Trump throws Vladimir Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine, out of the White House after a nuclear meltdown of a press conference. The rest of the world reacts, and we examine whether there is a new Trump doctrine, or whether Zelenski simply blew it.
00:00:21.000Do not miss the exclusive pre-show at 8.30 p.m.
00:00:23.000Eastern, followed by the full address completely uninterrupted.
00:00:25.000And when he's done, we're back with a breakdown of what it all means.
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00:00:31.000Okay, so before I get to the actual nuclear meltdown of a press conference, and we're going to go through the whole press conference, because I think that it is a disservice to all involved for us to simply focus on the moment where everything went south.
00:00:49.000It was a nearly 50-minute press conference, and I want to go through everything that led up to the press conference because it sort of explains where everybody is.
00:00:59.000Vice President Vance, Vladimir Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, and how we got to the nuclear meltdown.
00:01:04.000I want to remind you what a wise man wrote in October of 2022.
00:01:09.000Quote, Henry Kissinger has been publicly excoriated for suggesting that the off ramp to this conflict will be territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia.
00:01:16.000A repeat of the Moscow peace treaty that was signed after the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1941.
00:01:22.000But he may be correct, particularly if the West is unwilling to bear the full economic and military cost of a larger war with Russia.
00:01:28.000In the end, it may be that the least bad scenario is about simply preventing the worst case scenario.
00:01:34.000That wise man, of course, was yours truly.
00:02:04.000By the way, that also happens to be the policy of the Trump administration, which is seeking an off-ramp that would, in fact, not allow Vladimir Putin to waltz into Kiev, but also acknowledges that the likelihood of Ukraine winning back Donbass and Crimea is basically zero and has been since 2014. So that was the predicate to the big meeting that was supposed to happen on Friday.
00:02:25.000So on Friday, President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, was supposed to arrive in the United States and go to the White House, and he was supposed to sign a minerals deal.
00:02:32.000Now, there was an immediate conflict between what both parties wanted from this.
00:02:37.000President Trump, he wanted the minerals deal because, number one, he believes that the United States ought to be repaid for its investment in other countries.
00:02:44.000This has been a long-standing belief of President Trump's that...
00:02:48.000When we get involved in foreign policy, there ought to be sort of a clear return to the United States, whether we're talking about defending Kuwait from Saddam Hussein or whether we're talking about paying to defend Ukraine from Russia.
00:02:58.000There should be some sort of return to the American taxpayer.
00:03:00.000Otherwise, in President Trump's beliefs, we are getting screwed.
00:03:03.000That has been a longstanding Trumpian position.
00:03:05.000But there is something else going on here.
00:03:06.000And this was made clear during the press conference.
00:03:09.000President Trump always saw the economic minerals deal as a sort of foot in the door to prevent a Russian invasion.
00:03:16.000Because if the United States has workers in Ukraine who are, for example, mining rare earth minerals, and then the Russians invade, the United States is immediately dragged in.
00:03:27.000And President Trump is not wrong about this.
00:03:29.000In fact, for centuries, this has been a Western way of making war, is that if there is, in fact, the British East India Company that gets involved in trade in a far-flung place, and then they are attacked by the local government, that does actually dredge up.
00:03:45.000The problem of perhaps the British Empire getting directly militarily involved, and so you don't want to screw with the British East India Company.
00:03:50.000That is almost how President Trump is seeing the rare earth minerals deal.
00:03:57.000Meanwhile, Zelensky is saying, I can't go back to my people and say that I signed a minerals deal or anything else without security guarantees.
00:04:04.000If the final settlement does not involve actual explicit security guarantees, I can't actually go back to my people.
00:04:11.000Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I've also been suggesting for years that the United States might have to go over Zelensky's head in order to negotiate the end of this war and then cram it down on him.
00:04:19.000They might have to, the United States, might have to go to Russia and say, listen, we know the outline of the deal.
00:04:27.000But, again, outline of the deal, Donbass and Crimea remain in Russian hands.
00:04:30.000There are, in fact, security guarantees to the Ukrainians, and that's the best it's going to get.
00:04:35.000Okay, so, entering this meeting, all President Trump wanted was a grip and grin.
00:04:39.000All he wanted was for Zelensky to show up and Trump would shake his hand and there would be a sort of implicit understanding that almost became explicit during this meeting.
00:04:47.000That the rare earth minerals deal was a sort of trigger force for the United States providing security guarantees.
00:04:54.000And Trump comes very close to saying that several times in the actual meeting.
00:04:57.000Zelensky comes in with another agenda.
00:04:59.000And as we'll see, it's probably because he was prepped by Democrats, apparently.
00:05:02.000He comes in and he wants President Trump in the room.
00:05:07.000To say that he is going to give a security guarantee, a thing that President Trump does not want to do.
00:05:12.000Because again, from President Trump's perspective, the United States should not have to provide that security guarantee.
00:05:17.000Basically, Europe should have to provide that security guarantee.
00:05:29.000He believes that President Trump and Vice President Vance do not like him.
00:05:32.000That they've said nasty things about him, which is true.
