And I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, Oh, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it.
You could have made a deal. And amongst all of those words, You should have never started it, aimed at Ukraine. Naturally enough, a response coming very quickly from the Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelensky, who said that Donald Trump was living in a disinformation space, so you don't have to be an expert in diplomacy to understand that things between the US and Ukraine are not too good.
Welcome to Américast. Américast. Américast from BBC News.
Hello, it is Mariana, a. K. A. Misinformation in the worldwide headquarters of Américast in London.
It's Anthony here in Washington, DC.
It's Justin at home in South London. I suppose we ought to start with where we are in time, first of all, because everything is moving so fast. So it is, what is it? It's about a quarter past two in the afternoon London time on Wednesday, and we are now a week in to Trump Putin diplomacy, if I can call it that. In other words, it's been a week hasn't it, Anthony, since that phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Right. That was what kicked us all off. The first time that the American President had spoken with the Russian President since before the Ukraine war, had a dramatic departure from the way Joe Biden and his Democratic administration were handling Russia, making them or trying to make them into an international pariah, massive sanctions. Well, here you have Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, apparently having a very warm phone call. That set up this meeting in Riyadh, hosted by the Saudis, between Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, and the Russian Secretary of State, the Russian Foreign Minister, Serge Lavrov. And it went from there.
Yeah, and it went from there, Mariana. Number one, that was shocking enough. Number two, it went on because Donald Trump's now given an interview and a press conference as well, hasn't he? Where he said what we've just heard him say. But he also said that there ought to be elections in Ukraine. He was really down on Zelenskyy himself, wasn't he? I mean, this has become quite personal between the two of them.
Yeah, it really has, actually. I mean, maybe it doesn't come as that much of a surprise that Zelenskyy has come out pretty strongly to respond to the talks that were happening and particularly to the lack of invite for Ukraine. In a press conference that he gave in Ukrainian in response to a question that was all about Trump saying he had low approval rating, Zelenskyy then said, Another story, since we're talking about percentages, we're seeing a lot of disinformation, and it's coming from Russia. We understand this, and we have proof that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as a leader of a nation that we respect greatly, the American people, is living in this disinformation space. What he's talking about is Donald Trump claiming that Zalinsky's approval rating is very low, that it's at 4%. Zalinsky has then pointed to a recent poll which suggests suggests. He's actually at 57%, so much more popular. I mean, as always is the case with polling, all of this is suggests, and they haven't had an election in a long while, not at least before the war, because there has been a war going on.
So There are disputed numbers around whether he is the most popular person. There are other polls that suggest he's trailing other rivals. There's an army chief who could do pretty well if they did have an election right now, the polling would indicate. But all of this becomes a tip for tap, really, where they're going back and forth on this concept of should there be an election? Remember the war happened after Zalinsky was elected and Poroshenko, who was the old President of Ukraine. You've got this minor back and forth, mine is probably the wrong word. You've got this very specific back and forth about the polling. Then I guess this wider concept of the disinformation space, which is Russia has a well-oiled propaganda machine, and it's very good at seeding certain narratives about Ukraine. Ukraine, I guess, because it's been battling with Russia, also has tended to put out certain narratives, establish certain ideas, as happens during wartime and after they were invaded by Russia. Remember, it didn't happen the other way around. But what it means is that you've got this quite complicated information battle where, I guess, Zelenskyy is saying, Well, what Donald Trump is using to inform his decisions isn't necessarily correct or true.
Then Russia will argue that what Zelenskyy is saying isn't correct It's not true either. You get in, as we spoke about on Monday's episode, actually a bit of a pickle.
What Donald Trump is saying tracks with Russia's propaganda goals, they're trying to undermine Zelinsky's legitimacy as the leader of Ukraine. They never liked him, as Mariana mentioned. And so calling for elections, saying that he isn't a democratic leader anymore, that all is trying to push him out because I think Russia thinks or hopes that whoever replaces him will be more willing to negotiate less aggressively anti-Russian. And so you see Donald Trump taking the sides essentially with Russia in this, echoing what Russia is saying in the same way that if you remember, Justin, in Helsinki at that meeting with Vladimir Putin during Trump's first term, Donald Trump stood there side by side and said he had no reason not to believe Vladimir Putin when he said that Russia didn't medal in the 2016 elections, even though US intelligence agencies had concluded that it had.
