66. Trump vs Zelensky: The Art of the Deal

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1:05Hello and welcome to this founding members live stream. It's great to be back with you. It's felt like a pretty brutal few days in global politics. I'm Katty Kay. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Katty, I want to hear from you, Katty. What's going on? Tell me what happened, Katty. Well, we're back for another therapy session. We're going to be okay, Katty? That I cannot promise you, but we are certainly going to be broadcasting about it all. Look, before we get into everything, we do want to remind listeners who may be hearing this on Tuesday as a regular podcast that Anthony and I go out live every Monday exclusively for our Trip US founding members.

1:48And then we put this broadcast on the main feed on Tuesdays. So, of course, if you want it hot off the press to get our latest take as quick as possible, sign up to be a founding member at the rest is politics US dot com. OK, we are going to, over the next 20 minutes, take your questions. Send us a note, actually, where you're coming from. We love seeing where everyone is around the world. Do send questions as well in the chat. We're going to look at this from the American perspective, from the White House's perspective. What is it that Trump really wants from all of this? Is he, as he says, the greatest dealmaker?

2:26Or is this a lot harder than he may have anticipated? and it's very different making geopolitical deals from making business deals. But let me just before we get into all of that, because we are coming to you live, we can hot off the press. I don't know how many of you follow Donald Trump on Truth Social. I do, so you don't have to. But Zelensky made remarks in Kiev just in the last hour or so saying that he thinks the end to the war with Russia is still very, very far away. Well, Donald Trump in the last few minutes has leapt on that. And this is what he's written on Truth Social. This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky and America will not put up with it for much longer.

3:10It is what I was saying. This guy doesn't want there to be peace as long as he has America's backing. And Europe in the meeting they had with Zelensky stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the US. Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking? That's what Donald Trump put out. Let me ask you, Anthony, what is Donald Trump thinking at the moment? I'm a bully. I've got the quote-unquote better cards. I need to show people that I'm tough and America is not going to get pushed around. There was a big gravy train for Zelensky, and he's bought into the talking points that there's been money laundering and all kinds of nefarious activities in the Ukraine.

3:57And so he's going to push them around. And then there's an endgame. And so you articulated before we went live what that endgame is. And so why don't you tell our viewers and listeners, Kat, because I think you have a brilliant insight into what the end game is. Yeah, so I spent the weekend kind of getting phone calls from people who are close to Donald Trump, specifically on the kind of Ukraine-Russia issue, and also from a senior Democratic senator. And so I'm kind of getting a sense of what they're thinking. The message from Trump world is that Zelensky does not want peace, and that Zelensky needs to go on Fox News and not just profusely apologize.

4:44He has to do this on camera to make Donald Trump happy, but potentially even resign. Donald Trump has said that's not what he's asking for, but that that might be something that he needs to do. But the main message that came to me from kind of MAGA world very quickly, and you heard it coordinated all over the weekend on the Sunday shows, was that it's Zelensky who doesn't want peace. And their argument is that a bit like this person who advises Trump on Ukraine said to me, look, it was kind of weird comparison. He said, he's just like Bibi Netanyahu. He wants the war to go on as long as possible because that helps President Zelensky.

5:26And so it's kind of, this is somebody who knows actually Zelensky well and has had quite a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians. But I'm hearing in MAGA world that all of the sympathy for Ukraine in the White House has dried up and that there was a long kind of hostility even before that meeting on Friday. The hostility had been brewing between Zelensky and Trump. And while there is some split, Marco Rubio, whatever he's saying in public, does believe in the kind of European world order, does believe in trying to help Ukraine. Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, I'm told, really don't. I mean, they really have moved on from Ukraine, and they think that the better deal is some sort of an economic deal, whether it's around minerals or energy with Russia.

6:15Russia is the bigger, more powerful player. Russia has 6 ,000 nuclear warheads. What are we doing worrying about Ukraine? So that's my reading, and we can talk a little bit more about the terms of how this might be salvaged from what I'm hearing, what that could look like. but that's what i'm all right but but let me let me put this to you and then react to it so uh russia is okay with that minerals deal being signed because russia is okay with the minerals deal being signed because russia would get to keep 20 percent of ukrainian territory okay and then russia's uh position would be we get 20 of the land.

6:54The US is going to extort and extract minerals from them. So in this new polarity world, we get something, they get something, the two sort of kleptocrats are in business together. And then what happens to Zelensky, neither party likes Zelensky, so they'll try to oust him and put in a puppet. Is that what we have going? And a puppet, I presume we've already seen puppets get elected in Ukraine before Zelensky. But I think this would have to be somebody who is acceptable to Donald Trump and to Vladimir Putin, supposedly. All right. So here's the theory, Vlad, you get 20 percent of the territory, you claim victory.

