Ben Shapiro dissects the "nuclear meltdown" between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where conflicting agendas over rare earth minerals and Donbass territory led to Zelenskyy's ejection after refusing to apologize. While Republicans like Lindsey Graham condemn Ukraine's behavior, Shapiro argues this signals a shift from American hegemony toward isolationism, threatening the dollar's reserve status and global trade lanes. The episode concludes by mocking the Oscars for promoting Hamas propaganda and celebrating diversity quotas, suggesting cultural decay mirrors foreign policy weakness. [Automatically generated summary]
President 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 Zelensky simply blew it.
We'll get to all that.
First, tomorrow night, Daily Wire backstage returns live for President Donald Trump's address to Congress.
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Okay, 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.
This is a long press conference.
It 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.
President Trump.
Vice President Vance, Vladimir Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, and how we got to the nuclear meltdown.
I want to remind you what a wise man wrote in October of 2022.
Quote, Henry Kissinger has been publicly excoriated for suggesting that the off ramp to this conflict will be territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia.
A repeat of the Moscow peace treaty that was signed after the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1941.
But he may be correct, particularly if the West is unwilling to bear the full economic and military cost of a larger war with Russia.
In the end, it may be that the least bad scenario is about simply preventing the worst case scenario.
That wise man, of course, was yours truly.
That has been the clear off-ramp.
For legitimately almost three years at this point.
And so my view when it comes to the war in Ukraine is whatever gets us to that durable off-ramp is good.
And whatever gets in the way of that durable off-ramp is bad.
That's all.
By 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.
So 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.
Now, there was an immediate conflict between what both parties wanted from this.
President 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.
This has been a long-standing belief of President Trump's that...
When 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.
There should be some sort of return to the American taxpayer.
Otherwise, in President Trump's beliefs, we are getting screwed.
That has been a longstanding Trumpian position.
But there is something else going on here.
And this was made clear during the press conference.
President Trump always saw the economic minerals deal as a sort of foot in the door to prevent a Russian invasion.
Because 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.
And President Trump is not wrong about this.
In 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.
The problem of perhaps the British Empire getting directly militarily involved, and so you don't want to screw with the British East India Company.
That is almost how President Trump is seeing the rare earth minerals deal.
That is what he's doing right there.
Meanwhile, 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.
If the final settlement does not involve actual explicit security guarantees, I can't actually go back to my people.
Which, 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.
They might have to, the United States, might have to go to Russia and say, listen, we know the outline of the deal.
You may not like it.
We may not like it.
Zelensky may not like it.
But, again, outline of the deal, Donbass and Crimea remain in Russian hands.
There are, in fact, security guarantees to the Ukrainians, and that's the best it's going to get.
Okay, so, entering this meeting, all President Trump wanted was a grip and grin.
All 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.
That the rare earth minerals deal was a sort of trigger force for the United States providing security guarantees.
And Trump comes very close to saying that several times in the actual meeting.
Zelensky comes in with another agenda.
And as we'll see, it's probably because he was prepped by Democrats, apparently.
He comes in and he wants President Trump in the room.
To say that he is going to give a security guarantee, a thing that President Trump does not want to do.
Because again, from President Trump's perspective, the United States should not have to provide that security guarantee.
Basically, Europe should have to provide that security guarantee.
So that is the setup right here.
Now, beyond that, there's personal dislike between these two leaders.
So Vladimir Zelensky does not like President Trump.
He's angry at President Trump.
He believes that President Trump and Vice President Vance do not like him.
That they've said nasty things about him, which is true.
That 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.
There's a case to be made that that's true as well.
The Trump Vance case is Zelensky is being intransigent because he wants my moral condemnation, but moral condemnation don't get the job done.
The thing that gets the job done is whatever gets us to that off-ramp.
So 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.
That is another one of these conflicts that's happening.
And, 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.
Zelensky was an actor.
He's an egomaniac.
Zelensky likes being on camera.
He made his money on camera.
There's all sorts of footage of him wandering around the internet when he was a comedian doing bizarre things, body humor kind of stuff.
That's who Zelensky is.
He's quite performative, like very performative.
And guess what?
So is President Trump.
