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Aug. 16, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
29:31
Russia's Shifting Dynamic - August 15th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart podcast.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour, toll-free.
Our number is 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we're in Anchorage.
We're in Alaska, the summit with President Trump, Vladimir Putin.
Since they arrived, had a meet and greet.
There's been, at some point, they've worked in a lunch here.
We haven't gotten the full breakout of everything.
And the individual meeting that has taken place, a bunch of breakout sessions taking place.
And at that point, there's going to be, and probably immediately after this program, there's going to be a, we don't know if it'll be a joint pressure.
We don't know if it's just going to be President Trump.
At that minute, he probably will come to me.
I'm not sure if we're going directly live on Fox or if it'll air at 9 o'clock.
So it's going to be a pretty busy day.
Anyway, thank you for being with us and here to analyze the stakes.
And we've been going through every aspect of this.
George Beebe is the director of the Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Now, he spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, policy advisor, including director of the CIA's Russia analysis and staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney back in the day.
Rebecca Koffler is with us, host of Censored But Not Silenced, her podcast, and former strategic military intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Guys, good to have you both.
Thank you for being with us.
Rebecca, we'll start with you.
Now, I've gone through the lead up to today, and I can go over every aspect of it.
You know, watching President Trump coming into today, that Putin will face severe consequences if Alaska fails to end the Ukrainian war.
Now, we'll know in a very short period of time when I interview President Trump and we'll air it on Fox, you know, how this all plays out.
But certainly, the president's strategy, he's not hiding it, is going to be to shut off the spigot and tell countries, you do business with Putin, you're not doing business with us.
And I think President Trump wins that conflict.
So, Sean, unfortunately, I'm not very optimistic when it comes to the achievement of President Trump's ultimate goal to stop the bleeding in Ukraine, field-wide.
The two conditions are irreconcilable at this point.
And yes, we do have some comments in terms of the secondary sanctions, but Putin's economic concerns and his security concerns are two different things.
Even if we place the sanctions, secondary sanctions on Russia.
And it's uncertain whether China or India are going to play ball with us because their strategic calculations are based on their national interests, not on ours.
India has been for decades a major purchaser of Russian armaments, not just oil.
China has been a strategic partner, not a true partner, but to Russia.
But so if those two don't play balls, Putin will continue the war, even if the sanctions bring some hurt to the Russian economy.
Culturally, the Russians are just so much more comfortable than Europeans or Americans to tolerate casualties, to tolerate any kind of economic shortages.
And so his decision counselors is not going to be impacted just because the Ukraine issue is an existential issue for him and for Russia, Ukraine being part of Russia's kitchen kickers on which it relies on.
Well, I want to be as realistic as I can possibly be.
And I don't want to overpromise under deliver.
At some point, for example, if you look at Ukraine last night, they bombed the living hell out of a Russian oil refinery during last night's strikes.
Hundreds of Russian soldiers are dying daily as a result of this war.
Putin now forcing prisoners, ethnic minorities and migrants to fight on the front lines.
So they've got their own problems.
They've got their own economic problems.
Russia's, you know, there's an article in Fortune magazine about their coming fiscal crunch.
You've discussed this in detail.
On the other hand, Russia, I think, has the military advantage going into this.
But, you know, on paper, I don't think anybody would have thought, you know, three years later that Ukraine would still be in the game and fighting as valiantly as they have been able to fight.
Ukrainians have been fighting valuantly.
There's no question that these guys are patriots.
They are fast learners.
But they're in an untenable position, Sean.
It's like Russia is considered by the Pentagon itself as, and I quote, a near-pier competitor.
That means that it is on par with the U.S. military.
And yes, a lot of analysts say Russians can't fight.
You know, how come they haven't taken Ukraine yet?
But the Russian way of war and Europe's way of war are completely different.
So Ukraine is running out of men.
It's running out of munitions.
So from what we call the combat potential standpoint, we just can't.
But they're not going to run out of munitions now.
I mean, very, very.
Well, first of all, a couple of things have happened.
Number one.
Number one, and we'll get George to weigh in on this.
Number one, the American mindset on all of this has shifted and shifted rather dramatically is, you know, the difference between giving weapons to Ukraine and the Ukrainians buying weapons, I think, has gone over much better with the American people.
That's number one.
