MTracey podcast - NATO Summit aftermath, with Lily Lynch

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Here’s my discussion with Lily Lynch, whom I met at the NATO Summit last week and considers herself a fellow journalistic “weirdo,” making it opportune to swap some observations. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mtracey.net/subscribe

All right, world. We should be streaming now on a simulcast thing that I rigged up where it goes to Substack, YouTube, and X. Crazy, right? Impressive worksmanship on my part. Before we begin, I think if you want to send like a super chat that will come directly to my attention, you should go to YouTube. So YouTube M. Tracy is the channel, but whatever you want to do is fine.

I'm here with Lily. Do you want to give a brief introduction? I always sort of get annoyed when people ask me to do that, but I guess I'm going to violate my own rule or do what would annoy me in other contexts and ask you if you would like to do that. Sure. I'm a writer and journalist. I live in Istanbul. Michael and I met at the NATO summit. I write for the new statesman, new left review.

I'm the co-founder of a publication called Balkanist, and editor-in-chief for it. And yeah. Okay, that's some new information to me. So I'm glad in retrospect that I asked you to give yourself an introduction. Maybe I should have asked for that just for my own purposes. Yeah, so we met at the NATO summit. I had been, I think, peripherally aware of you, just given your online presence, but it all came together when we met in person. And you approached me, which was a great honor, because in my experience, going to functions like the NATO Summit and other security conferences that are similar in orientation.

very few people, very few journalists even, have anything even approaching the kind of mindset that I would bring to bear at such an event in the sense that nobody at these things, like I mentioned to you, the Data Summit, the Munich Security Conference, all these confabs that the Transatlantic Security Cretts, Securocrats, Securotocrats, something like that, gather at very few of the journalists in my experience who attend these things have any notion of sort of questioning any of the underlying premises and they just accept, to the extent that they're going to ask an adversarial question, it's something like, to give an example at this briefing that was just like decreed to be off the record or on background without even like consenting it uh asking anybody for consent uh from a

top nato official the questions were always something like how can we expedite more ammunition to ukraine could you give us more information on how many drones that russia can produce per day something like this so nothing i never like cuts gets to the crux of the whole reason for the gathering, you know, maybe this is my incorrigible, like, I don't know, a philosophical interrogationist side or something, but yes, that's the, that's the typical mindset that journalists bring to these functions. So it was very unusual to encounter you, or unexpected to counter you as somebody who is at least in the ballpark in terms of what my approach would be.

So. Exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I approached you, actually, is because it was two days of it. And I met a lot of very nice people. I don't want to say anything too negative about them. Everybody was wonderful. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of critical things. Like there wasn't a lot of like questioning of NATO. I mean, I've heard described as NATO is supposed to be both above debate and below debate. Like you're not supposed to actually question any of the. like what it is, it makes people very nervous when you do in any way. So yeah, I just, I was kind of relieved when I saw you as like another, another weirdos here. So it's very, very, very happy about that. Who imparted to you that that NATO must be both above and below debate? Was it somebody associated with NATO or just so like folk wisdom that was just floating around? It was like an academic paper actually about NATO and about the sort of the way that in large

was sold to countries in Eastern Europe and sort of the way that the NATO use like information kind of campaigns and as it spread east anyway. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that many of the journalists were asking was about Trump, but from the perspective of, oh, isn't this excessive flattery of Trump kind of embarrassing? shouldn't NATO have the self-confidence that it doesn't need to bend over backwards to

flatter and appease Trump, which I guess is okay enough questioning as far as it goes. But again, it's within the confines of like the accepted parameters of like except of affirming the virtue and necessity of NATO. Right. And worrying that maybe this dynamic in terms of Trump flattery diminishes the stature of NATO. Right, right. Because NATO is sort of like a holy thing that you're not supposed to really ever interrogated. It's almost like Atlantisism is almost like a religion for, I think, for a lot of these people. I think the first thing I said to you when I went up to you is that a lot of people seem like, you know, kind of culty. like they're almost like brainwash with a certain um but they would also probably say the same about me

so that's that's the other side of it what cult would you be in i mean they would probably just think that i you know was um and i don't know they would call me kind of some kind of like tanky or something like which is like totally ridiculous right i mean i write like very centrist publication so yeah i've gotten the accusation a lot not so much recently but definitely in the first two years or so of the ukraine war right all the sudden I was a tanky because I was akin to the actual communists in the 1960s who supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia right which just does not does not accord with my conception of myself in any way but what are you going to do I think the words like not