00:05:34.000That they have said things that are untrue about the Ukraine-Russia war in terms of casting moral aspersions at Ukraine that are unearned while going easy on Vladimir Putin.
00:05:41.000There's a case to be made that that's true as well.
00:05:43.000The Trump Vance case is Zelensky is being intransigent because he wants my moral condemnation, but moral condemnation don't get the job done.
00:05:50.000The thing that gets the job done is whatever gets us to that off-ramp.
00:05:53.000So if that means that we have to sort of massage Putin in public relations in order to get him to the table, then we'll do that.
00:06:00.000That is another one of these conflicts that's happening.
00:06:02.000And, by the way, Vladimir Zelensky, people forget this because, of course, he's been a very famous world leader since the outbreak of the 2022 war.
00:06:33.000Zelensky could have come in, could have done the gripping grin, could have gotten the win, could have walked out, and that would have been enough.
00:07:00.000I do not think acquits himself well in this particular exchange.
00:07:03.000I know there are people on the right who think that J.D. Vance handled himself beautifully here.
00:07:06.000I think that J.D. Vance actually threw a couple of hand grenades into the middle of the conversation because there may in fact be some foreign policy differences between Vance's view of the United States in the world and Trump's view of the United States in the world.
00:07:57.000I understand that Zelensky is trying to keep his country's spirits up, but it seems to me that if he had shown up in a suit, had a great meeting with Trump and walked out, that would have been a pretty good boost for the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines.
00:08:07.000Is it really more important that he shows up in the jumpsuit as some sort of, you know, slap in the face at Trump?
00:08:12.000Again, this setup leads one to believe that one of the things that Zelensky is doing here is he is recognizing tacitly that the United States is out of the Ukraine business and what he's actually trying to do, perhaps strategically, is blow up the meeting in order to get the EU To step in and try and provide some sort of aid that the United States is unwilling to provide.
00:08:29.000If that's the case, then Zelensky actually got something that he wanted out of this whole situation.
00:08:32.000But you can see right from the get-go, there's some antagonism right at the outset.
00:08:49.000And Zelensky, you can see, is a little bit ticked off.
00:08:52.000Obviously, there's a huge size differential.
00:08:54.000Zelensky is not a big man, and Trump is a very large human being.
00:08:57.000And then they finally sit down, and they have this conversation.
00:09:03.000So again, we're going to go through this in detail because this is, I think, one of the most fascinating and probably historic conversations we have ever seen publicly between a president of the United States and a foreign leader.
00:09:13.000And we should recognize that conversations like this have wide-ranging ramifications in terms of future policy.
00:09:20.000For example, The Iraq War was largely begun.
00:09:24.000The original Iraq War, the Gulf War, might have started because of a stray comment from a low-level State Department staffer who sort of implied that if Saddam Hussein had walked into Kuwait, the United States might not actually do anything about it.
00:09:43.000And the State Department had told Saddam Hussein that Washington had no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.
00:09:48.000And at that point, Saddam took that seriously and he walked into Kuwait.
00:09:52.000So, stray comments, certainly big blowups like this, can have some pretty radical ramifications for how foreign policy is conducted.
00:09:59.000In the same way that the Russian invasion of Ukraine probably has to do with the United States pulling out of Afghanistan ignominiously, in disgrace.
00:10:09.000In the same way, comments that are made on the public stage can have extraordinarily powerful ramifications for the future of foreign policy.
00:10:15.000That's why we're going to go through this.
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00:14:06.000What President Trump is saying there is, we look forward to getting boots on the ground digging things, and once we're there, it's sort of a tacit security guarantee.
00:18:33.000Okay, so again, that's Zelensky pushing.
00:18:35.000So Trump says, of course, we're going to sign an agreement.
00:18:38.000All Trump wants from this meeting is to get out of there with the rare earth minerals deal that is going to provide the lever for a broader American commitment or tacit American commitment to the security of Ukraine.
00:18:50.000And Zelensky keeps pushing because he feels like publicly he needs to push.
00:18:53.000I don't know if he thought that he was going to get Trump to cave in the room or something, or if this is all virtue signaling for the cameras, or if he feels he needs to say this for his own people at home.
00:19:01.000Or if this was all a sort of design to blow up the meeting in order to get the Europeans to step in.
00:19:06.000I'm not sure what Zelensky's strategy here was.
00:19:08.000All I know, it's a very, very bad strategy.
00:19:10.000So, President Trump, again, being very sober about all of this.
00:19:13.000And for all the talk about how Trump was the one who was combative in this, he really was not.
00:19:18.000For 40 minutes, he sat there while Zelensky effectively attempted to negotiate a deal in the room.
00:19:24.000And here is President Trump talking about compromise.
00:19:27.000I think you're going to have to always make compromises.
00:19:30.000You can't do any deals without compromises.
00:19:32.000So certainly he's going to have to make some compromises.
00:19:35.000But hopefully they won't be as big as some people think you're going to have to make.
00:19:41.000I'm here as an arbitrator, as a mediator to a certain extent between two parties that have been very hostile.
00:19:50.000Now you can see a fundamental difference between Trump and Zelensky here.