7:35Ukraine never enters NATO. We get the minerals. Zelensky's gone. And we sort of have partitioned that state. And oh, by the way, who cares about the Europeans? They're disorganized and they don't have our military might. And so that's the direction that Putin and Trump would like to go in. Is that my reading of it? So the Wall Street Journal said today, that's Trump's view. And so the Wall Street Journal op-ed today said, we're moving to a new world order where there's a couple of different sleeves of superpowers flexing on everybody, the weak versus the strong. And the United States, I guess we flipped over.

8:15We're not the good guys anymore, Katty. We're the good guys or no? It's interesting if you read the Wall Street. I grew up thinking we were the good guys. Are we the good guys? Oh, that's so sweet that you feel that. I don't know. I'm not saying are we the good guys anymore? I don't know. Listen, I think in this one, I mean, the Wall Street Journal is such an interesting newspaper at the moment. It's my kind of first go-to for the opinion pages every morning because when it comes to this issue, they're not just making the argument that this is not America being the good guys and acting, Trump is acting in a totally mercantilist view of the world, totally transactional, they're also making the argument that this is not actually good for America, that it doesn't help America stay strong, because if America needs allies at some point, those allies will have found other places to go.

9:02So that this, you know, three corners view of the world is not necessarily one that works for America. But I, there was another Wall Street Journal reporter who I was on television with this morning early, said something super interesting. And I wanted to run this by you and see how this kind of fits into your understanding of Donald Trump. He was saying that when we come up with this grand view of what Trump wants and how he sees the world and that, you know, it's the three spheres of influence and he's got a plan for Ukraine and it's Russia gets 20 % of the territory and we get the minerals.

9:36Actually, that's overstating the degree to which Trump plans any of this. And his argument, and I think it's an interesting one, is that Trump doesn't really have a plan for Ukraine. And if you go back to the arc to the deal, and you read that, you know, the first few pages, Trump lays it out, I go into office in the morning, I have an empty desk, I make a few phone calls, and that makes the plan for the day. And actually, what Trump is finding is that it's one thing to make business deals in that style, like, you know, make it up day to day with a few phone calls, it's really hard to get this deal done.

10:10And the Ukrainians are prepared to die for their land. And the Russians want more than Donald Trump may be able to give or more than the Ukrainians are prepared to give. So I think there is something in the argument that Donald Trump sells himself as this great deal maker. And that's clearly what he wants. What he wants here is the deal. I don't know that he really cares about peace in Ukraine very much. He wants the deal, but maybe actually that deal is not achievable. And then what for him? Well, I mean, listen, one of the reasons why I love doing this is we've got Greg Allen on here and he's saying something I think is so accurate.

10:48He says, it seems obvious to me that Trump wants to ally with Russia, lift sanctions as soon as possible and invest in Russia, helping Putin get back on his feet. So here's the deal. Vlad, how are you doing? Great. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to kill the aid, the military aid to Ukraine, and we're going to partition the country. Listen, the eastern side of the country, let us take that. We'll milk the minerals out of there. You create that buffer zone that you want with the other 20 % of the land you took, plus the Crimea warm water port. And oh, by the way, I'm going to lift the sanctions on you.

11:25we'll put some money in there. Maybe we'll get a Trump Tower built in Moscow. You'll pump up with money. You'll get your military rearmed. Do you want to take a few more Baltic nations? No problem with me, but that's your sphere of influence. I'm going to be working on making Canada the 51st state. So while you're doing that, no problem with me, weak versus the strong. And so now, Now, who coordinates the European policy? Who is Winston Churchill once wanted a United States of Europe? Europe seems to be getting forced into unity, Caddy, because of what's going on. But who's going to lead Europe?

12:08Who's going to lead Europe? Well, I think Donald Trump wouldn't really care about that. It's certainly not going to be Trump leading Europe. No, no, no. I mean, some European leader is not going to like what I just said. They're going to want to team up with Zelensky and blow back Putin, who's got a very weakened army and a GDP less than the state of Texas. So who's going to lead Europe? I think the Europeans realize that, I mean, let's deal with the Ukraine bit first, that without American help, there is no future for an independent Ukraine. I've been told that without American satellites, without American joint operation commands, special commands, without American intelligence, Ukraine has somewhere between six to six to 12 months of viability.

12:59And the Europeans know that. So this wonderful display of kind of unity over the weekends. I mean, as Donald Trump is saying here in this truth social, I mean, as always with Trump, there's an element of truth. Right. The Europeans may say that they're going to help, but they can't do it without the US. So for the moment, until they really do actually build a military force that is commensurate with America and can protect itself, which I think the Europeans have finally understood, and thank God they have understood, and that is something that Donald Trump has done actually for Europe, inadvertently perhaps, that's going to take them 10 years.

