Trump and Zelensky pick a fight in front of the media, and it blows up in the middle of a press conference. The President of Ukraine was in Washington, D.C. to sign a rare earth minerals deal with the U.S. government, and instead of thanking the President for the deal, he attacked him.
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00:01:02.000So Charlie was recording earlier today, but we just had some very remarkable public diplomacy go down in the White House.
00:01:09.000Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was in Washington today to sign the rare earth minerals deal that he and Trump recently negotiated.
00:01:19.000They held a public conversation with the press in one of the rooms of the White House and something none of us have ever seen before just happened.
00:01:30.000First, let's welcome in who you actually just saw, Alex Marlowe, is rejoining us once again.
00:01:53.000And then J.D. Vance was there, Vice President Vance, and he talks about, okay, we're going to try to develop better diplomacy with Russia to work towards peace.
00:02:00.000And something incredible happens where Zelensky, he basically picks a fight with Vance.
00:02:06.000He says, he was going on, oh, we had these deals with Russia, and then Russia broke all these deals, so what kind of diplomacy do you want us to do?
00:02:13.000He basically picks a fight with him, and it explodes.
00:02:30.000Mr. 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.
00:02:35.000Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems.
00:02:42.000You should be thanking the President for trying to bring an end to this conflict.
00:02:45.000Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?
00:02:48.000I'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.
00:02:59.000Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military?
00:03:03.000And 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?
00:04:07.000You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.
00:04:10.000You'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.
00:04:45.000And then we had this statement just released from President Trump on Truth Social.
00:04:49.000I'm not sure what the number is, but let's put it up if we can.
00:04:52.000We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today.
00:04:56.000Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure.
00:05:03.000It's amazing what comes out through emotion.
00:05:05.000I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for peace if America is involved because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations.
00:05:46.000Yeah, it's very interesting to watch Zelensky kind of buckle under the pressure of the moment.
00:05:51.000This was the moment for him to take his medicine, which is that he is vulnerable unless he has the backing of the United States or NATO countries.
00:07:11.000Charlie tweeted just a few minutes ago that this is the most transparent display of diplomacy in history.
00:07:18.000I literally cannot think of another example like it going all the way back.
00:07:23.000You'll hear about arguments between world leaders that happen at summits, that happen in private, but nothing where an engagement that appeared to be polite, appeared to be...
00:07:49.000He was a former speechwriter for Bush.
00:07:51.000He's kind of a more hawkish Republican.
00:07:53.000He literally has Ukraine's flag in his profile name on X. And he says, this is entirely Zelensky's fault.
00:08:03.000Trump greeted him graciously, was ready to turn the page, just said he wanted to get help, help Ukraine get its territory back.
00:08:11.000And Zelensky comes in, gets into a fight in public.
00:08:15.000I've never seen anything like it in my life.
00:08:20.000Blake, can I add something here that I think is really important?
00:08:26.000He's anticipating the American media is going to take his side.
00:08:29.000And what does that say about the American press?
00:08:31.000Zelensky is only doing this in front of the press because he thinks they're on his team, not the president of the United States team.
00:08:37.000And I got to tell you, I bet he was correct to assume that.
00:08:41.000Watch how the media reacts to this story because this one is a total Rorschach test.
00:08:45.000If you're on the pro-America side, if you're on the America First side, you see what Trump and Vance did is defend our nation, our sovereignty.
00:08:51.000What Zelensky did is attack us despite our graciousness and the fact that we've given them so much.
00:08:57.000It is totally outside of the realm of possibility that this would have happened if we had oppressed that actually cared about this country more than Ukraine.
00:09:04.000And it's such a bafflingly bad play to me because Trump has been the biggest guy in American politics for a decade.
00:09:11.000And I think anyone who honestly looks at the way he is, you can kind of understand how you would appeal to Trump.
00:09:18.000And if Zelensky came in and was just over the top, We're so grateful for the aid you've given.