Yeah. So there are two responses to this, it seems to me, and I think it seems to a lot of people who know Donald Trump. I was talking to HR. I was interviewing him for another program, the guy who was one of the early adopters of Trump in the sense that he joined his first administration as National Security Advisor, worked on the inside, wrote a rather good book, didn't he, Anthony, about what it was like being in there? I can't remember quite the title of it, but It's something like Never a Dull Day or something like that. Anyway, so the HR, Monmouth Master's view is that you need people to get to Donald Trump and tell him stories that he grasps and latches onto, and that actually the exact words he uses, even when he says things that are simply flat, false, like that Ukraine started the war when they obviously didn't, that actually the thing to do is not just to argue with him from the sidelines, as it were, and shout back, but to tell him stories of real things that happened to convince him and get him on your side. It's difficult for fellow politicians to work out now what to do about this.
It seems to that Zalinski, his frustration understandably has boiled over, and he's used this word disinformation. Your least favorite word, Justin. My least favorite word. And in a sense It's a word... Well, it's funny you say that because it is a word, isn't it, that pushes a lot of buttons in the United States, because it's a word that's been weaponised by the progressive left, and certainly by the mainstream media, disinformation is often used as a way just of attacking right wing people. That's what they think anyway. The word disinformation, I assume faithfully translated from the Ukrainian, is itself, it seems to be problematic. Is that fair to say?
Yeah, I think the decision to use that word, you can understand and see how people who support Donald Trump, for example, would be quite reactive to it because there have been accusations of Donald Trump saying stuff that's not true and spreading disinformation, and then also accusations that that's unfairly applied to people on the right and not people on the left, and how does that all work and everything else. But I think it's important to understand that that word disinformation, I mean, what it literally means is the deliberate spreading of bad information. In the Russian context, Russia is well known for being incredibly brazen in how it spreads disinformation, actively saying that people who were caught up in attacks in Ukraine were actors or not real. Really extreme stuff. But like you say, it's those narratives that often are the most convincing or that stay with people, not least someone like Donald Trump, who is very good at also using scenarios that are quite emotive and a good way of explaining the political situation to other people. You can see how it's reached this point.
Honestly, I'm not that surprised. I think we all knew when Donald Trump won that there was going to be a shift in US policy towards Ukraine. I mean, Donald Trump talked about it on the campaign trail, and so did his vice President, JD Vance, and towards Russia, because Donald Trump had, even right after that attack, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump called Putin a genius for what he did. He maybe walked it back a little bit afterwards. But clearly, Donald Trump has a proclivity for reaching out to Vladimir Putin a certain admiration, repeatedly expressed. So this is obviously a huge shift in American foreign policy. But I don't know, are you at all surprised by how quickly it happened?
Yeah, look, well, here's the thing. I've just remembered the name of HR McMaster's book, actually. It was called At War with Ourselves. I thoroughly recommend it to people. So it's about the first Trump term. And HR McMaster comes in as national security adviser. He does, I think, about a year or so. And then they part on reasonably good terms, but Trump, what someone else, and HR McMaster goes on. But what he says is that what you've just said about the relationship between Putin and Trump is strange and is more than just a bromance. It's really quite peculiar. So HR McMaster tells the story in the book of a piece in the New York Post. This is the punchy New York tabloid that has great massive headlines on it. And there's a piece saying that Donald Trump has understood Vladimir Putin as no other politician can, or something very positive about Trump and quite positive about Putin. And Trump tells McMaster, his National Security Advisor, Cut that out and send it to Vladimir Putin. And master says, okay, and then obviously doesn't do it, and then says to Trump in a week or so later, says, look, I didn't do it because I didn't think it would do you any good, actually, to be like that.