And so, as it turns out, is Vice President Vance.
So that's the setup.
The powder keg is right there.
Now, it didn't have to go sideways.
It didn't.
Zelensky 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.
But Zelensky really blows it.
I mean, he really, really blows it here.
I will say, of the three people in the room, the adult in the room is Trump.
By far, it's not close.
Zelensky comes in.
He's very aggressive.
He is, in fact, rude to President Trump.
He's a little rude to J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance.
I do not think acquits himself well in this particular exchange.
I know there are people on the right who think that J.D. Vance handled himself beautifully here.
I 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.
That may be emerging.
It's kind of an interesting conversation.
We'll save for a little later in the show.
What are the ramifications of all of this?
Which direction does the world go after this blow up of a meeting?
Okay, now I want to get into the actual meeting.
So as you can see, the interpersonal dynamics are already set from the very beginning for things to be pretty contentious.
When Vladimir Zelensky shows up at the White House, he is wearing a sort of military jumpsuit.
And now this has been a sort of bugaboo for many people on the right for a long time.
Zelensky wears what Trump has called a costume.
Why does he wear a suit?
Now, would it have behooved Zelensky to wear a suit for Trump?
Absolutely.
What's the downside?
I 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.
Is it really more important that he shows up in the jumpsuit as some sort of, you know, slap in the face at Trump?
Again, 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.
If that's the case, then Zelensky actually got something that he wanted out of this whole situation.
But you can see right from the get-go, there's some antagonism right at the outset.
And Zelensky, you can see, is a little bit ticked off.
Obviously, there's a huge size differential.
Zelensky is not a big man, and Trump is a very large human being.
And then they finally sit down, and they have this conversation.
So 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.
And we should recognize that conversations like this have wide-ranging ramifications in terms of future policy.
For example, The Iraq War was largely begun.
The 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.
And so her name was April Glaspy.
And the State Department had told Saddam Hussein that Washington had no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.
And at that point, Saddam took that seriously and he walked into Kuwait.
So, stray comments, certainly big blowups like this, can have some pretty radical ramifications for how foreign policy is conducted.
So you can see from Zelensky's body language, he's immediately on his guard.
He's already very nervous.
He's clearly not liking what he's hearing from Trump.
But what Trump is saying here is extremely good for Zelensky.
Zelensky came in oriented against Trump from the beginning.
And you can see what Trump is saying here is he's looking for some sort of win.
That's all.
He says right from the beginning.
We had a negotiation spat, but that worked out great.
And we're looking forward to getting in and digging, digging, digging, working, getting some of the rare earth.
But it means we're going to be inside, and it's a big commitment from the United States.
What is he saying there?
What 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.
Now Zelensky comes out firing.
Zelensky comes out, and he's like, I want a security guarantee in the room.
Okay, which again, you understand why he wants it.
He is the president of Ukraine.
He does not want another negotiation that ends with, in two years, the Russians coming back in.
However, these are negotiations that you save for the back room.
This is not stuff that you do in the front room.
Why is he negotiating in the room with President Trump?
Trump isn't rejecting a security guarantee outright here.
Trump has said nothing about a security guarantee.
It's Zelensky, who starts pushing him right out the gate.
So Trump says, of course, we're going to sign an agreement.
All 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.
That's what this is.
And Zelensky keeps pushing because he feels like publicly he needs to push.
I 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.
Or if this was all a sort of design to blow up the meeting in order to get the Europeans to step in.
I'm not sure what Zelensky's strategy here was.
All I know, it's a very, very bad strategy.
So, President Trump, again, being very sober about all of this.
And for all the talk about how Trump was the one who was combative in this, he really was not.
For 40 minutes, he sat there while Zelensky effectively attempted to negotiate a deal in the room.
And here is President Trump talking about compromise.
Now you can see a fundamental difference between Trump and Zelensky here.
Zelensky thinks that the United States is full-fledged on the side of Ukraine.
In 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.
And Trump says, listen, I got to broker a deal.
I want the deal.
Now, 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.
You know we want a deal.
We've been very obvious about how we want a deal.
I've been giving you all sorts of props in public.
If you don't make a deal, then we're going to ratchet up support because we can't just let you win by default, right?
