The Ben Shapiro Show - The Trump-Putin FACEOFF: Who’s Winning, Who’s Losing?

00:00:00.000 Alright folks, an enormous amount coming up on today's show.

00:00:02.000 We'll recap what happened on Friday in the meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

00:00:06.000 Plus, we'll preview what's about to happen today in the meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

00:00:13.000 All the details on that.

00:00:14.000 Plus, we're joined by the brother of one of the hostages still being held in the Hamas terror tunnels.

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00:01:26.000 Well, folks, an enormous weekend in diplomacy and a huge start to the week.

00:01:30.000 So today, Vladimir Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, is scheduled to arrive in Washington, DC.

00:01:36.000 He's supposed to come in this morning.

00:01:38.000 And then at about twelve, he's supposed to arrive at the White House.

00:01:42.000 And when he arrives, he's also supposed to be joined by a bunch of different European leaders.

00:01:46.000 That includes French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Kira Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Murz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister George Maloney, NATO Secretary General Mark Rudy, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

00:01:58.000 So it is a cavalcade of European heads of state at 1 p.m.

00:02:03.000 Zelensky is supposed to arrive and President Trump is supposed to greet him at 110.

00:02:07.000 There's supposed to be an Oval Office press spray featuring President Trump and Zelensky ahead of a bilateral meeting between the two of them at 2.30, a family photo with Trump and European leaders.

00:02:16.000 And at 3 p.m., everybody is supposed to get together in the Eastroom.

00:02:19.000 So obviously the most fraught moment of that for Vladimir Zelensky is going to be that 110 Oval Office press spray is that that last press spray with Zelensky that involved President Trump and JD Vance that things went really sideways back in February.

00:02:31.000 Obviously, things have.

00:02:33.000 And all of this comes on the heels of a big meeting in Alaska between the presidents of the United States and Vladimir Putin.

00:02:40.000 And so the question becomes at this point, what is everyone's goal?

00:02:44.000 Why don't we start from there?

00:02:45.000 What is everybody's goal here?

00:02:46.000 So President Trump has two goals.

00:02:48.000 One goal is to get to the end of the war.

00:02:50.000 Obviously, this is something that he said over and over during the campaign.

00:02:53.000 He said, it's not my fault this war started.

00:02:55.000 If I'd been president, it never would have started.

00:02:57.000 He said, I want to stop the death.

00:02:59.000 There's too much carnage, which of course is true.

00:03:01.000 Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed on both sides.

00:03:05.000 The number of total dead is probably in excess of a million at this point, depending on the estimates that you are using certainly dead and wounded is over a million.

00:03:13.000 You've seen vast flight of people from places like Ukraine, seven million people from Ukraine that actually left the country during the ongoing conflict that's now been going for three years.

00:03:23.000 The president wants to get to the end of that, but there may also be a larger geopolitical and geostrategic goal here, and that may be to do a sort of reverse Henry Kissinger.

00:03:32.000 So very famously, Henry Kissinger went to China and basically opened China along with Richard Nixon in an attempt to split off the USSR from the Chinese.

00:03:40.000 This is back in the early 1970s.

00:03:42.000 Well, it's quite possible that that is something that the president would like to do here, that what he would like to do is stop allowing for Russia to be predominantly used as a Chinese gas station, because obviously if we are orienting ourselves at boxing in China, then having a Russian-Chinese very close alliance is a bad thing.

00:03:58.000 So the idea might be to get to the end of the war, create a warmer relationship with Vladimir Putin and somehow do a sort of quasi-detention with the Russians in an attempt to pry them out of the waiting arms of the Chinese.

00:04:10.000 Now, is that something that's going to happen?

00:04:12.000 I think rather unlikely.

00:04:14.000 The Chinese and the Russians have a lot of common interests.

00:04:17.000 Obviously, the Russians have a longstanding agenda and this gets to what Vladimir Putin wants.

00:04:21.000 What Vladimir Putin wants is not only territorial expansion in Ukraine.

00:04:24.000 What he wants is the capacity to turn the rest of Eastern Europe, as well as at some point, Western Europe into a sort of anti-Atlanticist preserve.

00:04:34.000 This is something that's been pushed by his supposed brain, Alexander Dugan, an author who we've talked about on the program before.

00:04:40.000 He and Putin use exactly the same language.

00:04:42.000 What Putin would like is for essentially Europe to become a Russian sphere of influence, because the goal of the Russians is not to be a sort of strategic player in the world.

00:04:55.000 world they want russia to be an actual honest to god quasi empire they would like for the russian ability to influence events to spread far beyond its borders they see themselves as these sort of preservers of a deeper Russian ideology that should actually be spread.

00:05:12.000 And so this could be the first step towards something like that, gain a little bit more territory in Ukraine, stall for time, wait for the next president of the United States and then go after the rest of Ukraine or put additional pressure on Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, try to formally actually break NATO, try to get all of these countries because they're afraid of the West basically abandoning them to start treating them in friendlier fashion.

00:05:34.000 Something sort of similar to what's been happening with Taiwan, where Taiwan every few years when they have a presidential election has to decide whether to pursue a closer policy with China, a friendlier policy with China in an attempt to prevent a Chinese invasion or whether to stand tall and independent of China.

00:05:50.000 So again, that Vladimir Putin's goal here does not align with the goals of the president of the United States.

00:05:55.000 And obviously when it comes to China, if Putin has to choose between siding with China against the United States and siding with the United States against China, the answer is probably the former rather than the latter.

00:06:06.000 And then there's the interests of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, the rest of Ukraine.

00:06:11.000 They just want to be an independent state.

00:06:12.000 They do not want to be under the Russian thumb.

00:06:14.000 They're not interested in becoming Belarus.

00:06:16.000 They're not interested in becoming a Russian proxy state.

00:06:19.000 They don't want to be Georgia.

00:06:20.000 They don't want to be completely dominated by the Russians.

00:06:22.000 And so they want their independence.

00:06:24.000 And meanwhile, the Europeans, they want to have a warmer economic relationship with Russia.

00:06:29.000 They had that before Vladimir Putin's repeated invasions of Ukraine.

00:06:33.000 But they would also very much like for Vladimir Putin's influence to stop at the borders of NATO.

00:06:38.000 So those are the various interests at play here.

00:06:40.000 And it's very hard to see an agreement that gets made here that enshrines all of those interests and ensures all of his interests.

00:06:47.000 So this is a very, very sticky situation for sure.

00:06:50.000 And the thing that makes it most sticky is that the history of Russia in conflict is mass casualties do not matter to the Russian regime.

00:06:57.000 They just do not.

00:06:59.000 The rest of the West, these mass casualties are a very, very bad thing.

00:07:02.000 Russia does not see mass casualties as a very bad thing.

00:07:04.000 The more people die during World War II, the more they can claim Russian heroism during World War II.

00:07:10.000 Vladimir Putin's vast war output during this current conflict in Ukraine, which he thought he was going to win easily, has not diminished his standing in Russian circles by most available data at this point.

00:07:22.000 We'll get to more on the meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin and the upcoming meeting with Vladimir Zelenskyy in just one moment.

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00:09:33.000 So how does all this end?

00:09:34.000 Well, there are a couple of scenarios that are posited by the Wall Street Journal.

00:09:39.000 In a piece by Marcus Walker, basically says there are two scenarios here.

00:09:42.000 One is partition with protection.

00:09:44.000 Cite, Ukraine's leadership has quietly come to accept it doesn't have the military strength to get its borders back in full.

