378. TRUMP VS. ZELENSKY: OVAL OFFICE SHOWDOWN

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1:58Welcome to a restless politics live stream. Friday night, I think we're both expecting a quiet night in and they've just witnessed. I honestly can't find the words. The most extraordinary bust up in the Oval Office between Trump and the vile vans who really showed his true colors today with President Zelensky of Ukraine. I don't know how much you were able to catch a bit, but I don't think I've ever, ever, ever seen anything like in public. The only thing I ever saw in private, I wasn't sort of bloody me a putin, absolutely losing his rag with Tony Blair. But even that was nothing like this, nothing.

2:40Well, let's let's just quickly bring bring people up to date. So, quick reminder, Trump campaigns saying that if he came into office, he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. He then announced talks in Saudi Arabia with Russia and has gone out calling Zelensky a dictator and saying that he's very popular and choosing him starting the war and saying that the US was had spent three times more than it's actually spent in Ukraine. Everybody, of course, very, very worried, so that then lent to a emergency scrambling by President Macron and Prime Minister Stama who flew over to Washington. And the major objectives of their meetings, which were this week, Macron's meeting was on Monday.

3:30Stama's meetings just happened, was to try to convince Trump to get back into a more moderate position on Ukraine. And really what they were hoping to do is say, okay, Europe will put up much more money. In fact, they've even suggested Europe will put up all the money. Provided the US is prepared to continue to sell weapons systems and provide something called security guarantees, which we can get into a bit later. While this was all been going on, Trump has been making demands to Ukraine for a mineral steel. And in the draft that people saw, he was asking for 50 % of all Ukraine's minerals now and in the future.

4:13It's going to be about $500 billion worth of minerals for the United States. In return, it appeared for nothing. President Zelensky then has flown out to the United States. He arrived. There was quite a warm greeting on the steps of the White House where Trump made some jokes about Zelensky's clothes. Said it was a great honor that he was visiting. And then they sat down in this rather strange pre -press conference. So there seems to be, and I'd love to ask you about this, just to explain the logistics. This seems to be a pre -press conference. Then they go to their meeting and then traditionally they do a press conference at the end.

4:53What's this pre -press conference where the problems started? Well, I alluded to this in the discussion we had about Kierstama and his press conference, his meeting with President Trump yesterday. What happens is you arrive and traditionally, you then go into the over office. It's a big moment, obviously, particularly if it's the first time a leader is going there as Kierstama was yesterday. And then they bring in this thing called the Pulse break. And both when I was a journalist when Ronald Reagan was president and Bush won, and when I was working with Tony Blair through Clinton and Bush era, usually you take two or three questions, maybe two each, and it would be very much to set the scene.

5:43What this was, what this became was a full -scale shouting match. I think deliberate, I think deliberately provoked. It felt to me like an ambush. And the point is that we were talking this afternoon, we should tell others, we didn't interview this afternoon with Martin Wolfe, the guy who's now written four books about Trump. But he said something very, very interesting. He said, you guys keep trying to find what makes this guy tick. He's not a serious person. He's a reality TV guy. All he cares about, he said, remember this, are ratings and conflict. And he knows that to drive his ratings and keep him in the art public eye and get it all the attention he needs, he has to have conflict.

6:32If you are serious about this deal that he's talked about for the last few days, you'd have welcomed Zelensky. You're team sort of done all the work in advance. And then if it was still work to do, you'd have gone for the meeting. Done a few pictures, shaken hands, gone for the meeting. Instead of which they had full -on, his usual talking points about Biden was terrible, Biden did nothing. There would have been no war if I had been present. October 7th wouldn't have happened. The inflation wouldn't have happened. Raging about, and I think this is the crux of his hatred of Zelensky revisiting this thing about, you know, Hunter Biden, when he asked for favors, he asked Zelensky to do stuff which Zelensky felt he shouldn't.

7:13But I think the other thing that really, I don't know whether it should have shot me, but it did shot me. There's Zelensky's in a elected president of Ukraine. Very important country right at the height of things. There's nothing wrong with people in the meetings coming in. But the way Vance came in was utterly disgusting. It made me think it was a deliberate, intimidating, bullying behavior. Let me do a quick explainer again for people who didn't view it and then get your analysis on it. So the meeting started relatively calmly in a normal way. Then a journalist from Polish radio asked a direct question about whether it made sense for Trump to trust Putin.

7:57At that point, President Trump started attacking Zelensky. He started saying that Zelensky had a very bad attitude towards Putin. Then J .D. Vance, a prepover not very much, suddenly weighed in and made a speech mocking Biden saying America had been chest thumping and saying that America had made no attempts to do deals. But he Trump was going to bring peace. It was at that point that Zelensky felt that he needed to stand up for himself. He said, I think partly offended maybe that the vice president had interrupted him this way. He turned to J .D. Vance and he said, look, we did a lot of deals.

