65. EMERGENCY LIVESTREAM: Trump vs Zelensky At The White House

0:00This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad Ryan, Real United Airlines customers. We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.

0:41Okay. Hello, everybody. Little glitch there as I get used to the YouTube live. Anthony, your chin is cut off. You might want to adjust your camera. I'm laying low, Kat. You've got your head in your hands. Yes, I'm laying low. A bit like Marco Rubio did just now and the ambassador from Ukraine. We have just jumped on to do this chat because of the events in the White House and watching Vladimir Zelensky with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the blow up. I mean, quite extraordinary blow up. I've had my phone going off the hook from members of Congress, senators, ambassadors who are all saying they've never seen anything like this.

1:25And most of them saying they're kind of heartbroken by what they see and how extraordinary it was. What's jumping? Anthony, what's your initial reaction to what you saw? I know that you were in a meeting, but you've watched the video. I've watched the whole thing. I watched the tape. It's excruciating. I find it really hard to watch. I makes. Well, I mean, there's a lot going on. So let's just break it down quickly. Was he ambushed or was he not ambushed? I personally feel that he was ambushed. The Zelensky was ambushed. Number two, when Trump is saying the setup yesterday, that I say that he was a dictator or not, and we're going to have a really good meeting and everything's going to go well.

2:09And then they put him in a crossfire like that, where they ambush him. And he was trying to be polite and he was trying to be respectful, but he's also a very articulate person. And you just have to remember something. There are different American perspectives. So just for the Europeans listening, there are Americans, myself included, that believe that we have to defend each other for the cause of freedom. And we do believe that the aggressor was the Russians. And we can debate about whether or not the Ukraine, excuse me, Ukraine, not the Ukraine. I apologize. We could debate whether or not Ukraine should be part of NATO or not.

2:51But Ukraine has received security guarantees from the United States and from the West since 1994, signed guarantees. And so the notion now that you have the leader of the free world or he's about to lose the mantle of leadership of the free world soon, the Europeans will have to take that role from the United States because this man is trying to create something very different than Americans in Europe and the free world used to. But but I I'll just say this ambush totally against the interests of the United States, totally for the interests of the Russian Federation. And not surprising to me because I was like, wow, this seems like it's too good to be true that they're going to cut a deal and they're going to protect the Ukraine sovereignty.

3:39And so obviously that didn't happen. Do you think he was ambushed? And you think that was premeditated? I believe it was. let me give you a little bit of what I've been hearing since this happened the kind of tick tock of of what people are thinking here in Washington first of all a senator who met with Zelensky this morning and in a but Zelensky had a bipartisan group meeting up on Capitol Hill with a group of senators now there were fewer Republicans at that meeting than there have been in the past but there were some Republicans. And this senator said that at that meeting, they were hopeful that a deal could be done.

4:17So that was just this morning, not many hours ago. And then this senator texted me and said, look, I think what happened is this, what you're suggesting. Zelensky went in there. And if you listen to it up until the moment where J.D. Vance intervenes, then actually the meeting is going okay. And he says, the senator told me, look, I think J.D. Vance hijacked that meeting and deliberately threw Zelensky under the bus, deliberately riled him up. My understanding is that they were pissed off that he turned up not wearing a suit. You can point to the fact that Churchill didn't wear a suit when he turned up to meet FDR because his country was at war.

4:56Elon Musk, I've never seen in a suit except for at the inauguration. That's by the by. Maybe maybe that is something Zelensky should have done. and the question then is if you look at J.D. Vance's past statements and I've gone back over them since the meeting back in 2022 February of 2022 so when J.D. Vance was running for president he said in an interview I've got to be honest I don't really care what happens to Ukraine and he also said they have the most corrupt leadership in the world he said the Ukrainian people are brave but they have the most corrupt leadership in the world so I think J.D.

5:31Vance clearly, and you listen to the Munich speech, he's on a mission. He's on a mission to distance himself from this war, America from this war, get America the heck out of Ukraine. No more support. He doesn't like Zelensky. And the other thing that, you know, is pretty clear is that Trump just has this personal animus. Trump is very, as you know, Anthony, he's super personal. There's not a philosophy, really. A lot of what he does is personal. And ever since the first impeachment when Trump was impeached because of a phone call he had with Zelensky in which he asked for dirt on the Biden family.