Number two, I think Europe, you know, underestimated, underestimated Putin's commitment to this.
And they now realize that they have in many ways made multiple mistakes.
They have helped fund Putin's war machine.
But now, too, Donald Trump has pressured them to double their commitments to NATO.
And the weaponry that will be selling NATO can be then transferred over.
So I think that's a big deal, too.
So I think a lot of things have changed since this calculus has shifted dramatically.
Do you not agree, George?
Well, yeah, I do.
This is a situation, though, where I'm a lot more optimistic about something significant coming out of this meeting and subsequent meetings to put this war on a path toward resolution than I think most people are.
And the reason is because I don't believe that Putin's objectives and Trump's objectives are fundamentally incompatible.
In fact, I think there's a lot of overlap between them.
And I'll just list where I think those are.
Number one, Putin does not want Ukraine to be in the NATO alliance, and he doesn't want NATO forces on Ukrainian territory.
Well, guess what?
Neither does President Trump.
He is not eager to undertake a treaty commitment to go to war with Russia to defend Ukraine.
And neither were any of the other presidents in the post-Cold War period.
We worked ourselves into a situation where we felt we could bring Ukraine into the alliance, but not actually have to go to war to defend Ukraine.
And that was a mistake on our part.
Trump wants to fix that.
And Putin is more than willing to reach an agreement on that.
So that's a big deal.
The second thing is President Trump does not want to see Russian forces conquer all of Ukrainian territory.
He wants to stop their advances so that Ukraine emerges from this with a great deal of territory and independence.
Well, so does Putin.
Putin recognizes that trying to conquer all of Ukrainian territory is a trap for the Russian military.
It would require not just conquering the territory, but occupying and governing it.
And that would require an occupation force several times the size of the entire Russian military and subject those occupiers to ongoing guerrilla attacks forever.
It would be a trap.
So that's another area where I think there's basis for an understanding.
Then the third thing is Putin wants to be a great power in the world.
He doesn't want to be subordinate to China.
He doesn't want to be dependent on China's largest.
He wants to stand up and have an ability to deal with the West and with the East at the same time.
Well, so does Trump.
Trump looks at this and says it's not in America's interest to drive Russia and China together to work against us.
So all of those things I think mean both Trump and Putin have a desire to find a way forward here.
And I expect to come out of this with some significant achievements.
All right, quick break, right back.
We'll continue more with Rebecca Coffler and George Beeb on the other side.
Then your call is also coming up.
We continue.
We're in Anchorage.
We're in Alaska.
The Trump Putin summit is underway.
Full coverage.
My interview with Trump tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
All right, we continue with George Beebe and Rebecca Coffler.
At the end of the day, there's going to be land swaps, and there's got to be for Ukraine security guarantees, not necessarily NATO, but certainly their relationship with the United States going forward between a financial mineral deal.
And I would imagine the continued purchasing of American weaponry is going to got to be part of the deal.
They've got to be able to stop a third invasion.
Rebecca, I know you're less optimistic, but that's basically what the deal would have to end up looking like.
That's not what we're going to get out of this summit.
This summit is to see: are you serious?
Do you want to sit down at the table?
And if you do, we're going to move forward quickly at my pace.
If not, yet, I'm out of here.
I'm done.
And that's the crux of the matter.
First, I 100% agree with George that at this strategic level, at the big picture, Russia and the United States, and especially Putin and Trump, are on the same page, right?
But Trump is probably the only person, perhaps in addition to J.D. Vance, who wants to see that happen.
Trump is going to be president for four years.
Putin is looking long-term.
Putin potentially will be president until 2036.
He believes that it's only a temporary change.
The normal, the baseline for the United States is an anti-Russia posture.
The issue has been so politicized, Sean, that you can no longer, like George and I, I'm listening to us talking, and the mainstream media does not want these kinds of talking points because they are very simplistic.
Putin bad Zelensky good, Russia bad, like that's the level, but that's not where we are.
It's an extremely complex issue.
And I believe the deep state, the administrative, all of those people who are in fact profiting from weapons delivery to Ukraine are not going to let Trump to conclude that deal.
And the point to address on the weapons deliveries to Ukraine, we have depleted our own weapons arsenal, Sean, to very dangerous levels.
Javelins, stingers, even patriot missiles, especially 155 millimeter shells, because Ukraine has an extremely high burn rate on the battlefield, a lot higher by Western standards, right?
