Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/25/25

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

U.S. breaks with European allies in U.N. vote over the war in Ukraine

We want peace. And I think the initiative of President Trump is a very positive one. But my message was to say, be careful, because we need something substantial for Ukraine, but for the security of Europe and France. And second, let's work together on the future to preserve security guarantees, meaning to be sure that this peace will be respected by Russia. Numerous times today, President Trump expressed confidence that this war could really, in reality, end in a few weeks.

Do you share that confidence? I hope so. That is French President Emmanuel Macron appearing on Fox News yesterday after his meeting with President Trump at the White House. We'll have much more from their fascinating talk and the distinctly different messages from the leaders on the war in Ukraine as they sat side by side. Some really interesting dynamics there.

Also ahead, we'll have the latest on Elon Musk's ultimatum email to federal employees, which continues to cause major confusion across several agencies, with some of them telling their employees to ignore it. Plus, we will bring you an update on the legal fight over the Trump administration's ban of the Associated Press, as well as the concerning comment about the judge's ruling from the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Good morning. Welcome to Morning Joe.

It is Tuesday, February 25th, with Joe and me today, the co-host of course, of our fourth hour, a contributing writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, the host of Way Too Early, Ali Vitale, and staff writer at the Atlantic, Frank Foer. So Joe, that side-by-side meeting between McCrone and President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, just fascinating to watch their body language and then of course to listen to the substance of what they were saying. Their body language, the substance of what they're saying, the annual handshaking contest. It's always fascinating when these two get together, you never know exactly what is going to happen. Of course, talking about Ukraine, that was the context of the meeting. And of course, for much of what went on yesterday, Willie, and we're going to start talking about that meeting in Ukraine. But first,

I want to just briefly read from the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, who aptly calls yesterday what it was, a sad day for the United States at the UN. And in one part of it, the Wall Street Journal editorial page writes this, perhaps Donald Trump thinks that telling the truth about Russia will cause Mr. Putin to walk away from Ukraine negotiations. Ronald Reagan, who also sought peace and achieved it, never shrank from telling the truth about the Soviet Union. The truth was an essential weapon in defeating what Reagan called an evil empire. And they end by saying, it's hard to be optimistic if you won't tell the truth about which country

started the war. So, Willie, really just a stunning moment yesterday where the United States of America sided with an invader in blocking a UN resolution on the third anniversary of an invasion that the entire world saw. They know who the dictator is, just like the New York Post said to Donald Trump last week. The world knows who the dictator is. The world knows who invaded whom. And the world knows who is on the side of freedom and who's on the side of tyranny.

And right now, the United States officially at the United Nations does not. Yeah, and a stark contrast yesterday as there were remembrances around the world from Western democratic nations, free nations, siding of course with Ukraine, victims of the invasion three years ago. But the United States at the UN, as you point out, breaking ranks with those European allies,

joining Russia and North Korea among others in opposing a resolution that calls for Russia to withdraw from all occupied territory in Ukraine. The U.S. instead proposed a separate resolution avoiding territorial language, mirroring recent Trump administration suggestions that Ukraine may have to cede land to get peace. Ultimately, the United States abstained on its own measure after European amendments strengthened its wording. Despite US opposition, Ukraine's resolution did pass with 93 votes. President Trump was asked yesterday about American opposition to that UN resolution.

Can you explain the rationale of having US vote against the. vote against the U.N. resolutions that Ukraine proposed and also the U.S. proposed? I would rather not explain it now, but it's sort of self-evident, I think. So, John, if you look at the front page of the journal, Joe was reading from the op-ed pages, on the news side, U.S. sides with Russia, China against Ukraine in U.N. vote. We could add Belarus and North Korea to the company the U.S. is keeping at the U.N. yesterday. Yeah, international pariahs for the most part. You know, again, it's worth taking a moment reflecting how things have changed over three years.

When this war began, we heard from President Biden locking arms with Ukraine and our European allies to say they will support Kiev till the very end. President Biden said that the US backing of Ukraine's efforts to repel Russia would be unwavering and, of course, sent billions of dollars over time for weapons and munitions. And now, over the last few days, we have President Trump prioritizing his phone call in relationship with President Putin. We have a meeting, our first talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine not invited. We have a meeting, our first talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia,

Ukraine not invited. We have Trump calling Zelensky a dictator and being pressed as to whether Putin is the same, will not answer and doing so repeatedly. And now we have here at the UN, the United States refusing to acknowledge in plain language what happened, which was this is a war of Russian aggression. Russia is the one who invaded. And of course, subtext here, this war could end at any time if Vladimir Putin would simply call off his troops.