But that's not actually the approach that Trump is taking, and that's arguable.
But, again, in the meeting, so far, Trump is the person who's being mature, and Zelensky is the person, as I say over and over again.
You can hear him being combative.
This is for 40 minutes.
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Okay, so again, you can see Zelensky is saying that Putin can't be trusted, this is why we need security.
And again, I don't think that Zelensky is wrong about this per se, but why is he negotiating all of this?
He's not going to get what he wants in the room.
So, 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.
And there are people inside the Republican Party who clearly want to do this.
But I'm not sure that that is what President Trump wants.
There's been a lot of talk about Trump, for example, pulling out of NATO. Some loose talk.
Elon Musk suggested that over the weekend.
That would be, I think, a terrible move.
There's been a lot of talk.
About 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.
And we'll get into that in a little bit.
But here's President Trump projecting that outright.
For 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.
The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.
We 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.
So he occupied our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of East and Crimea.
So 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.
So Vance's first sentence in response to Zelensky is the correct response.
And that should have been the end of the meeting.
He should have said, you know, President Zelensky, I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that will actually end this war properly.
We're going to have these discussions behind closed door.
Instead, Vice President Vance takes the opportunity to throw two grenades.
One is directed at President Trump and one is directed at Zelensky.
The 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.
And walking around Pennsylvania with Josh Shapiro.
That is clearly directed at Trump.
Okay, the reason he is mentioning that is to piss Trump off.
Because that is like a red flag in front of a bull.
If 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.
If you mention that in front of Trump, Trump is going to get enraged.
He's also going to get enraged because Vance...
He says out loud what Trump has probably been thinking.
Trump's like, I've been contained this whole time.
And Vance says, you're being really, really disrespectful.
Okay, 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.
Meanwhile, he then says to Zelensky a thing that no leader can sit there and hear, which is, you're losing the war.
You're having to forcibly conscript people, right?
Which is an accusation about, you know, the inhumanity of the Ukrainian regime that, frankly, Vance didn't use with regard to, say, Vladimir Putin.
Who has kidnapped apparently tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and then taken them back to Russia for russification and all of this?
So you can hear.
This is the part.
So Zelensky started it.
And then J.D. just pours the fuel on the fire, like really pours the fuel on the fire.
I'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.
Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military?
And 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?
Except 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.
Okay, so, Zelensky is so obviously spoiling for a fight.
He's so obviously spoiling for a fight.
And J.D. pushes back on him in a way that is designed to blow up the entire thing.
The people who wanted the fight in this meeting...
Our Zelensky on the one side, who clearly was spoiling for a fight from pretty much the first moment.
And 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.
One designed to piss off Trump and one designed to piss off Zelensky.
And Zelensky, who's been spoiling for a fight the whole time, jumps on that grenade with his chest.
I mean, jumps on that grenade.
And then he gets into a fight with Trump in the Oval Office.
And then Trump, predictably, the fallout is that President Trump says, well, we don't, you know, get out.
Trump throws him out of the Oval Office.
And then he releases a statement on Truth Social.
We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today.
Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure.
It's amazing what comes out through emotion.
I'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.
I don't want advantage.
I want peace.
He disrespected the United States of America and his cherished Oval Office.
He can come back when he is ready for peace.
Okay, so what is the actual impact of all of that?
Now, again, the reality is...
At the end of the war, as I say, from the very beginning, the end of the war is Russia ends up with control of Donbass and Crimea.
Security guarantees are issued by Europe.
There's some tacit American support of those security guarantees in all likelihood.
Whatever accelerates the process toward that is good.
Whatever decelerates the progress toward that is bad.
Did this whole tête-à-tête accelerate the progress toward that?
So many things can be true at once.
One, I think Trump was the adult in the room pretty much his entire time.
Two, Zelensky came in spoiling for a fight.
And 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.
Three, Vice President Vance definitely escalated this.
You can hear it in the exchange.
It is Zelensky who is pushing Trump and Vance, but it is Vance who decides to get incredibly personal.
And 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.
Zelensky then made the swars.
Again, this is either brutal incompetence by Zelensky or an attempt to essentially drive support for Ukraine from the Europeans via hatred of Trump.