being used so much anymore. But like I still feel like, I mean, I lived in Serbia for many years and that kind of automatically gets you, you're like tarred by association forever, I think, with like a, quote-unquote bad country. So, I mean, I've also lived in Ukraine though. And they kind of like to overlook that part. So. Right. Yes, that would get you superior access to things at the NATO summit. So I'm surprised. Did you, did you use that as like a calling card? Or? It's a credential. You know, weird, it didn't come up. And I think this was just kind of true the summit in general. I feel like Ukraine was like compared to the previous three years was sort of on the back burner. I mean, it really was on the back burner. Like I don't, it was front and set. I mean, of course, this is my first, this was my first NATO summit. I know it was not your first NATO summit. But I picked the pan. Not my first rodeo. Not my first rodeo. Yeah. And I really want to hear about how you compare and contrast the two. But, uh, or the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. I don't know if maybe you've been to more than two. But I just thought it was two, two data summits total.

I've attempted to go to four, 22, 23, to four. Accepted to two, rejected to two. Rejected in my home nation. That's crazy. That's crazy. But accepted for whatever reason. And then rejected from the Lithuania summit in 2023. My pet theory is that, okay, so I looked into this obviously, furiously when I was

being toyed with and strung along in 2023. And it turns out that the host country does play an outsized role in the media accreditation process. Oh, wow. And evaluating whether certain people should be admitted. So I think maybe it's a bit more lax in Western Europe. Yeah. In Lithuania, I know that I would. be seen in maybe a slightly different light. Yeah, the Baltic states are a little tough, a little, like, kind of not. And D.C. would be under Biden, you know, quite, you know, I don't know. It was kind of a disaster. I'll never forget that summit, you know, like watching it. It wasn't it when he referred to.

It was right in the middle of when he was being badgered to exit the presidential race. And it was shortly after that fateful debate performance. And his age was saying, well, just wait till the NATO summit, he'll show that he's on the ball. Yeah. And I think like one of the first things he said was didn't he confused Zelensky with Putin or something like that. That was that was unreal. I think he said like Vice President Trump at one point. I mean, it was just a comedy of errors.

Yeah, it was, it's actually horrible thinking about back to last summer. It was just last summer, you know, brat summer. But on that note, one of the interesting points of comparison is that in terms of the big end of summit press conference, which the president does traditionally hold. Yeah. If you compare Biden's press conference in 2022, which I did attend, that year I wasn't admitted to the summit as part as the White House press corps or I don't even really know what I was admitted as part of. I just know that it was facilitated by the White House press operations, thankfully enough and unexpectedly enough. But in 2022, I was just sort of independently admitted like on my own accord. And so I was in 2020.

in the main hall for the final Biden press conference, but not within the American delegation, so to say. So I did not get the prime seating access, but I was still in a pretty good seat. It wasn't quite as good as the one last week, but I was still a decent enough range where, in theory, I could have raised my hand and asked the question, but Biden came out

with a prepared sheet of paper that listed the journalist and outlets to call on. And so even raising one's hand as though it were a freewheeling exercise that you could just be spontaneously called on was totally futile. Yeah, it's just theater, basically.

There's no need to raise your hand in that situation except to like, yeah, create the impression that there's something organic happening. Oh, that's awful. So he called on a grand total of thigh. I went back and just double-checked this. He called on a grant toll of five American outlets. I think I told you this.

One of which I believe it was Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News, who was also at this past summit, asked about Roe versus Wade being overturned, which, I mean, come on, not the most relevant for a NATO summit, especially if you're one of five people who are able to ask a question of the basically leader of the military alliance. Yeah, yeah.

And he called on zero. international outlets. So you have journals from all over the world essentially. Yeah. But at least from all over Europe, Canada, et cetera, given this one opportunity to ask a question of the big cahuna of the NATO alliance and to travel all the assistants, paid all this money or whatever to get into the position to do that. And there was not even a notion that he would call on any international journals.