00:19:53.000Zelensky thinks that the United States is full-fledged on the side of Ukraine.
00:19:57.000In terms of this negotiation, meaning they should, like Biden, just pour in the aid without any sort of end, without any sort of designs to end the war.
00:20:03.000And Trump says, listen, I got to broker a deal.
00:20:06.000Now, we'll talk about the ramifications of the meeting and how actually one of the things that the Trump administration might think about doing, and President Trump had said during that campaign, pretty clearly, is say to Vladimir Putin, listen, we want a deal.
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00:25:29.000Okay, so again, you can see Zelensky is saying that Putin can't be trusted, this is why we need security.
00:25:34.000And again, I don't think that Zelensky is wrong about this per se, but why is he negotiating all of this?
00:25:38.000He's not going to get what he wants in the room.
00:25:41.000So, President Trump is asked about NATO. And again, I think one of the things that the people want to attribute to Trump is that he wants to rewrite all the bargains of the world.
00:25:50.000And there are people inside the Republican Party who clearly want to do this.
00:25:53.000But I'm not sure that that is what President Trump wants.
00:25:55.000There's been a lot of talk about Trump, for example, pulling out of NATO. Some loose talk.
00:25:59.000Elon Musk suggested that over the weekend.
00:26:01.000That would be, I think, a terrible move.
00:26:04.000About President Trump basically ripping up the idea that America guarantees the freedom of the seas and sort of conceding the Far East to China and all the rest of this kind of stuff.
00:26:12.000And we'll get into that in a little bit.
00:26:14.000But here's President Trump projecting that outright.
00:26:16.000He's asked about NATO. He's asked about Poland.
00:28:08.000Because they've been in the USSR. You know, they've been one of the republics of the USSR. And Putin wants to bring them back to his empire.
00:28:39.000Because President Trump is actually not talking about surrendering all of Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin, like all of his critics claim that he is.
00:28:46.000And then Trump is asked about why he has not said mean words about Putin.
00:31:47.000For four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country.
00:31:58.000The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.
00:32:04.000We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States' words mattered more than the president of the United States' actions.
00:33:24.000So he occupied our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of East and Crimea.
00:33:33.000So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years, I'm not speaking about just Biden, but those times was Obama, then President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, now President Trump, and God bless, now President Trump will stop him.
00:35:06.000Okay, so, you'll hear Vance's response.
00:35:10.000So Vance's first sentence in response to Zelensky is the correct response.
00:35:13.000And that should have been the end of the meeting.
00:35:14.000He should have said, you know, President Zelensky, I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that will actually end this war properly.
00:35:19.000We're going to have these discussions behind closed door.
00:35:22.000Instead, Vice President Vance takes the opportunity to throw two grenades.
00:35:25.000One is directed at President Trump and one is directed at Zelensky.
00:35:28.000The one that is clearly directed at President Trump is that he mentions, as you will see, Zelensky going to Pennsylvania in the final days of the campaign.
00:35:39.000And walking around Pennsylvania with Josh Shapiro.
00:35:44.000Okay, the reason he is mentioning that is to piss Trump off.
00:35:47.000Because that is like a red flag in front of a bull.
00:35:49.000If you mention that Zelensky, which again, was an idiot move, a foolish move, I commented on the time, that Zelensky went to Pennsylvania and campaigned with Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who was campaigning for Kamala Harris in the last stages of the campaign.
00:36:03.000If you mention that in front of Trump, Trump is going to get enraged.
00:36:06.000He's also going to get enraged because Vance...
00:36:09.000He says out loud what Trump has probably been thinking.
00:36:11.000Trump's like, I've been contained this whole time.
00:36:12.000And Vance says, you're being really, really disrespectful.
00:36:14.000Okay, if you say to Trump, this man is being disrespectful and loved Joe Biden, that is like a red flag in front of a bull.
00:36:20.000Meanwhile, he then says to Zelensky a thing that no leader can sit there and hear, which is, you're losing the war.
00:36:26.000You're having to forcibly conscript people, right?
00:36:29.000Which is an accusation about, you know, the inhumanity of the Ukrainian regime that, frankly, Vance didn't use with regard to, say, Vladimir Putin.
00:36:38.000Who has kidnapped apparently tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and then taken them back to Russia for russification and all of this?
00:36:58.000Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.
00:37:04.000Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems.
00:37:11.000You should be thanking the President for trying to bring it into this conflict.
00:37:14.000Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?
00:37:17.000I've actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President.
00:37:28.000Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military?
00:37:32.000And do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?
00:38:36.000You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.
00:38:39.000You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III. And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country.
00:40:10.000I said a lot of times thank you to American people.
00:40:14.000Except that there are disagreements, and let's go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight it out in the American media when you're wrong.
00:41:01.000Because you'll get a ceasefire faster than a degree.
00:41:05.000Okay, so, Zelensky is so obviously spoiling for a fight.
00:41:10.000He's so obviously spoiling for a fight.
00:41:12.000And J.D. pushes back on him in a way that is designed to blow up the entire thing.
00:41:16.000The people who wanted the fight in this meeting...