In other words, there is a tendency towards fauning from Trump to Putin, as personal thing that I think has surprised some because I think that they believe that others, like Marco Rubia, the Secretary of State, like Keith Kellogg, the guy who's actually the envoy to Ukraine, who's there at the moment, like Walsh, the National Security Advisor, that these people might have tampered it and said, Well, let's not give away everything right at the start. In other words, yes, Anthony, it's no surprise at all that he's doing this because he promised to do it. He said he'd do it on day But what's a surprise, I think, to a lot of people is how much ground he's giving without apparently getting anything in return.
You had Pete Hegsef come out in Munich last week and say that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to think that they would keep all of their pre-. Right at the beginning without even using it as a bargaining chip. Yeah. So it is. It's a dramatic shift. And I find it really interesting looking at, say, Marco Rubio, who before he was Secretary of State, was a senator from Florida. He ran for President in 2016 against Donald Trump. They clashed repeatedly. He was viewed as a foreign policy hawk for most of his political career, maybe more hawkish towards China than Russia, but still definitely someone who wants a robust act of America that pushes back against perceived enemies. Here he is leading the negotiations. And I don't know if you read that release that the State Department put out right after the meeting with Lavrov It talked about the exciting economic opportunities that could come after the end of the Ukraine war. I was expecting them to start talking about a riviera on the Black Sea and how Russia and the US would rebuild it.
That already is a The air on the Black Sea, to be honest. That's very nice.
I will say that.
The readout that came after this meeting in Saudi Arabia between the Russian Foreign Minister and Rubio and various other delegates was agreeing to lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities, which will emerge from a successful end to the conflict in Ukraine. Do both of you think that is the primary goal, or is it about this personal stuff between Donald Trump and Putin, or is it even about the alignment of values that Russia sees itself, that America rather sees itself more aligned to Russia, say, than it would Ukraine?
Certainly, the right sees Russia and Vladimir Putin and has over the past decade in a more positive light. They see this ethnonationalist state that has close ties to the Orthodox Church that if you listen to Vladimir Putin, he pushes back against woke liberalism, and he echoes some of the things you hear within certain circles on the right. And so I think there are people in conservative circles here in the US who who view Vladimir Putin and Russia as a kindred spirit. When I was at the conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering of a bunch of Conservatives, CPAC, in Florida in 2022, it was just days after Russia invaded Ukraine. And that entire conference was more geared towards anti-China, and they really had difficulty pivoting to say anything critical about Russia. They didn't really... There hadn't been this buildup and groundwork laid for viewing Russia as an enemy. I mean, even actually, Marco Rubio spoke at that conference, and he said something along the lines of, however you feel about this Ukraine-Russia situation, we have to agree that innocent shouldn't be heard. It was very a mealy-mouth statement from him because he's a politician first, right?
He knew where the base, the audience was on Russia, and they didn't want to hear him criticize Russia even just days after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion.
Yeah. On the economic side of it and the potential economic benefits, it's pretty much in the longer term future. There are rare metals, aren't there, in Ukraine that could, in theory, be mined in huge amounts. But there are two problems with that. One, that's a long way off. The place is quite a mess. It's been really obviously badly damaged by war, but it wasn't anyway mining many of these materials before the war. The number two problem, But quite a lot of them, quite a high percentage, I've seen 20 or 30% are actually in the bit of Ukraine that has been occupied by Russia. It's a complicated picture. The idea that there's a immediate payback to the United States with mining companies going in and the next year, all of this stuff coming out, I think is a bit far-fetched, frankly.
Do you think we're at a point, Justin, now where the Ukraine and the United States are no longer allies?
Yeah, I mean, Zelensky came up with a rare metals or rare earth materials or whatever we're calling them in the first place. So it's rather come back to bitten him, to bite him, because I think he thought, oh, Donald Trump's transactional. I'll wave this idea that we've got all this stuff that might be these minerals metals, these rare earth metals that might be useful one day. I'll wave that in front of Trump, and then we'll carry on from there. Now, Trump has obviously listened really carefully and more carefully than the Ukrainians were first expecting. So, yeah, that's a problem now for Zelensky. As for their relationship, I don't think it's feasible. Well, it's not feasible, is it, to have a deal that is done. And I think actually, Marco Rubio has confirmed this, hasn't he, Anthony, that you can't do a deal in the end that doesn't include Zelensky. You can't do a deal that doesn't include Ukraine. So at some stage, he is going to have to have his serious input into whatever talks might be going on. On. I suppose that's where we really find out whether the United States and Ukraine have completely fallen out or not.