13:35They can't rebuild all of the systems that America currently provides. So it has to be. I mean, in terms of Ukraine, the only way that Ukraine has any hope here is that three things have to happen. Vladimir Zelensky has to go on television and apologize on camera for that meeting in the Oval Office. They have to, Keir Starmer, Macron and Zelensky have to go to Donald Trump. And this is what I'm told by somebody who's had lots of conversations with Republican senators over the weekend. Keir Starmer has to go to Donald Trump and say, you know what, Mr. President, that win you had in the minerals deal.

14:16Guess what? You now have an even bigger win. This is the biggest, historic, most fantastic win for America and for your presidency. And only you could have done this. get an even bigger minerals deal. You know, side note that America may not see any of these minerals for the next 10 years, but anyway, that's irrelevant. You sell it as a massive win. And then the third thing that they need to do is the Europeans need to say, I am told to Donald Trump, those frozen Russian assets that the Europeans have, that$300 billion, we're going to use that to buy arms from the United States. We're not going to use it for reconstruction money for Ukraine, which is what the hope was and the intention was, we are going to use it, Mr.

15:01President, to buy big, beautiful American weapons. And if they can do that, then there is a chance that they can get this deal back on the road. And if they don't get this deal back on the road and Donald Trump pulls out all American aid to Ukraine, which the White House is weighing at the moment. That's it. Ukraine doesn't have a future beyond six to 12 months. Okay. I want you to react to this. It's May 9th, 1945. Yeah. So, and I'm a time traveler from 2025. I've now arrived back and I'm sitting with Winston Churchill and Dean Atkinson, Clement Attlee, Harry Truman. I'm saying, hey, fellas, just give you guys a heads up 80 years from now uh the germans are going to be at the tip of the spear and the cause of freedom and western liberal democracy and the americans are going to seed their mantle of leadership and they're going to back off and the russians who we've been fighting for 80 years are going to be in the ukraine sorry the sorry in ukraine i keep making that mistake And I do apologize to people.

16:14They're going to be in Ukraine. And that's it. And you would react to that as what if you were Churchill? I'd probably say stay in May 1945 and just don't go to the future. I mean, this is very bleak stuff. And if you're in MAGA world at the moment, you are thinking those close to President Trump, and I'd probably exclude Marco Rubio because I just don't know what he's thinking at the moment. But you think this is America being tough. This is America doing what it needs to do to make America strong. and that America, and I know that Elon Musk and J.D. Vance think that the Europeans have freeloaded on America for the last 75 years, and that certainly Ukraine has freeloaded for the last three years, but that they've, you know, they are ready to say, you know, we're glad.

17:07Give me the other argument. Do you think that J.D. Vance is right, that there's been a freeloading situation? No, I think that, you know, there is a reason the European Union won the Nobel Peace price. We have had the letting off of steam in minor conflicts in the Western Hemisphere in the last 75 years, but we haven't had a world war. And why haven't we had a world war? We haven't had a world war because relations between the United States, the most powerful country in the world, and the Europeans have basically been good. And the trade has been good and the trade has been free and unfettered and it has grown and commitment to NATO has not been enough by European nations, but everybody has been on the same page that they did not want the Second World War to happen again.

17:58Okay, we got to go back to 1945. We're back 80 years because... You know, this is what Donald Trump really wants. He wants a Yalta conference, right? That's what he wants. He probably does, but whose side would he be on? That's the question at the Yalta the conference. But just again, for viewers and listeners to provide historical context, the United States agreed to provide the security umbrella. The United States effectively wanted monopoly power on defense. Dwight Eisenhower himself, who was the Allied Supreme Commander during the war and became the commander of NATO, the first general to oversee NATO, told everybody, relax, we have this, because he didn't want Germany to rearm.

18:47He didn't want the French to rearm. And he wanted to create this security umbrella where we controlled it, because he saw us as a benevolent. They did not see it as a freeloading situation. They saw it as these countries were wiped out, and we needed to provide help with the Marshall plan. We needed to uneven the trading system to create living standards that were good to protect the liberal democracies. Should there have been tweaks along the way? Certainly. But I'm telling you as a student of history, as a student of the Leviathan, the United States is better positioned to have the biggest military power.

19:31We're 26 times the other military powers. That has generally made the world safer for the United States, safer for our allies, and has been a deterrent, whereas Reagan and now Trump is saying peace through strength. So guys, we can't pretend that that's not what we wanted. Now we're going to say, well, they were freeloading off us, but we told them, listen, this is what we want to do to make the world safe and free. And Katty, to your point, it worked. It worked. It made everybody freer and more prosperous. So now what do you want to do? You want to end that? And what do you want to do now, guys?

20:07We also told the Ukrainians in 1994 that if they gave up their nuclear weapons, they would have security guarantees. We have to have like our own branded, the rest is politics, vodka or something like that, where I can take vodka shots while we're talking. Right, exactly. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and we will be right back to take some more of your questions and to also look at what the Republican base is thinking, because Trump may be out of step with people there.