00:09:49.000 Last week, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky indicated his willingness to negotiate about territory in video calls with President Trump and European leaders after a ceasefire that freezes the current front line.

00:09:58.000 So the goal there would be to essentially stop the forward momentum that Russia is attempting to pursue while the talks continue.

00:10:05.000 Kiev and European countries say they would never give legal recognition to Russia's gains, a step that would turn international law into an incentive for further conquest instead of a taboo against it.

00:10:13.000 But they are signaling they would live with the reality of de facto Russian control.

00:10:16.000 So what would that look like precisely?

00:10:19.000 Kind of unclear.

00:10:20.000 It wouldn't be a formal Russian recognition of annexation.

00:10:23.000 It would be saying, okay, well, we understand that we are not going to make any forward movements on those borders for the foreseeable future.

00:10:30.000 The best case scenario for Kiev and its European backers is probably to limit Russia to what its forces already occupy, equivalent to about one fifth of Ukraine's land.

00:10:37.000 The Kremlin continues to insist Russia retreat from areas that it claims is Russian but doesn't actually control.

00:10:42.000 That's particularly true in the Donetsk region where Ukraine has a bunch of fortified cities that Russia has been unable to conquer.

00:10:48.000 And remember, any sort of territorial acquiescence by the Ukrainians will actually have to go through a referendum in Ukraine.

00:10:57.000 There's a constitutional provision in Ukraine that requires that the people vote if they're going to give up land to the Russians.

00:11:03.000 So what happens to the other 80% of Ukraine?

00:11:05.000 Well, Kiev and its European allies want to protect the future security and sovereignty of the remaining rump with a combination of strong Ukrainian military defenses and Western security assistance.

00:11:14.000 A so-called coalition of the willing led by the UK and France wants to actually deploy some of its own troops to Ukraine as a sort of trigger force, the way the United States has a trigger force in South Korea to prevent against North Korean aggression.

00:11:24.000 So that is possibility number one is they get very, very strong security guarantees.

00:11:27.000 Ukraine makes some sort of territorial concessions and this.

00:11:32.000 conflict comes to a sort of ceasefire, an end point without a full-scale peace agreement.

00:11:38.000 That is that is possibility number one and most hopeful possibility.

00:11:42.000 Then there's possibility number two.

00:11:43.000 The Wall Street Journal calls it partition with subordination.

00:11:46.000 Russia's demands since its 2022 invasion have included shrinking the size of Ukraine's armed forces, limiting its weaponry and its supplies of Western armaments and changing its political regime.

00:11:55.000 The greatest danger for Ukraine isn't just losing its East and South.

00:11:58.000 It's that what remains would not be able to resist a third Russian invasion.

00:12:01.000 You can't imagine a situation in which Ukraine accepts that outcome, not after the second invasion of Ukraine inside of a decade.

00:12:07.000 There's just no way.

00:12:08.000 They are not going to accept full-scale subordination.

00:12:10.000 They're going to say we say we might as well fight this thing out and slug it out on the front lines if the idea is that we're supposed to diminish our military in some serious way.

00:12:19.000 Such an outcome would turn the surviving rump of Ukraine into a Russian protectorate.

00:12:22.000 The battlefield, again, remains the only way Putin could achieve such capitulation terms.

00:12:27.000 Russia's forces continue to make only limited gains in terms of square miles, but again, their goal is to basically outlast Ukraine.

00:12:33.000 So those are the stakes as all of these meetings are taking place.

00:12:37.000 So just to review, last Friday afternoon, Vladimir Putin arrived in Alaska, which of course is very close to Russian territory.

00:12:43.000 And it was kind of a fascinating tet-a-tet between the president and Vladimir Putin.

00:12:49.000 So on the way to the actual meeting, President Trump was speaking to the press aboard Air Force One, and he said his goal was to get them to the table.

00:12:57.000 Are the territorial swaps on the table?

00:13:01.000 Will you be discussing them?

00:13:02.000 They'll be discussed, but I've got to let Ukraine make that decision.

00:13:06.000 And I think they'll make a proper decision.

00:13:08.000 But I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine.

00:13:11.000 I'm here to get them at a table.

00:13:14.000 Now, did that actually change?

00:13:16.000 That's the big question coming out of those meetings.

00:13:18.000 Did Trump's position actually change?

00:13:19.000 Is he pre-negotiating on behalf of Ukraine what Ukraine should give up to Russia?

00:13:24.000 And it is worth saying here that the president the president has been very busy on truth social over the weekend trying to now put pressure on Vladimir Zelensky to give up some territory.

00:13:34.000 Unclear what kind of territory he wants him to give up at this point.

00:13:36.000 Well, when Vladimir Putin arrived, President Trump did the ceremonial handshake.

00:13:40.000 There's a big red carpet that was out there.

00:13:42.000 And he shook his hand.

00:13:43.000 And he kind of yanked him as he did so in a show of physical dominance.

00:13:47.000 Mr. Putin, did you offer us to make a praise?

00:13:51.000 Thank you.

00:13:55.000 The president taking a more dominating position physically there with people who like the body language reads on these sorts of situations.

00:14:01.000 The president is the one who seems to be much more in control.

00:14:03.000 Meanwhile, just to make things particularly clear to the Russians, the president ordered the B-2s fly over.head on Putin's arrival.

00:14:15.000 You can see in this footage, he's flanked by a bunch of F-35s and F-22s.

00:14:19.000 And then you can see a B2 fly overhead, which honestly, I love.

00:14:24.000 I think that's great.

00:14:25.000 I think that all nations that are adversarial to American interests should be forced to face the reality that America is a militarily dominant power, not only on planet Earth, but in human history.

00:14:36.000 I think it's a good thing.

00:14:37.000 Okay, well, Vladimir Putin, he's attempting to show the president that actually he is not enemy, but maybe friend.

00:14:44.000 And the last time, of course, the United States and the Russians were quasi-friends was World War II.

00:14:48.000 That would be in the very short period of World War II between when the Russians declared that they were actually on the Nazis' side and then flipped and they were on America's side for approximately four years.

00:14:58.000 And that was because of the Nazi invasion of Russia.

00:15:01.000 And then they flipped back and that was the Cold War.

00:15:04.000 So there was a very short period of time where the U.S. and Russia were on the same side and it was only because of the Nazis.

00:15:08.000 So Vladimir Putin went to a monument to honor the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II.

00:15:13.000 So Vladimir Putin went to a monument to honor the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II.

00:15:20.000 So you can see he's taking flowers.

00:15:22.000 Putin is over to the monument.

00:15:25.000 He's taking flowers.

00:15:38.000 During World War II, they were best allies of convenience, obviously.

00:15:42.000 And the kind of notion that Russia was a positive force during World War II.

00:15:46.000 Well, if it had not been for Russia's manipulation in the prior to World War II era, then probably there is no World War II.

00:15:55.000 Great book by Sean McMeekin all about Stalin and how Stalin basically really, really wanted World War II to happen.

00:16:01.000 He was only shocked when Hitler turned against him.

00:16:03.000 He thought that Hitler was going to continue his battle with the West and basically leave him to pick up the scraps.

00:16:07.000 In any case, the Putin-Trump meeting happened on Friday.

00:16:12.000 And then afterward, they had a bit of a presser.

00:16:14.000 Putin basically read from a paper and he, Putin's goal here was to sort of flatter President Trump over and over and over to talk about how wonderful President Trump was.

00:16:22.000 He knows that President Trump is sometimes susceptible to such matters.