So that is exactly why Pete Hancock tried to pause the deliveries of military hardware to Ukraine, but then President Trump reversed that decision.
There's a national security strategy commission that has concluded that the United States has no capability to prosecute what we call a multi-state war, which is a real threat.
It's a tangible threat.
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran potentially synchronizing operations or even, so we just simply don't have it.
And Europeans are in the same position.
Their weapons arsenal is depleted.
And by the way, we have no capacity.
We have no military industrial capacity to quickly scale up.
We're putting to transition to the military and economy and a wartime putting seven years prior to the invasion.
That's why the Russians are pumping out more missiles in three months than entire Europe right now is producing in one year.
So that is the lay of the land.
I wish I could tell you, Denise, some optimism.
I'm just trying to be realistic.
I agree with a lot of what both of you are saying.
And it's an interesting time.
The one thing you cannot deny is that no other world leader that would even think about expending any political capital.
And this now would be the eighth peace deal President Trump involved himself in.
And I can't think of past presidents that would be willing to go that hard, that deep in the paint, you know, for actually something that is not the biggest benefit to the United States, except that the United States should be the country that wants to stop killing around the world if it can and use its power to do so.
India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Rwanda, Congo, Serbia, Kosovo, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Ethiopia.
We'll see.
I'll know in a little bit right after the show when I interview President Trump.
Don't forget we'll be broadcasting.
We might even be on earlier than 9 p.m. Eastern.
And if we are, we'll send out a big social media blast on it.
800-941, Sean, we continue from Anchorage.
I 25 now till the top of the hour.
800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, we're in Anchorage.
We're actually at Joint Base, Elmendorf.
I am near Putin right now.
I'm near President Trump right now.
It was so weird.
My hotel filled with all these Russian agents.
They must have dumped like 12 truckloads of equipment.
I mean, if there's pictures of me naked on the internet, you'll know why.
It's not because I'm putting them out there.
But it was so bizarre.
And then they're like coming up to me.
They recognize me.
I forgot to tell you this, Linda.
They recognized me.
And, oh, my gosh, Mr. Hannah.
They thought it was the biggest interview they ever got.
I said, how do you know me?
And I think one guy was that guy, the foreign minister.
Lavrov?
Yeah.
And he's trying to ask me a question.
He doesn't speak English.
Oh, no.
So the woman reporter was asking.
And I was very blunt.
I said, Trump doesn't have a lot to gain from this.
And by the way, if you don't think for a second, you know, he'd walk out of this meeting in two seconds, you don't know Donald J. Trump.
He will walk.
And then I went on to, I said, and she goes, what message did you send for Putin?
Stop the killing.
Yeah.
Stop the killing.
How many more?
How many?
I said, how many more women and children have to die?
How many more Russian soldiers have to die?
And so it's going to be very interesting.
President Trump tonight with me on the Fox News channel immediately after he does a short press conference.
I'm not sure if it's going to be a joint press conference.
Nobody knows.
I mean, this is very fluid.
And, you know, they've been in a breakout group now, you know, for a while.
And, you know, and we'll just see what happens.
I'm sure they're having Borscht and nice shots of vodka.
Vodka.
Vodka.
And I did try my reindeer sausage today just so I could get back at you.
Listen.
Now, the president in the lead up to today, let me play him saying he hopes for this second meeting with Putin.
I mean, and this is the stupidity of listening to European leaders and NATO leaders and their so-called leaders because they could never be in this position, which frustrates me.
You know, Donald Trump doesn't need lectures from them on how to negotiate.
But Donald Trump is saying there will be no deal without Ukrainian and Western European approval, number one.
And the purpose of today is to get to a point where President Trump is convinced this guy is willing to have a peace deal.
And if he is, he would very quickly like to move to step two.
Step two would be President Zelensky, President Putin, Donald Trump, and hopefully that's when you start talking about what is inevitable.
Now, don't kill the messenger because I talk about the inevitable.
I'm telling you how this is going to end.
I've been doing radio since 1987.
I could sit here and lie to you and tell you I don't think I have a very good idea how this is going to end, but I'm telling you how it's going to end.
It's likely going to have to be give and take on both sides.
For Ukraine, it's going to be land swaps.
They're going to lose territory.