00:09:42.000Throw in your lot to just assume, oh, well, the media, the same people who very badly failed at stopping Trump in 2024, they'll tear him down, they'll wreck his administration, and that will force him to give me more money to keep the war going.
00:09:58.000I just, I really cannot figure out what was driving this to happen unless, maybe he just didn't expect it to blow up that way, but he should have...
00:10:07.000He should have backpedaled once he saw what was going on, and instead they just escalated it.
00:10:13.000I would say this is certainly the single most memorable moment of the new Trump administration so far.
00:10:43.000I think he's completely arrogant because of the American media and the way they've treated him in the past and the Democrat Party that's welcomed him.
00:12:49.000Remember, he gave Zelensky the call in 2018 or 2019, and then they said, we have to impeach him over that.
00:12:55.000Hunter Biden, we've come a long way since then.
00:13:00.000But, yeah, Alex, so how do we see this play now?
00:13:04.000Let's assume Zelensky's correct that the media do take his side, and they'll say, Trump disgraced America with his bad diplomatic protocol or whatever.
00:13:14.000How do you see that shaping out with the American public?
00:13:17.000Yeah, this might be one where they might see the writing on the wall that they can't do that this time because you cannot come into our Oval Office, one of the hallowed grounds on American soil, and to be so spoiled.
00:13:30.000Trump was trying to be gracious, trying to help him, and I feel like it is going to be a big...
00:13:35.000It's something that Zelensky certainly calculated he would have...
00:13:39.000The people in the room, the press who were there, they would have his back.
00:13:42.000But for him to come out and to suggest that Trump has been anything short of trying to broker a peace that provides a best-case scenario for Ukraine is just inaccurate.
00:14:13.000It wasn't how it was at the beginning of the war.
00:14:14.000They've lost hundreds of thousands of people.
00:14:16.000Russia, I think, has lost a million people.
00:14:18.000It's time to end this thing for the good of humanity.
00:14:20.000And anyone who is not prepared to do that is just going to be – it is not going to be welcome in the eyes of Trump, who wants this thing cleaned up so he can go back to focusing on his agenda.
00:14:30.000And Vance jumping in there and defending our honor as a country after Zelensky wasted so much of our money and he went against Trump.
00:14:37.000Despite how Trump was helpful to him when Trump was president.
00:15:09.000I think I would consider it a tragedy.
00:15:11.000Charlie would consider it a tragedy if that were to result in, you know, if this means there is no peace, Russia crushes Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people die.
00:15:22.000I don't think that's what President Trump wants.
00:15:25.000We want peace, but we can only have peace if every party involved actually wants it to happen.
00:15:33.000Today, it kind of did have the look that rather than pursuing peace, Zelensky wanted to pursue this dunk on Vice President Vance.
00:15:44.000Why don't you give us your thoughts, Alex, on that part of it?
00:15:47.000Are we closer to peace or farther away?
00:15:49.000Yeah, Blake, one thing that's really interesting here that I was thinking about is that there's been a lot of back and forth about whether or not Ukraine has all these rare earths.
00:15:57.000And the EU says that they've got all these rare earths.
00:16:00.000They've got like 5% of the world's rare earths.
00:16:01.000And there's been a lot of dispute about that.
00:16:04.000Russian media says they don't have as much.
00:16:06.000And, you know, I don't tend to trust Russian media at face value, but it's an interesting possibility that maybe Russia was right and the EU was wrong.
00:16:14.000Again, all else being equal, I tend to trust the EU more than Russia, but...
00:16:20.000Maybe there's something going on that maybe there aren't as many of these minerals that we thought we were going to get when we were brokering this piece.
00:16:25.000And maybe that was part of the underlying thing.
00:16:27.000Maybe that's why Zelensky was freaking out is that that could have been exposed.
00:16:30.000So that's another thing because the deal was not signed.
00:16:33.000So apparently Zelensky's left the White House, been kicked out of the White House now, so he's on his way home.
00:16:38.000And if there's no deal signed yet, then what was this all about?
00:17:00.000This is what we live for in the news business, and I love to see America defended by—it's a double whammy for me because it's America's first guy.