00:16:26.000 Here's Putin doing this.

00:16:29.000 I'd like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that.

00:16:40.000 That it should not, the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities.

00:16:51.000 And I said it quite directly back then that it's a big mistake.

00:16:56.000 Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there will be no war.

00:17:01.000 And I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so.

00:17:05.000 I can confirm that.

00:17:08.000 Now President Trump, of course, is happy to hear those words.

00:17:10.000 And then he issued his own optimistic statement about the nature of the talks.

00:17:18.000 extremely productive meeting and many points were agreed to.

00:17:23.000 There are just a very few that are left.

00:17:26.000 Some are not that significant.

00:17:28.000 One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.

00:17:33.000 We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.

00:17:38.000 Okay, so again, general rule of negotiation.

00:17:41.000 If you're the person who keeps going out there and saying that you have a very good chance of getting there and that you're very, very close and the other guy is standing there silently, you're the person who is likely to move.

00:17:49.000 That is just a general rule of negotiation.

00:17:52.000 And so I think that is why Zelensky is very nervous.

00:17:55.000 That's why the Europeans are relatively nervous here.

00:17:57.000 President Trump issued a statement on Truth Social saying, A great and very successful day in Alaska.

00:18:02.000 The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine and various European leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO.

00:18:10.000 It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement which would end the war and not a mere ceasefire agreement which oftentimes do not hold up.

00:18:18.000 President Zelensky will be coming to DC the Oval Office on Monday afternoon.

00:18:21.000 If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin.

00:18:24.000 Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved.

00:18:26.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter.

00:18:28.000 So he is saying that everybody basically agreed we're not going to worry any more about the ceasefire stuff.

00:18:32.000 We're going to go directly to some sort of peace agreement.

00:18:34.000 Now remember that is a change in President Trump's position.

00:18:37.000 He had said that he wanted an immediate ceaseasefire, right?

00:18:40.000 Stop the fighting while we negotiate this thing.

00:18:42.000 And Putin says, I'm just going to keep grinding while we negotiate this thing.

00:18:45.000 So if the negotiations don't work out, then I'm still grinding through Ukrainian bodies.

00:18:51.000 So let's just keep going.

00:18:52.000 So President Trump appears to have shifted his position on that.

00:18:55.000 And now he says that he's not going to mandate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine before the negotiations can continue.

00:19:02.000 And Putin is treating that as a bit of a victory for sure.

00:19:05.000 Meanwhile, Melania Trump wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin that was delivered to him saying, Dear President Putin, every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart, whether born randomly into a nation's rustic countryside of a magnificent city center.

00:19:17.000 They dream of love, possibility, and safety from danger.

00:19:19.000 As parents, it is our duty to nurture the next generation's hope.

00:19:22.000 As leaders, the responsibility to sustain our children extends beyond the comfort of a few.

00:19:26.000 Undeniably, we must strive to paint a dignity-filled world for all, so that every soul may wake to peace and so that future itself is perfectly guarded.

00:19:33.000 A simple yet profound concept, Mr. Putin, as I'm sure you agree, is that each generation's descendants begin their lives with the purity and innocence, which stands above geography, government, and ideology.

00:19:41.000 Yet in today's world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter untouched by the darkness around them, a silent defiance against the forces that can potentially claim their future.

00:19:48.000 Mr. Putin, you can single-handedly restore their melodic laughter in protecting the innocence of these children.

00:19:52.000 You'll do more than serve Russia alone.

00:19:54.000 You serve humanity.

00:19:55.000 itself.

00:19:55.000 Such a bold idea transcends all human division.

00:19:57.000 And you, Mr. Putin, are fit to implement this vision with a stroke of the pen today.

00:20:00.000 It is time sincerely, Melania Trump.

00:20:02.000 Now, I will point out here that Vladimir Putin is not giving to craps about the laughter of children.

00:20:07.000 This is not his thing.

00:20:08.000 The idea that Vladimir Putin is sitting there and his heart warms at the joy and laughter of the children, there is zero record to demonstrate that this is the case at all about Vladimir Putin.

00:20:18.000 But of course, you have to admire the sentiment from Melania.

00:20:21.000 Now, Zelenskyy, for his part, he put out a tweet in which he retweeted a joint statement of the leaders of the Nordic Baltic Gate on Ukraine.

00:20:29.000 Quote, we remain steadfast in our support to Ukraine and to efforts, including by President Trump, to end the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

00:20:35.000 To achieve a just and lasting peace, the next step must be together with Ukraine.

00:20:38.000 Only Ukraine can make decisions concerning its future.

00:20:41.000 No decisions on Ukraine without Ukraine and no decisions on Europe without Europe.

00:20:44.000 Experience has shown Putin cannot be trusted.

00:20:46.000 Ultimately, it is Russia's responsibility, says this statement from, again, the leaders of the Nordic Baltic, to end its blatant violations of international law.

00:20:53.000 Russia's aggression and imperialist ambitions are the root causes of this war.

00:20:57.000 Achieving a just and lasting peace requires a ceasefire and credible security guarantees for Ukraine.

00:21:02.000 A peace agreement needs firm and concrete commitments by transatlantic partners to safeguard Ukraine against any future aggression.

00:21:07.000 We welcome President Trump's statement that the U.S. is prepared to participate in security guarantees.

00:21:11.000 No limitations should be placed on Ukraine's armed forces or on its cooperation with other countries.

00:21:15.000 Russia has no veto over Ukraine's pathway to the EU and NATO.

00:21:19.000 We demand that Russia urgently returns children who have been abducted from occupied territories as well as prisoners of war and civilian prisoners.

00:21:25.000 We'll continue to arm Ukraine and enhance Europe's defenses to deter further Russian aggression as long as Russia continues its killing.

00:21:31.000 We'll continue to strengthen sanctions and wider economic measures to put pressure on Russia's war economy.

00:21:35.000 We stand firm in our unwavering support for Ukraine's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

00:21:39.000 So obviously the Baltic Eight, they are the most threatened.

00:21:42.000 If they are looking across their borders at Russia and they are seeing an aggressive Russian bear that may be winning its battle in Ukraine, this may be a big problem.

00:21:48.000 This makes them quite upset.

00:21:49.000 Zelenskyy tweeted out that statement.

00:21:51.000 Then he said, quote, thank you for the support.

00:21:54.000 All the points mentioned are important to achieve a truly sustainable and reliable peace.

00:21:58.000 We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing.

00:22:02.000 This complicates the situation.

00:22:04.000 If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement a far greater peaceful coexistence with its neighbor for decades.

00:22:12.000 But together, we are working for peace and security.

00:22:14.000 Stopping the killing is a key element of stopping the war.

00:22:16.000 So translation there is Zelenskyy saying, I still want the ceasefire.

00:22:20.000 President Trump may have said he's going to put the ceasefire agreement to the side to pursue a broader peace agreement.

00:22:24.000 Zelenskyy saying, listen, I was ready to ceasefire like yesterday.

00:22:28.000 You wanted it from me.

00:22:29.000 I gave it to you.

00:22:30.000 What happened to the ceasefire agreement?

00:22:31.000 He says today, coordination with partners has been ongoing throughout the day.

00:22:34.000 Tomorrow, calls are already scheduled.

00:22:36.000 We're preparing for Monday's meeting with President Trump.

00:22:38.000 I'm grateful for the invitation.

00:22:39.000 It is important that everyone agrees there needs to be a conversation at the level of leaders to clarify all the details and determine which steps are necessary and will work.

