Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Peace Plan Is Putin’s Dream — And the GOP Backs It

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger expose how Trump’s so-called “peace plan” echoes Putin’s demands—and why MAGA Republicans are backing it.

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Total savings varies based on purchase amount. See Lowe's.com for details. Hi, this is Andrew Egger with The Bulwark, here with MorningShot's co-author Bill Kristol. They're finally doing it, folks. They've been signaling for a long time that we're just pro-Russia now in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the White House is ready to put it on paper, make it official, rolling out a quote-unquote peace proposal that would essentially codify most of what Russia has hoped to get out of this conflict for at least the past year. So we just wanted to break it down a little bit. Here's the headline from the New York Times

just a little bit ago. Vice President J.D. Vance on Wednesday called on Ukraine to accept an American peace proposal that closely mirrors longstanding Russian demands, including a freeze of territorial lines in the three-year war, acceptance of the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and a prohibition on Ukraine becoming part of the NATO alliance. There's been indications this has been the direction things have been moving, but here it is kind of on paper. They're saying, Ukraine, it's time to accept this, or else, is basically the line. What do you make of all this, Bill? Where are we today? So a couple of things. As you say, they've been going in this direction from, well,

January 20th or really since Trump's campaign. And so this is, in a way, simply the next step. Maybe it's a decisive step. I think, though, the others were pretty decisive before this. But I think it's a coordinated thing. I think that's one others were pretty decisive before this. But I think it's a coordinated thing. I think that's one point to make. Trump pops off sometimes, Vance pops off, Rubio does, you're not sure, well, have they really discussed this? Is this really the administration position? If I'm not mistaken, today we have a Trump tweet, we have Vance speaking in India, and Rubio's office announcing that he won't go to this meeting in London, that's supposed to work on the peace prospects and Ukraine-Russia related things. So clearly, there's been a coordinated attempt to

say, okay, this preliminary stage of abandoning Ukraine is coming to an end. And as you say, now we're into the full scale abandonment of Ukraine. I mean, if one wanted to be nice to them, which I don't particularly, but one might say they may not be quite as pro. It's not obvious, 100 percent, that they're entirely pro-Russia. They're just abandoning Ukraine. Now, maybe that's a distinction without a difference. You know, Devil Chamberlain abandons Czechoslovakia. He wasn't actually pro-Hitler exactly.

In the case of Trump, there's a lot more reason to think that he's actually pro-Putin. But on paper, at least, it's more of an abandonment, I would say, than anything else. Yeah. And when it comes to Zelensky and his people, it's a little bit of a distinction without a difference, right? I mean, the functional reality is that what we're doing is we're greenlighting Russia to push them around to whatever extent, unless they're willing to accept this very pro-Russia proposal.

I mean, that's been the most striking thing about this moment is they are the ones who are now saying it's now or never. You take this deal or we're walking away from this process entirely and you guys figure it out. And incidentally, Putin has not accepted this proposal, even though it's correctly characterized as pro-Russia and in accord with lots of Russia's demands. It doesn't give them every single demand. Putin is perfectly capable of creating new demands if he wishes to. It's not clear Putin wants to have some kind of peace deal. That might constrain Putin a little bit down the road.

Maybe there'd be pressure on Trump to enforce the deal when Putin at some point violates it, which he surely would. Putin wants all of Ukraine, and he may think he can just wear down Zelensky. I think it raises lots of interesting questions going forward, though, because Europe has stepped up more than I expected over the last two, three months in the face of this Trump abandonment, which they saw coming. They can provide a fair amount of harms to Ukraine. They can provide some economic help. It's not like us, obviously, in terms of the arms capabilities, intelligence sharing. If we cut all that off, that could be damaging to Ukraine. On the other hand, I don't know. We've had people like Mark Hurtling, four-star general, writing in our pages, say not so obvious that Russia could just steamroll Ukraine. It probably makes it very hard for Ukraine to take back territory at this point.