It may be that.
Could easily be that.
So Zelensky goes on Bret Baier that same evening.
And here is Zelensky over and over and over refusing to apologize to the president.
Okay, so did any of this like change the underlying dynamics of the deal?
Maybe not, but...
The perceptions from other players, say Russia and China, are going to matter.
So Russia put out a statement saying that the United States' sudden shift in foreign policy, quote, largely aligns with its own position.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quote, the new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.
This largely aligns with our vision.
There's a long way to go because a lot of damage has been done to the whole complex of bilateral relations.
But if the political will of the two leaders, President Putin and President Trump, is maintained, this path could be quick and successful.
And of course, they then insulted Vladimir Zelensky throughout all of this.
So, 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.
That is the big question that comes out of all of this, and we'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so the Republican reaction to this was to condemn Zelensky quite proper.
So Lindsey Graham, there's no bigger backer in Congress of the Ukraine involvement by the Americans than Senator Lindsey Graham.
He said that Zelensky probably should resign over all of this because he's now blown out his level of support with Americans.
So, 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.
unidentified
I think Vladimir Putin is an old-school communist, a former KGB agent.
He's not to be trusted, and he is dangerous.
No, they're not abandoning Ukraine.
I was with the president a day before that meeting, and he was excited about this mineral rights deal.
He believed it, and we all believed it, to be in the best interest of both countries.
We understand that he is a dangerous adversary, and he is the one that provoked the war.
Well, something has to change.
Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude.
And we need to figure out, is there a way to get them to stop the war?
And 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.
That's the goal here.
It's that simple.
Can we try to sit with them and figure out whether there's anything?
What are the Russians' demands?
Under what conditions would the Russians be willing to stop this war?
And as I said, we don't know what those are because we haven't talked to them in three years.
That's the singular goal here is to try to bring about an end.
That'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.
It's just ridiculous.
His requests were ridiculous.
They were not reasonable.
The president let it go for a while.
He was there to make peace.
Our president is there to make peace.
As he said, end the death.
And Zelensky was not there to make peace.
He was there to strike some sort of make-believe bargain that he had in his mind.
The British ambassador to the United States, again, Peter Mandelson, he said that that was the whole point.
The 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.
unidentified
And yes, I do think it would be a good idea if he signed the economic and commercial deal put forward by the United States.
And 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.
It will mean that U.S. commercial interests, U.S. individuals, citizens will be on the ground there.
And 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.
OK, by the way, you know who agrees with all this?
Donald Trump!
Donald Trump agrees with all this.
So...
Yesterday, President Trump went to Truth Social and he posted a quote from some dude named Michael McKeown, who I've never heard of.
And here's the quote he posted, quote, Now Zelensky will have no choice but to back down and accept Trump's terms.
But here's the genius part.
Trump is actually protecting Ukraine without dragging the U.S. into war.
By negotiating a mineral drill, Trump ensures that Americans will be involved in Ukraine's mining industry.
This prevents Russia from launching an invasion because attacking Ukraine would mean endangering American lives, something that would force the U.S. to respond.
Trump played both sides like a master chess player.
In the end, Zelensky will have no choice but to concede, because without U.S. support, Ukraine cannot win a prolonged war against Russia.
And once U.S. companies have mining operations in Ukraine, Putin will be unable to attack without triggering massive international consequences.
Don't underestimate Donald Trump in this game of chess.
He's 10 moves ahead of everyone.
Okay, so that's what Trump was trying to do.
Trump was trying to give Zelensky the W, and Zelensky wouldn't take the W. So why did this go so wrong?
Well, 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.
Quote, 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.
Quote, just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington.
He 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.
The 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.
But apparently, again, the goal here for Democrats was to basically sink the deal.
So 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.
Here he was now suggesting that Trump was a Putin acolyte for the failure of the meeting.
So in other words, Murphy sent Zelensky to get absolutely creamed in that meeting.
And then he turns around and says that Trump is working for Putin.
It is absolutely shameful what is happening right now.
The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin.
Every 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.
For the last week, the White House has been pretending as if Ukraine started this war.
Yeah, you can hear people screaming at various cars.