00:22:46.000 We in Ukraine welcomed the principled statement of the Nordic Baltic partners and are grateful for their very significant assistance.

00:22:51.000 The unity of all strengthens each one.

00:22:54.000 So again, there is a bit of a gap here.

00:22:57.000 There is a gap between the United States and Ukraine and Russia.

00:23:00.000 There are gaps.

00:23:01.000 And pretending that those gaps don't exist is not going to make them disappear.

00:23:06.000 Zelensky then said that it's not possible to just give up territory.

00:23:10.000 He said that at the EC.

00:23:13.000 Russia is still unsuccessful in Donetsk region.

00:23:17.000 Putin has been unable to take it for 12 years.

00:23:22.000 And the constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible to give up territory or trade land.

00:23:30.000 Since the territorial issue is so important, it should be discussed only by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at the trilateral Ukraine-United States-Russia.

00:23:41.000 So far, Russia giv refuses, then new sanctions must follow.

00:23:50.000 Well, in a moment, we'll get to President Trump's reaction to all of this.

00:23:53.000 What is the latest?

00:23:54.000 Plus, the left goes insane, of course, of course.

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00:26:16.000 So meanwhile, President Trump was on Truth Social last night.

00:26:20.000 He tweeted that fake news has been saying for three days that I suffered a major defeat by allowing President Vladimir Putin of Russia to have a major summit in the United States.

00:26:27.000 Actually, he would have loved to do the meeting anywhere else but in the United States, and the fake news knows this.

00:26:30.000 It was a major point of contention.

00:26:32.000 If we had the summit elsewhere, the Democrat run and controlled media would have said what a terrible thing that was.

00:26:36.000 These people are sick.

00:26:37.000 They want crime in DC and other blue cities throughout our country, but don't worry.

00:26:40.000 I won't let that happen.

00:26:41.000 He also made some statements about the actual content of the meeting with Vladimir Putin, suggesting that not only could the ceasefire be put to the side, but that there was actually some pressure on Vladimir Zelensky.

00:26:54.000 So late last night, the presidents of the United States.

00:26:56.000 issued a statement on Truth Social, quote, President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately if he wants, or he can continue to fight.

00:27:03.000 Remember how it started?

00:27:04.000 No getting back Obama given Crimea twelve years ago without a shoot being fired and no going into NATO by Ukraine.

00:27:09.000 Some things never change.

00:27:10.000 So apparently he wants some sort of commitment from Zelensky to not enter NATO like ever, presumably, which is a key demand that the Russians have been making since the 1990s because it's not that they're afraid.

00:27:22.000 I know there are a lot of Russian apologists who want to say they're afraid that NATO is going to launch offensive action against Russia.

00:27:28.000 That is not what Vladimir Putin is concerned about.

00:27:30.000 He believes that NATO is a defensive front against his fear of influence in Eastern Europe.

00:27:34.000 Alexander Dugan has made this clear over and over and over again.

00:27:37.000 So Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister.

00:27:40.000 In any case, what comes next?

00:27:43.000 Well, that is unclear, certainly.

00:27:45.000 That's why today is extremely fraught.

00:27:47.000 We'll have to see what plays out in public and then also behind the scenes.

00:27:51.000 So Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, was in Alaska for a lot of these negotiations, was on ABC with Martha Raditz and Raditz, the rest of the media were highly, highly critical of the entire meet.

00:28:02.000 Of course they were.

00:28:03.000 I mean, by the way, I just want to point out that all of these Democrats, all of these members of the media who are highly critical of the meet, it is so ridiculously hypocritical.

00:28:11.000 So ridiculously hypocritical.

00:28:12.000 I want to flash back to 2009.

00:28:14.000 Here is Hillary Rodham Clinton, then Secretary of State under Barack Obama.

00:28:17.000 meeting with Sergei Lavrov was the foreign minister and handing him a red button that was supposed to say reset but it actually just said overcharge represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is we want to reset our relationship so we will do it together Thank you very much.

00:28:45.000 You're very welcome.

00:28:48.000 We worked hard to get the right Russian word.

00:28:50.000 You think we got it?

00:28:51.000 I got it wrong.

00:28:52.000 I got it wrong.

00:28:54.000 It should be Beregrudska.

00:28:56.000 And this says Beregrudska, which means overcharged.

00:29:02.000 But we won't let you do that to us.

00:29:04.000 I promise.

00:29:05.000 Okay.

00:29:06.000 Thank you very much.

00:29:06.000 Thank you.

00:29:10.000 It actually said overcharged that button.

00:29:12.000 But look at the big warm smiles.

00:29:14.000 And that was supposed to be a glorious new era for American-Russian relations.

00:29:18.000 Well, it didn't work out.

00:29:19.000 Anyway, I'm also old enough to remember when it was Barack Obama.

00:29:23.000 who's paying homage to the Russians back in those 2012 presidential debates.

00:29:27.000 It was President Barack Obama saying to Mitt Romney, the 1980s called and want their foreign policy back.

00:29:33.000 And Mitt Romney was asked, what's the greatest geopolitical threat?

00:29:36.000 He said Russia.

00:29:36.000 And Obama was like, no, Russia's great.

00:29:40.000 Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that Al-Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked, what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia.

00:29:49.000 Not Al-Qaeda.

00:29:50.000 You said Russia.

00:29:51.000 And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.

00:29:58.000 But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 19200s.

00:30:13.000 It's ridiculous.

00:30:14.000 The fact that that man was president for two terms is just insane to me.

00:30:17.000 But that wasn't the extent of his capitulation, by the way.

00:30:20.000 You'll remember Barack Obama sitting with Dmitry Medvedev, who was then the stand-in for Putin, who was the pretend president of Russia at the time, and Obama being caught on hot mic saying, This is my last election.

00:30:29.000 After that, I'll have flexibility, basically saying, Please back off and I will give you things, which he proceeded to do.

00:30:35.000 He proceeded to give Russians control over Syria.

00:30:37.000 He proceeded to back off when Russia took Crimea and did literally nothing.

00:30:41.000 So I mean, you want to talk about it like an open quid pro quo, an open electoral quid pro quo.

00:30:45.000 Barack Obama, the fact that he has got away in American history with this idea that he was some sort of coherent moderate who was just beautifully mellifluous and genius in his worldview.

00:30:58.000 The guy was awful.

00:30:59.000 He was just awful.

00:31:02.000 This is my last lecture for you.

00:31:03.000 Yeah.

00:31:04.000 And this is my last lecture.

00:31:04.000 I have more.

00:31:07.000 Yeah.

00:31:07.000 And this is my last lecture.

00:31:09.000 I translate this information to the legend that I'm listening to.

00:31:15.000 Insane.

00:31:15.000 By the way, the sort of benign.

00:31:29.000 It's always bizarre to me.

00:31:31.000 In any case, this is just to point out the insane criticism of the left.

00:31:34.000 The left is going nuts over all this.

00:31:36.000 Let's just be clear.

00:31:37.000 If there were a Democrat who is President right now doing the exact same thing, they would be celebrating it.

00:31:41.000 Celebrating it to the ends of the earth.

00:31:42.000 Diplomacy above all.

00:31:44.000 In any case, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, he went on the Sunday shows to talk about these meetings, and Martha Raditz said, Why exactly did you give them the red carpet treatment?

00:31:53.000 And Rubio was like, Well, I mean, he is a world leader, and we do have to acknowledge that reality.

