accusing people within the Israeli system of running a paid campaign to keep the war going indefinitely. I mean, we all know that J.D. Vance was less hawkish, perhaps, than the president was. And the reporting has been that the president was actually more hawkish than we might think. But it was interesting to hear him come out and be that critical of the Israelis in public, I thought.

5:04Oh, incredibly interesting. He might be bright, I have to be honest. We have a reporter here at the Bulldog Well Summer who covers that right-wing internet culture pretty well. And oftentimes there is a kind of subterranean influence peddling operation that happens with MAGA influencers where they're on the take, frankly. But in this case, I think the sort of larger impetus, the bigger factor here is that Trump is just boxed in. He sees the polls. He knows how difficult it is to get an off-ramp with respect to Iran. And then, in fact, last night we saw a reengagement, the Iranians attacking American positions in Jordan again.

5:43Suddenly this brief ceasefire is no longer in place. And so I think the Netanyahu stuff is fascinating, the cooling of this relationship. And then, of course, the question is about whether Bibby really screwed it all up by putting so much of his eggs in the Trump basket, by, you know, openly agitating Democrats, by, you know, just pushing the U.S. position in the Middle East to an extreme. And now we're in this spot and Trump is even waffling on his own relationship with Bibby.

6:13Anthony Scaramucci:There was a comment by any pro-Israel donors suggesting that they are voting with their wallets already and that it's very hard to find any support for Netanyahu and even for Vance as a potential political candidate in 2028 unless Vance breaks more firmly with some of those people on the right. It means he's caught between he needs the funding from the kind of pro-Israel Republican group, but he also realizes where the polls are going and needs to make sure that he is on the right side of where the kind of anti-war faction is in the Republican Party at the moment. And I think that's the dance he's trying to do.

6:56Anthony Scaramucci:And I don't know that he's managing to pull it off. As Karim Sajipour at the Carnegie Endowment has said, his fate rests more with the IRGC probably. than it does with MAGA voters on this. In a way, yeah. And it's interesting how the, you know, obviously on both sides of the equation, Democrats and Republicans, you have base voters who have really soured on Israel. So there is some sort of horseshoe theory of the politics there. But it is, and to tie back to Zelensky in a weird way, you know, there's like this kind of, I don't want to overstate it, but there is definitely something happening on the MAGA right with respect to Ukraine as well.

7:31So I thought the most interesting thing in the past week and politically was Laura Loomer.

7:36Anthony Scaramucci:Fascinating. I mean, talking questions about whether who was funding her and why she said what she said, but there is Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer, who turns up in Ukraine a week or so ago, having been so opposed to the war and much more in the kind of America First camp, and suddenly gets a kind of one-on-one meeting in a rather dreamy garden with Vladimir Zelensky and is saying, yeah, this is the fight we should be having with these brave Ukrainians. She's only just discovered, actually, that Ukraine is up against Russia, and it was Russia who invaded. It was a bit of conspicuous timing.

8:14Anthony Scaramucci:I had a bit of whiplash over that one, but I think you're right that she reflects something that is happening on Ukraine at the same time that something is happening on Israel in the Maga right. Right. And so she had that weird dreamy garden in Vizlinski. She also did some sort of photo op. I don't know if you saw this one where she's eating from McDonald's in some burnt out neighborhood in Kiev. And there's like just like absolutely bombed buildings in the background, but she's got this quarter pounder with cheese that she's just buying. Rule of thumb, nobody can resist being a war correspondent for a day, ever.

8:49Anthony Scaramucci:Given the opportunity to eat your McDonald's in front of a bombed out building in Kiev or on a street on M Street in downtown Washington, which would you choose, Sam? I don't know. That's a tough one. I don't know if I'd eat a McDonald's anywhere. Yeah, that was quite the photo op. And I felt like, you know, she couldn't resist. And then I guess the other question about is, you know, Zalinski deciding to do it, which I think is quite smart, actually, because he knows where his bread's buttered, right? Like put aside the insane stuff that she has said and done and how unethical sometimes her journalism is.

9:19And she's definitely been on the take. Like there's a weird episode where she started like pushing some weird Venezuelan oil cause out of nowhere. And it was pretty obvious that this was like, you know, something was happening under the table. Zelensky understands that she has influence. And she does. She has influence in this administration. And sure enough, who retweets her interview with Zelensky? Donald Trump. He reposts the video. He says, good.

9:43Anthony Scaramucci:And then because we're getting super meta, she retweets that Donald Trump has retweeted her interview with Zelensky. Welcome to 2026. This is diplomacy right now. So I do think there's something happening with respect to Ukraine. And then you add further to the elements, which is the news that the Ukrainians had attacked an Iranian ship that was sending oil to the Russians, which then ties everything back together. And it's like, okay, now we have some strange bedfellow alliances happening here. And maybe the Magorites reawakening to the Ukrainian cause. And Trump clearly has decided that, you know, it's okay to send Patriot interceptor missiles, apparently, to the Ukrainians.