And we should note, even as there are now talks, the peace process may be on its way to the beginning, Russian is not only continuing, but escalating their bombardment of Ukrainian cities with drone strikes and the like. So we saw French President Macron there yesterday, flat out contradict Trump at a couple of moments, saying that, no, no, Europe gave this money to Ukraine. We're not expecting it to be paid back, you know, suggesting this was a cause

that Europe would still continue to support, as much as there is acknowledgement, Willie, that, yes, that this, we are nearing, likely, the end stages. There will be some sort of negotiations, Trump suggesting that a minerals deal may still be part of this and that Zelensky may be coming to the White House the next week or so. That was a telling moment in the Oval Office when a reporter said, you have called Zelensky a dictator. Is Putin a dictator?

Donald Trump would not answer and change the subject. Meanwhile, President Trump's White House meeting yesterday with President Macron came on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And while the two leaders were friendly, their views about the war and each other's support for Ukraine were vastly different. The French president said a peace deal must not mean a surrender for Ukraine. It must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees. And it must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty.

Meanwhile, President Trump refused to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a dictator and was focused mainly on recouping billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine. Macron briefly corrected Trump when the president said Europe was already getting repaid. Would you use the same words regarding Putin? I don't use those words lightly. I think that we're going to see how it all works out. Let's see what happens. I think we have a chance of a really good settlement between various countries.

And you know, you're talking about Europe and you're talking about Ukraine as part of that whole situation. The other side has a lot of support also. So let's see how it all works out. It might work out. Look, you can never make up lives. The one thing you can, you can make up the money, but you can't make up the lives.

A lot of lives lost. I think probably a lot more lives than people are talking about. It's been a rough war, but I think we're close to getting it solved. Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back. No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 percent of the total effort. And it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantee, grants, and we provided real money, to be

clear. We have 230 billion frozen assets in Europe, Russian assets, but this is not as a collateral of a loan because this is not our belonging. So they are frozen. If, at the end of the day, in the negotiation we will have with Russia, they're ready to give it to us, super, it will be loan at the end of the day, and Russia would have paid for that.

This is my wish. The President is right. If you believe that, it's okay with me. But they get their money back, and we don't, and now we do. But, you know, that's only fair. That's just not true. It's really not. What Macron said was true.

Frank-Four, so much about this is just doublespeak. We live in really an upside-down world right now, especially domestically and when it comes to foreign policy. But you actually have a piece in The Atlantic. It's a man who actually stands up to Trump. You say, Zelensky's willingness to stand up to President Donald Trump holding true to American values in the face of American intimidation was a perverse trading of places and I think back all the way back to Harry Truman in 1947 the Truman Doctrine, the creation of NATO, the Berlin airlift, the United States standing

up time and time again to those that the Soviet Union, that the Russians would want to oppress. What happened in 1980 when the Soviets were about to go into Poland. And the so-called porcupine doctrine that the Carter administration and Dr. Brzezinski put together saying, sure, go into Poland if you want. We'll make sure it's like swallowing a porcupine. You don't want to do it. What we did throughout the 1980s, our support for solidarity all the way up to the Berlin Wall going down the United States, first in defeating Nazism and then defeating Soviet tyranny. We've always known what side we were on when it came to fighting against Soviet and Russian

aggression. Yesterday, just absolutely stunning and a stinging rebuke that most everything American foreign policy has stood for, for the better, for 80 years. Right, it's an upside-down world and part of the reason it's upside down are the values that are infusing Trump's foreign policy here. That Ukraine, which was the victim of Russian aggression, is not, we're not even able to acknowledge that fact. And here the president is trying to basically extort Ukraine in its incredibly vulnerable state.