00:41:18.000Our Zelensky on the one side, who clearly was spoiling for a fight from pretty much the first moment.
00:41:22.000And then J.D., when he gets his chance, the Vice President of the United States, when he gets his chance, he immediately throws two grenades again.
00:41:28.000One designed to piss off Trump and one designed to piss off Zelensky.
00:41:32.000And Zelensky, who's been spoiling for a fight the whole time, jumps on that grenade with his chest.
00:41:38.000And then he gets into a fight with Trump in the Oval Office.
00:41:40.000And then Trump, predictably, the fallout is that President Trump says, well, we don't, you know, get out.
00:41:45.000Trump throws him out of the Oval Office.
00:41:47.000And then he releases a statement on Truth Social.
00:41:49.000We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today.
00:41:52.000Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure.
00:41:55.000It's amazing what comes out through emotion.
00:41:57.000I've determined that President Zelensky is not ready for peace if America is involved because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiation.
00:42:39.000One, I think Trump was the adult in the room pretty much his entire time.
00:42:42.000Two, Zelensky came in spoiling for a fight.
00:42:44.000And as we'll examine in just a moment, that's probably because he was talking with many of the wrong people in the United States, and also possibly because he's strategizing for European support.
00:42:52.000Three, Vice President Vance definitely escalated this.
00:42:56.000It is Zelensky who is pushing Trump and Vance, but it is Vance who decides to get incredibly personal.
00:43:02.000And I think that that may have something to do with Vance's own views on foreign policy, which again, I don't know how well those match up with President Trump's generalized worldview on foreign policy, even if they cross over with regard to their perspectives on Zelensky.
00:43:16.000Again, this is either brutal incompetence by Zelensky or an attempt to essentially drive support for Ukraine from the Europeans via hatred of Trump.
00:44:29.000There's a long way to go because a lot of damage has been done to the whole complex of bilateral relations.
00:44:33.000But if the political will of the two leaders, President Putin and President Trump, is maintained, this path could be quick and successful.
00:44:39.000And of course, they then insulted Vladimir Zelensky throughout all of this.
00:44:44.000So, one of the big questions that we're going to have to answer here is whether this meeting is symptomatic of a broader American foreign policy shift or whether it is reflective of bad political calculations by Vladimir Zelensky, whether it is reflective of specific designs in Ukraine, but doesn't have implications for, say, NATO or the Far East.
00:45:03.000That is the big question that comes out of all of this, and we'll get to that in just one moment.
00:46:20.000And the question for me, for the Ukrainian people...
00:46:24.000I don't know if Zelensky can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States.
00:46:29.000Either he dramatically changes, or you need to get somebody new.
00:46:35.000So, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson repeated that general sentiment, suggesting that, on CNN as well as NBC, that we know Vladimir Putin is going to be trusted, we're not abandoning Ukraine, but Zelensky is a disaster area.
00:46:50.000I think Vladimir Putin is an old-school communist, a former KGB agent.
00:46:55.000He's not to be trusted, and he is dangerous.
00:47:16.000Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude.
00:47:23.000Okay, so again, this has been the sort of general Republican response to all of this.
00:47:30.000Secretary of State Marco Rubio said something similar.
00:47:33.000He said, listen, we're not trying to undermine Ukraine.
00:47:35.000We're trying to get to a negotiated end here.
00:47:37.000And, you know, you can preen and you can posture, but the negotiated end kind of looks the same no matter how you slice it.
00:47:42.000And we need to figure out, is there a way to get them to stop the war?
00:47:46.000And the only way you're going to do that is to get Russians engaged in negotiations, something the Europeans haven't been able to do, the Biden administration wasn't able to do or didn't even try.
00:48:25.000That's why the president called it World War III. You're gambling with World War III. We're not going to give you security guarantees while you're at war with Russia.
00:49:56.000Again, this is not just from the United States.
00:49:57.000The British ambassador to the United States, again, Peter Mandelson, he said that that was the whole point.
00:50:02.000The whole point of the rare earth mineral deal was to set up the possibility of a peace deal that would then include some security guarantees.
00:50:10.000And yes, I do think it would be a good idea if he signed the economic and commercial deal put forward by the United States.
00:50:19.000And the reason I say that is quite apart from the economic gain that Ukraine will derive from that, it will also give the United States a stake in Ukraine's future.
00:50:32.000It will mean that U.S. commercial interests, U.S. individuals, citizens will be on the ground there.
00:50:40.000And that will be an even greater added incentive for the U.S. to protect the Ukraine in future and make sure that war does not ensue again.
00:50:52.000OK, by the way, you know who agrees with all this?
00:51:10.000Trump is actually protecting Ukraine without dragging the U.S. into war.
00:51:13.000By negotiating a mineral drill, Trump ensures that Americans will be involved in Ukraine's mining industry.
00:51:18.000This prevents Russia from launching an invasion because attacking Ukraine would mean endangering American lives, something that would force the U.S. to respond.
00:51:23.000Trump played both sides like a master chess player.
00:51:26.000In the end, Zelensky will have no choice but to concede, because without U.S. support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia.