00:17:06.000I love to see Vance and Trump defend America, and I just like the clarity with the way both of them spoke.
00:17:13.000Zelensky, he's at a disadvantage because it's our home soil and he doesn't speak the language naturally, but Vance and Trump defending our honor was great to see.
00:17:22.000I think it's a historic moment for both of those men, and I think the country will ultimately be grateful.
00:17:56.000If anybody in the news media landscape knows where things go from here, other than the fact that Zelensky has left the White House, there's been no deal signed.
00:18:06.000I mean, that is a complete devolution of that relationship.
00:18:26.000I mean, really, it was Zelensky, but the fact that J.D. Vance stepped in and, as Alex says, defended our country's honor in that moment was striking.
00:18:34.000I think it says a lot about his courage.
00:18:38.000We've been talking about Doge and big balls.
00:18:40.000Well, I think we got another guy here that also exhibited a lot of courage under fire and a lot of gusto, and I'm really proud of J.D. for standing up for our honor.
00:19:01.000Zelensky started this exchange and J.D. Vance wasn't going to sit idly by watching it happen.
00:19:07.000I completely think that Zelensky comes out looking like the unhinged foreign oligarch that he is.
00:19:15.000And I think people with eyes to see it are going to see it.
00:19:17.000I think this changes dramatically, at least in the short run, the way that I see this.
00:19:26.000It could very well mean that Zelensky is going to simply defy anything that the U.S. proposes, even if we try and broker a peace.
00:19:36.000Zelensky could very well just try and thumb his nose at the Americans, which is, I would say, a political death sentence for him if he actually allows a democratic process to unplay.
00:19:51.000We're in uncharted territory, but I absolutely, to your point, Alex, I think before, where you said he's never been confronted with the depth of his, just how unpopular he's become, and especially within conservative circles, And this was a come-to-Jesus moment for him that he simply refused to acknowledge because he's had smoke blown up, as you know what, for so long with, you know, Hollywood, the foreign press, our press in the United States.
00:20:20.000So I couldn't be more stunned, shocked, surprised that this happened, but actually really grateful at J.D. Vann.
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00:22:01.000Zelensky stays in the cities when he comes and doesn't understand that the people out here who have to pay for this in treasure and, if necessary, in blood are.
00:22:11.000And I don't think he understands that when he runs his little foreigner mouth at the guy we just elected president and gets put in his place, which is subordinate to the United States of America, normal Americans are going to cheer.
00:23:17.000273. This is CNN Christiane Amanpour's reaction to what just transpired in the Oval Office.
00:23:23.000273. Never in the history of modern diplomacy, war, peace, whatever, have I ever, ever, ever seen anything like it.
00:23:34.000We just have to hope that for the safety of the free world and for the American people, for the European people, for the Ukrainian people, That these two presidents get out of breath and try to iron out their differences.
00:23:51.000This was an entirely personal go-to with so many mistruths and misfacts.
00:24:00.000Totally in line with what I was saying.
00:25:00.000Maybe instead of presuming to lecture them from some sort of moral high ground, you were handed by a bunch of Hollywood halfwits and regime media superstars.
00:25:12.000You came in and you made your case about how you're fighting for the freedom of your country against invaders and how you need America's help.
00:25:38.000We're not going to be treated like children.
00:25:44.000Well, you know, Kurt, what strikes me here is that this could essentially force Zelensky to run into the arms of Europe, and Europe's talking tough on Russia still.
00:26:39.000Worst case, it's, you know, oh, please don't throw me in that briar patch.
00:26:43.000What, he's going to show Trump by doing exactly what Trump wants him to do?
00:26:48.000I mean, the Europeans have already tried that.
00:26:50.000Well, we're just going to have to, you know, you're mad at us for not carrying our fair share of NATO, so I guess we're just going to have to show you by carrying our fair share of NATO. Oh, no, please don't do exactly what he wants.