Zelensky initially proposed this idea that there could be some sharing of his nation's resources as a gesture of gratitude. It was his form of trying to suck up to Trump initially. But then when Trump, when Scott Bissett arrived as a gesture of gratitude, it was his form of trying to suck up to Trump initially. But then when Trump, when Scott Pesant arrived in Kiev to negotiate the terms of this, it wasn't a negotiation. He pushed in mob-like fashion, he pushed a piece of paper across the desk to Zelensky

and said, these are the terms. And these were terms that were just punitive, that they were trying to...Zelensky, who'd been a kind of perpetual thorn in Trump's side, going back to that very beautiful phone call that they had that was provoked the first impeachment, he's always had this animus towards Zelensky. And here, that animus was being imposed on the entirety of Ukraine. Yeah, but Frank, the thing about that deal is, it would be one thing if you pushed these outrageous demands across the table at Zelensky, who's siding with the country that's repelling

Russian aggression. But there was no security guarantee even attached to that. It was give us all your your money and we will give you nothing in return. It wasn't even, you know, you said like, you compared to them up, wasn't even that because there was no no protection afforded. It was give us all your money and we give you nothing in return. Right. He was, exactly.

There was, it was extortion. There was nothing on the other side for Ukraine. When Zelensky first proposed that deal, he was saying, look, you know, we know that you're going to take risk in protecting us and guaranteeing our security. So here are some access to some of our valuable minerals in exchange. Instead, Trump was behaving like a Russian oligarch. And in the end, shouldn't Russia be the one that has to pay some sort of price for having invaded Ukraine? It's perverse to impose those costs on Ukraine, the victim.

Yeah. I mean, NATO membership is a big step. And President Zelensky said he would step aside if his nation could be given a path, at least, to NATO membership, but nothing there so far from the Trump administration. Back here at home, there's growing confusion this morning now that Elon Musk imposed deadline has passed for federal workers to respond to an email justifying their positions or to resign. The Musk-directed email was sent by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to government employees over the weekend.

Shortly after, Musk wrote in a post on X that if they did not respond by 1159 p.m. last night, it would be, quote, taken as a resignation. NBC News now has learned the Department of Government Efficiency is expected to feed the responses from federal workers who replied to that Musk-directed email into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary. AI will decide their fate. That's according to three sources with knowledge of the system. But confusion continued yesterday ahead of the deadline. First, individual departments advised their employees not to respond, while others said

they must respond. Then the OPM said responses were optional. Then Musk said responses were required and failure to respond would result in termination. President Trump appeared to agree but added to the confusion by saying those who did not respond would be quote sort of semi-fired. I thought it was great because we have people that don't show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government so by asking the question tell us what you did this week what he's doing is saying are

you actually working and then if you don't answer like you're sort of semi fired or you're fired, because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist. Last night, Musk followed the president by posting that federal workers who did not respond to the initial email would be given another chance, but failure to respond a second time would result in termination. The White House did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment on that post. Let's bring in senior political columnist for Politico, Jonathan Martin. So, Jonathan, we're seeing some of the first, I guess, pushback from

these individual departments to Elon Musk just having free reign with that chainsaw he wielded at CPAC, telling people, if you don't respond to this we'll assume you're resigning and you're gone and if you do respond we're gonna feed it into AI and AI will decide whether you keep your job or not. What do you make of what we've seen just even in the last 24 hours? Yeah I'm curious for the AI function on semi-fired. That's a pretty advanced AI software these days apparently that can do the semi-fired, but they're making it up as they go. It's not more complicated than that.

I think Trump obviously wants Elon to bring the efficiencies of a private company to the federal government, and Elon is doing to the federal government or trying to what he has done in the private sector. It just doesn't work that way. And the upshot of it tragically for the federal workforce and for the country is that you guys know what's gonna happen. The people who have the best opportunities

and the best options or the most talented are gonna say to borrow from the old country, so long take this job and shove it. They're gonna walk, they're gonna go in the private sector, take that pension early, move down to the low country or 30A, Joe, and enjoy the rest of their life

and then their early 60s. And everybody else who's gonna try to hang on is gonna go to court and try to keep their job, but it's just asking for the best people to walk and it's totally self-defeating. That's the concern that we've heard frankly on this show on other shows people saying you're going to lose really talented minds that want to do

their work for America and on behalf of the public. I can tell you I've heard that from the federal workers that I've spoken to there in agony not knowing what's coming next, but then also wanting to serve and having no place to put that service because of this but then Musk wanting to serve and having no place to put that service because of this. But then Musk is also applying this same attitude of flaunting the norms of how these firings would even typically be done by posing the same question to literal members of Congress, to senators saying, what did you do this week? Give me five bullet points. I mean, that's the tone, right? Yeah. And I, you know, there's no function on the AI search I don't think for Coequal