But maybe they can hang on. Maybe they get demoralized, on the other hand, if we're on the other side. So still a fair amount of fluidity, I think, on the ground. But no, but it's a shameful thing. I mean, we're abandoning it. Why? I mean, I think, on the ground. But no, but it's a shameful thing. I mean, we're abandoning it. Why? I mean, they're not asking for our, for soldiers. It's not Vietnam type situation. They're not asking, they're asking for a reasonable amount of military aid, but it's, well, it's not much compared to everything else we do in the world. And it helps an ally and helps prevent

Russia from focusing on other European countries it might want to mess with in the world. And it helps an ally and helps prevent Russia from focusing on other European countries that might want to mess with in the Balt and elsewhere. And so just, we're abandoning it because I'm not sure why, because some of the MAGA right hates Ukraine and because Trump sort of wants to be on the same side as Putin, I think, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of a combination of all those things, just this sort of vague sense that it's not America first to be involved elsewhere at all, and all of those things. The stuff you were saying about Europe is really interesting, because I remember all the way back at the beginning of this conflict

when I think a lot of the question was how tough Europe was going to be standing. I mean, it was like, obviously, America is going to stand up to Russia and help Ukraine out. But like, Germany is going to be under a lot of pressure economically because of how, you know, how much they relied on certain Russian exports and things like that at that time. And now, a few years later, to see it so flipped, where the people who actually are suffering from the ongoing war, much more so than us, you know, other European countries, who would be more materially interested in bringing this thing to a quick conclusion are the ones who are standing firm. And we are the ones who are sidelining not only Ukraine, but also them. That was what Rubio

pulled out of yesterday was a meeting with European officials to discuss some of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, it raises and one big question, therefore, lurking out there is how much can Europe do and how much can they do without us? I mean, they can say they're going to do a lot now, and I think they mean it sincerely. They can start to do a lot now. 18 months from now, if we've checked out an effector on Russia's side, and they're being asked to send more aid, and they still have an energy cutoff with Russia, and they're paying maybe higher prices for natural gas because they're deprived of Russian gas and so forth. Does the pressure domestically come back in some of these

countries? What are we doing here? The U.S. has abandoned them. We can't just do this ourselves. Or maybe the opposite. Maybe they say, you know what? The U.S. is abandoning not just Ukraine, but us, but Europe. That was certainly the message of Vance and Hexeth two months ago in Munich. And so we need to really step up as a kind of alliance at times without the U.S. And that would be a huge change, obviously, in the world, kind of the global international order. But this is just part of that change. So Ukraine is a huge issue, but it's also part of this even bigger issue of the U.S.

and the West, the U.S. and Europe. I mean, one thing I do wonder about, and we've discussed this at other times, too, is Republicans on the Hill. There are plenty of issues where you and I think, I think, that they should stand up against Trump and, you know, and defend the rule of law and defend humane immigration policies and a million other things. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

But on a lot of those, they should do it. But Ukraine is a kind of unusual one where they have a very explicit recent record of half of them voting for aid for Ukraine, even when MAGA was against it and when Trump was against it last year, including the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, chairs of all the relevant committees, I think. Are they going to simply roll over for this? I think they've rolled over for an awful lot where it's been a little ambiguous what their previous position was or where you could say Trump had a mandate for this. I think that's much harder to say in this case. Less than a year ago, I can't remember when that vote was now, I guess it might be just about a year ago, they voted for aid for Ukraine, half the Republicans on the Hill and all the Democrats. I do wonder whether this Ukraine becomes an issue that Republicans are a little more willing and emboldened to step forward on against Trump, just because they're so, A,

they care about it, to be fair, some of them. Many of them have been there, you know, and B, they are on record so repeatedly for it. Now, that didn't stop Rubio and Elise Stefanik and a lot of other people from flipping when there was the prospect, Mike Walz too, when there was the prospect of getting into Trump's cabinet. And so I don't want to overstate this. But I think it'll be interesting to see what the Hill reaction to today's developments is. Yeah, yeah. Well, I got to say, I do admire your kind of hope springs eternal. I'm a little bit joking, but honestly, I think there's such a sense, just kind of broadly, that Republicans have just completely tied themselves around Donald Trump's finger and they're going to do what he says without, you know, he says jump, they say how

high, that sort of thing. And functionally, that's true about a lot of stuff, right? But the narrative of it almost lets them off the hook a little bit. I mean, I feel like Hill Republicans are not getting kind of held over the coals in the same way they frequently were in the first term, just because of this kind of mass assumption of why would you even ask? Because of course, they're just going to go along with Trump. And it makes it easier for them perversely to do that when people just have the expectation they're going to every time. No, that's a really good point. I think we've seen that happen. I suppose one thing that triggered that was that there were hopes, and I had them, that they would oppose one or two or three of these unbelievably unqualified cabinet nominees.

And they haven't, they didn't do that. And they all got confirmed, except for Gates, I guess, who was pressured to pull out very early. But once, you know, once the voting, once the bill process started in December, they all made it despite stuff that came out, despite everything. And so I think that was a blow to people, including me, who thought maybe a few of them will split on some things. But no, and then you were told, no, they can't do that because that's Trump's personal nomination. He cares about these people. They can split on some policy stuff over the next two, three months. They haven't done that.