00:27:09.000Look, I used to negotiate for a living when I was a full-time lawyer, and sometimes you walk in with nothing, and maybe you can bluff, maybe, but if you have a master negotiator like Donald Trump, are you going to bet on bluffing out bluffing him?
00:28:17.000And so I think it's one of those things where when you're watching it, you're never quite sure what will happen.
00:28:23.000But as we saw in the first term, it had this...
00:28:26.000This pattern of eventually working out, that it would seem very chaotic, it would seem like it was causing conflict, and then actually, surprisingly, he'd get on really well with the Mexican president, who was this big left winger, and we'd remain in Mexico.
00:28:39.000He would actually successfully renegotiate the trade deals.
00:28:45.000There's this special thing with Trump where whatever he's doing ends up working out surprisingly well.
00:28:54.000I don't know how this will fit into it.
00:28:56.000We'll have to see what unfolds, to say the least.
00:28:59.000I very much wonder if maybe what could happen is Trump will say, we're happy to make more concessions with Ukraine, make a better deal, but Zelensky specifically needs to resign.
00:29:11.000And that would be an interesting way to get him out and also...
00:29:17.000Say you guys have to hold an election.
00:29:18.000We'll support a democracy if it's an actual democracy, not a sort of military dictatorship for the duration.
00:29:25.000There's a lot of ways I can see this shaking out.
00:29:29.000Yeah, and Kurt, I don't know if you saw the statement, because I know you're driving, but President Trump released a statement basically saying he's not ready for peace yet.
00:29:43.000He disrespected us in our cherished Oval Office.
00:30:09.000Again, as I said, I sympathize with the Ukrainians, but I'm an American, and I believe an American interest is in America's interest for this war to end.
00:30:23.000It is not in America's interest for this Ukraine war to continue.
00:30:28.000We have Zelensky leaving the White House early.
00:30:31.000Apparently, the agreement they were going to sign has gone unsigned.
00:30:35.000We saw a diplomatic deal collapse in real time.
00:30:39.000I've been reacting here with producer Andrew, who had to leave the doctor's appointment early, as well as Kurt Schlichter.
00:30:46.000We haven't played every video that we have available from this, so I kind of want to go back to play one of these, because they're pretty incredible.
00:30:55.000This is a very interesting argument over basically saying the word thank you.
00:31:01.000Let's play clip 272. It's going to be a very hard thing to do business like this, I tell you.
00:31:08.000I said a lot of times to American people.
00:31:12.000Except 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.
00:33:01.000It says the rare earths deal was not signed.
00:33:06.000The White House claims that the Ukrainians were begging to reset And then she adds this.
00:33:34.000this this is incredible when I went to the upper press to ask what was going on the lunch that Trump and Zelensky were supposed to be dining on and while talking was sitting out in the hallway I am told that White House press office staffers will be eating it so that's the current state of things Zelensky kicked out of the White House and told, come back when you're ready for peace.
00:35:24.00035%, though, is an incredible amount of people in this country that I guarantee you are rooting for foreign nations that are going to be siding with Zelensky.
00:35:33.000And that 35%, when you take it to our press corps, is probably more like 85%, 90%.
00:35:38.000So don't expect, you listening in the audience, for the U.S. media to look favorably on what just happened.
00:35:45.000They're going to say this is blowing up norms, it's destroying the world order that's been led by America.
00:35:53.000This is President Trump reasserting American dominance and American leadership in a pragmatic, realistic way on the global stage, telling our allies that they will not treat us like garbage anymore, and we're not your kicking post, and we're not your piggy bank, and we're going to assert our wants, needs, and desires, our interests, ahead of everybody else's, and to the extent that those align, fantastic, and to the extent they don't, too bad, so sad, get in line.
00:36:18.000I want to play, since we're talking about the press's reaction, let's play another clip of their reaction we did CNN earlier.
00:36:24.000Now we have MSNBC. Let's play clip 275. I certainly have never seen anything like what we just watched unfold between the president of the United States and the leader of another country.
00:36:36.000Give me your take on what we've just witnessed.
00:36:42.000We're on live TV, so I'm not going to speak in terms that I would speak if we were off the air.
