Global News Podcast - Trump tells BBC 'I'm not done with Putin'

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

In an exclusive BBC interview, President Trump says he's disappointed with President Putin but he's "not done with him”. Also: the world's biggest human imaging project, and what a tomato plant sounds like.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 13 Hours GMT on Tuesday, the 15th of July, these are our main stories. After Donald Trump gives Russia 50 days to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine or face stiff tariffs, he speaks to our chief North America correspondent about President Putin. I'm disappointed in him, but I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him. You trust him? I trust almost nobody, to be honest with you. I'm disappointed that this hasn't been done.

We get reaction from Moscow. The Syrian government announces a ceasefire with Druze leaders after deadly clashes with Bedouin tribes. And also in this podcast, we hear from some of the thousands of people abused in Myanmar's scam centers and if you are a moth this is what a tomato sounds like. We find out why it matters. We start this edition with an exclusive glimpse into the mind and policies of the US President Donald Trump. Late on Monday, our chief Washington correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, received a phone call from

the White House saying the president was ready at short notice for a phone interview. It came at the end of a hugely significant day for American foreign policy. Just hours earlier, President Trump had announced a deal to send more US weapons to Ukraine and given a warning to Vladimir Putin that unless a ceasefire in Ukraine was agreed within 50 days, then Washington would impose sanctions on Russia and nations that trade with it. So in the light of those developments, Gary O'Donoghue spoke to the president about his attitude to Vladimir Putin and Russia, amongst other subjects. But first, he started on the subject of an assassination attempt on Mr Trump whilst he was on the election

campaign trail almost exactly a year ago. I'm here with the president. Here you go. Mr President. Hi Gary, how are you? I'm very well sir. Thank you very much for sparing some time. Good. You covered us very fairly. Appreciate it. Well, I wanted to ask you briefly about that to start with. I know it's not a topic you like talking about very much, but I wanted to ask you, the moment you realised what had happened, and then the moment you realised you survived, what was your immediate thought sir? Well it happened very quickly and I'm not sure I had any conscious thought other than

to say that I had to let the people know because I knew they must have thought that it was a disaster and I could tell by the it was like dead silence and everything we had 55,000 people and it was dead silence and so, you know, I assumed that they Expected the worst. Yes, and so I had to let them know I was okay, which is what I did That's why I tried to get up as quick as possible. They had a stretcher ready to go. I said, no, thank you I actually had a big argument with them. They wanted me on a stretcher and I said, nope, I'm not doing that. Did it change you, what happened? Well, I like to think about it as little as possible,

to be honest. I don't like to think about, did it change me? Because it could have changed a lot of people, and I just don't, do you understand what I'm saying? I don't wanna think about it. It's like the power of positive thinking or the power of positive non-thinking. But so I don't like dwelling on it

because if I did it would be, you know, might be life changing. I don't want it to have to be that. It was a crazy moment. You know, I went on to win the presidency. I don't know if that had anything to do with it to be honest, but I went on to win the presidency. We're having a great presidency. One thing I was keen to ask you is, these world leaders, they do treat you differently to the way they treated you first time around.

Well I think they think it's maybe not all luck, you know, it's like when you do it twice it's a big difference. I also think that you know over the years they've gotten to know me. This is not an easy crowd to break into, you understand, these are smart people heading up very very successful generally countries, you, they're all Germany and France, Spain and, you know, big countries. And, you know, I've gotten to know them over a period of years, and I think they've come to respect my, respect me and my decision making. How do you feel, though, when they're kind of obviously, sometimes they're very obvious

in their flattery, sometimes over obvious in their flattery? Yeah, well, I think they're just trying to be nice. You've said you were four times close to a deal with Putin. Yeah, I've done a deal four times. Are you done with him? I mean, I know that sounds a simplistic thing. No, I'm not done, but I'm disappointed in him. But I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him.

So we had a deal done four times, and then you go home and you see he just attacked a nursing home or something in Kiev. I said, what the hell was that all about? Do you trust him? I trust almost nobody, to be honest with you. So how do you deal with someone you can't trust? Well, it's not a question of that. It's like I'm disappointed that this hasn't been done. The deal we made last week is amazing. You know, the 5%. Nobody's heard that was possible.