Yeah, I guess what you find out is whether the United States is willing to put the screws to Ukraine to accept a deal that they don't want to accept. Does the United States, well, I think it's pretty clear we're not going to provide much military support going forward. But does the United States start to cut off economic support? Does the United States start to use the tools that they've used on Russia for the past three years on Ukraine? We are still the world's the biggest economic power. We could make life very difficult for Ukraine if we wanted to do it. And I think that would be a sign that we aren't allies anymore, that we're treating Ukraine as just another country to push around. And What Donald Trump, when he looks at the minerals in Ukraine, I mean, this is a part of a pattern that Donald Trump has followed since he first became President. He talked about Iraq and Syria and what US was doing there, and we got to keep the oil fields Now, of course, as we mentioned earlier, Gaza having some prime oceanfront, seafront real estate, and now Ukraine with its rare earth minerals.
It's an exploitative, it's an almost colonialist view of American interaction with other nations. The question is, can America impose its will on these countries, or is a pushback going to be too big?
But that then brings up the whole business of its relationship with Europe and this schism that is just so fundamentally important because it's the end of a relationship that's basically, broadly speaking, existed since the end of the Second World War, this Atlantic Alliance. If this is the end of that, then my goodness, the world is in a very, very different place, isn't it? I wonder whether we are saying that all of this potentially amounts to a schism between Europe and the United States that is lasting and real and means eventually that the US just withdraws certainly its troops from Europe, and potentially it's feeling of allianceship with Europe as well.
I think that's definitely what some of the Europeans are thinking at this point. They've had, what, two emergency meetings in Paris now, NATO countries, European leaders, to try to figure out how to respond to Donald Trump. They see the writing on the wall. You've got to imagine that the leaders in the Baltic states, which are right there on the border of Russia that used to be part of the Soviet Union are wondering how firm the US defense obligations are to them. It turns, as you mentioned, almost as the 80 years, almost a century now of the North Atlantic order on its head. And while I think there are some people here in the United States that say, okay, we just have to last through four years of Donald Trump and then we can rebuild the alliance. Four years is a long time. And what Donald Trump is doing now, I mean, if you're If you're a European leader, can you really count on the United States now that it has elected someone like Donald Trump who has changed foreign policies so dramatically twice? Can you say that things will be back to the way they were, or is this the new normal?
Can't say they weren't worn, though. I mean, you'll remember Robert Gates, Anthony, from- I love it, Justin, when you say things that I won't remember. I'm only saying it because to me, and I suspect to Anthony, it was just yesterday that Robert Gates was defense secretary, wasn't he? In two administrations, Bush Jr. And then he stayed on, didn't he, for Obama. But I remember him. The reason I bring him up, he came here. I can't remember quite the circumstances, but he got really frustrated with Europe, didn't he, at one stage, and in terms said to European governments, You know what? You've got to start looking after yourselves, and you've got to start spending more on defense, et cetera, et cetera. This was before even the early invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, the initial incursion into parts of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. They were repeatedly, repeatedly warned, and there are some, aren't there, in the diplomatic community who, although they don't want this to happen, are frustrated that the Europeans couldn't see the writing on the wall a little before Donald Trump.
Justin, what you were just saying there, the rhetoric you're describing is almost exactly what JD Vance, when he was at this Munich security conference, was essentially saying about Europe. I mean, he went particularly hard about issues like immigration and freedom of expression as well, feeling like the continent of Europe and the United States are no longer aligned in those ways, which was quite interesting because the conference itself is obviously all about security. It felt like it really, again, it's this fusion between culture wars themes and then actual international diplomacy and how those seem to be playing into the decisions perhaps that the United States are making about who they want to be close to or who they don't. J. D. Vance spoke about this idea of Europe being a threat to itself, like a threat from within, rather than actually needing to worry about the external threats like Russia, for example, possibly.
The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
Again, to your point, Justin, the clues have all been there. The writing's on the wall. I mean, all this stuff has been all over Elon Musk's feed on X for quite a long time now.