00:38:41.000And I think Trump's already sized up the leverage.
00:38:44.000Kurt, if you want to reply, you've got about 30 seconds until our break.
00:38:47.000Look, I think that if you like Ukraine, if you truly like Ukraine, like the regime media pretends to, like the Democrats pretend to, they be honest and say, hey, Zelensky was totally out of line here.
00:39:11.000Yeah, so I was just thinking, as I watched that clip where, you know, what's his name on MSNBC was raving how horrific this is, I think it is worth pausing to reflect on what we've said a lot about the Ukraine war, which is, this is a war which 100% Did not have to happen.
00:39:30.000If you followed the lead-up to that war in late 2021, early 2022, Russia was very, very, very straightforward about what their grievances were with the West.
00:39:46.000They were saying, if we can make a deal on Crimea, if we can make a deal on leaving military assets away from the border, if we can make deals about who gets to join NATO and so on, They were ready to, they wanted some sort of negotiation.
00:40:10.000Hundreds of thousands of people from both countries are now dead because of this.
00:40:15.000We have the evidence that a peace could have been negotiated within the first few days of the conflict, which would have been a much better deal than we are likely to get now.
00:40:26.000It might have literally just been, We acknowledge Crimea and we acknowledge Donbass, which were two territories Russia already controlled at the time, that by all measurements appear to want to be a part of Russia anyway.
00:40:39.000And they threw all of that out and they insisted on plunging an unfortunate country.
00:40:55.000It is a tragic country that has had enough bad things happen to it.
00:40:59.000And we had war hawks in Washington, war hawks in Brussels, push them into a war that they could not win without foreign support when we weren't willing to send our own troops to do it.
00:41:11.000We had people saying, this is great because Ukraine is doing the dying for us to kill Russians.
00:41:19.000And now all of these people are going to have this moral outrage because Trump got mad at Zelensky for not being grateful for the billions of dollars we've already sent him.
00:41:28.000And I'm just in awe of how outrageous their moral posturing can be.
00:42:44.000You've got to know when you've been beat, when you have reached a stalemate.
00:42:50.000And the only sensible thing to do, I think Trump sees this, is to basically sue for peace.
00:42:55.000That's the only sensible thing that is left on the table because we're not going to keep bankrolling this quagmire forever.
00:43:04.000And on one level, and when we come back from the break, I'd love to get your opinion on this, Kurt.
00:43:09.000I do feel bad for Ukraine on some level.
00:43:13.000As Mersheimer said, and we're going to play this clip, they have been led down the primrose path by the West, saying that we were going to have their back to the bitter end.
00:43:38.000But how would we feel if the—and we got a taste of this with the Cuban Missile Crisis— if Russia was parked outside our doorstep, pointing nukes at us, pointing weapons at us, and advancing an alliance that they'd built closer and closer to our doorstep?
00:43:56.000Now, I'm not saying we would go bomb Cuba, but that was on the table.
00:43:59.000Kurt, you know, I'm not as good of a student of history as you.
00:44:02.000But listen, I mean, we've got to understand that Putin is maybe a malicious actor, but he's not an irrational actor.
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00:45:20.000This Trump press conference or press briefing with Zelensky ended with Zelensky departing, kicked out of the White House and told to come back when he is ready for peace.
00:45:33.000I have a message from a friend of mine that I think is pretty insightful.
00:45:37.000If I thought that my life and my country's survival depended on my ability to suck up to someone, I would just do it.
00:45:49.000To be more serious for a moment, it's sad to think, who are the people whose lives might end that didn't have to end because Zelensky couldn't help himself from picking a fight with the country that has bankrolled him more than any other country in the world?
00:46:07.000It's sad to think about, and it's unfortunate that it came to this, but you also find yourself thinking, was this a necessary thing that had to happen to show that we are serious?
00:46:47.000The Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West, because we will ultimately defeat Putin, and we will ultimately get our way.
00:46:56.000And of course, the Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians, and instead want to pursue a hardline policy.