They're just trying to go skiing for the weekend, so that's just absolutely delightful.
What are the actual impacts from all of this?
Well, on the one hand, it could be that Europe finally steps up, and Trump actually gets what he wants out of this.
That Europe decides that they are going to actually fill the gap.
According 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.
British 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.
He said more countries would need to come on board if Europe is to build a force that would actually deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Well, I mean, that's what Trump has been calling for all the way.
And it's very weird to hear the Europeans suddenly doing the stuff that Trump actually wants them to do.
Like, for example, spend on defense and commit to defending their own continent.
Here is Ursula von der Leyen, she's the head of the EU, suggesting, weirdly enough, peace through strength.
Basically, we've discussed everything that is around peace through strength.
And, of course, security guarantees are of utmost importance for Ukraine, but we need comprehensive security guarantees.
This 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.
Maybe Zelensky's play was alienate Trump, knowing that Trump doesn't like him very much.
And then...
Play up to the Europeans and get what we want from the Europeans.
There's some problems with that, namely that the United States' materiel is way better than the Europeans' materiel.
And 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?
I 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.
So in other words, they paid the Russians more than they sent to the Ukrainians.
Which just shows you their levels of commitment.
But perhaps reality is starting to set in for the Europeans.
The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, he said, of course Europe should step up.
It's bizarre for Europe to ask the United States to be the one that actually fills the gap.
unidentified
Ladies and gentlemen, there's a paradox and someone has already overlooked it.
Okay, so, again, Trump seems to be getting what he wants here.
Europe steps up.
They do the heavy lifting.
Probably Zelensky has to come back and sign some sort of deal with the United States.
And the deal gets cut.
In which case, good job.
Everybody goes home happy.
The reason there's a lot of heartburn.
That is happening around this meeting is not really to do with Ukraine.
It really isn't to do with Ukraine.
The question is whether there is a resetting of the world order that is happening right now.
Now, 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.
The 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.
On a sort of Wilsonian moral level without actually filling that gap.
That is ending.
And the era of sort of hard power is returning.
But the question really is whether the Trump administration, what the Trump doctrine is.
Now I've said before on this show, because President Trump told me on this show, that the Trump doctrine is peace through strength.
That America stronger in the world is better.
That America with strong allies is in fact better.
But there's an open question.
Because it turns out that there are members of the Trump administration.
We don't necessarily believe all of that.
So 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.
Perhaps he could share this vision with the country when he addresses Congress on Tuesday.
The conventional view of Mr. Trump is that he's above all transactional.
He wants deals at home and abroad that he can sell as great successes.
But the way his second term is unfolding, this may undersell his ambition.
Mr. 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.
Now, that is the question.
That's the question.
The 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.
He says Trump hasn't articulated this.
This is the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Trump hasn't articulated this.
Some of the intellectuals surrounding him have.
Elbridge 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.
But Colby has also said South Korea might have to fend for itself.
And he said in a letter to us last year, quote, Taiwan isn't itself of existential importance to America.
Mr. Vance is the most vigorous promoter of the abandoned Ukraine strategy, arguing the war with Russia is little more than an ethnic dispute.
Ross 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.
So this is the question.
The question is whether what we are looking at...
Is America withdrawing from the world, ceding the Far East to China, allowing America's allies to basically run on their own in those areas?
And if they get invaded or taken over, Taiwan, South Korea, well, that's their business.
Whether Eastern Europe will be left open to the predations of the Russians.
Whether the Middle East will basically be left up for grabs between Turkey, Iran, Saudi, the Israelis.
And what that will look like.
What does it look like in America withdrawing from the world?
That's sort of the open question after the Trump-Ukraine meeting.
Is 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?
Now, I don't know that that's the case.
In fact, I think that's probably not the case because the truth is there are a lot of conflicting signals.
It 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.
I may not agree with the means, by the way.
I may think, The best approach to Vladimir Putin is to say, listen, you can see we're making every possible signal.
We're saying it openly.
We want a deal.
We want to get to a deal.
That deal will keep you Donbass and Crimea.
That deal will not allow you to invade the rest of Ukraine.
That's the deal.
And if we don't get that deal, then we're going to pour resources into Ukraine.