00:32:00.000 I mean, critics of President Trump are always going to find something to criticize.

00:32:03.000 You don't even pay attention to it anymore.

00:32:05.000 But I will tell you this, Putin is already on the world stage.

00:32:07.000 He's already on the world stage.

00:32:09.000 The guy's conducting a full scale war in Ukraine.

00:32:11.000 He's already on the world stage.

00:32:12.000 He has the world's largest tactical nuclear arsenal in the world and the second largest strategic nuclear arsenal in the world.

00:32:19.000 He's already on the world stage.

00:32:20.000 When I hear people say that, oh, it elevates them.

00:32:22.000 Well, all we do is talk about Putin all the time.

00:32:25.000 All the media has done is talk about Putin all the time for the last four or five years.

00:32:28.000 That doesn't mean he's right about the war.

00:32:30.000 That doesn't mean he's justified about the war.

00:32:32.000 Put all that aside.

00:32:32.000 It means you're not going to have a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

00:32:36.000 You're not going to end a war between Russia and Ukraine without dealing with Putin.

00:32:41.000 That's not that's just common sense.

00:32:43.000 I shouldn't even have to say it.

00:32:46.000 Meanwhile, Rubio assured NBC's Kristen Welker that they're not reading minds, they're looking at actions.

00:32:53.000 The goal here isn't to try and discern the soul of Vladimir Putin.

00:32:57.000 It's to actually take a look at the things that he's doing and then react to them.

00:33:01.000 Look, I wasn't playing any of those games about looking people in the eye and trying to read their minds.

00:33:05.000 I'm reading actions.

00:33:06.000 And what we're looking at is actions.

00:33:08.000 What will you agree to?

00:33:09.000 What will you commit to?

00:33:10.000 And what will you follow up on?

00:33:12.000 And in order for this war to end, Russia will have to take actions.

00:33:15.000 Ukraine will have to take actions.

00:33:17.000 Ukraine's partners and allies will have to take actions as well to enforce that peace in the long term.

00:33:21.000 That's what we're interested in.

00:33:25.000 And so, you know, whether those steps are taken is an open question.

00:33:30.000 As Rubio says, he says, listen, I'm not saying we're on the verge of peace.

00:33:34.000 There's enough movement to justify some of these meetings.

00:33:39.000 Look, our goal here is not to stage some production for the world to say, Oh, how dramatic he walked out.

00:33:44.000 Our goal here is to have a peace agreement to end this war.

00:33:48.000 Okay.

00:33:48.000 And obviously we felt and I agreed that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase.

00:33:57.000 If not, we wouldn't be having Zelensky flying all the way over here.

00:33:59.000 We wouldn't be having all the Europeans coming all the way over here.

00:34:01.000 Now understand and take with a grain of salt.

00:34:04.000 I'm not saying we're on the verge of a peace deal, but I am saying that we saw movement, enough movement to justify a follow-up meeting with Zelensky and the Europeans, enough movement for us to dedicate even more time to this.

00:34:17.000 Now Rubio also pointed out with Martha Raditz that a lot of these conversations are going to have to be made in private, which is something I fully agree with.

00:34:24.000 Again, I think the most fraught moment of the day today is going to be when Zelensky is in the Oval with members of the Trump administration.

00:34:30.000 Wouldn't be surprising to see the vice president try to repeat some of his performances from February, even though the times have changed and Vladimir Putin has demonstrated his complete intransigence.

00:34:39.000 Here's Rubio saying, listen, we're going to have to have some private discussions.

00:34:42.000 They're going to be very serious.

00:34:45.000 Both sides are going to have to make concessions.

00:34:47.000 So, of course, concessions were asked.

00:34:49.000 But what utility would there be of me going on a program and telling you, we've wagged our finger at Putin and told him, you must do this and you must do that?

00:34:56.000 It's only going to make it harder and less likely that they're going to agree to these things.

00:35:00.000 So these negotiations, as much as everyone would love it to be a live pay-per-view event, these discussions only work best when they are conducted privately in serious negotiations in which people who have to go back and respond to constituencies, because even totalitarian governments have constituencies they have to respond to, people have to go back and defend these agreements that they make.

00:35:23.000 And so and figure out a way to explain them to people.

00:35:26.000 So we need to create space for concessions to be made.

00:35:28.000 But of course concessions were asked.

00:35:32.000 So, you know, again, I think that this is the exact right approach is that it does have to be done behind closed doors.

00:35:37.000 I hope that that will be kept to today.

00:35:39.000 So Marco Rubio was also asked by Margaret Brennan over at CBS.

00:35:45.000 If the European leaders are showing up with Vladimir Zelensky as almost a protective pretorian guard for Zelensky, like they're so afraid that Trump is going to bootstom Zelensky that they're coming over here to provide a sort of phalanx of protection for the Ukrainian president and Rubio dismisses that out of hand.

00:36:00.000 But that's not true.

00:36:00.000 They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied.

00:36:03.000 They're coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans.

00:36:05.000 We talked to them last week.

00:36:06.000 There were meetings in the UK over the previous weekend.

00:36:09.000 And they said President Trump was going to demand a ceasefire.

00:36:12.000 As early as Thursday.

00:36:14.000 But you said that they're coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied.

00:36:17.000 They're not coming here tomorrow.

00:36:18.000 Oh, this is such a stupid media narrative that they're coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal.

00:36:26.000 We've been working with these people for weeks, for weeks on this stuff.

00:36:29.000 They're coming here tomorrow because they chose to come here tomorrow.

00:36:31.000 We invited them to come.

00:36:33.000 We invited them to come.

00:36:34.000 The President invited them to come.

00:36:37.000 Okay, and again, he is right about that.

00:36:40.000 So there has been some movement on the American side.

00:36:42.000 We should point out here, and it's not just all empty verbiage.

00:36:46.000 According to the Washington Post, the United States is now prepared to maybe give some security guarantees.

00:36:52.000 So Steve Whitcoff, the negotiator, special negotiator on this, on Gaza, on a bunch of other issues, Whitcoff says that the goal here could be to offer Article 5-like language as a security guarantee.

00:37:04.000 but without actual NATO protection.

00:37:06.000 So instead of Ukraine entering NATO, which is a big no-no for the Russians, instead we'll kind of end around it by saying that there are European and American direct security guarantees that sort of act as the equivalent of.

00:37:17.000 a NATO admittance for purposes of a Russian invasion.

00:37:21.000 We got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee.

00:37:36.000 So Putin has said that a red flag is NATO admission.

00:37:41.000 And so what we were discussing was assuming that that held, assuming that the Ukrainians could agree to that and could live with that, and everything is going to be about what the Ukrainians can live with.

00:37:57.000 But assuming they could, we were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection.

00:38:09.000 That is a major move.

00:38:10.000 If President Trump does that, that is the single biggest thing that America could do to end the war.

00:38:15.000 Seriously, the single biggest thing America and the Europeans could do to end the war is short of formal NATO recognition of Ukraine and admittance of Ukraine, saying, with real actual security commitments with UK forces on the ground in Ukraine, saying, listen, we know you're going to have to give up some strategic territory, but we are for the next.

00:38:33.000 thirty years going to have troops on the ground, not the United States, the UK.

00:38:37.000 But if there is a Russian war that starts, we are providing you overwhelming military material, whatever you need in order to stop Russian aggression and reverse it.

00:38:46.000 That would be something that could actually move Ukraine toward the table because otherwise Ukraine really doesn't have a lot of incentive to move toward the table at all.