branch of government necessarily. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. Yeah exactly, it has semi-fired and Coequal branch, it's really high tech stuff. Though look he's trying to do what he did for Tesla, for SpaceX obviously, for Twitter, and trying to apply that to the federal government. It's a very different scenario here and it's not going to go as well. Here's where I think it ends. I think Trump eventually is going to get tired of Elon's a antics but but be his unpopular if you look at the polling data so far something that Trump cares deeply about Trump's

numbers are a lot better than Elon Musk's Trump doesn't like somebody who's that unpopular around him. I think once Trump realizes that the depth of Elon's unpopularity, whether it's this summer or this fall, I think his days are gonna be numbered. Well, you know, Frank, for the whole idea that this is, we need a CEO to run our government the way they run their own businesses, the best CEOs.

First of all, there's a long and sorry history of CEOs performing horribly in government because they can't just sit in their side office and do this, do that, do 10, 15, 20 years, they don't do this. I mean, you look what Elon's done with Twitter. Ask anybody if Twitter is better today than it was when he walked in there. And the overwhelming majority of people will say no. But you take Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs later Steve Jobs, later in life, was asked what something that he learned. He said, you know, I learned you have to be a lot more patient with people. There were people that I got rid of too early. There were people I didn't stick with. There were people I didn't get. They grew on the job and they ended up being my most valuable employee. So you don't just go around and just fire somebody because of it. That's the same thing. You look at the video, the video is culture.

Their entire culture is you're on board. We don't fire you. If you make a billion dollar mistake, then we get the benefit of that billion dollar mistake because you won't make it a second or a third or a fourth time. And that is a culture of so many highly successful companies. I mean, if you are the world's richest man, and you've made a lot of your money because of government contracts, again, the great irony of all of this,

then perhaps you can afford to go in and blow up Twitter and start firing people and gutting operations. It doesn't work that way when you're dealing with the National Institutes of Health and there are young Americans who are depending on the NIH and the research that NIH provides to stay alive, Alzheimer's patients, cancer patients. I mean, you just go down the list. If you look at cuts to the FAA, cuts to, you know, nuclear security and safety, cuts to health organizations that are trying to stop the bird flu from being an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.

We go down the list. This, I mean, forget government. This is not how top CEOs would work at their own companies. Well, and the consequences of breaking Twitter, I mean, were bad. It turned the public square into a toxic racist neo-Nazi playground, but the consequences of breaking the federal government are much worse, as you're describing. We saw this last weekend with this email, when you ask FBI agents to list the five things that they're working on in a highly insecure sort of setting.

Well, I mean, that's not showing tremendous sensitivity to their investigations. And when you have Cash Patel telling you, whoa, wait a minute, guy, you might be moving too far too fast. You know, there's certain things that we don't want to move fast and break. You know that you've gone too far and you're dealing with extremely dangerous territory. Yeah, it's possible we'll look back upon this as an inflection point in the early days of Trump's second term.

Let's remember, and I wrote on this today for The Atlantic, this began with a Trump post over the weekend encouraging Elon, saying he's doing the work, actually telling him to be more aggressive. Musk and his aides at Doge then put together this email plan that was so haphazard and hastily written. We're told so many federal employees thought it was spam. They didn't think it was real. They thought it was a phishing attempt. Then Musk started driving it on social media and

cabinet agencies, we're told, a lot of their leaders grew very unhappy about this, thinking this was Musk encroaching on their territory. Now some of that is because they want the authority to dismiss personnel at their own department if needed. They didn't want to cede any of that power to Musk. We saw a real inflection point yesterday from the White House. Willie read through the chronology about the shifting guidance. But I'm told some senior members of the West Wing really frustrated with Musk here and

quietly let agencies know this is optional. You don't have to have your employees respond to this. It's the first time we've really seen some daylight between the West Wing and what Musk is trying to do. We talked to some senior federal employees yesterday, one of whom deemed this a train wreck. Another said it was a form of harassment, that they feel like that they've really soured here on what Musk is trying to do. And really the backdrop we should keep in mind,