And it amounts to over a trillion dollars a year On that deal you once said that NATO was was obsolete. I think NATO is now becoming The opposite of that. I do think it was past and it was very unfair because the United States paid for almost 100% But now they're paying their own bills and I think that's much better. And what about the collective defence thing? Do you believe in that still? I do, yeah, I think collective defence is fine. Can I ask you about Britain? Because you're going to, you're having the state visit in September. I know you're looking forward to that.

I do, I do, I look forward to it. And in terms of Britain's sort of role in the world, it sits between the US and Europe. Sometimes it tries to act that mediation role. Do you think it achieves that? Do you think there is this special relationship that British politicians often claim there is with American media? I do. I think, you know, one of the problems with NATO is,

I said, you know, we have to fight for them, but will they actually fight for us if we had a war? And I'm not sure I can say, but I will say this. I believe that the UK would fight with us. There's something about it. It's just been so many years. And I really think the relationship is just a really great one. I think that they would be with us. I'm not sure that a lot of the other countries would be, which is unfair because we pay far more than anybody else. There's this special relationship we have. Well, look, that's why I've made a deal with them

and I haven't made a deal. I mean, I've made some other deals, but for the most part, in terms of your competitors and in terms of the European Union, I haven't made a deal. But now the UK is very special and it's been there for a long time. Yeah, they have been a really true ally. So may I ask you, what would be, looking back, what would be the key for your legacy for you? What do you think would define

your legacy? Saving America. I think America is now a great country and it was a dead country one year ago and that's been told to me by many leaders of the countries, you know. Thank you very much for your time Mr President. Thank you Gary, it's a great honour. Let's pick up on some of the Russia related themes of Gary's interview now. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg told me how Moscow has been reacting to the news from Washington. President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has held his daily conference call for journalists and commented briefly on Donald Trump's announcement yesterday about arms to Kiev and possible additional sanctions against Russia. Clearly, he didn't want to say very much. He said this, that Donald Trump's announcement was a very serious one.

Part of it was directly addressed to President Putin. Of course, Mr. Peskov said, we need time to analyze what has been said by Washington. If and when President Putin considers it necessary, he will for sure comment on this. Let's wait for Putin's decision to comment himself. So very little there. Now I followed that up with a question to him about Gary's interview. And I said, you know, Mr. Peskov, in an interview with the BBC, Donald Trump said he was disappointed with President Putin, but wasn't done with him. Would you like to comment on that?

He didn't. He said, please refer to the last thing I said. I'm not saying any more. This is all I'm going to say on the subject. So clearly, the Kremlin is, I think, a little bit rattled by what Donald Trump announced yesterday. And I think it's likely that at some point we'll hear from President Putin about what he thinks about it.

And Steve I'm seeing on the wires that Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov given an interview to the TASS news agency saying that Russia rejects ultimatums and yet Russia will be concerned won't it about the possibility of secondary sanctions being put on its training partners? That could potentially have an impact? Potentially, yes. But keep in mind, those secondary sanctions come with a caveat. They won't be introduced for 50 days. Now, 50 days is a long time. A lot can happen. A lot can change in 50 days.

We've had previous deadlines set by Donald Trump, two weeks, for example, but this is 50 days. We've had previous deadlines set by Donald Trump, two weeks for example, but this is 50 days. So that gives plenty of time for Moscow and Washington, if they want to, to sit down and talk about things. It gives Russia time to come up with counter proposals to Washington and it also gives time for Russia to continue doing what it's doing right now on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. You know, from Mr. Dnepropkov's statements, it's clear Russia will push on with this so-called special military operation. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. Syria's defence minister has announced a ceasefire in the predominantly Druze city of Sueda after deadly clashes with Bedouin tribes

killed about 100 people. He said the move follows agreements with what he called the city's notables and dignitaries. Earlier, Syrian security forces had entered the city to restore calm. Hugo Pacheca reports. This is the first time that Syrian government forces have been deployed to Suwada since Islamist-led rebels ousted the Assad regime and seized power in December. The violence of the last few days has underscored the challenges the new administration led by President Ahmed al-Sharif faces in asserting control over a country that remains deeply fractured. Minority groups are suspicious of the new leaders, and the province of Sueida has remained

largely under the control of Jews armed groups that have resisted calls to join government forces. Meanwhile, Syrian state media reported fresh Israeli airstrikes on the city of Sueda. Hugo Bacheca, now if you're ever feeling stressed out and want to let out a sigh or scream, you are not alone. It turns out that plants do something similar. A group of scientists recently learned that some plants make sounds when under stress and now they've shown the first interaction between these crying out plants and animals.