8:38Macron, Merkel, myself, we signed deals with Putin. He promised we did gas deals and he broke all those ceasefire agreements and deals. Then when Vance challenged him again on diplomacy, Zelensky said what diplomacy and eventually said and have you ever even visited Ukraine? It was at that point that things really began to get out of control because they started shouting at him being disrespectful, not showing enough gratitude to the United States. You don't have any cards. Let me tell you, this is very rude. You mustn't talk to a psych. There's you've done enough talking. Okay, every for now, let's just now have given a little.

9:14Yeah, that's what made me think it was deliberate, bullying, intimidating behavior because they kept putting points to Zelensky, which she tried to respond to and they just sort of shouted over him. The other thing that Vance said, he said at one point, he essentially, he said, we said that you don't have any, you don't have any soldiers left. At one point, Trump also said, all your cities have been flattened. Zelensky said, no, because the truth is that we said this on the podcast last week. 20 % has been occupied but most of the big cities in Ukraine, they're functioning. They're, it's not easy, but they're functioning.

9:50So they kept and the other point that both Macron and Stammer had pushed back on this thing that Europe just gets, Europe's getting all the money back and we paid more than Europe. So Lensky very factually, very calm. They said, no, Europe has paid as much. Europe has given us much and we're very grateful to you, we're very grateful to them. Vance literally his first words were, have you actually said thank you? And Zelensky again, very calm. And by the way, I went back and watched the whole thing again. It's 15 minutes. So Zelensky started by saying thank you to the American people. Started, thank you for the invitation, thank you for the American people.

10:27So Vance sits there, utterly vile that man, I've been thinking this for a while about Vance, he's utterly vile and you really saw it today. And he basically said, have you ever said thank you, when are we going to get gratitude? That triggers Trump to say when are we going to get gratitude? I felt that Zelensky did look slightly on the edge, hardly surprising. He's been a war leader for three years. He's been flying around the world. Vance also said, all you do are these propaganda tours. He talked about taking people to Ukraine on propaganda tours. And as you're not showing, I always thought he was going to say free speech, you're not showing us the whole picture.

11:04And so as a result, it got work. And instead of Trump, if Trump was a serious person, a serious diplomat, the minute he sensed it going wrong, unless he wanted it to go wrong, he just said, okay, you've had your questions, you've had your pictures, we're now going to do the meeting, we'll speak to you later, that have gone and tried to resolve it. Instead of which, he went, you, you, you, another question, another question. And kept gusting. And then the story at least that's just been printed in the independent is that they then went into an hour of meetings and at the end of that hour, Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, the Secretary of State and that secretary of vice, asked Zelensky to leave the building.

11:47And Trump then posted on three socials saying this guy isn't interested in peace. And part of the problem of see why Zelensky is unentripe, presumably, is that he's in an impossible situation. Trump has been asking for $500 billion, which is much more than the United States has given and offering nothing in return. And Zelensky has been sitting on his tongue, being as polite as he can, hoping because the Europeans have been encouraging to leave this, that maybe if he gave him an in -nual deal, maybe if the Europeans put up the money, the United States would provide some kind of security guarantee in return.

12:22But that phrase, security guarantee hasn't happened at all. And can I just try to dig into this maybe just for a little bit so that we get into the the the question of what these different deals are, what it is that Trump seems to want, what Putin seems to want, what Europe seems to want, what Zelensky seems to want. So let's start with Europe and Zelensky. Their starting point, which was pretty similar to President Biden's starting point, was that Russian economy is in trouble. Russia has been making advances, but very, very slowly, I think it was you that said it would take 88 years for Russia to be able to conquer the whole of Ukraine of this rate.

13:04And that you could get a deal in place in which maybe Putin held on to bits of eastern Ukraine, but Western Ukraine was fully secured. And fully secured for Zelensky means becoming part of the European Union and NATO, and becoming part of NATO means article five protection, which basically means that if Putin stepped foot into that part of Ukraine, NATO will be obliged to respond with a nuclear missile strike. It's pretty, pretty extreme stuff. Putin's demand on the other hand has been that he gets full recognition for the territory he's taken. He gets more territory. He's got more bits of territory that he wants.

13:47He wants Ukraine completely demilitarized. He wants Zelensky gone. He wants all sanctions lifted and eastern Ukraine recognized as part of Russia. And it now I think is increasingly clear that the Trump plan is the Putin plan. And why? Well, maybe these reasons. Number one, he may have a very strange relationship to Putin, and you talked about that a little bit. He's got something in his head that Putin backed him over Hunter Biden. Secondly, there are people in Trump's administration who have a national security ploy where they believe that China is the priority, Russia's the distraction, and some of the more imaginative ones even believe they might be able to peel Russia off and use it as an ally against China.