00:51:31.000And once U.S. companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences.
00:51:36.000Don't underestimate Donald Trump in this game of chess.
00:51:40.000Okay, so that's what Trump was trying to do.
00:51:41.000Trump was trying to give Zelensky the W, and Zelensky wouldn't take the W. So why did this go so wrong?
00:51:48.000Well, one reason, apparently, is because, according to Michael Goodwin writing at the New York Post, Zelensky decided that he was going to take his hints and his advisory opinions from Democrats.
00:52:00.000Quote, before meeting President Trump, Zelensky met with anti-Trump Democrats who advised him to reject the terms of the mineral deal the president was offering, according to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
00:52:08.000Quote, just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington.
00:52:11.000He confirmed the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine.
00:52:18.000The meeting, as the world now knows, went quickly off the rails and ended with Trump angrily ejecting the, quote, arrogant ingrate from the White House.
00:52:25.000But apparently, again, the goal here for Democrats was to basically sink the deal.
00:52:32.000So Chris Murphy, who had advised Zelensky before the meeting, again, he's a hardcore Democrat who'd love to run for president, senator from Connecticut.
00:52:38.000Here he was now suggesting that Trump was a Putin acolyte for the failure of the meeting.
00:52:41.000So in other words, Murphy sent Zelensky to get absolutely creamed in that meeting.
00:52:46.000And then he turns around and says that Trump is working for Putin.
00:52:49.000It is absolutely shameful what is happening right now.
00:52:53.000The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin.
00:52:56.000Every single day, you hear from the National Security Advisor, from the President of the United States, from his entire national security team, Kremlin talking points.
00:53:05.000For the last week, the White House has been pretending as if Ukraine started this war.
00:53:13.000Poland invaded Germany at the beginning of World War II. So Murphy set this whole thing up to fail, presumably, or at least he was involved in it.
00:53:23.000Okay, so what is the actual outcome of all of this?
00:53:26.000Well, first of all, you have the idiot protesters.
00:53:47.000Yeah, you can hear people screaming at various cars.
00:53:55.000They're just trying to go skiing for the weekend, so that's just absolutely delightful.
00:53:59.000What are the actual impacts from all of this?
00:54:01.000Well, on the one hand, it could be that Europe finally steps up, and Trump actually gets what he wants out of this.
00:54:07.000That Europe decides that they are going to actually fill the gap.
00:54:10.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the UK and France said they would lead a European effort to forge a Ukraine peace plan to present to President Trump as they sought to patch up differences between Kiev and Washington following Friday's White House clash.
00:54:21.000British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, hosting nearly 20 allies in London on Sunday, said the progress had been made in building a coalition of the willing which would commit military assets, including troops on the ground, to secure any eventual peace.
00:54:31.000He said more countries would need to come on board if Europe is to build a force that would actually deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.
00:54:37.000Well, I mean, that's what Trump has been calling for all the way.
00:54:39.000And it's very weird to hear the Europeans suddenly doing the stuff that Trump actually wants them to do.
00:54:43.000Like, for example, spend on defense and commit to defending their own continent.
00:54:47.000Here is Ursula von der Leyen, she's the head of the EU, suggesting, weirdly enough, peace through strength.
00:54:54.000We had a very good and frank discussion.
00:54:59.000Basically, we've discussed everything that is around peace through strength.
00:55:05.000And, of course, security guarantees are of utmost importance for Ukraine, but we need comprehensive security guarantees.
00:55:13.000This includes that we have to put Ukraine in a position of strength, that it has the means to fortify and protect itself from the economic survival to the military resilience.
00:55:28.000Now again, maybe this was Zelensky's play.
00:55:30.000Maybe Zelensky's play was alienate Trump, knowing that Trump doesn't like him very much.
00:55:34.000Play up to the Europeans and get what we want from the Europeans.
00:55:36.000There's some problems with that, namely that the United States' materiel is way better than the Europeans' materiel.
00:55:42.000And the other problem, of course, is can you trust the Europeans, given the fact that the Europeans have a long history of being absolute suckers when it comes to being taken in by foreign dictators?
00:55:51.000I mean, it is worth noting at this point that during this war, during this actual honest-to-God war, EU imports of Russian oil surpassed the financial aid they sent to Ukraine.
00:56:01.000So in other words, they paid the Russians more than they sent to the Ukrainians.
00:56:04.000Which just shows you their levels of commitment.
00:56:06.000But perhaps reality is starting to set in for the Europeans.
00:56:09.000The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, he said, of course Europe should step up.
00:56:13.000It's bizarre for Europe to ask the United States to be the one that actually fills the gap.
00:56:18.000Ladies and gentlemen, there's a paradox and someone has already overlooked it.
00:58:00.000The question is whether there is a resetting of the world order that is happening right now.
00:58:04.000Now, a reset from the sort of bizarre vision of the Obama-Biden era would certainly be in order because the leading from behind, America should not actually engage in peace through strength.
00:58:14.000The United States should essentially allow America's enemies to walk all over America's friends and then every so often throw some half-hearted support to America's friends that we would bloviate.