00:47:05.000Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked.
00:47:27.000You know, Mearsheimer, for those who don't know him, he's a very esteemed foreign policy professor, written a lot of books about, you know, he's like considered basically the main guy in his branch of foreign policy studies, neorealism.
00:47:44.000He's been very astute on this conflict for basically a decade now where he just makes the point.
00:47:50.000And it was actually a point Obama made a decade ago is what's so funny about how it shows how fanatical the left has gotten, which is just Ukraine is next to Russia.
00:47:59.000It has been a part of Russia for most of the past 500 years.
00:48:03.000It is considered the cultural origination point of Russia.
00:48:08.000If you read a history of Russia, it doesn't start with Moscow.
00:49:30.000There's a lot of things going on there we don't fully get.
00:49:33.000We can approach understanding it, but there's nationalist fires, religious fires, all sorts of things going on that make this very, very dangerous to interfere in.
00:49:49.000and interference includes oh go ahead go ahead wave the red flag in front of the bull and maybe you'll scare the bull off or maybe the bull will charge uh unfortunately this bull charged and uh what we've had is a human tragedy unfolding for three years there's a way out and it's not going to be one like that ukraine likes but you know what it lost we have alex marlowe back He was speaking to us just a few minutes ago, and now he's back.
00:50:19.000Alex, did you get a chance to see any of those clips we had of the media reaction?
00:50:24.000We had MSNBC saying that this was, I think...
00:50:28.000And that was the word he had to use because he was on television.
00:50:30.000He couldn't say what he really thought.
00:50:32.000I have not had a chance to see the clips because I was doing another hit that I had pre-scheduled.
00:50:37.000So sorry to leave you guys for a little bit.
00:50:39.000But I'm on the MSNBC homepage right now and it's...
00:50:42.000Trump and Vance berate Ukraine's Zelensky in ugly Oval Office media, in ugly Oval Office meetings.
00:50:49.000So it's exactly what I predicted an hour ago, Blake, to you, which is that the media was going to try to spin this as Zelensky's the victim.
00:50:56.000And so I don't think all of them are going to be able to stick with this because it did look so bad.
00:51:00.000And the points that particularly Vance was making were so salient and so resonant that Trump is not getting enough credit for all the good that he's done for Ukraine over the years.
00:51:09.000And I think that once people realize that that's what was going on and Zelensky was being ungrateful, they're not gonna be able to hang on to this.
00:51:15.000I don't think for too long, but you knew they were going to try.
00:51:18.000They have to try because remember everything Trump does is bad and everything Zelensky does is good in the eyes of our press.
00:51:24.000And we have breaking news here, Let's go ahead and put up 288. So Zelensky has now gone on Twitter, X, and released the following statement.
00:53:03.000Because this was so surprising that Zelensky, who you would think would be a pro by now, I know he was a comedian, but he's been president.
00:53:09.000He was president of his country for four years, and then he's been a dictator of his country for the last year.
00:53:25.000He just completely, completely messed up here.
00:53:28.000And so he does need a full mea maxima culpa.
00:53:31.000And he needs to then sign the mineral deal.
00:53:34.000But that's why I wondered in the last hour with you guys whether or not the mineral deal is even a real thing.
00:53:39.000Maybe there's something else going on that we're not seeing, that we can't see quite yet, that maybe will come out later.
00:53:45.000But if this really was just Zelensky freaking out and not handling himself like a diplomatic leader trying to lead a massively consequential negotiation, then he's just got to try to take a mulligan.
00:53:58.000just say, "I'm sorry, let's sign the deal and let's move on." But can he do that?
00:54:02.000Is he capable of doing that when all he wants to do is beat Putin?
00:54:07.000I think that's been a really interesting dynamic here to the extent that Ukraine really wants to not have to make so many I mean, I think if you look at a map of Ukraine, Ryan, maybe you can grab that for us where the territorial expansion of the Russian forces into Ukraine has happened.
00:54:27.000I think he's looking at that map and he's already piecing it apart.