J-Mart mentioned the polls that suggest that Musk's approval rating is dropping. We've also had these series of town halls in recent days, some of which in Republican districts were voters. Republican voters express a lot of anger as to these indiscriminate sloppy cuts. And at a certain point, the people in Trump's orbit tell me, the president who still likes Musk for now, that could reach a breaking point. Yeah, these jobs that are being hacked away with a chainsaw belong to Republicans and Democrats. And that's why you're hearing a lot of that at those town halls. We'll see as these members come back to Washington,

if they actually say something about this to Donald Trump and pass on what they're hearing from their constituents. Still ahead this morning on Morning Joe, the latest on the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas after both sides accuse each other of violating that fragile truce, the latest from Tel Aviv. The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is in jeopardy again this morning after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Saturday a scheduled release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners is being delayed. He cited the terrorist group's repeated violations of the ceasefire's terms and its cynical exploitation

of Israeli hostages for propaganda purposes during several handovers to the Red Cross. Last week, Hamas returned the bodies of four dead captives, saying they were those of two young children, their mother, and an elderly man. But forensic testing conducted in Israel found the mother's body was not returned. Those remains were of an unknown person from Gaza. A day later, Hamas handed over the correct body, calling the incident a mistake. Meanwhile, Israeli defense forces say forensic testing

shows the children, a four-year-old and a 10-month-old, the youngest hostages taken on October 7th, were not shot to death, saying the captors killed the babies with their bare hands. The IDF says Hamas then, quote, committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities. The terrorist group denies the allegation, claiming the children died in an Israeli airstrike.

For the latest on all this, let's bring in NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley, who joins us live from Tel Aviv. Matt, what's the latest there? Yeah, well, as you mentioned, this tenuous treaty that had already been in place for about six weeks is now really, really close to collapsing. And that's not just because of what you mentioned earlier about the fact that the Israelis are now withholding

more than 600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons because of these, what Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have called degrading and humiliating ceremonies during these weekly handovers. What is also a major problem and a ticking time bomb for this piece is the fact that we are about to move from phase one, the six weeks of handover swaps of Israeli prisoners and, excuse me, of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. That's supposed to end on Sunday and it was already supposed to have been weeks of negotiations between Hamas and the Israelis to move to phase two as of March 1st. This new phase would have seen a more permanent peace in the Gaza Strip as well as potentially

the full withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip for the first time since those October 7th attacks. So the fact that those negotiations haven't been going on despite this looming deadline, that is a major, major roadblock in the way of continuing this peace. And already we've heard from Israeli military leaders and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that they are prepared, they are girding for a renewed fight in the Gaza Strip. They've even brought reservists to the areas around the Gaza Strip in order to prepare

for targets within Gaza and simply to go about the business of fighting Hamas. Now, one of the reasons why these negotiations haven't really been started again in earnest is because both sides, once again, are so far apart when it comes to the final terms of this deal. The Israelis have said they are not going to leave the Gaza Strip without seeing Hamas completely demilitarized or completely destroyed, whereas Hamas have said, of course, they are not going to essentially sign their own demise as part of this peace treaty. So that puts these two sides so far apart and makes these negotiations back to where they were before, almost impossible, with both sides seeing totally different realities on the

ground. Willie? NBC's Matt Bradley, live in Tel Aviv. Thank you so much, Matt. We really appreciate your reporting. The situation in Israel among the Israelis, it's from people I've talked to, from interviews I've read, from reporting I've seen from there. Those two babies being brought back in coffins without their mother and then the way they were grotesquely paraded, the way every one of these hostages that have been through hell have

been paraded by Hamas, it has made, as one person heard one person say it is made even the most left-wing Israeli actually sound like you know a right-wing hawk it is hard for Americans to understand the impact of the past week on the people of Israel, and just how angry they are that the news that these babies were killed and tortured before they were brought back, many say it is the low point since October the 7th. As long as Hamas, well, I've said it before, but it bears repeating now, as long as Hamas is in charge of Gaza, there can be no peace. And that was said during the war,

and that has been underlined by their continued barbaric actions. And it's even worse than that. I mean, seeing that baby, the picture of the baby, the infant over and over, it is crushing. But it's a form of psychological warfare that Hamas is engaged in, that they know that on this moment, where they're on the cusp of the next phase of this peace deal, that the

manner in which these babies were released, it's just inflicting further psychological damage on the Israeli psyche. It's reminding Israelis of the brutality that Hamas is capable of and reminding them that, as you say, Hamas is still there more than a year and a half after October 7th, that we're no closer to a brighter future really for Gaza because of their continued persistence. See how much longer this ceasefire holds. The Atlantic's Frank for Frank.