Whereas it's true that Trump didn't have a prepared sheet of paper. He obviously recognized some of the people in the media front row that I somehow insinuated myself into. Good job, yeah. As part of the American delegation. And he said stuff like, oh, this one's going to be a beauty and calls on the guy who he knows, like, he's probably going to want to mix it up with. But he was doing that just by visually observing who it is that he wanted to call. call on and I'll unfortunately recognize some of these long more longstanding very serious like network TV journalists but it was not predetermined who we would be calling on it actually was organic

hence he also ended up calling on like a journalist from Ukraine a two journalists from Spain right yeah from uh there was well right there was one from uh ukay there was one from austria yeah some dutch for sure like oh dutch that's right yeah Dutch that's right yeah Dutch And so it really was like identified press conference in the way that the Trump press conference, in the way that the Biden press conference three years ago wasn't. So that was a genuine contrast that I think it should be pointed out. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's, I mean, that's, yeah, that is important.

The quality of the press conference, you know, I don't know. We could, I guess, interestingly, I was talking to like the other, journalist I was hanging out with on that same day from Croatia just now. And he was saying, like, well, at least Trump walked away from the press conference with a positive notion of NATO. And I've heard this over and over again from Europe in particular, for whom NATO is sort of like an existential thing. They feel, or like they feel like that they're like, yeah, they feel really wrapped up in it in it. And they have all said, hey, well, you know, Mark Ruta needed to say, maybe it was embarrassing that he said daddy, but he kind of, you know, in the end, it all kind of worked because

Trump left saying positive things about NATO. But I mean, I just don't understand how like people haven't figured out by now that like he changes his mind like every two days or two weeks or yeah, I have a slightly different read on that. So I don't know if you if you read the article that I posted yesterday. The German. Yeah, the German thing. So I ended up entering into this background briefing, they call it, for the German press corps, just because my tactic was to spot these herds of journalists migrating in different directions and just assuming that they had somewhere interesting to go, is just latching on to the glob of people traveling somewhere.

and I ended up in this German press conference, this press conference with the top spokesperson or like aid or advisor to the German chancellor, Mertz. Yeah. And I don't speak German, so I had to just sit there and I just recorded it, but I heard enough, I heard the word Trump said enough to ascertain that like 95% of the briefing was about, Trump, interpreting Trump, dissecting Trump, trying to come up with like the correct heuristic to understand Trump talking about like Trump has his own way of speaking.

So like one reason why these especially non-fluent English speakers get so paranoid and frantic about Trump is because Trump speaks in terms of like colloquialisms. That's exactly true. Yeah. And other American politicians don't really do that. so as much. Not quite as much. I mean, like, Obama did.

Obama, I mean, Obama, Bush, I mean, they'll have like folksy. Yeah. Idioms that they'll use or whatever. Trump is just like, Trump is entirely that. So they're always like, they're always fearful that they're not

understanding quite what's going on. Yeah. And so one of the Tem was telling things to me about what that German official said and this was supposed to be, I guess, a background briefing, although, again, I was not asked as to whether I agreed to not attribute the, as I said in the piece, like, of course, as a journalist, I'm happy to abide by arrangements to be off the record or to be on background

or whatever it is, but it's like a mutual thing typically. That's the standard of practice, not just like I dictate that. is issued by some German official without even asking me if I agree. So, yeah, it was Stefan Cornelius, who's the top German spokesperson for Fred Friedrich Mertz. Oh, but one thing I thought that was so, and people should go to amtracy.com.

There's actually a link if you're watching on YouTube to the article if you want to take a look at it. But one thing that I thought was so telling was that he and his cohort had come into this summit, hyper paranoid because they thought it was going to be this dire culmination of the past couple months, and Trump was going to announce that he was going to be withdrawing from NATO or something. And they were so worried ever since the Munich Security Conference in February where Vance lectured.

Feach was crazy. The Europeans, which, yeah. And Vance's speech, I thought, like, had some substantive, merit to it. He just forfeited any standing to make that argument when they just started rounding up people for criticizing Israel in the United States. Right, yeah, exactly.

So anyway, so this German official said effectively, look, Trump was the word that he used, I don't know if this is like a totally perfect translation, but the word that I had translated for me was that Trump

was peaceful in that he was not looking for confrontation with the other European NATO member states. He was moderate in his disposition, I guess, toward the other European states. Wow. And said this is the, this is the German official relaying his observations of the private meeting that Trump had with the other NATO leaders. God. And also speaking with Mertz about Mertz's private interactions with Trump. And then Trump ended up reaffirming Article 5. I mean, they thought that Trump was going to repudiate

Article 5, potentially. Right. Right. And et cetera, et cetera. And I just always would have thought that that fear that they harbor is paranoia. It's not actually grounded at anything tangible because why would Trump withdraw from NATO? It just doesn't make any sense.