6:10Even though Zelensky has never released the audio of that phone call, Trump has had it in for Zelensky. And very recently, just this week, Trump said, you know, Putin and I went through this together. So for me, this was an ambush, but it's very reflective of a total break now between America and Europe. And everything that Macron did this week and everything that Starmer bent over backwards and gave a masterclass in diplomacy to do this week, I think has been undone in the course of this meeting. My question for you is, why did Zelensky let himself get into that position? I mean, knowing Trump, why did he go there?

7:00you know i listen i mean does he know trump the way i know trump probably not was he signaled from his staff and trump's staff that it was going to be okay probably so uh is he a little bit of a risk taker yes he is i mean you have to admire this man this is a man that was told at the munich security conference uh in february of 2022 you have sanctuary in the West, in the United States, somewhere you can go into exile and the Ukraine is going to be taken over. Sorry, the Ukraine is going to be taken over by the Soviet Union and or the Russians, I should say. And so he didn't have that happen. He's a hero to his people.

7:41He's a warrior and he's a little bit of a risk taker. So he was willing to do what he thought he needed to do for his country. But but listen, you know, anybody that thinks this reflects well on the United States. Mr. Musk is putting out on Twitter a watch this intently. And this sort of browbeating that we gave to Vladimir Zelensky is a great thing, I guess. I think the Russians, okay, I think the Russians are aghast at this. Honestly, I think the Russians are like, okay, whoa, we want this guy on our side, but is he really this crazy? Because even in Russian, cold war diplomacy with the united states nobody did this there's no leaders you mean the volatility is is no people out even in russia exactly there's no public humiliation of leadership at this level these are supposed to be a players metaphorically olympic political leaders they're supposed to be some level of decorum.

8:49And if you are a Russian personality profiler, a Russian intelligence agent, President Putin himself, you have to be looking at this and say, okay, wow, there's random cards in this deck. First of all, Trump is not playing with a full deck, but whatever is left of his deck, there's random cards that are going to show up while I'm at the card table. And so So it's very, very dangerous. And by the way, I am a market person. If you walked out here, you know, we've got billions of dollars under management and the market's telling you that they don't like this. The market's telling you risk premium is up.

9:28Tariffs are going to cause a recession. The market's telling you, OK, wait a minute. we need our political leadership to have some type of predictable decorum and Donald Trump and now his minion J.D. Vance are telling you they don't want that and and by the way I'm just going to say this and I don't care at this point I think Rubio is really did you ever Anthony was there a point at which you did trying to I mean I'm trying to you know it's like my wife yells at me says don't Caddy's probably smarter than you don't over talk okay I'll try not to but I'm just saying I think rubio is a disaster at this point yeah i mean looking just looking at rubio in that meeting his body language is terrible but what's what the hell is he doing yeah i can't stand there and and and talk about if you don't mind the coordination of tweets that have come from trump's team with all the same chant including rubio so this is marco what the hell are you doing it's super go dunk your head in cold water go for a cold plunge brother i'm watching um i i'm going to confess, just as you were talking, not that I was not listening to every single word you said, Anthony, I promise, but I was also pulling up Twitter on another window because Zelensky, as we are speaking, is tweeting back to every single member and leader in Europe, thanking them for their support.

10:48So there's a, this, it's been sort of slightly surreal how this is all, it played out in real time and we watched, our phones blew up with what was happening. And then you had to kind of jump onto X, I'm afraid, to watch the kind of fallout of this, because you're right, there's been a lot of coordination. The president of the European Parliament, who you and I met just the other night, has tweeted out her support for Vladimir Zelensky. And it's the same language that you're hearing from Ursula von der Leyen and from other European leaders as well, EU leaders as well. There's a coordinated campaign on the European side.