Thanks so much as always. One week from today, the United States will levy tariffs on two of its closest trading partners, Mexico and Canada. Jonathan Martin has a new piece for Politico titled How Canada Hopes to Thwart Trump. And if it, John writes, not since Tim Hortons began opening franchises south of the border has there been such a

marketing offensive from up north. And for good reason. Canadian leaders are near a state of panic about President Trump's threats of tariffs and annexation. The former would upend their economy. The latter would undo their country. One Canadian official told me they felt like they were under an artillery barrage. So enter the Maple Leaf Mafia, eh? John goes on to write, Ontario premier Doug Ford was

joined at the National Governors Association in Washington by the premier of Nova Scotia as well as Canada's ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman. Other provincial leaders as well as federal ministers have regularly been in and out of Washington on Air Canada since the election, meeting privately with Trump aides and lawmakers of both parties. Kudos to you, J-Mart, for getting in Tim Hortons. You got to have it in any piece about Canada. It's got to include it.

So what do they feel like? What is the sincere level of panic inside Canada? We've seen all the 51st state stuff from President Trump. We've heard Canadians booing the national anthem at hockey games, but when you cut through all that, what is the level of concern from people who actually can make a difference here? It's significant. I've covered the NGA for the last 15 years. I don't think I've missed one in that period of time.

I can never remember any Canadian presidents at the national governor's meeting, let alone the extent of what I saw over the weekend here. And there's a couple things going on. Look, first of all, there is real concern about Trump going through with these blanket tariffs next month and what that would do to the economy of Canada. But the other thing is there's a fractured response because there's not a stable federal

government right now in Ottawa because Trudeau is stepping down. The liberals are about to elect a new leader in March and then obviously there's going to be a general election. So a lot of this work is being done by the individual provinces, which are kind of like our states on steroids. They have a lot more power than our states do. So you've got not just the federal government and obviously the ambassador in Washington, but you also have, well, these individual provinces, some more conservative, some more liberal who are doing their own lobbying, literally have hired separate Washington lobby shops to do their work and are just blanketing the governor's meeting, Capitol Hill, any Trump aide who will give them an audience they'll talk to.

And the message is we're your friend, eh? You know us, like we do business together. The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, who I wrote could be played by John Candy or Chris Farley in the movie, is a really fascinating guy. He's toting this 25 page document around which talks about how Ontario alone is like the biggest trading partner for like a dozen states in the U.S. So they want to know that this is a matter of a friendship but also be business Willie that you guys sell us goods we sell you goods why would you want to screw that up? Why would you want to screw that up why would you want to screw that up and yet you also hear from that same minister that you're talking about that he talks to Republicans and

Republicans say yeah I'm with you this isn't a good idea there's plenty of governors who look at the way that their states do business who say I'm with you too this doesn't work for my bottom line yeah and it's pretty easy to find senators governor so both Ali, who are deeply uneasy about the idea of a trade war with Canada in part because of the retaliatory tariffs. Let's take for example, Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell ran Paul, the two senators, very deeply concerned about the

Canadian slapping tariffs on bourbon. And that has already become a sort of subplot in this, is the Canadian effort to block US booze and to sort of tariff it. That would be devastating for the economy and parts of Kentucky. So we're already hearing about the kind of pushback that the Canadians could inflict on us

by tariffing our goods. Senior political columnist for Politico, Jonathan Martin, a great piece as always, will be reading it online. Thanks, Jay Martin. Coming up, we'll turn back to the war in Ukraine as our next guest examines how failures in America's foreign policy enabled the current crisis. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman joins us to explain what went wrong and the new approach he says the US should be taking moving forward. Morning Joe's coming right back. President, if you called Zelensky a dictator, would you use the same words without including

him? Uh, I don't use those words lightly. I think that we're going to see how it all works out. Would you use the same words without including it? I don't use those words lightly. I think that we're going to see how it all works out. Let's see what happens. I think we have a chance of a really good settlement between various countries. And you know, you're talking about Europe and you're talking about Ukraine as part of that whole situation.