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21:43Okay, so this is interesting. I was looking at some polling, Anthony, because I just wanted to see whether what Elon Musk and J.D. Vance and Donald Trump on Friday and since seem to be proposing, which is this shifting of the new world order, of the world order. And certainly, this is what Russia thinks is taking place. I mean, you look at what the Russians have said over the weekend, it's pretty clear. They've said, we're on the same page as Donald Trump now, and this is great for us. But actually, there's very recent polling in the last week or two that shows that, and this was done by a Republican polling firm, and it's polling of Russians.

22:24That was a Freudian slip. This is polling of Republicans. 69 % of Republicans think that Russia is the aggressor. 60 % support continued arms to Ukraine in certain circumstances. And 71 % of Republicans are likely to support aid for Ukraine when they've been told that Russia has kidnapped Ukrainian children. The Republican Party base believes Russia is the aggressor. Here's something even more interesting. Amongst GOP voters, Donald Trump ever since the election is still super popular. He has an 83 % approval rating amongst Republican voters. That is massive approval rating for Donald Trump. Guess who has a disapproval rating of 83 %?

23:14Zelensky? Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin. Oh, 83 % of Republicans like Donald Trump, 83 % of Republicans hate Vladimir Putin. So I don't know, is Donald Trump, I mean, we've always talked, Anthony, about how good he is at reading his base. Is he misreading the base? Does it matter? No, I think he's I think it doesn't matter that splitting of opinion doesn't matter. It's not going to change their support of Donald Trump. I think he knows that. I think Donald Trump knows his base is with them come hell or high water. It doesn't matter what the Russians have on him. It doesn't matter what anybody says about him.

23:53That base is with him. And the question is, what does Donald Trump want? And it's a combination of a thread between J.D. Vance, Project 2025, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Donald Trump. And by the way, this is the issue that Steve Bannon has. Steve Bannon is now on the outs. And he's like, okay, wait a minute. They're going to have an oligarchic kleptocracy without me. I mean, I like stealing things too. I mean, why am I not in the mix? And so the messaging, remember, this is the beauty of Trump. This probably will save us. He's so wildly disorganized, and he really just wants to go play golf and hang out and, you know, flex and own the libs.

24:39He's wildly disorganized. These guys underneath him are not. The guys underneath him, let's go down Project 2025. The guys underneath him, the democracy is obsolete. Let's team up with Putin. He's got 13 time zones and lots of energy. and what do we care anymore? The democracies are obsolete. We got to make a trillion dollars a piece. We should be able to do that easily if we have some state controlled apparatus to do that. And then the question is, what happens to the Trump supporters when there is no Trump? And then will it matter? Because if they've totally destroyed the democracy and they've got themselves installed to power or they're running fake elections, will it matter?

25:20And people say, well, that can't happen in the United States. It's happened in other parts of the world. And so as much as I love my own country, I think it's important to say, yes, it could happen here in the United States if you're not creating the right organized dissent, you're not creating a process to at least explain what they're trying to do and then to push it back. Okay. And now let me channel, because I think we have to do this, channel pure Trumpism for a second because I think it's important. Okay. What's the argument? The argument is I'm going to take care of my people by walling and closing myself off from everybody else.

25:58All this money, even though it's only 1 % of the budget, USAID, I'm going to take care of my people. I'm going to wall the country off, manufacture inside the country. I'm going to cut a deal with my adversaries. You own those territories, rape and pillage those territories. I'll take control of this territory. And this will be better for the United States. You know, I'm tired. Half the Americans are tired of helping the rest of the world. They want help here at home. And by the way, that is a valid argument for a lot of people, Caddy, which is why the establishment politicians have been derelict on their watch for these people.

26:40They didn't create policies for these people that lifted them. When Occupy Wall Street happened, that was because a trillion dollars went to fat gap bankers, no dollars went to the little guy. And then it morphed into the Tea Party with further types of corporate benefits, post-Citizens United. And then those two things met, like Jeff Goldblum in the movie Spot, you remember the movie Fly, where he walked into the machine and merge with the fly. The MAGA came out of the Tea Party and came out of Occupy Wall Street. They merged and there was Trump, their spokesman. And he is unorganized. But guess what?

27:23They had four years to coalesce a very tight organized team underneath him to execute the strategy. That's where we are right now. Yeah, certainly. I mean, certainly you see with Elon and JD much more. I don't know with Elon and Doge, and we'll talk about that because I think there's also quite a lot of chaos inside Doge. There's some chaos emerging around the tariffs because having Trump did this 25 % tariffs against Canada and Mexico, it looks like that's going to be rolled back. I just think the thing to remember with Donald Trump is that it's about branding and winning. Donald Trump doesn't own all of those buildings that he has his name on.