But also they genuinely believe. I mean, even before Elon Musk, there were plenty of Americans on the right who genuinely believe that Europe's lost the plot. It's lost the plot over immigration. It's lost the plot over a whole range of cultural issues. It doesn't defend itself properly. It's refusing to pay. It's a place that is completely failing to manage to fight its weight, as it were in the modern world. And that has been a view of Europe from the United States, certainly on the right for some time. And the fact that he was there at the at making that speech in Munich. It caused exactly the reaction that I think the Trump administration would have expected. In other words, it just was all sorts of highly emotional stuff. One person even sobbed at the podium, and I think they just think the Europeans have lost it. I think all of it plays into this idea that Trump has of Europe being a bit of a waste of space, to be honest.
I mean, it's the reaction that the Trump administration probably expected and probably the reaction that they wanted. I mean, this was a speech that was as much reemphasizing Trump as domestic principles and priorities as also rubbing in the face of the European allies. But there are a couple of... That whole speech is worth reading, but there were a couple of remarkable things that you said that we just heard in that clip. I mean, comparing a Scandinavian teenager with the richest man in the world as far as tolerating what Elon Musk is doing and the power that Elon Musk is wielding within the American government. It doesn't seem like a fair comparison. Then to think that just three months or three years after Russia invaded a European country and tried to take it over to say that the greatest threat to Europe is internal and not Russia. I mean, that's a pretty dramatic thing to say as well. What do you think, Justin?
It certainly is and has caused huge controversy, not just in the European Union, but also here in Britain, but has also started or kickstarted a conversation that was begun, I suppose, by Elon Musk, but has certainly started politically now, and you've got elections coming up in Germany, and you've got all sorts of chaos in France politically as well. These two great engines of the European Union And it plays into that. There's no doubt at all that it's hit home. Quite what the longer term impact of it is, is going to be interesting to see. I mean, number one, is Europe going to step up to the plate in Ukraine? I mean, it's a challenge. If the Europeans are saying to the United States, we object to what you're saying about us. We can and will pay our way and look after the things that we think important. Well, there's the Will they do it? And specifically in Ukraine, will they pay for Ukraine to carry on fighting? It's an open question. But longer term, will Europe turn away from the United States? I mean, you think obviously it's policy towards China. If the US has abandoned Europe, then maybe Europe might abandon the US when it comes to being friendly with China.
In other words, might plot their own course of friendlier relationships with Beijing than the United States might want them to have. So there are all sorts of spin off things that you think could happen as a result of this fissure, if it really is a fissure.
Yeah, the United States has benefited enormously from the current international order, the international order that the United States really built after World War II. So be careful what you ask for, be careful what you wish for because the way all the dust settles in this could not be in a place that the United States is happy with.
Well, I was just going to say, I wonder where Zelenskyy and Trump really go from here because I imagine that Donald Trump will respond to those disinformation comments and very much stick to his guns. But you've got a problem here, which is that both of these people don't really seem... I mean, Donald Trump wants to make a deal, and Zelenskyy wants to keep doing what they've been doing, which is to try and repel this invasion of Ukraine. It just seems very hard to climb down from that, particularly in the current atmosphere. You can't really see a world where he suddenly turns around and says, Oh, okay, yeah, I'm all right with this. You wonder whether actually the decision to use words like disinformation. I've I'm thinking about it while we've just been chatting about all sorts of things, is because actually that appeals to the kinds of people he needs to be his allies here, and almost like he's accepted that Donald Trump will not be one of them. I don't quite see how it gets resolved without it ending in tears for someone.
Kia Starmer is sorted out. He's going out there next week, isn't he? When I say out there, he's going to Washington, Anthony. He's not really out there to you, is it? But he's crossing the pond.
And Donald Trump said he probably would meet with Vladimir Putin sometime this month. There's not much time left in this month, so we'll see. But clearly, a summit between the American and the Russian leader is in the cards at some point soon. Amerecast. Amerecast from BBC News..
As the Trump administration begins peace talks with Russian officials to end the war in Ukraine, President Trump himself seems to ...