11:24You've now got Zelensky thanking every single member individually of the Europeans on Twitter. And then you've got this tweet response from the administration as well, including Marco Rubio's tweet thanking President Trump for standing up for America in a way that no other president has ever done and for being brave and defending American rights. I mean, I'm just looking at the images. Guys, go and have a look to all of you who are following this. Just have a quick look at Marco Rubio. He just looks like he wants to be, he would rather be on the front lines in Ukraine, frankly, than be in that Oval Office.

12:03But he is bent over and he is, he's thanked President Trump for standing up for American values. The the insolent pig finally got a proper slap down from the Oval Office. And real Donald Trump is right. The Kiev regime is gambling with World War Three. Who did that come from? That came from Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow. And that's where we are now. So we're we're we're in a we're in a really weird situation. So that's also the same as I've, that is one of the reactions I've had from people up on the hill who are supporters of Ukraine and supporters of Zelensky and were hoping that there would be some kind of a deal.

12:54And they're pointing me directly, in fact, to that tweet, Anthony, the one that you've just read up as a way of saying, okay, this may be freaking out the Russians, but the public response from the Russians has been that this is so helpful to them. OK, I want to give you another tweet, though, that's come out from your old friend, H.R. McMaster. It's impossible to understand why Trump and Vance seem determined to put more pressure on Zelensky while they seem to be coddling Putin. H.R. McMaster, of course, was Trump's chief of staff in the first Trump administration, somebody you know well. And he doesn't often tweet.

13:33I think I'm right in saying this, right, Anthony? He doesn't often. He has been quoted in books, of course, recently saying that he thinks that Trump has fascist tendencies, but he doesn't often put himself out there in public like that. So the reaction as well from people who served with Trump before has been pretty staggering, too. well you know listen uh you know general mcmaster knows he just wrote a recent book about it uh john kelly knows jim mattis knows uh listen there there was a reason why ladies and gentlemen 40 of us spoke out against the return of donald trump to the presidency i just left the bitcoin conference by the way and i asked people for a show of hands who voted for donald trump and it It was probably 80-20 for Donald Trump because he's supposedly pro-Bitcoin.

14:22But remember this about him. You're getting the entire buffet table with Donald Trump. You can't pick off things that you like. You've got to get everything. You've got to get the attack on Prime Minister Trudeau, Governor Trudeau, 51st state. You've got to get the attack on Greenland and the Danes. You've got to get the attack on the European leadership. You've got to get the Zelensky's a dictator comment. You know, you're not going to get the sleeve of things that you like on their own a la carte. You get everything with Donald Trump. And, you know, it's sad for me to see this because he will hurt the Bitcoin community.

15:01He will hurt the business community. He will hurt the international community. And I know this sounds crazy to everybody listening, but the Russians are worried about it. So trust me, trust me, the Russians are sitting there saying, OK, there's certain things that we want and there's certain strategies that we want in terms of what we're going to control in terms of our sphere of influence. But this cat is so unpredictable and he may be on our side. He may be on our side. And, Kat, you know this. They have weak cards. Yeah. The Russians have a GDP that's lower than Italy now, smaller than the state of Texas.

15:40their their army has been decimated uh you know you tell me the number of russians that have died in this war uh zelensky's held on with the help of the west and they have a weak hand and trump is going to give them the entire card table but you you trust me on this what happened today has normal no they have they're freaked out by it yeah it wouldn't be normal or even even if they're evil people or malevolent they're rational they can't be up for that after it happened i had a long call with um somebody actually i was meant to meet but i didn't because um we're doing this chat and anyway the news blew up who was an ambassador for uh japan um with under shinzo abbey in the first trump administration and he was saying he saw this happen with donald trump in meetings with Shinzo Abe and with other world leaders when Trump got angry and he would blow off the handle like this.

16:42But it was never happened in public before. And that's what is, I think, worrying people so much this time around because they've seen Trump behave like this in private. And as we know, Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan who ended up getting killed, actually had one of the better relationships with Donald Trump. But even he was subjected to some of this behind closed doors and they managed to bring the relationship back again. But I think it's the fact that this happened in public that is particularly alarming for people. Okay, we've got some great questions coming up. And thank you, guys, all of you for joining this.