Would, does Trump strike you as somebody who wants to, like, relinquish one of the primary tools of American hegemony and power projection? Because never. No, I mean, I don't think any American president. So the fact that they were so relieved that Trump was like genial. Yeah, right. Actually, hearing you talk about this, now I kind of get it, because he has had this very adversarial relationship to Europe.

And like, you know, thinking of them as like pathetic vassals and like humiliating them when they would come to the White House. Like he humiliated the Merck's. Like when he said like, it was a bad day for you. on like the end of like World War II. Remember like a couple of months? That was just kind of a quip. I mean, that wasn't really,

again, I think to take that little like ribbing or whatever it was as illustrative of some like, all consuming humiliation that Trump has tried to inflict on Europe. I think, again, it's just a little overstated. So I guess my takeaway is that 10 years later, and this has been a theme throughout my attending these sub-functiones,

like this and talking to Europeans is that they're always ingesting this like hyperparano, histrionic, like almost Democratic Party vision of Trump? Yes. So that distorts how they view Trump and they miss like the tangible policy outcomes that are much more indicative of like what Trump's actual posture is towards NATO and Europe. He brags about, why do you think that his central mission here was supposedly was to get the 5% of GDP spending on defense commitment. Like is that to cripple NATO or is that to actually strengthen NATO as a tool of American power projection, right?

Probably the latter. So I thought it was so interesting and like indicative of this like professionally paranoid Trump of fixated mindset that these like, you know, supposedly very sophisticated and analytically, um, careful German officials were, we're like, we're like, we're like, we're, you know, wiping their brows with relief that Trump didn't just barrel in and declare that the United States was going to be like unilaterally dissolving NATO or something. Flanked by Marco Rubio?

I mean, would that be something that Mark? I mean, it's insane. Again, this was not unforeseeable at all that Trump would do this. But the Europeans live in this sort of like paranoid almost alternate dimension with respect to Trump where they still don't have a good read on him. And so, yeah.

You're totally right that they kind of have absorbed the Democratic Party line on Trump from the last several years. Just, you know, they kind of, this is kind of one of the ways in which they're kind of, to me, vassals is they don't have an independent sort of like understanding of Trump. It doesn't seem to, or least not a particularly well-developed one. However, I would say there are besides Vance's speech, which I didn't really shook them, I think that that really was kind of, because it came at the very beginning of the second, term, there was also the kind of altercation with Zelensky. And talking to liberal Atlantis

in Europe, they felt really, like, jarred by that. They felt like that made it all real. They felt that was like a moment that sort of just, I don't know, illustrated some, a very big change in, say, tone or direction of the United States. So I think it kind of makes sense to me that the Europeans would have expected, or not necessarily expected, but thought it was a real danger that Trump would show up and treat them the way that he treated as Zelensky, or treat them the way that advanced it at Munich. So I can kind of see how, you know,

they emerged from this one saying, oh, so it's actually kind of okay. You know, he was saying we really loved our countries and that he kind of being saying nice things about NATO. So I guess, you know, given those two really kind of big, events that, you know, got international attention that they could, they, I understand why they would kind of walk away from this one feeling a bit more like relieved, say.

Yeah, I mean, I understand why they feel relieved. I just think the basis for them being so paranoid and hysterical was, yeah, was like they did not have a valid basis to be so paranoid and historical, notwithstanding something like the Zelensky meeting, which I think was a little bit of an anomaly. I mean, just the way that was all set up where there was a little bit of a language barrier where if Zelensky had just

kept his mouth shut for another five minutes, they would have gone and signed the minerals deal that basically gave the United States ownership over a huge swath of Ukrainian natural resources, basically turned Ukraine to like an economic colonial outposts or something of the U.S. And then they ended up signing that, you know,

another iteration of that minerals deal within like six weeks anyway. Yeah, I totally agree with your point that like Trump is never going to pull out of NATO. All of this hysteria is hysteria. But I think in a way they're responding to like domestic American politics because, you know, it works, I guess, on the home front for the Democratic Party to say, look, Trump like all of, he angers all of our allies or like he makes us look bad on the world stage, whatever kind of idea they have in their head and the Atlantisist bubble, liberal Atlantis bubble.

And like, so, yeah, I mean, like, I think that they kind of have, yeah, they kind of are going with a Democratic Party line, therefore have a bit of a distorted view of sort of Trump and don't see how much of continuity there is between Trump and other presidents. They're just seeing the change in tone and style and showmanship, and they're not seeing the sort of like underlying substance is effectively the same, exactly the same. Yeah. Well, the Democratic, yeah, the Democratic Party, like, Fun House mirror version of Trump also is not tethered too much in the way of policy substance either. Right.