00:58:22.000On a sort of Wilsonian moral level without actually filling that gap.
00:58:49.000Because it turns out that there are members of the Trump administration.
00:58:52.000We don't necessarily believe all of that.
00:58:54.000So the Wall Street Journal has an editorial this morning saying, with his first weeks back in office, especially after Friday's Oval Office brawling with Ukraine's president, it's clear President Trump has designs for a new world order.
00:59:05.000Perhaps he could share this vision with the country when he addresses Congress on Tuesday.
00:59:08.000The conventional view of Mr. Trump is that he's above all transactional.
00:59:11.000He wants deals at home and abroad that he can sell as great successes.
00:59:13.000But the way his second term is unfolding, this may undersell his ambition.
00:59:16.000Mr. Trump's strategy seems to be moving toward that of Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance, who view America as in decline and no longer able to lead or defend the West.
00:59:27.000The question is whether he is interested in hammering traditional U.S. friends like Canada and Mexico in violation of his own U.S.M.C.A. trade deal, or whether he is interested in sort of ceding control of Taiwan to China.
00:59:46.000Some of the intellectuals surrounding him have.
00:59:48.000Elbridge Colby, nominated for the chief strategy post of the Pentagon, has argued the U.S. must leave Europe and the Middle East to their own devices to focus on the Asia-Pacific.
00:59:57.000But Colby has also said South Korea might have to fend for itself.
01:00:00.000And he said in a letter to us last year, quote, Taiwan isn't itself of existential importance to America.
01:00:05.000Mr. Vance is the most vigorous promoter of the abandoned Ukraine strategy, arguing the war with Russia is little more than an ethnic dispute.
01:00:13.000Ross Douthat of the New York Times, who is sort of the clarifier for J.D. Vance, says the vice president and president are merely, quote, stripping away foreign policy illusions.
01:00:24.000The question is whether what we are looking at...
01:00:26.000Is America withdrawing from the world, ceding the Far East to China, allowing America's allies to basically run on their own in those areas?
01:00:33.000And if they get invaded or taken over, Taiwan, South Korea, well, that's their business.
01:00:37.000Whether Eastern Europe will be left open to the predations of the Russians.
01:00:41.000Whether the Middle East will basically be left up for grabs between Turkey, Iran, Saudi, the Israelis.
01:00:48.000What does it look like in America withdrawing from the world?
01:00:53.000That's sort of the open question after the Trump-Ukraine meeting.
01:00:55.000Is this symptomatic of a broader foreign policy shift away from America being the world's hegemonic leader and toward the idea that we're going to retreat from the world behind our oceans and then assume that everything will be okay?
01:01:08.000Now, I don't know that that's the case.
01:01:09.000In fact, I think that's probably not the case because the truth is there are a lot of conflicting signals.
01:01:13.000It seems to me that if you look at the Russia-Ukraine situation in isolation, what you are seeing is President Trump trying to get to a deal through any means that he can.
01:01:20.000I may not agree with the means, by the way.
01:01:22.000I may think, The best approach to Vladimir Putin is to say, listen, you can see we're making every possible signal.
01:01:38.000Because again, that is how Trump typically negotiates.
01:01:40.000So it's kind of weird he's not doing that here.
01:01:41.000Typically, the way that Trump negotiates is Colombia does something we don't like.
01:01:45.000We threaten to increase our tariffs on Colombia to 50% and the next day they cave.
01:01:49.000President Trump has no problem throwing his weight around.
01:01:52.000And the sort of strange notion that we have to throw our weight around with Ukraine predominantly and that Russia is actually the conciliatory party here.
01:01:59.000What are the signs of Russian conciliation?
01:02:01.000If we saw those, I might be on board with that.
01:03:00.000That's what the center of America's interest is.
01:03:02.000This is the difference between quote-unquote neocons, you know, people who in the 2000s were suggesting we needed to spread democracy all over the world, and people who are real politique.
01:03:38.000With us being the world's hegemon comes enormous economic benefit to the American people.
01:03:44.000So, for example, if you think that we can continue to fund our unbelievably onerous welfare state via debt, if we are not the leading power on earth, you got another thing coming.
01:04:43.000Our economic strength is the reason that people buy our debt, because they figure we're the best bet on the block.
01:04:47.000Two, foreign policy strength, which undergirds that economic strength.
01:04:51.000This is something people don't like to talk about, but the reality is that free trade, for example, isn't something that just randomly happened.
01:04:58.000It happens because the United States Navy is guarding all the shipping lanes on planet Earth.
01:05:03.000It is the United States that ensures the Straits of Malacca, where a huge percentage of world trade goes, is open.
01:05:09.000The reason that there are so many countries that are willing to buy our debt is because the United States is involved with those countries in ways that include security.
01:05:18.000In fact, as we'll talk about in a moment, one of the reasons that the United States dollar is the world's global reserve currency is because of our foreign policy strength.
01:05:26.000And then finally, lack of viable alternatives.
01:06:28.000If you want to trade a euro for a ruble for decades until the current sanctions, both the EU and Russia would translate that into dollars and then trade with each other using dollars.