17:17Thank you particularly to our founding members, those of you who are joining us and who have joined as founding members recently. We welcome you to our little club. And there is a question here from Mike Dignam, who's just become a founding member. Thanks, Mike. Who says, this was definitely a setup. should the state visit to the UK now be cancelled? I hear Canada isn't happy about the visit either. Well, Canada isn't happy because Keir Starmer wouldn't weigh in in his meeting with Donald Trump on whether Canada should become the 51st state. I'm going to relate that to what I heard from the former Japanese ambassador, which was that there was an acceptance that, you know, you have to deal with the cards you have.

17:58And so I don't think you are going to see this UK state visit cancelled because everybody realizes that Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States. The American security umbrella for the moment is irreplaceable. I mean, if you are a country like South Korea or Australia or the Philippines or Japan or even Europe, where else or Canada, where else are you going to look? America's military is just too big. The economy is just too big. And this diplomat was saying to me that even in the kind of medium to long term, it's very hard for America's allies, particularly in the Pacific region, to think where else they could go.

18:39And so they all recognize that America's allies recognize that however irrational he may be, however angry he may get, however unusual, unprecedented a president he is, however much he may bully them in public or in private, they have no choice but to deal with him. And I don't think you will see the state visit being canceled. Okay. Let me ask you something perhaps somewhat existential, but let me just ask it to you. The founders of the American government, were they not trying to protect the minority, meaning the people that lost the vote? They were trying to protect them, right? That's the point of democracy, isn't it?

19:21What you do to protect your minorities, I think, is the definition. Right. Okay. So they try to do that. Okay. So if you have the strong and you have the weak, does good leadership require you to protect the weak, Caddy? Or does good leadership require you to roll the weak? Do you roll the weak or do you protect the weak? Well, I would say that protecting the weak is probably the definition of good leadership. OK, and so now let's play. Let's role model role play in Trump world right now, because someone is asking a really good question. Is there anybody in Trump world that's going to walk this thing down?

19:55And so let's role play. They're they're in the Oval Office. They're in the cabinet room. They're in somewhere in the White House. e-bike newbies asking this and they're saying to each other wow this was great neil musk is texting tweeting contacts and look at us how strong we are this cat doesn't have the cars that we have and we rolled him and we're showing people how great america is but it's the exact opposite you see it's the exact opposite what you're doing is you're sending a signal that you're weak and you're insecure. And what you're doing is you're sending a signal that your hyper-masculine bravado is actually a sign of insecurity and weakness.

20:39Benevolency would be - That is certainly not how this is going to be seen in Trump world. No, no, no, not at all. I mean, look at your, I bet at your Bitcoin conference, those 80 % who raised their hand and said they voted for Donald Trump, I imagine they're happy with this, right? They like this display. I think market participants are concerned, as I pointed out. Market participants are saying to themselves, whoa, this is sort of bad because this creates lots of unpredictability and we don't like unpredictability in the markets. But what I'm trying to get at is there is no one in Trump world that's turning to Donald Trump right at this moment and saying, hey, this is totally against everything that we stand for.

21:24This is totally against everything you're trying to build with People like Keir Starmer, Prime Minister Starmer or President Macron. Can you take a step back? We need to get to a security agreement with Ukraine and we need to get to a security agreement that protects the sovereignty of Ukraine, even though they're weaker than us and even though their hand is worse than ours. And that to me is a very, very big problem now for the United States because it will create, Caddy, unnatural alliances. You know, the Canadians are already talking to the Chinese about selling their energy. Yeah. You know, they dumped, they put 78 % of their aluminum into our country for our car manufacturing.

22:11You want to have a trade war in North America with Canada. You want to shut down Zelensky and force the people that live close to Ukraine to step up and protect Zelensky. And you want to leave yourself out of that equation. Imagine a scenario, Caddy, where the Europeans get together. It looks like they're speaking off the same sheet music. They get together. They protect Zelensky. They repel the Russians. And we're out of it. and imagine the waning influence of the United States in a situation like that. We're going to wrap this up soon. And obviously we have our regular podcast. This is cheaper than therapy for me.