00:38:56.000 And as Marco Rubio has said, listen, the minute we do sanctions, basically the negotiations are over.

00:39:01.000 So if you if you want the negotiations to actually end in something short of a continuation of the war, then they have to continue.

00:39:10.000 I don't think new sanctions on Russia are going to force them to accept a ceasefire.

00:39:15.000 already under very severe sanctions.

00:39:17.000 I think that should be But there is no evidence that more sanctions, because sanctions take months and sometimes years to bite.

00:39:28.000 And we may very well wind up in that place.

00:39:30.000 I hope not, because that means that peace talks failed.

00:39:33.000 But we have to give every opportunity for peace a chance in this particular case.

00:39:38.000 And that's what we're trying to do here.

00:39:40.000 And so those options remain to the president.

00:39:42.000 The minute he takes those steps, all talks stop.

00:39:44.000 The minute we take those steps, there is no one left in the world to go talk to the Russians.

00:39:49.000 and try to get them to the table to reach a peace agreement.

00:39:52.000 In a moment we'll get to the latest on the democratic side of the Al Gavin Newsom continues to posture.

00:39:57.000 Plus we'll be talking with the brother of a man who's still being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas.

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00:41:06.000 Well, the bottom line to all of this is that it's unclear which dire direction these negotiations are going to go at this point, but Democrats already know.

00:41:12.000 Democrats know no matter what President Trump does, it must be a very, very bad thing.

00:41:16.000 So you have Senator Chris Murphy, who for some reason thinks he's going to be a presidential candidate or something, the Senator from Connecticut.

00:41:23.000 He says, well, you know, President Trump is afraid to offend his great friend, Putin.

00:41:27.000 Again, listening to this sort of rhetoric coming from the Democrats who were massaging Vladimir Putin, like while he invaded Crimea in 2014 is insane to me.

00:41:38.000 This next set of sanctions could be much more impactful.

00:41:41.000 The problem is in the Senate, the Republican leader won't even bring up a vote, a debate on this bill because Donald Trump doesn't even want a discussion about these sanctions because he's so worried that it might upset his great friend Vladimir Putin.

00:41:56.000 What is most impactful and what will be most impactful on this war are more weapons for Ukraine.

00:42:04.000 So, I mean, again, what basis does he have for suggesting he knows how these negotiations are going to end?

00:42:09.000 Meanwhile, Eric Swalwell, who when he's not farting on TV allegedly.

00:42:14.000 is saying silly things.

00:42:15.000 He said on MSNBC that President Trump is acting like a Russian asset, which is, again, a very weird take from somebody who was sleeping with a Chinese asset, but okay.

00:42:24.000 I was hoping to hear there would be a ceasefire.

00:42:26.000 That didn't come out of this.

00:42:26.000 And I was hoping to at least hear about the territory that would be proposed or exchanged by both sides.

00:42:34.000 That didn't come out of this.

00:42:35.000 Look, Alicia, I don't know if Donald Trump is or is not a Russian asset.

00:42:41.000 I do know that at press conferences like this and like at Helsinki, he certainly acts like one.

00:42:47.000 And that is cold comfort for anyone in the United States, particularly in our military, that the commander in chief would be so flattering of and so charming to a ruthless dictator like Vladimir Putin.

00:43:03.000 Again, listening to this sort of talk from the Democrats, I can hear critiques of President Trump's take on these negotiations.

00:43:11.000 And in fact, depending on what the take on the negotiations is, we'll either be praiseworthy of them or critical of them depending on the content.

00:43:17.000 But listening to Democrats go off about this stuff, not very critical.

00:43:20.000 Jake Sullivan, who is the former NSA under President Biden, he says, well, actually, it was a loss already because if there's no ceasefire, there are no consequences.

00:43:30.000 Dude, you had your shot.

00:43:32.000 You were in the seat for two years.

00:43:33.000 You had the ability to basically negotiate this off-ramp back in August of 2022 and you blew it.

00:43:39.000 You had the ability to forestall this war before February of 2022 and you blew it?

00:43:44.000 Listening to Jake Sullivan lecture people on foreign policy is like listening to Rosie O'Donnell lecture people on losing weight.

00:43:51.000 Like what are we talking about here?

00:43:54.000 Basically, the bottom line is the way to judge in a very straightforward manner whether a summit was a success or a failure is did you achieve your stated goals?

00:44:04.000 And President Trump's stated goals were very simple.

00:44:07.000 Get an immediate ceasefire.

00:44:08.000 And in the absence of a ceasefire, impose what he called severe consequences.

00:44:13.000 Well, the summit has come and gone.

00:44:15.000 There is no ceasefire.

00:44:16.000 There are no consequences.

00:44:19.000 Well, I mean, it's a little bit early.

00:44:20.000 It's a little bit early.

00:44:21.000 That's sort of the point.

00:44:22.000 Maybe it goes there, but we're going to find out.

00:44:25.000 Meanwhile, President Trump, as always, has the unique ability to make his opponents take the wrong side of dumb arguments.

00:44:31.000 It's amazing to watch.

00:44:33.000 So the Republicans continue to send troops to Washington, DC in order to quell crime.

00:44:38.000 According to the Washington Post, three Republican-led states responding to a Trump administration request said on Saturday they'll send up to 750 National Guard troops to join 800 already mobilized in Washington, DC.

00:44:48.000 South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster says he will deploy 200 troops to stand with President Trump as he works to restore law and order to our nation's capital.

00:44:55.000 Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says he's sending 150 military police from the state's National Guard.

00:45:00.000 Remember, Ohio Governor DeWine is not exactly like a red-blooded, hardcore, hard-edged Republican.

00:45:06.000 Meanwhile, Democrats just keep taking the wrong side of this thing.

00:45:09.000 Chris Van Holland, one of the dumber members of the United States Senate from Maryland, he says that, you know what, this is all just a diversion of resources.

00:45:15.000 I mean, if you're talking about great stewards of the taxpayer dollar, Chris Van Holland is definitely not on the list.

00:45:23.000 I would think that taxpayers all over the country, federal taxpayers, have to ask themselves, how it is that we are using resources, national resources, the FBI, the DEA, folks who are supposed to be out and about protecting the country from violent criminals.

00:45:42.000 And now they're spending their time taking down tents of homeless people in the District of Columbia.

00:45:47.000 I would think people all over the country would worry about that diversion of resources.

00:45:54.000 What a ridiculous person he is.

00:45:56.000 This is a dude who diverted his resources all the way down to El Salvador to hang out with a dude who is almost certainly a human trafficker.

00:46:02.000 So yeah, let's hear more about your resource allocation, Chris Van Halen.

00:46:05.000 Meanwhile, the luxury beliefs crowd in Washington, DC was outside protesting over President Trump's intervention and they were chanting, free DC from what?

00:46:14.000 From what?

00:46:15.000 Does it feel super?

00:46:16.000 super fascistic and you like you're marching down the street shouting to free the city this doesn't feel like 1984 meanwhile here's a black senior citizen in Washington DC talking to CNN you know I kind of feel safer as it turns out I think this is long overdue.

00:46:44.000 I've been one of the National Guards in this area for years.

00:46:47.000 I like it.

00:46:48.000 I love it.

00:46:48.000 I feel safer already.

00:46:52.000 I mean, oops.

00:46:54.000 That unfortunate.

00:46:55.000 for Democrats.

00:46:55.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to suggest that the president of the United States is, of course, an authoritarian for what he is doing with Washington, D.C., among other things.