00:54:31.000He's saying, like, I'm going to give here, but I want that one.
00:54:33.000And I can't come out losing all of it, essentially.
00:54:40.000He's going to lose land, particularly the stuff that Putin took under Obama, and the gravy train is going to slow down.
00:54:47.000Knowing America is not going to completely stop, because unfortunately we keep sending money overseas at insane levels, but it's not going to be what it was, and there's going to be more accountability for everything that does get sent going forward.
00:54:58.000And so he's not really looking forward to this.
00:55:01.000He's choosing between bad options, and I don't think he likes the current slate of bad options that Trump has presented him, which is partially why he freaked out.
00:56:58.000He knows he's got to stay in alignment with the president on this.
00:57:01.000And so him coming out saying that is...
00:57:04.000I mean, I'm looking at the reactions on social media.
00:57:06.000It's like when you lose Lindsey Graham, you've lost everything, right?
00:57:09.000It's an amazing card to play and it speaks pretty...
00:57:13.000Pretty well to Trump's ability to use different assets and use different allies and keep them close for just such a time as this.
00:57:21.000Andrew, can I add something, Blake, which is so good.
00:57:26.000Going back to what we were talking about where I was half joking about him being a dictator, part of that is because...
00:57:32.000He's losing popularity, and even before this happened, there's a very good chance he wouldn't win if he called an election, which is partially why he's not calling an election.
00:57:40.000Now, his constitution does grant him the right to declare martial law, and thus he doesn't have to have an election.
00:57:48.000But again, that basically gives him an indefinite, he could just declare he's at war for infinity and never call an election again, which is why I maintain he is a dictator.
00:57:57.000But part of it is he thought he would win an election.
00:57:59.000He probably would have called it by now to get himself another four-year runway.
00:58:05.000And stuff like this could make it even more likely that he would lose.
00:58:09.000So maybe the move is if this thing does not get resolved very quickly, and Trump are the deal guys, so Trump knows how to negotiate this stuff better than I do.
00:58:16.000But maybe the move is if Zelensky does not come right back there, sign that deal, the move is to say the Ukrainian people, they need to have an election right now, frame it up that way, and that could be a huge squeeze.
00:58:32.000So we have a suggestion in our show chat that I think is amusing enough to read.
00:58:47.000So Lindsey Graham says Zelensky has to fundamentally change what if he came out tonight on Fox and did every network deliver an apology?
01:00:11.000It wasn't exactly the clip we wanted, but it's a good clip.
01:00:16.000And Lindsey Graham is out there defending President Trump quickly.
01:00:22.000Alex, what do you make of Senator Graham's tone there?
01:00:26.000Totally right, but Graham is a politician, so Graham's angling for something, and I don't have a total read on it right this second, but he is right.
01:00:33.000I mean, that was, I thought, masterful by Vance and Trump, and it will go down in their historical canon as one of their best moments.
01:00:39.000Defending America and doing it calmly and articulately, they presented great arguments.
01:00:44.000Trump swooping in there and saying to Zelensky, you have no right to tell us how to feel.
01:04:43.000Our sympathies still lie with Ukraine.
01:04:45.000If you took the polling as a nation as a whole, our sympathies are with Ukraine.
01:04:50.000I certainly feel sympathetic towards the Ukrainian people, less so towards Zelensky, who I think is an uppity foreigner, who has been swindling us out of a lot of treasure and his own people out of blood.
01:05:11.000And I think if he does it, if he signs it, if Zelensky moves forward with this, I think what you're going to see is you're going to see Trump come back into the side of Zelensky, use that as leverage against Russia, and they're going to hammer something out, and Ukraine's going to have to make some concessions.
01:05:31.000There's no reality here where Ukraine does not make a lot of concessions, but they can get peace, they can get neutrality, they can get European troops on the border.
01:05:43.000But, you know, this is a wake-up call for Vladimir Zelensky.
01:05:49.000He does not have nearly the leverage or the star approval that he thought he did in this country, and that ultimately will be a good thing.