14:33Thirdly, since that he feels he's wasting a lot of money, foresteely he's got a lot of isolationists in mega behind him. And I think finally he wants to present himself as the great peacemaker. He wants to be able to come and say, I ended this war. Right back over to you. Well, I think this thing about being the great peacemaker and the great deal maker. And when he was saw Macron on Monday, he was saying, you know, all my life is deals. You have to understand I'm a deal maker. I make great deals. Putin has completely played him on this totally played it. Putin's first big step was to get back at the top table.

15:09And the top table when it comes to pretty much any big international issue with the UN so weak at the moment, it's the United States. So he has a one -on -one phone call. That's where this all started. Trump came out and said, I've had this long chat with Putin and he started to say, I know him, I trust him and all this. That was the other thing that I think triggered Zolensky slightly. Was he sitting there? His country having been invaded. Trump not having said a single word of criticism pretty much since he returned to office. A few -tent. And he's saying, yeah, I believe him. I believe the guy.

15:43He says he won't invade. He won't invade. He says this. So and then into this whole mineral thing. And the minerals, of course, I hadn't quite realized that so much of the mineral wealth that we're talking about. And they're a very good podcast, the German podcast today with a woman called Florence Gau, posit she works for NATO in Rome. And she, I don't know quite where it's the extent to which a lot of these rare earth minerals are in the occupied part. And so Zolensky has been bullied into doing this deal, which is, you say, 500 billion, which Ben Wallace on the radio earlier was talking was calling blatant extortion, which Garamucci has called scarab extortion, which I think you have as well.

16:30And so he's basically being put in there and told, we're going to sign this deal. We're going to sign this deal. And it was perfectly obvious that the groundwork hadn't been done. It wasn't like, you know, Kierstheim and you that Trump was going to accept the state visit and they knew they were going to say Cheg or silence because the work had been done. That hadn't happened. And that is not serious diplomacy. So I think I do think Michael Walls point about him just not being serious. Now what he will feel now, I don't know, as you say, the Magcrowd and it's actually, it's pathetic. Do you remember Boris Johnson was Prime Minister?

17:05And each time there was a scandal, the cabinet were given these cut and paste tweets by Dominic Cummings to say, you know, well, the Trump cabinet is now doing the same. Including Marco Rubio, who by the way looked absolutely sick in that meeting. Would it just just remind, remind listeners little on Marco Rubio and why he looks sick. So Marco Rubio was one of the leading voices in the Senate of skepticism towards Putin. He was the guy who used to ask other people and confirmation hearings, as I think we've discussed in the podcast, is Putin a dictator. He has always been on the record saying you can never trust Putin.

17:43Putin doesn't want to deal all he wants to do as we can the United States. And now he's having to claim that he believes Trump. And that he believes Trump's, you know, fundamental claim, which is Trump thinks he can hand over Ukraine to Putin. And he sort of implies that he thinks and then Europe will be safe. And that NATO will be safe. And Putin will back him on China. All this is unbelievably naive, because he's got no leverage over Putin on Europe. He's got no leverage over Putin on NATO. He's got no, by which I mean, now that he's simple, that he doesn't believe in security guarantees, I'm not quite sure where no to is at all.

18:19Let me read you his tweet, which is the same tweet that lots of others would have. Thank you, Potos, President of the United States. We're standing up for America in a way that no president has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America first. America is with you. Now, you've sat in the meeting. You've seen what's gone on. Is that a serious secretary of state who was who was sitting there, just look at the look at his face there. Look at how he looks during the meeting. He knows it's going really, really badly. And yet he cannot bring himself afterwards to do anything other than what he's told to do.

18:52And by the way, you talked about some of the questions. And as with the Macron, he's clearly, they clearly have planted questions. One of the questions and Trump was giving the guy a little wink was this guy who said to Zolensky, couldn't you have actually, you know, worn a suit. Now, Zolensky is we all know is dressed like that for a reason to show that he's countries at war. And I think a lot of people respected him for that. So, Zolensky rightly just sort of battered it off. But then Trump gave his little wink to the guys, if to say thanks for that. They gave him a little punch as well. And I just feel that if you don't have a serious government in the, in the White House at this time, he have Trump and Trump and he's put it in his FSB guys will be laughing their heads off watching every single minute of it.

19:37But what it means now, I think for the UK, for France, for Germany, for Canada, for Australia, for other countries. And this, this summit that Kierstarm was hosting now in London on Sundays, unbelievably important. I'm hoping Zolensky is still coming. And I think it's, I think the Europe now really has to step up. It may, you may end up with somebody having to negotiate, like Starmor or Macron to negotiate to get Trump back in the same room as Zolensky. Let me play the full pessimistic picture here. So basically, Macron and Starmor's trips to Washington seem now to have been wasted. Their objective was to get there before Zolensky, get US security guarantees.