10:24And now, you know, Witkoff and Kushner are going to go to Kiev. And things are happening in a way that during that early all of office meeting where you have no cards meeting, you could not fathom that we would be in this place.

10:36Anthony Scaramucci:Is that what we're calling it now, the You Have No Cars meeting? Well, what would you call it? I think that's pretty good. I've always wondered what we'd call that one, the kind of abominably shameful humiliation of America's closest ally in Europe that's taking on Russia meeting. You can't put that on a bumper sticker, though, so I'm going to go with mine. Zelensky's smart, right? As you say, he invites Laura Luma. Yesterday after the Oval Office meeting, our nice little closed doors Oval Office meeting, before the White House has put out anything, Zelensky has put out four photographs, all of which include Donald Trump looking kind of, you know, beaming in the Oval Office.

11:14Anthony Scaramucci:So he gets that you get to Trump by giving him lots of publicity. And this is the Trump show. He puts that out very quickly. He makes an allusion to the fact that they've still talking about getting this deal that would allow them to license the Patriot missiles. And then hours after Lindsey Graham's funeral, Vladimir Zelensky was in the Senate as the Senate advanced Graham's Russia-Iran sanctions bill, which passed by a staggering number 86 to 12. And a lot of that is credit to Zelensky, who has learned how to handle Washington. He'd come in beforehand and made the case to a bunch of Democrats, actually, who were wavering on this bill because they don't like tariffs in any form.

11:57Anthony Scaramucci:And this had a tariffs component to it. And he made the case to them, look, Putin has learned how to get around sanctions. If we're really going to hit Russia when they seem to be vulnerable, we also have to tariff China and India for buying Russian oil. And it seems to have worked because there had been about 20 Democrats who had been wavering and half of them voted in favor of this bill. It now, of course, has to pass the full Senate and then it has to go to the House after the August recess. To your point, I think Trump does like the visuals. And we know this because back in the first term, his daily briefing was, you know, people learned very quickly, put visuals in the daily briefing and bullet points, don't make it long.

12:38And so I think probably these images of, you know, the drone attack successfully getting into St. Petersburg and, you know, blowing up these Russian landmarks and things like that, I think probably have gotten to Trump where he can sort of signify, oh my God, they actually are succeeding and this is not a lost cause. I do think Zelensky has figured out Washington speak. I think the Loomer visit is evident of that. And it's like, you know, I think a lot of countries have, frankly. I don't know if you saw the story out of Morocco where they're renaming a major roadway, like the Trump Highway. I saw that smart.

13:12That's the price to pay to get goodwill from the president. You're going to name some roadways after him. I'm shocked the airport in Kiev is not renamed after Trump too. On the sanctions, I understand what you're saying. I still think ultimately there's just a distinct calculus on the Hill. Fortunately, I suppose, there has remained kind of bedrock support for Ukraine on the Hill, even amidst all this stuff. It's like we mentioned Lindsey Graham, and Lindsey He did everything he could to ingratiate himself to Trump and called him all the time and talked about how great a president he was and really contorted himself.

13:52But Graham consistently was supportive of Ukraine. And even when Trump was at his low point, the ebb of Trump's anger towards Ukraine, Graham was there. And I think that signifies that on the Hill, at least, Republicans and Democrats have consistently said, no, this is a cause we do need to support. Now, I will say, you know, there are moments where it kind of teeters a little bit here and there. And there were a number of Democrats who voted against this bill precisely because they didn't want to give Trump more terror, you know, codify Trump's use of tariff authority in that way. And more recently, the talking point is that our current munitions stockpile is low precisely because we gave so much to the Ukrainians.

14:36And that's like a nice talking point right now. But I think by and large, there's been a lot of support for Zelensky on the Hill, and that's not the place that he's had to worry about. It is interesting that he felt like he wanted to, or he showed up for the vote on the sanctions terrorist bill. But I never really thought that that was in much doubt.

14:53Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. And the bill passed 86 to 12, and whether that was because it was Graham's dying wish, or whether it was because of the change that is taking place on the battlefield in Ukraine and the success that Ukrainians are having. I suspect that you're right, that plays quite a lot into it. There was one Republican senator, Senator Risch, who said of this bill, that this bill, and he had spoken to Zelensky about it, he said, this bill could have more impact on the tide of the war in Ukraine than anything that takes place on the battlefield. And he said he felt that Zelensky agreed with him. I actually texted a Democratic senator before we started taping this to ask whether he thought that was the case.