We're going to hit you so hard.
Because again, that is how Trump typically negotiates.
So it's kind of weird he's not doing that here.
Typically, the way that Trump negotiates is Colombia does something we don't like.
We threaten to increase our tariffs on Colombia to 50% and the next day they cave.
President Trump has no problem throwing his weight around.
And 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.
What are the signs of Russian conciliation?
If we saw those, I might be on board with that.
I'm waiting to see those still.
It seems to me that what actually happened in terms of real politique is that Russia now feels emboldened.
If you're Vladimir Putin, don't you pour troops across that border as soon as possible?
You now know that Zelensky and Trump don't get along, that the United States is not fond of Zelensky.
They don't like how he's handling it.
That the Europeans, for all of their big talk, aren't going to do much in the moment.
Wouldn't you try to push as hard as you can?
Because that is the Russian strategy, is to push where there's mush.
I mean, the war may have been lengthened by this meeting, not shortened by this meeting.
I don't know.
We'll see how it works out.
But the real question is overall American approach toward foreign policy.
So I'm going to talk for a second about why, in general, America's involvement in the world matters for America.
Here's some stuff that you're not going to hear me say.
I'm not going to talk about democracy.
I'm not going to talk about Wilsonian values.
I'm not going to talk about the spreading of free speech and the blessings of liberty.
All that stuff is super nice.
It's great.
If we can get it, terrific.
But that is not at the center of America's interest.
You know what's at the center of America's interest?
A thriving America.
That's what the center of America's interest is.
This 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.
Aficionados.
Let's be real.
After the Iraq War, everybody is now in the real policy category.
There are very few Wilsonian thinkers who think that it's the job of the United States to spread democracy everywhere in the world.
That rhetoric has been blown up.
It's why it was so irritating when Joe Biden used to use it.
America's national interest does in fact rely on a strong America abroad.
Because here's the thing.
With us being the world's hegemon comes enormous economic benefit to the American people.
So, 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.
That is not the way this works.
We sell our debt, trillions of dollars of debt, every single year abroad.
The question is, why does the rest of the world buy American debt?
And there are several reasons.
One, they think that we'll repay them.
And this has several elements.
One, we are economically strong.
Well, part of America's economic strength is not, in fact, autarky, overpriced products.
One of America's economic strengths is that we are not a highly regulated society, unlike much of Europe.
Our tax structure is better than that of Europe in many ways, particularly for business.
We are more globally competitive.
Our economic strength relies, yes, on globalization.
I know that that word has taken on weird connotations.
All that means is that when we trade with other countries, That's actually typically very good for the United States.
It makes better products and services at a cheaper price.
Our innovation tends to win.
Our economic strength is the reason that people buy our debt, because they figure we're the best bet on the block.
Two, foreign policy strength, which undergirds that economic strength.
This 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.
It happens because the United States Navy is guarding all the shipping lanes on planet Earth.
It is the United States that ensures the Straits of Malacca, where a huge percentage of world trade goes, is open.
The 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.
In 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.
And then finally, lack of viable alternatives.
Right?
Because we occupy so much space on planet Earth, that means there is no alternative to investing in the United States.
What are you going to invest in China?
China's a debt-driven society.
You're going to go invest in the EU? The EU is the most non-innovative society in the developed world by far.
Okay, second, why does the rest of the world buy American debt?
Because they want fungible assets that translate into dollars.
So, for example, foreign banks will buy American bonds.
Why do they buy American bonds?
That's debt.
Because they can then easily exchange those bonds for dollars.
And people need dollars because dollars are the world's reserve currency.
What does that mean that dollars are the world's reserve currency?
You hear that all the time.
It's a huge thing that the dollar is the world's reserve currency.
That means an enormous percentage of trade all around the world, not involving the United States, happens via the dollar.
So, for example, if, for example, the Indians want to trade with the Chinese, they both translate to dollars.
They don't just go rupee to yuan.
Instead, they both translate to dollars.
It's true all over the world.
If 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.
So 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.
So according to the Brookings Institute, 54% of all global trade invoices are done purely in dollars.
And then, even the ones that are not done in dollars, the foreign exchange happens in dollars.