01:06:41.000So banks around the world will exchange these foreign currency into dollars and then they'll trade those dollars for other forms of dollars, other currency.
01:06:49.000So according to the Brookings Institute, 54% of all global trade invoices are done purely in dollars.
01:06:55.000And then, even the ones that are not done in dollars, the foreign exchange happens in dollars.
01:06:59.00088% of all foreign exchange transactions happens in dollars.
01:07:02.000And there you are talking about tens of trillions of dollars every single year.
01:07:06.000And this has huge benefits for the United States.
01:07:08.000Because when people buy our debt, because they want access to the dollar, it funds our welfare state.
01:07:20.000If there's lots of dollars wandering around abroad, those dollars have to go somewhere.
01:07:23.000And it turns out a lot of those dollars...
01:07:24.000Go into our capital markets, our stock market.
01:07:27.000It also, because we have such enormous leverage in global markets, allows us to use economic weaponry like sanctions against Iran or to increase tariffs against our enemies.
01:07:36.000It gives us leverage in foreign policy.
01:07:38.000So what keeps the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency?
01:07:50.000If the United States is really stable, but we trade with a currency you can't get elsewhere, No one's going to use that as a reserve currency.
01:07:56.000So that means that trade, that means that global involvement matters an awful lot.
01:08:02.000The reason the U.S. originally became the world's reserve currency is because in 1971, the U.S. ended something called the Bretton Woods Agreement.
01:08:09.000The Bretton Woods Agreement was an agreement that was signed in 1944, very end of World War II, in which the United States basically allowed, we pegged our currency to gold, to the price of gold, and then all other currency pegged themselves to the United States dollars.
01:08:23.000In 1950s and 1960s, the United States wildly overspent.
01:08:27.000We spent way too much money on our welfare programs, and we'd started to bankrupt ourselves.
01:08:31.000So what happened is massive gold outflows.
01:08:33.000What people were doing is they were showing up at the central banks in the United States, and they were saying, we want to trade our U.S. dollars for gold.
01:08:39.000And so Nixon said, we're not going to be dependent on gold anymore.
01:08:42.000We stopped pegging the U.S. dollar to gold.
01:08:45.000So that should have completely debased the dollar, right?
01:10:21.000If we spend too much money on our welfare programs, this makes us way more dependent on foreign purchases of our debt.
01:10:27.000If we withdraw from world markets in trade, that makes dollars way less available.
01:10:31.000And if there is chaos in the markets in general, if, for example, the free trade lanes start to break up, if the U.S. Navy retreats, There is now pressure for regional trading blocks to stop using the dollar as the reserve currency.
01:10:44.000So what would actually happen if we lose that status?
01:11:17.000The availability of capital to start businesses drops pretty dramatically as well.
01:11:21.000And, of course, we lose our ability to use economics as leverage.
01:11:24.000We can no longer do sanctions because, obviously, if you're trying to cut somebody off from the use of the dollar and they're not using the dollar anymore, it don't matter.
01:11:31.000So all this is materializing in real time.
01:11:34.000As the United States retreats from the world, As the United States loses its relative power, it's not absolute power, it's relative power.
01:11:40.000As that happens, things start to get worse.
01:11:44.000Here is a chart of the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency.
01:11:49.000And as you can see, it's from the IMF. As you can see, the U.S. dollar share of foreign reserves has dropped from somewhere around 72% in 2000, all the way down to if you're adjusting for interest rates and exchange rates, all the way down to about...
01:12:11.000It's something that we should be looking to fix.
01:12:13.000The only way to fix that is with productivity at home, a strong and healthy market here at home, cuts to our national debt, cuts to our welfare state, and yes, a continued presence abroad that ensures a stable world and global situation.
01:12:27.000Again, that is not for the good of other countries.
01:12:33.000At no point during this little disquisition have I mentioned the following words, democracy, liberalism, free speech, sexual orientation.
01:12:40.000I've not mentioned any of those things.
01:12:42.000And when you're talking about clear, real politic interests, that is why it matters how the United States orients itself to the world.
01:12:48.000And if China goes after Taiwan or goes after the Taiwan Straits, that's going to have massive knock-on effects for American citizens, not just in terms of the semiconductors at TSMC, but in terms of the breakup of the global trade system, of the free market.
01:13:02.000Of American power and its perception abroad.
01:13:07.000It doesn't require an invasion of the United States.
01:13:09.000We have big oceans, thank God, in order for the United States to suffer.
01:13:14.000Because the United States, it turns out that when you dismantle a global hegemon like the United States, that doesn't tend to be amazing for the global hegemon.
01:13:22.000Meanwhile, as it turns out, other things were happening on planet Earth that were not important at all.
01:13:29.000So this may be the first you heard of the Oscars because no one watched any of the movies.
01:13:32.000We reviewed all of them on Friday, and it turns out the only two that did any box office at all were Wicked and Dune Part 2, and neither one really did particularly well last night.
01:13:41.000The Oscars itself was semi-apolitical except for one bizarre statement in support of Hamas that happened when a documentary that was all about the evils of the Israelis, you know, like a year and not even a year and a half after the mass murder of Jews on October 7th and the continued holding of hostages in the Gaza Strip.