15:30Anthony Scaramucci:And he said, yes, probably could be the case if the bill actually gets signed off on by Donald Trump, because it has to pull past the full Senate after August recess, and it's still there away for a month that has to pass through the House. And then, of course, the president has to sign off on it. But yeah, Trump has seen a winner and he likes it. Let's do this. By the next time I come on this podcast, and who knows when that will be, what's the status of the war in Ukraine? Very good question. I mean, the patriots that the Americans are saying they can license, that's going to take a long time for them to get, and they need the patriots now.

16:06Anthony Scaramucci:So I think you're still going to see the Russians launching these attacks. I don't think it's all done and dusted, which is what many Democrats would like to think. This sanctions bill is important, but as this Democratic senator pointed out to me this morning, it's still got to get through the White House. I think the trajectory is the same as it is now in a year's time. Ukraine is doing better. Putin is doing worse, but I don't think it's over. All right. By the election, are we still in an open conflict with Iran? I think it has to be resolved by 2028. Yeah, but we're in the cycle where it's like - How do you resolve it?

16:41Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. The oil markets have used up their buffer, is what I am told. I'm sure you've been told the same thing. And although there was, yes, everyone was going hyperbolic, oil's going to go to$150 a barrel,$200 a barrel, and it never did it. And so now the kind of hawks are saying, see, we can handle this, we can handle this. But actually the smart oil people that I've spoken to recently said, that's just, we've opened the cupboard and there's just not much in there. And I think that's going to be, that will end up being the problem that eventually drives some sort of a resolution here. So he'll end up cutting a deal where the straight actually is told, more or less.

17:17Anthony Scaramucci:Yes. And people work as hard as they can to build those alternative pipelines and alternative routes, which - I agree with that. are not going to happen very fast, but will happen eventually. Just before we go to a break, Sam, where does this all leave J.D. Vance? Where do you think the power shifting balances on international affairs with the MOU that he was response put in charge with, and Trump having famously said in Evian, look, if it fails, that's Vance's fault. Well, I think it's failed by now. What gave it away? Trump must be blaming Vance, I suppose. That's what he said he was going to do because, you know, Trump, he sticks to his words.

17:56Anthony Scaramucci:If he says something, that's what's going to happen. But where is Vance's standing at the moment? So I've never been as bullish on Vance as a lot of people are. You're not Team JD? Yeah. I just think part of it's just that there's, you know, I don't want to sound cruel and I'm not like Mr. Charismatic, but I do think he has sort of a deficit of charisma. And even on the Rogan show, it felt stilted and stuff like that. But then on the politics and the policy stuff, I think the issue he's going to run into is that the stuff that he really does care about or pushes the most aggressively, remanufacturing, focusing on the American workers, the immigration crackdown a little bit, but also this non-interventionist foreign policy stuff.

18:42I mean, those are like the tenets of advance. And I don't think the Trump record ultimately is going particularly well with that. Yes, they have dramatically reduced immigration to the United States and the deportation regime is really ramping up, but it's polling very poorly, right? That was a strength that turned into weakness. Jobs in America, bringing back manufacturing, statistically not going well. The tariffs have been a bust, honestly. And then because we're talking about it on the foreign policy front, I mean, it kind of boggles the mind to a degree how little blowback he has gotten so far for the MOU.

19:19The MOU was a huge diplomatic failure. I mean, a huge diplomatic failure.

19:23Anthony Scaramucci:It was rushed. It was badly worded. They didn't get experts in. They didn't get lawyers in. It opened the door to resumption of tensions. Yeah. Not only did it open the door, it kind of sparked the resumption of tensions because there was a lack of clarity specifically around, for instance, the Strait of Hormuz and what was going to happen there. You had this document that if you read it, it seemed fairly evident that the Iranians in Oman were going to decide what the channel would look like, how they could levy payments for ships that are going through the strait. They were going to control it.

20:05And yet at the same time, the Trump administration was insistent that it was going to remain open. And if you have that type of ambiguity on just that one front, then you've crafted a really poor deal. And precisely because there's that ambiguity, it led to an accelerating amount of conflicts between the countries, which then led us to this current mess that we are in. And I just think if you own a diplomatic agreement like that, and it blows up so spectacularly, and now we have a resumption of conflict, we have additional deaths of U.S. service members, and we have really no off-ramp, it does kind of take a little bit of shine off of you.

20:47And it puzzles me that Vance hasn't actually gotten more blame for where we are right now.

20:52Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, I agree. I mean, I expected him, I expected to have more senior Republican voices and actually more Trump aligned voices and Trump himself having signaled that he would give the blame to J.D. Vance. But I think it is having an impact with the voters or with Republican primary voters because the latest Emerson poll that has just come out on the primary ballot for 2028 has Vance and Rubio essentially tied 39 to 38. A year ago, that same poll had Vance at 52 and Rubio at nine. So something is tanking Vance's favorability ratings. Talking of favorability ratings, we're going to take a quick break and talk about Gavin Newsom, who has a little bit of a similar problem to J.D.

21:41Anthony Scaramucci:Vance, although perhaps better hair.