The Donbass region, for example, in Ukraine is 80% Russian national.
Not a fact maybe a lot of people want to dwell on, but it is reality.
So I'm giving you the reality of if you want a deal that would actually result in peace in the continent of Europe, I'm giving you the reality of what it ultimately is going to look like.
Now, you can also game out if war continues.
Ukraine will not really exist as a country.
Do I think that Russia can win and conquer it?
No, I don't.
I think it would take, you know, years and years and years.
I don't even think Putin is that stupid.
I do think he's a thug, a murderer, and a dictator.
And I don't think Zelensky is Mr. Perfect either.
Although the Ukrainian people have fought valiantly, I think Putin, I was interviewed by some Russian as I was going into my hotel media person, and I just said, when is the death and dying going to stop?
Is it worth it?
You couldn't have had a negotiated settlement.
And where was Joe Biden?
Joe Biden created all of this.
Zelensky, on his part, rightly so, is going to want guarantees, security guarantees.
And meaning he doesn't want a third invasion for his country.
If he's thinking long-term, that would be the first thing on my mind.
And that would be non-NATO security guarantees, which should be possible and something that I think Donald Trump will have to work with Putin on.
Nobody gets what they want in a deal.
It just doesn't happen that way.
Otherwise, let the war continue.
That's your option.
I wish there were better options.
They're not.
Now, as for the president, if Putin, you know, in the end, by the end of today, if this doesn't go well, we know what President Trump's going to do.
He said there will be severe consequences for Russia.
We know what those consequences are.
He's going to shut off that spigot, which is the Russian economy, which is oil, as quickly as he possibly can.
And, you know, the president's right, too.
This is a chess game.
And both sides, Russia and Ukraine, have been firing up to the last second leading into this.
They think they're getting some type of negotiation or a bargaining chip or some type of advantage.
It's not what really is, that's not going to be what the reality is.
But we'll wait.
We'll watch.
We'll see.
Let me play the president saying that he hopes for the second meeting.
So everyone understands what the president's goal is here.
Because if he walks out of here, oh, he didn't get a peace deal.
That's not the purpose of what is going on here today.
He's been very, very clear about it.
The purpose is to see if there is a path that they can get to for that hard negotiation, which he wants to happen immediately thereafter.
Listen, we have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow.
I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having.
We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders on.
Maybe not.
I don't know that it's going to be very important.
We're going to see what happens.
And I think President Putin will make peace.
I think President Zelensky will make peace.
We'll see if they can get along.
All right, but that's President Trump coming into today.
The president also saying there will not be security guarantees in the form of NATO.
As I just said, that's not going to be on it.
Those cards are not on the table.
However, that doesn't mean European troops.
That doesn't mean a deal with the United States to build up enough weaponry to serve as a deterrent wouldn't be part of the deal.
Here's what he said.
Again, manage your expectations here.
Just one thing.
What about the positive?
That is the possibility of the United States providing security guarantees to Ukraine.
Maybe along with Europe and other countries.
Not in the form of NATO, because that's not going to, you know, there are certain things that aren't going to happen.
But yeah, along with Europe, there's a possibility of the US.
It's on the table for discussions today, Mr. President.
Are the territorial swaps on the table?
Will you be discussing that?
They'll be discussed, but I've got to let Ukraine make that decision.
And I think they'll make a proper decision.
But I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine.
I'm here to get them at a table.
And I think you have two sides.
Look, Vladimir Putin wanted to take all of Ukraine.
If I wasn't president, he would right now be taking all of Ukraine.
But he's not going to do it.
And so, you know, we'll learn a lot more when I interview the president.
It's coming up shortly.
So when I see him, talk to him, interview him, I'll know a lot more.
One thing before I get your calls here, I want to, I did have an important interview last night with the FBI director Cash Patel.
And remember, we've been following all of the declassification by both Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, all the breaking news of John Solomon.
And, you know, Cash Patel finds these burn bags inside the FBI and hard drives from predecessors involved with RussiaGate.
And it's clear that the evidence is becoming overwhelming and incontrovertible.
And that's why Pam Bondi now has, and she was on last night, and that's why she now has herself created a grand jury.
Again, she can't confirm that.
But here's what Cash said about what they've been able to find.
Remember, he was Devin Nunes' chief of staff.