01:14:00.000A person named Basil Adra, Rachel Jor, Hamdan Balal, and Yuval Abraham.
01:14:05.000It's not too hard, by the way, to find a left-wing Jew to join along with people who wish to slaughter Jews in order to rip on Israel.
01:14:12.000Actually, not all that difficult a task.
01:14:13.000So there's a movie, a documentary called No Other Land, which earned approximately 128th of Am I Racist, I believe, at the box office.
01:14:20.000And these guys got up to talk about how Israel was the problem in the Middle East, you know, the week after Palestinians held a giant ceremony celebrating The strangulation murder of two toddlers before returning their dead bodies to the Israelis.
01:14:34.000But, you know, Hollywood's going to be Hollywood.
01:14:37.000About two months ago, I became a father and my hope to my daughter that she will not have to live the same life I'm living now.
01:14:50.000Always feeling settlers' violence, home demolitions, and forest-built displacements that my community, Masaf Riyatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.
01:15:02.000No other land reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist, as we call on the war, to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.
01:15:19.000The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people which must end, the Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.
01:15:27.000When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal.
01:15:33.000We live in a regime where I am free, under civilian law, and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.
01:15:40.000There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with...
01:15:46.000National rights for both of our people.
01:15:49.000And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.
01:16:14.000Hamas is a dominant force inside the West Bank.
01:16:16.000Hamas continues to occupy the Gaza Strip.
01:16:19.000The Palestinians are by and large supportive of terrorism against Israelis and wish to exterminate the state of Israel.
01:16:24.000The reason that there is a quote-unquote military occupation of these areas and not, you know, domestic home rule by the PA is because every time Israel attempts to withdraw from these areas, terrorists take them over and use them as bases for terrorist attacks.
01:16:36.000The reason for checkpoints is because of terrorist attacks.
01:16:39.000The reason that Israel has to maintain a military presence in these areas and put its own people in harm's way.
01:16:45.000It's because of Palestinian terrorism and exterminationist hatred for Jews.
01:16:50.000So yeah, for sure, you definitely should give a Best Documentary Award to this sort of propaganda on behalf of terrorism in the year and a half after the worst terrorist attack on Jews since World War II. It's just vile stuff, but, you know, leave it to the Academy.
01:17:05.000Okay, meanwhile, there were some good things that happened during the show.
01:17:08.000I think the best moment came when Karen Culkin was given an award for a movie called A Real Pain.
01:17:23.000About a year ago, I was on a stage like this, and I very stupidly publicly said that I won a third kid from her because she said if I won the award, she would give me the kid.
01:17:32.000It turns out she said that because she didn't think I was going to win.
01:17:36.000And people came up to her and were like, you know, really annoying her.
01:19:36.000It is amazing to me how people in Hollywood will make movies with very clear conservative messages at the end, and they don't even realize the movie they just made.
01:19:43.000Mikey Madison won Best Actress over, apparently, Demi Moore.
01:19:48.000So I guess that the plot of the Oscars was just the plot of The Substance, where the young, better-looking young woman, apparently, wins the Oscar over the older woman.
01:19:58.000Anyway, here is Mikey Madison also thanking the Prostitutes of America.
01:20:03.000I also just want to, again, recognize and honor the sex worker community.
01:20:08.000I will continue to support and be an ally.
01:20:15.000All of the incredible people, the women that I've had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this incredible, of this entire incredible experience.
01:20:30.000No more incredible experience than hanging out with the prostitutes.
01:20:34.000Okay, also, Daryl Hannah showed up to show support for Ukraine.
01:20:38.000Now, I do find it hilarious that Hollywood has decided that this is the same Hollywood that will stand for Hamas will also show support for Ukraine, which is interesting.
01:20:49.000I have a feeling it has less to do with their support of Ukraine than the fact that Trump does not sufficiently support Ukraine in their view.
01:21:53.000I'm here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of anti-Semitism and racism and of othering.
01:22:15.000And I believe that I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world.
01:22:23.000And I believe if the past can teach us anything, it's a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.
01:22:34.000It's always the same crap from Hollywood.
01:23:01.000Best actors who are black, best actresses who are black, best directors who are black.
01:23:05.000And so now we've reached the point where we need standing ovations for the first black man to win best costume design.
01:23:11.000When we get down to best key grip, and I guess we'll still be doing standing ovations for this, as though black Americans could never win costume design until this very moment.
01:23:45.000Thank you, everyone in the UK, for all of your beautiful work.
01:23:49.000I could not have done this without you.
01:23:50.000Until this very moment, until this very moment, when a black man finally became the first black man to win Best Costume Design, I thought that racism really was going to triumph in America.
01:23:59.000But now that Paul Tazewell has become the first black man to win Best Costume Design, I gotta say, man, I think we're there, guys.
01:25:36.000All right, guys, coming up, Andrew Klavan joins the show to analyze Anora, the film that won Best Picture at the Oscars last night, as well as some of the other pictures that were nominated first.
01:25:44.000However, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:25:46.000If you're not a member, become a member.