88% of all foreign exchange transactions happens in dollars.
And there you are talking about tens of trillions of dollars every single year.
And this has huge benefits for the United States.
Because when people buy our debt, because they want access to the dollar, it funds our welfare state.
Who's paying for that?
It ain't you.
It ain't taxpayers.
It's debt.
It injects capital into our markets.
If there's lots of dollars wandering around abroad, those dollars have to go somewhere.
And it turns out a lot of those dollars...
Go into our capital markets, our stock market.
It 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.
It gives us leverage in foreign policy.
So what keeps the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency?
Well, there are a few factors.
One, stability of the currency, and that requires stability in the country.
That means economic growth in the United States.
Two, availability of the dollars.
If 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.
So that means that trade, that means that global involvement matters an awful lot.
Now here's an example.
The 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.
The 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.
In 1950s and 1960s, the United States wildly overspent.
We spent way too much money on our welfare programs, and we'd started to bankrupt ourselves.
So what happened is massive gold outflows.
What 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.
And so Nixon said, we're not going to be dependent on gold anymore.
We stopped pegging the U.S. dollar to gold.
So that should have completely debased the dollar, right?
Because now what is it pegged to?
Well, instead, Nixon pegged it to the full faith and credit of the United States, right?
Look at your dollar bill.
That's essentially what it says.
So how did we ensure that people would trust the dollar?
Well, one of the ways is we created something called the petrodollar system.
So we went to Saudi Arabia, which was at the time with OPEC, the dominant oil trading firm on planet Earth.
And we said that they should only use dollars for transactions involving oil.
So if you wanted to buy oil from Saudi, you couldn't use a ruble.
You couldn't use a yuan.
You had to use a dollar.
What did Saudi get in exchange?
We would provide military protection, economic aid, and security guarantees to Saudi.
And so again, foreign policy matters an awful lot for domestic economic policy, for how we spend, for the value of the dollar.
What factors undermine the dollar as the world's reserve currency?
Well, number one, foreign policy weakness.
If we retreat, then it turns out people don't want dollars as much.
They do not see us as a good bet.
They also are going to move away from the dollar and start embracing more local forms of currency.
Every time we use economic weaponry, for example, its effects diminish.
So this is why peace through strength matters.
Peace through strength is a deterrent.
You don't want to have to use economic or military weaponry.
You spend on your military, so no one wants to screw with you.
And then you don't have to, for example, levy enormous sanctions on the Russians.
If we had had a peace through strength policy before Russia invaded Ukraine, then Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine.
And then we wouldn't have had to put giant sanctions on them.
And then the Russians wouldn't have moved into a full-on satrapy relationship with the Chinese.
And then they wouldn't have moved away from the dollar, which has led to a broader de-dollarization.
Other factors, domestic overspending.
If we spend too much money on our welfare programs, this makes us way more dependent on foreign purchases of our debt.
If we withdraw from world markets in trade, that makes dollars way less available.
And 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.
So what would actually happen if we lose that status?
Why is all this important to you?
One, massive increase in borrowing costs.
So the national debt, we can no longer pay that off.
We can no longer sell more of it.
That means radically increased taxes at home or radically increased inflation or both.
Two, currency depreciation and inflation.
Because if less people are buying the dollar globally, the price of the dollar goes down.
If there's less demand...
And the supply remains the same.
The price of the dollar goes down.
So that means all your prices go up.
It means less foreign investment in U.S. financial markets.
So your stock prices drop as well.
The availability of capital to start businesses drops pretty dramatically as well.
And, of course, we lose our ability to use economics as leverage.
We 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.
So all this is materializing in real time.
As the United States retreats from the world, As the United States loses its relative power, it's not absolute power, it's relative power.
As that happens, things start to get worse.
Here is a chart of the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency.
And 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...
56%.
That is a massive decrease in the U.S. dollar as a share of foreign reserves.
That is a problem.
It's something that we should be looking to fix.
The 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.
Again, that is not for the good of other countries.
That is for the good of you.
That is the good for me.
That is good for American citizens.
At no point during this little disquisition have I mentioned the following words, democracy, liberalism, free speech, sexual orientation.
I've not mentioned any of those things.