The team found that female moths avoided laying their eggs on nearby plants if they made sounds indicating poor health. Here's our science correspondent, Pallabh Ghosh. This is a sound Israeli researchers recorded in 2023 of a tomato plant gasping as a result of it being dehydrated. It's normally outside the range of human hearing, but the frequency has been adjusted to allow us to hear it. TAPS TAPS TAPS

Their latest research shows that moths respond to the sound. The discovery opens up the possibility of an invisible ecosystem between plants and animals based on the secret sounds they make. Researchers will now investigate the sounds of different plants and whether other species make decisions based on them, such as whether to pollinate, hide inside or eat the plant. They'll also consider whether plants can pass information to each other through sound and crucially act in response, such as conserving their water in drought conditions. Another new area of investigation is whether plants and animals have co-evolved the ability

to produce and listen to the sounds for their mutual benefit. Palabgos. Still to come. It took me sort of virtually the best part of a day to have sort of three to four hours of my body being scanned, but on a particular day there was a lot of attention, as you can probably appreciate. We meet the milestone man, number 100,000, of the world's biggest human imaging project. Aid workers have described it as one of the biggest human trafficking events in history. The thousands of migrants from around the world often tricked by the promise of a normal seeming job offer, only then to be forcibly held at scam centres on the border of Myanmar and Thailand.

The BBC's Ed Bartler has been to the region to speak to aid workers attempting to rescue them and hear accounts of those now set free. I see WhatsApp status of my best friend's husband saying there's data entry jobs in Thailand. It was a good offer. So I never thought they were going to scam me and send me to Myanmar. Anika Boram from Sri Lanka is one of 8,000 or more traffic migrants from around the world who recently were released from Myanmar scam centres. After being tricked into accepting an apparently normal IT job, she spent 18 months luring people into buying

fake cryptocurrency schemes. Failure to scam them led to brutal punishment. We didn't have any option. If we didn't do, we are getting beat. We are getting electric shock. It was really traumatic. Still, sometimes I cannot sleep in the night. We were lucky to come back. Judah Tanner is an Australian aid worker and activist who's trying to get the migrant workers freed. You're looking at over a hundred thousand people brought into a single area at just a 70 kilometers stretch of land, almost untouchable. Because of sovereign laws, you can't go in and rescue these people. They've found this particular niche area within Myanmar that's controlled

by military groups, and then you've got this illegitimate government that says that they have no jurisdiction in that region. And so you get this no-man's land that has built what we know today as one of the most successful criminal enterprises in the world. The forced scamming is built on a system of beatings and worse, according to some of those who have been inside. One informant who asked to remain anonymous showed me this collection of very brutal torture videos. His words are spoken by my translator. They torture as much as they can, but not to die. If a victim die, it's more cost.

Have you seen people being killed? Yes, we have seen a Chinese man die. And this is run by Chinese gangsters? Yes. They dare to do everything, kill the people, rape the girls. If someone touched to their profit or business, they would kill everyone. This is one of those who, informants say, is profiting from the trade. His name is Soh Shui Wah, and he is the deputy leader of a Karen rebel group called the DKBA, which has been specifically implicated alongside the Chinese criminal groups that run the scam

centres. Eyewitnesses identified the general visiting compounds where his own soldiers are running security and allegedly carrying out killings, claims that he brushed aside when I put them to him. Why do all you journalists ask me about these scam centers? Why do they ask all these questions? So he's never had control of any of the migrants, he's saying?

I don't commit any crimes. That's why journalists can come and talk to me, because I have nothing to hide. Please now stop the recording. That report was by Ed Butler. The medical charity Doctors Without Borders says it has found evidence that Ethiopia's federal forces executed three of its staff during the war in the northern region of Tigray. A report issued following the charity's own review of the incident suggests that the three were killed intentionally and at point-blank range

while facing their attackers. The BBC has contacted the government of Ethiopia for a response to the allegations. Speaking to our senior Africa correspondent Anne Soy, MSF Spain's director general, Raquel Ayora, demanded accountability. Our colleagues were killed intentionally. They were clearly identified as humanitarian workers. They were clearly identified as MSF workers in a medical mission. They were killed facing their attackers. And all those investigations have as well established that there was a convoy of EMDF in the road very close to the place our colleagues were found

after the killings. Why have you decided to publish the review now? We have been trying for four years to persuade the Ethiopian authorities by engaging with them instantly, for them to provide an explanation and a clarification of what happened to our colleagues. So far we haven't achieved any concrete results. So we think it's for us the moment to really make it public and to try to persuade them by all means.