The other side has a lot of support also. So let's see how it all works out. A dodge from President Trump yesterday in the Oval Office, again, declining to call Vladimir Putin a dictator. And he does use that term very casually when it comes to President Zelensky. He used it to describe the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump's administration, meanwhile, voted yesterday with Russia against a UN resolution that condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine and called for Russia's immediate withdrawal from the country that on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Let's bring in former National Security Council director for European Affairs, retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who's the author of the new book titled, The Folly of Realism, How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. And as NBC contributor, our good friend Mike Barnicle joins the table as well.

Guys, good morning. So I want to get into the book in just a minute, but let's talk, there's so many directions we could go with this. The president's comments in the Oval Office being corrected by President Macron of France on a couple of occasions. But what do you make of the UN vote as someone who understands the dynamics of Ukraine, its relationship with Russia, how this war started, who actually is the aggressor that the United States would side with Russia, with China, with North Korea, with Belarus

at the UN yesterday? It's disgusting. Up is down, down is up. We're no longer the good actor. We no longer believe in the same values we did just a month ago. So it's, to me, I start to wonder, you know, I'm not big into conspiracies because I've seen government as a leaky sieve. Things just don't stay secret.

But now I'm starting to wonder, what does Putin have on Trump that he's willing to bend over so hard, to bend over backwards to really support Putin's agenda? It doesn't make a huge amount of sense. He's not getting anything for it right now. He's given away the farm. He's, you know, I'm not sure what kind of deals he's making where he's giving everything that his opponent wants, nothing in return, maybe the promise, the dangle of something in the future.

But he's not getting anything. He's voting against Ukraine, our allies in NATO. He's calling Zelensky a dictator. He's glad handing and saying he's going to visit Putin at the Kremlin. This is just surreal and very, very wide departure. And it's really throwing a lot of folks for a loop. They don't know what to make of it. And putting the onus on Ukraine, putting the onus on President Zelensky, who, of course,

had their country invaded three years ago, saying, if you want a peace deal, I can't make any security guarantees, but give me a whole bunch of your rare earth minerals that feed our technology industry. What is your concern about the kind of deal that Ukraine might be forced to strike at the end of this war? You know, it's shocking how much continuity there is between Trump and his deal making now

and the historical pattern that I write about in the Folly of Realism. Everything is highly transactional. It about in the Folly of Realism. Everything is highly transactional. It's called the Folly of Realism because realists believe that you basically, our countries have interests, everything needs to be transactional. You want to maximize all your outcomes in each individual encounter. We're now at the poison Kool-Aid stage of realism.

That's what you get with Donald Trump. We have somebody that's utterly transactional. Nothing that happened before matters. Even in his first administration, he didn't really make any deals with Putin before. He's now trying again. He's now resetting the same mistakes that we repeat in the past. And it's really boggles the mind how you have somebody not learn the lessons of the past and try to strike a deal with Russia while throwing Ukraine under the bus. The Ukrainians are willing to bend have somebody not learn the lessons of the past and try to strike a deal with Russia while throwing Ukraine under the bus.

The Ukrainians are willing to bend over backwards also. They're willing to compromise maximally to end this war, but they're not going to give up their sovereignty. They're not going to give up their independence. Russia is the one that needs to be pressured to come to the negotiating table. They're actually teetering in certain ways. Their economy is quite brittle. If they're pushed in the right direction with sanctions,

if Ukraine has some successes in the battlefield, continues to hold the Russians and maybe achieve some military successes, you could see Putin coming to the table. Instead, the pressure is coming off Putin. It's going on Zelensky. Again, it makes very little sense from deal-making perspective. It is maximally the folly of Trump and maximally the folly of realism. You know, Mike Barnicle, take the next question, but I just I want to underline what the colonel

has just said about the folly of realism in this case. You had George W. Bush in 2000, I think it was four, saying he'd looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and saw his soul and liked what he saw. It was a few years later that Vladimir Putin, in effect, declared a war on the West. In 2008, Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, the country of Georgia, and the United States and the rest of the world did absolutely nothing. You had in 2012 Barack Obama talking to Medvedev saying, you know, after the election we can do some more things. In 2014 Russia did more things. They invaded Ukraine despite the 1994 treaty where Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons

and the United States and the rest of the world said that they would protect the integrity of their borders. Then it was Crimea. Then it was the shooting down of commercial aircraft. That continued. So Vladimir Putin by 2021 understood one thing. 2022, he understood he could invade Ukraine and the West wasn't going to do anything. Well, this time the West actually did something. But again, it was the attempt over the past 20, 25 years for that realism that the Colonel

is talking about, that reset with Russia, the reset that never came in was always seen as weakness by Putin. Putin has made a sucker of every president that has tried to deal with him. You know, Joe, it's interesting that you mentioned George W. Bush's observation that he looked into the eyes of Putin and saw his soul. John McCain's retort to that was he too had looked into the eyes of Putin and he saw K, G and B. And today, all these years later, all of us, and not just us here on this set,

and not just us here in this business, are probably kind of shocked that the United States joined Russia, Iran, and North Korea in voting against Ukraine at the United Nations. And Colonel, the subtitle of your book, How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine, when did this deception begin and what were the component parts of this deception? The deception really began probably even before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

What you had is in 1989, Robert Gates, then the deputy national security advisor, approaching George Bush and saying, hey, we should start thinking about the collapse of the Soviet Union. They put together this ungrouped secret if it wasn't supposed to exist. It seemed like far-fetched notion that the Soviet Union was going to fall apart. As they started to look at the problem, they settled in on Russia breaking apart, loose nukes, nuclear proliferation, and everything became about security. We threw out the idea of values, the fact that we needed to bring these regions as the

Soviet Union fell apart into the fold. We underinvested there and maximally into denuclearization. That's why we had the Budapest Memorandum. So it started all the way at the very, very beginning and carried forward as Joe mentioned through all these different moments where we didn't we after the Ukrainians gave up their nukes we lost attention there we focused back on Russia and the relationship we wanted with them. Orange Revolution 2008 and the Georgia war it's carried through all the way and now we're at this moment where again Donald Trump is taking the worst mistakes the

absolute worst mistakes, the absolute worst mistakes of the past 30 plus years and doubling down on him as if nothing happened before. Putin is winning. Putin is winning. And Trump is in a lot of ways, there's a moment where six months from now where it's clear that unless there's some sort of compromise, some sort of dirt he has on Putin, on Trump, that Trump is going to

have to relive the situation. Right now, he's getting all these potential promises of relationships with Russia. Russia is not really that interested in that. They're interested in breaking things. They're interested in breaking the relationship between the US and NATO. We could end up at a point where six months from now, the US may turn its back on Russia, but it will have already spoiled the relationships with Ukraine, with NATO, and we would be weaker and more isolated. So we're making the same mistakes over and over.

There is a better way to do this. We start thinking about the centrality of values and interests. It's that idea of neo-idealism that I advocate in this book. It's the idea that we need to figure out how to avoid the bright, shiny objects of a deal on arms control or a dangle from the Russians on fighting terrorism. And if we think about the centrality of values to interests, it allows us to focus on what really matters.

It's our relationships, it's democracy, because that's where we have the strongest relationships, the best prosperity. And that's the way ahead. So let's look forward a little bit. You just talked about potentially fracturing the relationships in the US. Europe has stepped up to help Ukraine. Where does Russia go from here in the post-Putin era, whenever that occurs? That might still be some time away.

We're talking probably, it could be as late as 2036. That's a long ways away. I don't think that at that point Putin will be quite old, but somebody else will come in that won't have that consolidated power, won't have ruled for 30 plus years. So it will be a change that might be an inflection point. But for the foreseeable future, the only thing we could do is make sure that Russia takes an L on this war. That's the only way that we can pin Russia back

and get them to maybe not think of military aggression as the tool, a viable tool to achieve their ends. They're gonna, in the meantime, what they're gonna do is they're gonna try to pander to Trump, indicate that there's a relationship to be had there. Once that they've done enough damage in the relationship between the US and NATO, they're going to start probing what could they start to affect NATO directly.

NATO Article 5 is no longer ironclad. Maybe they start hybrid warfare in the Baltics. So this is going to get much, much more dangerous than we see today, as bad as it is at the moment. Putin clearly knows how to handle this. The president is starting to get exactly what he wants out of this deal. The timely new book, The Folly of Realism, How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine is on sale now.

Author and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. Colonel Vindman, thanks for being here. Congrats on the book. Thanks for having me on. Good to see you.