22:56You're cheaper than my therapist. Are we really wrapping it up this soon? I mean, and I think judging by the number of people that have joined us, it's like a collective global therapy session. I don't know. I mean, do I have to call my shrink after this, I just got a text from somebody who was a senior official in the first, all through the first Trump administration, who did text me saying that this was extraordinarily painful to watch. And J.D. is playing to his online chorus. The consensus seems to be that a lot of this was driven by J.D. Bantz. But I don't think we should underestimate the degree to which, you know, Trump is in on this, too.

23:35I mean, Trump, this in the end, it's Trump's presidency. And if Trump had wanted to, you know, find a way to make a deal. Now, maybe Donald Trump, and this is gets to a question that has just come in on the chat about how viable was an economic, this is from Sino7, what is your view of the viability of an economic deal via minerals? Could it be as backdoor to station US Trump's troops? And should Zelensky have bit the bullet? But it was very clear to me, Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the UK, gave a masterclass in diplomacy and how to deal with Donald Trump. I texted you about this, Anthony, while I was watching it.

24:13He hit all the way. It was super impressive. I mean, he talked about winning. He talked about being number one. He talked about golf. He talked about not wanting to reward the aggressors and pointed not to Russia, but to Iran, for example. And then, of course, he invited him to and fell over himself to say how extraordinary it was to get a second straight visit. So I don't know if Zelensky should have done that in order to get this minerals deal. But there's been a lot of chat in Washington in the last couple of days about how the Obama administration was actually offered a mineral deal with the Ukrainians, something quite similar to what had been being discussed at the moment.

24:52and the Obama team had looked at the logistics of this and found actually that, A, it was not clear how many minerals there were and whether it was possible to get these minerals out. And the kind of economic viability of trying to extract these minerals was probably not worth it. So now, did Trump actually realize or has the chatter in Washington about that kind of exposed this deal that Trump was going to present as a win as not really being much of a win. I mean, like you said on the podcast this week about being the kind of emperor has no clothes, was it a sort of paper tiger win? And so did Trump just decide, actually, you know what?

25:30I don't even think there is an economic win to be had. And he was happy to let JD go with it. JD's instincts, which was, I don't know, and because Trump doesn't have much love for Zelensky anyway, that was the way he went. Maybe there just wasn't a deal to be done.

25:48this is just to me there that was a total setup because if there was a deal to be done and trump thought that that was a deal that could be done that would make him look good he would have done the deal he thinks this makes him look good to the new world order that he wants to create he wants spheres of influence he wants to control north america and perhaps the western hemisphere and he wants other autocratic-like leaders to know that they're okay in their playgrounds. And the real question, I know we have to wrap, but the real question before we do wrap is what do you do if you're Zelensky? What do you do?

26:29Yeah, we better wrap because otherwise your therapist is going to be calling me saying, hold on a second, you're taking my business away. You know, I'm not to be paranoid, but there are rumors that you perhaps have already called my therapist. And you told my therapist to not over speak in these podcasts. Perhaps you've done that already. OK, look, if Ukraine and Europe were able to hold on for long enough, do you think the midterms could turn the position around? No, because in the end, this is going to be the president's decision and the president controls the Republican Party in the Senate.

27:03And it's unlikely that they'll get the Senate back again. And it's not it's going to be I don't see that they would be able to mount any kind of deal. And plus, that's two years away. One other thing I think we should point people to a little bit of news that went under the radar. And I wanted to get your reaction to because I do think it's kind of indicative of the bigger sort of jaw dropping thing that's happened over the last week or two, which has been the realignment of America's relationship with Russia under this administration, which is that last week, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, hence ordered US Cyber Command to stop all planning against Russia.

27:46Now, if you think of what Russia has done in terms of its meddling in America, its capacity in America, I mean, the fact that X, Twitter this afternoon is full of Russian bots celebrating this, I just thought that was a very interesting piece of evidence, if you like, of how the Trump administration is degrading its defensive and offensive capacities against Russia at the moment. And I look at what happened this afternoon in the Oval Office, and it feels like it's part of the same story to me. I think it's well said. It's a good insight. Okay, I know we have to wrap, but I will just say that the Democrats have to figure out a way to bring into their tent the H.R.