Now, Hegseth is involved in this unbelievable mismanagement of the Pentagon. And so far, I think a couple of Republican House members have said he should go. But I don't think any Republican senators have spoken up. So people have a right to be dubious about the Republicans on the Hill. But again, I think abandoning this admirable ally might be something they would want to say a word or two about. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to wallow in just sort of the grotesquery of all this, but you did mention the Trump post earlier.

And I do want to go through that a little bit here because it's obviously related to all of this stuff. But the way that he kind of assigns moral blame for how this all is going is just remarkable. And this was just an hour ago or so. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is boasting on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that, quote, Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There's nothing to talk about here. This statement is very harmful to the peace negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack

Hussein Obama and is not even a point of discussion. Nobody is asking Zelensky to recognize Crimea as Russian territory, but if he wants Crimea, why didn't they fight for it 11 years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired? Yada, yada, yada. It also houses, Crimea houses major Russian submarine bases. Trump, make sure to get that in there. It's inflammatory statements like Zelensky's that makes it so difficult to settle this war. He has nothing to boast about. The situation for Ukraine is dire. He can have peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country. It just goes on. I mean, like, it's really just striking.

First of all, the deal that's been floated would involve U.S. recognition of the Russian occupation of Crimea, not necessarily Ukrainian recognition. So like the idea that Zelensky is expected not, the idea that Trump would get mad, that Zelensky would say, well, we still think we have Crimea. That's what's in our constitution. That's the way it is in international law. That's the way everybody has recognized it since Russia took Crimea. The fact that Trump would not only kind of come down on Zelensky for saying that, but essentially say because Zelensky is saying stuff like that, it's Zelensky's fault that this peace process that the U.S. is directing is going the way it's going. He's really kind of kicking him while he's down with all this.

And I do wonder whether that is what we'll end up kind of seeing from the Hill and from Republicans. It's like the same sort of thing that we saw after Zelensky came to the Oval Office, where it was not, I can't believe that the president would treat this guy this way. It was, I can't believe Zelensky would not go out of his way to flatter Trump and make Trump not want to come down on him in this way and really just kind of blame the victim of this whole situation for the way it's going down. Yeah, I think Trump sort of senses that if he just says, I'm staying out of it, as you said earlier, it's not America first, which would be correct, in the sense that if you really are an America first kind of isolationist, you say, what are we getting involved in this conflict about?

But then, in fact, the natural sympathy to Ukraine and the fact that we have been helping them and the fact that it hasn't provoked a nuclear war and it hasn't dragged U.S. troops in or anything, people say, well, I don't know. We can keep helping Ukraine. That's not really inconsistent with not sending troops over there to fight. So Trump, in a way, has to, to sustain his policy, attack Zelensky and make it not attractive to continue the bipartisan policy that supported Zelensky for three years, two and a half years, and not just bipartisan, but also the multinational policy, obviously us and all of our allies. So I think he almost, to keep his, to explain to sort of Republicans out in the country, what's the case for doing this? You have to lie and complain about Zelensky and make him a bit of an evil figure.

He didn't, Trump otherwise has said, you heard about this a week ago or so, that Zelensky's kind of responsible for starting the war, or at least he's strongly implied that, right? Yeah, he's come out and said it. He said, why, you know, if you weren't confident you could win this war against this big country, why'd you start it in the first place? Which is really amazing. So basically, I now qualify my earlier qualification of your statement that Trump is simply on Putin's side.

Trump is simply on Putin's side. It's a terrible, it's a bad day, a bad day because that has become clearer and clearer. And we're getting closer to the moment where there's no pretense. Well, there is no pretense about it, but also where others are going to have to decide what to do. And obviously, Trump is not going to want

further aid for Ukraine, which means the Republicans on the Hill, to get back to what I was saying about them, it's harder for them. They don't just have to, you know, go somewhat against Trump. They have to really go full out against it. Trump will say, I don't want this aid in the appropriations bill or whatever or in the CR or omnibus or something on September 30th.

And they'll say, no, we want to put it in. And you're not going to veto the whole spending bill over this, are you? Or reconciliation or something like that. So, I mean, that would be courageous if a few Republicans joined with Democrats to push for that. We'll see if that happens. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's obviously something that we will continue to follow. A bit of a bleak note to end on, but a bit of a perhaps tiny silver lining hopeful note

to end on after that. We'll leave it there. Thank you all for watching. Hope you subscribe to the channel. Share us around. You can go to thebullwork.com to get Morning Shots, the free newsletter that Bill and I write. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.