We know that it's a very difficult task. What do you hope would be the outcome, the desirable outcome for MSN? What we need is an explanation, a clarification of the circumstances as close as possible to the truth. Four years have passed. What we have seen as well is that it's a deterioration, a trend of disregard and targeting of humanitarian workers everywhere across the world. We have seen the numbers in Gaza.

We have seen the numbers in South Sudan and in many other places. And what we see now is a trend of impunity, pure impunity that cannot continue. So we hope that by making this report public, we will force some actors to really take a stand with regards to this problem of impunity. Raquel Ayora from MSF.

China has been bearing the brunt of the most stringent of Donald Trump's tariffs regime, but now there's a sign that relations could be easing over some key US exports there. The US tech giant and the world's most valuable company, Nvidia, has been told it can sell advanced artificial intelligence chips there again. Washington restricted sales under President Biden and stopped them completely earlier this year under Donald Trump. The concern from Washington had been that it didn't want China using the tech for military purposes. So given that, I put it to our business reporter Katie Silver that this U-turn was a bit of a surprise. Chips have actually formed something

of a bargaining chip in the relationship and in the negotiations between Beijing and Washington. We have just last week, for instance, seen three companies that make the vast majority of the software that goes into making chip designs being allowed to export again to China. It does seem that on one side you've got China saying give us lower tariffs, we'll give you rare earths, but we also want your chips as well. So it does seem to be forming something of a part of that and they do seem to have figured in the conversations that we've had and seen in Geneva and London. Washington's concern was always that the chips could be used for military use. There is a caveat to these sales that they're not

going to be the top end. That's right. So the H20 chip was brought about for the Chinese market. It's a slightly downgraded version on the H100 chip that Nvidia has that's available to the rest of the world. It was made for the Chinese market, slightly slower, slightly less bandwidth. It was able to be sold there until April. That was when the requirements were made more stringent. According to Nvidia and what they filed with stock regulators, it was basically because US officials were worried that China would use these chips to build a supercomputer. So that's what the fear had been. And for Nvidia, which was losing tens of billions of dollars over this, this is extremely good news isn't it?

It is great news for them and it certainly forms a part of a multi-stop charm offensive that we've seen from the chief executive Jensen Wang. So according to a statement they said that they had visited both Beijing and President Trump in Washington. And as part of that, they had to agree to a number of concessions and to really appease President Trump on what his big concerns are. So basically saying that it's going to create jobs, that it's going to strengthen the AI infrastructure, that it's going to onshore manufacturing, which of course is very important

for President Trump, and that ultimately all of this will lead the US to being the global AI hub, the place for AI in the future. Katie Silver. Now, voice recognition software has transformed the way we get help from companies and banks. No need for people on the other end of a phone. A virtual assistant will help you out, right? Well, sadly not in all cases. Voice recognition only goes so far as people with regional or non-standard accents know all too well. One company in the UK, though, now thinks it's cracked the problem, as Will Chalk explains. Even within the UK, this is a problem many people from outside the South have. Amy is from Yorkshire in Northern

England. I constantly have robots that can't understand me. They all sound Southern. And this is what happened when a BBC radio presenter in the English city of Derby tried to speak to her own local council's AI helper. Who do we report potholes to because we've got a bigan outside here? Your message was blocked by our content filter. This may be due to language that appears inappropriate. Sometimes genuine questions get flagged by mistake. Thank you so much and have a great day.

Please wait while I process your request. It's actually quite easy to see where this problem's come from though, because AI needs to be trained on data. And if that data mainly comes from North American or Southern English speaking sources, AI voices will naturally sound similar. And it's not just an English problem. We especially work with a lot of customers. Many of them are based in Europe or in Asia or even in other parts of the world. And these people tend to have accents that, you know, they're rightfully proud of.