And when you're talking about clear, real politic interests, that is why it matters how the United States orients itself to the world.
And 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.
Palestinian Terrorism and Exterminationist Hatred00:04:35
It doesn't require an invasion of the United States.
We have big oceans, thank God, in order for the United States to suffer.
Because 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.
Meanwhile, as it turns out, other things were happening on planet Earth that were not important at all.
That would be the Oscars last night.
So this may be the first you heard of the Oscars because no one watched any of the movies.
We 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.
The 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.
These schmucks got up.
A person named Basil Adra, Rachel Jor, Hamdan Balal, and Yuval Abraham.
It'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.
Actually, not all that difficult a task.
So there's a movie, a documentary called No Other Land, which earned approximately 128th of Am I Racist, I believe, at the box office.
And 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.
But, you know, Hollywood's going to be Hollywood.
unidentified
About 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.
Always feeling...
Always...
Always feeling settlers' violence, home demolitions, and forest-built displacements that my community, Masaf Riyatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.
No 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.
The 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.
When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal.
We 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.
There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with...
National rights for both of our people.
And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.
The Palestinians are by and large supportive of terrorism against Israelis and wish to exterminate the state of Israel.
The 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.
The reason for checkpoints is because of terrorist attacks.
The reason that Israel has to maintain a military presence in these areas and put its own people in harm's way.
It's because of Palestinian terrorism and exterminationist hatred for Jews.
So 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.
Okay, meanwhile, there were some good things that happened during the show.
I think the best moment came when Karen Culkin was given an award for a movie called A Real Pain.
He won Best Supporting Actor.
And his speech was really, really charming.
He basically suggested that he get his wife pregnant for the fourth time.
About 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.
It turns out she said that because she didn't think I was going to win.
And people came up to her and were like, you know, really annoying her.
I think it got to her.
But anyway.
After the show, we're walking through a parking lot.
She's holding the Emmy.
We're trying to find our car.
Emily, you were there, so you're a witness.
And she goes, Oh, God, I did say that.
I guess I owe you a third kid.
And I turned to her and I said, Really?
I want four.
And she turned to me.
I swear to God, this happened.
It was just over a year ago.
She said, I will give you four when you win an Oscar.
Deep respect for people who sell their body for money.
The whole movie, by the way, is a repudiation of that.
The reason she's sad at the end is because she has to go back to being a sex worker.
And that sucks.
It 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.
Mikey Madison won Best Actress over, apparently, Demi Moore.
So 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.
Anyway, here is Mikey Madison also thanking the Prostitutes of America.
unidentified
I also just want to, again, recognize and honor the sex worker community.
I will continue to support and be an ally.
All 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.
No more incredible experience than hanging out with the prostitutes.
Okay, also, Daryl Hannah showed up to show support for Ukraine.
Now, 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.
I 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.
Also, Adrian Brody won Best Actor for again playing a veteran of the Holocaust.
So he played a very similar part when he won for The Pianist, and now he won again for The Brutalist.
And I have to say, it is pretty incredible that...
He tried to call out anti-Semitism, but Hollywood is so perverse that he can't just call out anti-Semitism in a movie about anti-Semitism.
He also has to call out racism and all the rest of it.
In Hollywood, the way that it works is you can't say anti-Semitism without saying, also, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
It's like a formula.
And if you don't say the magical incantation, then they smite you.
Here is Adrian Brody.
unidentified
I'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.
And I believe that I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world.
And I believe if the past can teach us anything, it's a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.
Best actors who are black, best actresses who are black, best directors who are black.
And so now we've reached the point where we need standing ovations for the first black man to win best costume design.
When 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.
Here we go.
unidentified
I'm the first black man to receive the costume design award.
Until 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.
But 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.
I think finally we're there.
Okay, that was the whole Oscars, basically.
Conan O'Brien was fine.
He didn't do anything particularly shocking or wonderful.
He wasn't as annoying as some of the other hosts.
He wasn't Jimmy Kimmel or something.
Maybe one of the best moments for Conan was joking with Adam Sandler, who showed up in shorts and a t-shirt, basically.
unidentified
For such a prestigious night, it's important that everyone is properly dressed, okay?
All 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.
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