00:47:04.000 So Gavin Newsom, who's desperately running for that 2028 nomination for the Democrats, he says that the president should really worry about Shreveport, Louisiana and Speaker Mike Johnson's district and all the rest instead of worrying about the big cities.

00:47:19.000 I think you should start with Shreveport, Louisiana and Speaker Johnson's district that has six plus times the per capita murder rate of Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco.

00:47:27.000 What about the carnage, Mr. President, in Shreveport?

00:47:30.000 Why aren't you protecting the folks there?

00:47:31.000 Eight of the top ten.

00:47:33.000 murder states in this country red states what and everyone knows it everybody knows it again it's acts of authoritarianism it's acts of power on a person that is trying to use his moral uh its formal authority and it's depleting and it's weak it's increasingly weak and it's increasingly desperate and that's why it's important for us at this moment to meet him head on, not just rhetorically, but through substantive counteractions.

00:48:02.000 And that's what we're doing in California with this ballot issue.

00:48:07.000 Wow.

00:48:08.000 What an amazing.

00:48:09.000 He's standing up to authoritarianism, you see, by standing up for higher crime and saying we really shouldn't stand up against high crime in DC.

00:48:15.000 We should do it in Shreveport, Louisiana.

00:48:17.000 So I asked our friends and sponsors over at Comet, a project of perplexity, to list the mayors of Shreveport, Louisiana, as well as their parties since 1980.

00:48:25.000 And as it turns out.

00:48:26.000 Well, not tons of Republicans in that list, but there are Republicans who are the mayors of Shreveport, Louisiana between 1990 and 1998, and then nothing from 1998 all the way till 2022.

00:48:37.000 That was all Democrat dominance.

00:48:39.000 So great job, Democrats.

00:48:41.000 Meanwhile, Joy Reid is out there claiming that President Trump is the embodiment of all of America's sins, all of them.

00:48:47.000 Was he a slaveholder or something weird?

00:48:51.000 Donald Trump in some ways, people try to say God put him in a White House.

00:48:55.000 I don't believe God is that cruel.

00:48:56.000 But in a way, I'm thinking the way you could justify saying that Donald Trump is the physical embodiment of all America's sins.

00:49:05.000 Yeah, I agree completely.

00:49:07.000 All right, he's sloppy, he's unkempt.

00:49:11.000 Everything about him is false.

00:49:12.000 His hair is a pretense of non baldness.

00:49:16.000 He's old, but his followers try to pretend that he looks like Superman.

00:49:21.000 He's a terrible businessman and a failure who gets to fake success because he's white., so banks keep lending him money even when he's failing.

00:49:32.000 Yeah, by the way, Joy Reid also has some takes on the nature of white people.

00:49:36.000 She says white people didn't invent anything, pretty much.

00:49:38.000 They steal everything.

00:49:42.000 They can't fix the history they did.

00:49:44.000 Their ancestors made this country into a slave hell, but they can clean it up now because they got the Smithsonian.

00:49:53.000 They can get rid of all the slavery stuff.

00:49:54.000 They got Prager U. They can lie about the history to the children.

00:49:58.000 They can't originally invent anything more than they ever were able to invent good music.

00:50:03.000 We black folk gave you all country music, hip hop, RB, jazz, rock and roll.

00:50:08.000 They couldn't even invent that, but they have to call a white man the king because they couldn't make rock and roll.

00:50:14.000 So they have to stamp the king on a man whose main song was stolen from an overweight black woman.

00:50:24.000 So because Elvis took black tropes and used them in music, that means white people have never invented anything like anything at all, like at all.

00:50:35.000 I have some, all of human history that would like to quibble with the thing that Joy Reid is saying, right?

00:50:40.000 This is your Democratic Party.

00:50:43.000 They've deposited that President Trump, everybody is a fascist authoritarian and and all the rest that there is however a weird undercurrent that has already begun and i think you're going to see this grow i'd like to point this out and that is that democrats are already moving beyond president trump already and what i mean by that is that every republican president is the worst person until in in the world until precisely the moment there's going to be a republican who replaces that president and which person he becomes a delightful moderate if only all republicans were like that democrats said that mt romney was

00:51:13.000 the worst person in human history just awful i mean george w bush was a real moderate but mt romney he was crazy then mt romney lost and it became donald trump is the worst republican in human history that mt romney wasn't That meant Romney, wasn't he a nice guy?

00:51:26.000 Wasn't he just delightful?

00:51:27.000 And so you're about to see that same thing happen.

00:51:29.000 And you can see the groundwork being paved for that right now.

00:51:33.000 So suddenly, Hillary Clinton is saying some, you know, relatively moderate words about Donald Trump.

00:51:39.000 This is the beginning of the movement toward President Trump was actually not as crazy as you think he was.

00:51:45.000 Yeah, he was crazy and all, but the one who comes next, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Ted Group, whoever that was so much worse, so much worse.

00:51:52.000 Here we go.

00:51:54.000 If he could end it without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor had to.

00:52:02.000 So the Russian ambassador had to in a way validate Putin's vision of Greater Russia, but instead could really stand up to Putin, something we haven't seen, but maybe this is the opportunity to make it clear that there must be a ceasefire,

00:52:22.000 there will be no exchange of territory, and that over a period of time, Putin should be actually withdrawing from the territory he seized in order to demonstrate his good faith efforts, let's say, not to threaten European security.

00:52:40.000 If we could do that off, if President Trump were the architect of that, I'd nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

00:52:47.000 Okay, well, I mean, if you could also do magic, I mean, that's not a thing that's going to happen, but you'll notice how suddenly she's treating President Trump as a quasi moderate watch.

00:52:56.000 It's going to happen over the course of the next couple of years.

00:52:58.000 You'll see as Democrats morph into the party of, yeah, the Donald Trump, who's bad and authoritarian, but man, what's coming next is going to be so much worse, so much worse.

00:53:07.000 Okay, meanwhile, the latest on the Gaza Strip.

00:53:10.000 So Israel is still making a decision as to what it wishes to do next.

00:53:13.000 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he wants essentially a deal that only allows for the release of all hostages, not some hostages, all of them.

00:53:21.000 No more partial deals, no more waiting around.

00:53:23.000 And if that doesn't happen, there will be a full military takeover of the entirety of the Gaza Strip and Hamas will be completely extirpated and destroyed.

00:53:30.000 There are meetings that are happening in Egypt right now in which a bunch of Arab nations are trying to push Hamas into making some sort of deal, any sort of deal.

00:53:36.000 President Trump, for his part, taking the most moral position, President Trump has been excellent on this.

00:53:41.000 He says the hostages in Gaza will only be freed, quote, when Hamas is confronted and destroyed.

00:53:45.000 He said, we'll only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed.

00:53:49.000 The sooner this takes place, the better the chances of success will be.

00:53:52.000 Remember, I was the one who negotiated and got hundreds of hostages freed and released into Israel and America.

00:53:58.000 And then he said, I was the one who ended six years in just six months, six wars in just six months.

00:54:03.000 I was the one who obliterated Iran's nuclear facilities, played to win or didn't play at all.

00:54:06.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.

00:54:09.000 And of course, he is totally right about that.

00:54:11.000 Well, joining us online to discuss the latest on all this is Eli David.

00:54:14.000 He's the brother of Aviatar David.

00:54:16.000 You'll recognize Aviatar from that horrifying video that was put out by Hamas, the propaganda video showing Aviatar David looking essentially like a Holocaust victim emaciated digging his own grave.