Yousef Alami-Majati is from London-based AI company Synthesia, who've spent a year training in AI on different accents. He uses the example of French accents, which, when reproduced by AI, tend to sound French-Canadian. And this is just because, you know, the companies building these models tend to be North American companies and they tend to have datasets that are biased towards the demographics that they're in. Synthesia's product is being released in the next few weeks and it says it's better at solving the accent problem than some of its US or Chinese rivals. But is it? The BBC's technology editor Zoe Kleinman has been trying it out on Northern Irish accents.

I'm going to play you an AI clip and a real clip, see if you can spot the difference. Here's the first one. Most visitors know Box Day as a potato pancake, but in some counties like Leitrim and Fermanagh it's served as dumplings. Sounds yummy, right? And here's the second. Dulce is a salty seaweed snack that may look unassuming, but we love it in Northern Ireland. The clip that was artificially intelligence generated, the AI clip was the first one. But of course with all of this comes risk because the harder they are to spot, the more

opportunities AI voice tools offer for scammers and peddlers of misinformation. World Chalk reporting. Scientists say they can study our bodies as we age in greater detail than ever before, thanks to more than a billion scans of volunteers here in the UK. The world's biggest human imaging project says it has now hit its target of scanning the brains, hearts and other organs of 100,000 people. The 100,000th volunteer to be scanned was Steve. He told the BBC about it. It basically involves me giving up my time for research. And it took me virtually the best part of a day to have three to four hours of my body being scanned. Because of the day I had and the attention I had by certain members of the media, it was a stop-start process.

But it was an amazing experience having the full body scan, the brain scan and ultrasound to say the least. And you do it why Steve? Why give him back. I've got grandchildren, it's for future generations and research is something we all must appreciate because doctors need to make decisions. Professor Rory Collins is the principal investigator and chief executive at UK Biobank. He told us more about how they carried out these studies. It involves magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, people may be familiar with that of the brain,

of the heart, of the body, low-power X-ray of the bones, the joint body and also looking at the arteries themselves with carotid ultrasound. And critically you want to learn how to prevent illness. We've just time to go through to I think dementia and obesity. What are you learning about that? Well what the brain imaging data allows you to do is pick up very small changes in the brain and you can look at risk factors for developing dementia. You can look to see how they're associated with those very small changes in the brain and get much more sensitive information about the determinants of dementia and therefore identify ways to treat and prevent it. With respect to obesity, we know that body mass index, which is that measure of your kind of body

weight and your height, is a very strong predictor of many diseases, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer. What we've found from the body imaging data is that you can actually see very different distribution of fat differences in muscle among people with the same body mass index and those differences have likely be very relevant to whether or not you are likely to get disease and therefore provide detailed and specific targets for treatments that will prevent the disease. Rory Collins speaking to the BBC's Nick Robinson. To end this edition let's return to that late night telephone interview our Chief Washington correspondent Gary O'Donoghue had with President Donald Trump. Now often when a world leader does an interview with a

news organisation it'll be pre-arranged for several weeks. So how did this last minute interview come about? Gary has been speaking to my colleague Amol Rajan but first let's hear what Gary had to say to Rob Young who asked him, did he just bring you up? Yeah, I mean I've been for some weeks working some contacts and some channels that I have particularly because I wanted to speak to him around the anniversary of the attempted assassination because I was there when that happened last July and to be honest with you I was asleep last night and the phone woke me up and one of his senior aides said, Hi Gary, the President's on the line for you now. So that was that.

So you quickly had to do this interview in your pyjamas. More or less, yeah. Certainly grabbing a little recorder to record the phone call and gather my thoughts through somewhat bleary eyes. If I may say Gary, some of our listeners may not know that you're blind. What practical challenge did that present you given as you say you got this call from the the President's team relatively out of the blue?

Actually, I mean the detail is kinda tedious in some ways but when I sort of woke up and I think I accidentally hung up the call to start with which is not good is it when you hang up on the... Yeah, too busy. Sorry about that. Anyway, they rang back and I ran into my living room and I sat down and I pressed go on a little recorder of mine and I prayed that I had pressed go and we got the interviewer. There are some areas I think we could have covered, maybe should have covered, but you do what you can in the time and then they sort of pull it at the end. Although

to be fair he was still talking as they took the phone off. Gary O'Donoghue, our Chief Washington Correspondent. And that is all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith and produced by Tracy Gordon and Alfie Haberschen. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.