If you think I know a lot about Trump-Russia collusion, because we covered it for three years, trust me, he knows everything I know and more.
Listen.
But sadly, we found a room locked away in the Hoover building that contained burn bags.
And just for your audience, Sean, a burn bag is a government bag that is specifically created to destroy classified evidence and shred and burn it, hence the name burn bag.
We didn't find one.
We found seven.
That wasn't the only thing we found in there.
We found hard drives from our predecessors and prior FBI leadership and folks like Paige, Strzok, Comey, McCabe, Comey.
The list goes on from RussiaGate.
The names were strewn all over these materials.
Now, as our great attorney general just told you, we can't deny or confirm what we're looking at, but what we can discuss is what we've publicly disclosed.
And these documents have been publicly disclosed because the greatest way to educate and bring along the American public for a transparency initiative and accountability under President Trump is to give them the documents.
And step one is by cleaning house inside the walls of Hoover.
And that's Cash Patel, you know, saying what they have found.
Now, he also mentioned last night something that really caught my attention, how we're educating the public about what happened.
And if you really, if you're a longtime listener to this show, pretty much everything we've been telling you the whole time is what happened.
Take a listen.
Well, Sean, what we're doing is building a case for the American public under the Truth and Transparency and Accountability Initiative.
And what I mean by that is A.G. Bondi brilliantly highlighted our partners, Director Ratcliffe at the CIA and Director Gabbard over at the DNI.
We are working with them because the documents that would facilitate an investigation of this magnitude don't just rest at the FBI and DOJ.
They're throughout the intelligence community.
And we, the RussiGate guys, like Johnny Ratcliffe and myself, who investigated this and exposed this, are trying to expose documentation that we've known existed for years.
At the same time, we're finding new material.
So the best approach is to release this information with them and also go to our colleagues in Congress who have an oversight function on the judiciary committees and oversight committees and demand from us information and documentation that we can publicize.
Things like the Durham Annex, which we've known have existed this entire time, but were classified for political reasons.
We are educating the American public as we build through this transparency initiative.
And where the investigation goes, I can assure you of this.
We will max accountability for the American public.
All right, that's the FBI Director Cash Patel.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, let's say hi to Tim.
He's here in the great state of Alaska.
Tim, you got to be proud of me.
Tried a little reindeer today.
Never tried it before.
And you know what the reindeer sausage tasted like?
It tasted great, I know, because I've had it.
No, it tasted like regular sausage, pork sausage, which is what I usually get.
The same thing.
Well, welcome to Alaska, Sean.
I'm glad you're tasting some of our culture here.
Thank you.
And I will tell you, the people here are wonderful, incredible.
Every place I've been, every person I met, except for my hotel that was full of like Russian KGB, former KGB guys.
Yeah, I was hoping you'd get up to Fairbanks for a visit, but it sounds like that's not going to happen.
No, not on this trip, but I am convinced that I want to come back in the summertime for sure.
Yeah, I'm heading to Valdez.
You can come over to Valdez and go fishing with us tomorrow.
We're going to go fishing down for some silver salmon.
And I promise I won't feed you day-old crab cakes, okay?
By the way, there's nothing that stinks to high heaven more than somebody that would take a day-old crab cake and throw it in a microwave and blast it for like 40 minutes.
It was awful.
Well, I just contributed so much to your program.
Just love her.
I'm from the East Coast, and she reminds me of the East Coast when I'm living up here.
I wish she'd contribute to some good food and maybe write me back.
Thank you, Tim.
Thank you, Tim, for appreciating me and for saying it out loud for all of the world to hear.
And I am so grateful for your kindness and supporting me.
Tim, have fun fishing tomorrow.
Catch a lot of fish, man.
Appreciate you being here.
I guess we don't have time.
We're just flying by.
800-941-Sean is our number.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Let not your heart be troubled.
Hannity tonight from Elmendor Air Force Base from the very room that President Trump and Vladimir Putin negotiated today.
That's where we are doing the interview.
All happening tonight.
Hannity, 9 Eastern, Seth DVR on the Fox News channel.
President Trump's first sit-down interview telling us all about the day's events.
We'll get into every weed, every bit of detail, every nuance.
News you'll never get elsewhere in the legacy media mob.
All coming up tonight.
We'll see you then.
We'll be back at home in the free state of Florida on Monday.
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