00:54:27.000 Eli, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:54:28.000 I really appreciate it.

00:54:31.000 Thank you for having me.

00:54:33.000 So why don't we begin with what happened to your brother in the first place and what do you know about his current status at this point?

00:54:39.000 Aviatar, he was at the Nova Music Festival with his friends on October 7.

00:54:45.000 He was 22 back then, but I was already 24.

00:54:49.000 He was kidnapped that day along with his friend, his childhood friend Gagir Badalal.

00:54:55.000 They were both brutally kidnapped, thrown into the pickup trucks all the way to Gaza.

00:55:01.000 We saw, we saw them on videos that Hamas posted that day, on October 7.

00:55:09.000 We have a, we had a very long time of not knowing what is going on, where is he exactly, if he is okay or not.

00:55:16.000 I mean, we were terrified from not knowing what was going on.

00:55:20.000 And after a year and four months, during release of other hostages, they took out every Italian guy from the tunnel.

00:55:30.000 They forced them to watch other hostages being released.

00:55:33.000 Then they were sent back into the tunnel.

00:55:34.000 And we thought, I mean, it was a sign of life, of course, but it was very cruel to watch.

00:55:41.000 It was like, I mean, we felt it's the peak of cruelty to do this, this emotional torture to those beautiful, kind souls like my brother.

00:55:53.000 It was terrible.

00:55:54.000 And almost half a year later, two weeks ago, Hamas published another video.

00:56:02.000 As you said, it'll look like a human skeleton.

00:56:06.000 We knew that he's being stabbed.

00:56:08.000 We knew that.

00:56:09.000 It wasn't the first time we acknowledged that.

00:56:13.000 We heard the testimonies of hostages that stayed with him.

00:56:18.000 So we knew that he's in a very bad place.

00:56:22.000 We were told about the tunnel.

00:56:25.000 This horrible tunnel, it's the same place where he lived for the last year and even more than that.

00:56:32.000 And we understood that he was deliberately being stopped as part of Hamas Sikh propaganda.

00:56:43.000 So Eli, obviously the media treatment of that video was far out of proportion to the media treatment of victims of supposed Israeli blockades with regard to nutrition.

00:56:56.000 It appears that Hamas has been stealing a lot of the food, obviously.

00:56:58.000 And so Israel has been using Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to send in tons of aid, something like 3800 calories per day per person in the Gaza Strip.

00:57:06.000 Obviously, Hamas is not starving.

00:57:08.000 Hamas has been stealing aid, shooting aid workers and the media have instead decided to publish on the front page photos of children who are suffering from genetic problems, people who are suffering from things like cystic fibrosis, pretending that that was an effect of starvation.

00:57:22.000 Meanwhile, your brother who's legitimately being starved to death, that did not make the front page of any newspaper, I believe in the world, except for maybe the New York Post.

00:57:29.000 What do you think of the disparity?

00:57:33.000 Yeah, I find it sad.

00:57:35.000 I see that Hamas is using his own people as part of his SIG campaign as much as my brother.

00:57:44.000 And he is using, I mean, who was ever Hamas in Gaza Strip is well fed, whoever not Hamas, whoever's not a supporter, he's poor and he's starving.

00:57:58.000 And that's the thing, you have to be Hamas if you are in the Gaza Strip, or else you're going to be very miserable.

00:58:04.000 Hamas will make sure that you will be very miserable.

00:58:07.000 And in this condition of my brother, they we heard the testimonies and it leaves no place for any doubt.

00:58:17.000 The terrorists live on the next door.

00:58:21.000 There is an iron door separating between Aviata, his friend Guy, which is also there on the same conditionitions and the terrorists.

00:58:29.000 And they have plenty of food.

00:58:31.000 They have plenty of humanitarian aid that they stole and they even bragged about stealing humanitarian aid to the captivity survivors that testified.

00:58:42.000 And they were even enjoying the food loudly only to make the hostages feel worse.

00:58:50.000 And that's the peak of cruelty.

00:58:52.000 They are starving Eviatar, they're starving Gaida, they're starving the other hostages deliberately, cynically, and they're using him and their own people, the Gazans, as political tools, which is cruel, inhumane and also it's forbidden in their own religion in the Islam which is Sikh.

00:59:14.000 And that's the sad part.

00:59:15.000 Hamas, they are the ones to blame.

00:59:18.000 They are the ones to blame for hunger in Gaza.

00:59:22.000 They are the ones who decide who lives and who dies in the Strip.

00:59:27.000 Right now, a Vietar is on the verge of death, a Vietaran guy.

00:59:32.000 And the only thing I want from leaders around the world and nations around the world to make sure that they survive.

00:59:41.000 And I'm not talking about an agreement and ceasefire.

00:59:44.000 I'm talking about making sure that they will get food, that they will get water and bread and proper medical care.

00:59:53.000 Because right now, where they are, they may die at any moment.

00:59:58.000 And the only reason they didn't die is because they still have faith.

01:00:01.000 And we saw it in Ayatollah's eyes.

01:00:03.000 We saw it in his eyes that he's still himself, that he's still, he still has that faith that he's going to be okay.

01:00:12.000 So Eli, how have you and your family been able to deal withal with all this?

01:00:16.000 Obviously, it's the worst situation that you can possibly imagine.

01:00:19.000 Have you been able to cope with that throughout the course of the last couple of years?

01:00:24.000 So I kind of feel that we have no choice.

01:00:30.000 We know that if Ethan survives and he didn't give up.

01:00:35.000 And if he's not giving up, we are not allowed to give up.

01:00:40.000 Me, his brother, I cannot give up.

01:00:42.000 My parents cannot give up.

01:00:44.000 We are manifesting the moment of his return.

01:00:47.000 We are manifesting the moment that we have hugged again, I see him in my mind hugging my parents.

01:00:54.000 Every time I go to sleep, I'm thinking about him.

01:00:58.000 We used to play music together every week.

01:01:00.000 It was a tradition of ours.

01:01:03.000 He plays the guitar.

01:01:04.000 He's a brilliant guitar player.

01:01:06.000 And we used to play music every week together at my parents and sing.

01:01:11.000 And that's what I'm dreaming of.

01:01:13.000 And I know that he is hoping for the same things.

01:01:16.000 He is thinking about those simple things, hugging my parents, giving them a good night kiss, playing music with me.

01:01:30.000 He, he, thinking about the things that he wanted to do prior to his kidnapping.

01:01:36.000 He was so passionate about traveling the world and studying music production, and I believe that he will come back and achieve those dreams and even become greater than before.

01:01:48.000 But right now he suffers.

01:01:49.000 Every second there, he suffers very great deal.

01:01:53.000 He and Guy and all the other hostages.

01:01:57.000 And we have to be together.

01:01:59.000 That's the only thing we have right now we have family we have friends and we have to hold to each other and remember that eventually avatar comes back home eli thank you so much for joining us and explaining what's going on with your brother aviatar david who's still being held hostage in the tunnels obviously our thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family we're all praying for the hostages to come home really appreciate it thank you all righty folks the show is continuing for our members Right now,

01:02:28.000 James Comey, remember the former head of the FBI?

01:02:30.000 That dude is just weird.

01:02:31.000 He's a weirdo, like a giant, giant weirdo.

01:02:33.000 I have more video proof of him being, you know, a giant weirdo.

01:02:36.000 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.

01:02:37.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use Coach Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 18, 2025

The Trump-Putin FACEOFF: Who’s Winning, Who’s Losing?

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