20:22Macron believes that he'd charm Trump to do that. Starmor famously turned up with a letter from the king. They got a lot of sort of warm smiles and no real language. And the end of it is the week ends with this incredibly aggressive humiliation of Zolensky. So what can we read from this? I think that the worst case scenario is this and it seems increasingly as though it's probable. So not just the worst case scenario, it's probably what's going to likely to happen. If Trump holds to his current position, he will withdraw US support from Ukraine. He will withdraw all US military assets from Ukraine.

21:03He will withdraw all US money from Ukraine. But worse than that, he will also not allow European countries to continue to buy American systems in order to continue the war in Ukraine. He will wash his hands. It's Zolensky. He will say, I tried to make a deal. You wouldn't sign the minerals deal. I hand you over to Putin. And that is, I'm afraid, unbelievably difficult. We can talk on his podcast about Europe stepping up. But at that point, it's no longer US and Europe's war. It's Europe's war only. And there are two questions for that. Can Europe fight that war? And would Europe want to fight that war?

21:48Can Europe fight that war? Well, very, very difficult in the next two years. It would take at least 24 months before Europe was in any position to replace a lot of the key US equipment. Would Europe want to fight that war? Does Macron have the support, the strength in his own parliament? Does Stama, my sense is Stama hasn't been pitching himself as the grand big picture international statesman? Is he going to want to take the full burden of the Ukraine war? And what's really involved? Well, I think the next thing that will happen is Putin will start advancing very, very fast. Because without US anti -aircraft missiles, he's going to be able to get pushes artillery much closer.

22:40Without US electronic warfare, the drones will be able to take out the Ukrainian tanks, etc., etc. So I think we are in a situation in which almost certainly Putin can guarantee that he can radically increase his territory. But I think it's not impossible that Putin could march all the way through Kiev to Moldova. The Dmitry Medvedev, who is the former, the guy who pretended to be president when Trump was in Putin is an interregnant. The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the overloss. Trump is right, the Kiev regime is gambling with World War Three. This is what we've seen since the election is Russian delight at pretty much everything that Trump says and does.

23:28I mean, you really do begin to wonder, we talked on the podcast the other day about, you know, the question we keep being asked is what has Putin got on Trump? And we keep, this goes back to the discussion with Michael Wolfe, we keep trying to find strategic and tactical and psychological reasons as to why Trump operates as he does. But it may, there may be something very simple behind this. But I think that what I saw in Zelensky as well, and I honestly, I felt the sight of, I think, Zelensky is an incredibly courageous guy. He's an unbelievable communicator. He's the way that he's kept going for three years, kept traveling around the world or he's propaganda tours as Vance called it.

24:15But I think that I sort of felt, you did feel he was on edge, you felt that even he was shocked. He knew, listen, when you've been called at your theater, when you have to listen to Trump saying, you know, Russia, Ukraine started the war, you can see why might arrive pretty angry. But he arrived looking like he was, he was kind of, you know, serious about trying to get something done. But then it was like just these, first of all, they start chipping away and then the big stuff, these planted questions coming in. I don't know whether it's true, but somebody on the chat just said that the question about the suit was asked by the same guy that I told you about who asked the planted question at the press con, was with Macron, the guy who's a friend of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

24:58But I think in this, that the Maga crowd probably think, great, yeah, we're, you know, we're showing the world that we're at the boss, et cetera. But I think this does unbelievable damage to the American standing in the world, unbelievable damage. But part of the issue is that in some way, as with everything with Trump, it sort of was predictable and not predictable. So I guess if, you know, when you and I were doing podcasts before the election, we were saying, well, if Trump wins, he will give in to Putin and the way that he'll make pieces by basically allowing Putin to have all the territory and toppling Zelensky and creating a puppet regime in Ukraine.

25:37So we can say that quickly. But then he actually gets in and he starts leaning into that. Then it becomes clear that he's made these promises to Putin. He's made these promises to the American public. So it becomes increasingly clear that he's going to sell out Zelensky in order to be able to boast that he's ended the war and saved America money. But we still don't quite believe it. And you've got these trips by Stama and Macron, where I guess we keep saying, well, you've got to try. I mean, you've got to keep hoping that something that you can do, that the some way through. But I'm afraid after tonight, we might just return to the analysis back in October and November.

26:18This has been Trump's position all the way through. We've been hoping against hope that some element of diplomacy, realism, arguments about Putin not humiliating him will change it. But honestly, I don't think Jedi Vance or Trump could have been more clear from the beginning. But this is what they intended to do. Now the problem is because nobody quite took them seriously. We haven't really thought about what that looks like. We've now need to plan for the possibility that Putin thinks he's in a much stronger position he could have imagined. And Putin may think he can take the whole of Ukraine and maybe help himself to mold over to.