So Biden, I think, actually was campaigning while he was still in the race or, like last year, Biden would say if Trump gets reelected. He probably also said this in 2020. I'm not sure I have to go check. But basically, he would explicitly warn that if Trump were reelected that NATO wouldn't exist by the end of Trump's term. Right. So the Europeans hear that. And then they assume it must be correct on some level, right? Because Biden's a really committed transatlanticist.

Right, right. And Trump has these like idiosyncratic rhetorical quirks that make it seem like sometimes he's aggravated with the European powers. Or, you know, there was the famous photo of him. I think it was at the 2018-Nitreliad of summit, maybe 2017, where he's like looming over Merkel. And he pushed the Montenegrin Prime Minister out of the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like anybody. Who cares about that. Yeah. I mean, the Montenegrin president deserves me pushed aside probably. He does. Who cares? But yeah, I know what should mean that kind of famous photo, right?

Is that what you're the meaning? And we're like, yeah, but Merkel's that, yeah. God, wow. Yeah. I could pull it up, actually. I have lots of fancy tools on this. Trump, Merkel, photo. Let's see.

Oh yeah, here we go. Okay. I'm going to pull it up on the screen here. Okay. As you can see, I'm very well prepared. Amazing. Yeah, very well organized. Impressed.

Okay. Can you see that? Is it up? Yeah. This is, that's the photo. Yeah, that's the photo. Yeah. Wow.

So, like, what were the fruits of that photo? That was at the NATO Summit, right? I think or some other international gathering. Maybe it wasn't the NATO Summit. I'm not even sure because I'm not sure why Shinzo Abbey would be there. Well, the prime minister of Japan was supposed to be at this one as well. That's true. I think it was the NATO summit.

So like what was that supposed to be indicative of in terms of the tangible, measurable U.S. support for NATO? Really nothing. It's just that there was like this weird interpersonal dynamic that got captured in time there. And I think even like the story of that photo was that like within a matter of second, like seconds it came became much more cordial. just like a random snapshot that really wasn't representative of much of anything. But that's like a lot of way about a lot of these European officials view Trump vis-a-vis NATO. And I mean, the one thing that I will grant that was significant, at least while it was going on, was after the Zelensky meeting, there was a pause or suspension of U.S. aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

It wasn't comprehensive, meaning not every thing. asset of U.S. arms provision and intelligence sharing with Ukraine was suspended, but there was some suspension for nine days, okay? And then that was resolved. And ever since, you know, March 11th or whatever it was, U.S. arms of Ukraine have been flowing basically in keeping with the Biden levels. Right. And there's still a lot in the stockpiles that Biden authorized just says he was leaving office like several billion dollars worth of weaponry, that the Trump administration is still utilizing through the presidential drawdown power, basically allowing the president to unilaterally dispense or disperse weaponry.

So there's like a ton of policy continuity that I'm just not sure many of these European officials are aware of. I don't think Democrats are largely aware of them. Like, when Rubio and Hegsef have testified before Congress recently, the Democrats who are questioning them and the House and Senate are always shocked when they tell, when Hexeth and Rubio informed them that the Ukraine policy is effectively the same. Right. Like they assume there must be like some cataclysmic, you know, rupture. The Democrats. But I mean, I think the Democrats almost like in a way, they probably like kind of want there to be. So they can kind of contrast themselves and demonstrate themselves as like, you know, faithful, faithful, yeah.

What do they expect? So what they expect it would be in Trump's interest because he has the, because he's been colluding with Putin since 1987 or whatever the theory is. Right, right, right. To just allow for the total collapse of Ukraine. Right. allow, I guess, for the Russians to have a total military victory in Ukraine, as if that wouldn't be a blow to American prestige as Trump sees it? Right. Like, why would Trump just submit himself to that kind of indignity and blow to American hegemonic?

Right. And the Democrats would never let him, like, live it down. It would be humiliating for him, too, in a way. you know like i mean he had he would have to take ownership of that if it happened on his so yeah i i totally agree um in you know i guess they're they're actually thinking or at least some people are maybe some segments of the american public uh and european public believe that trump really is working on behalf of russian interests instead of ukrainian interests in that case in this kind of like parallel reality they live in um i guess giving up or allowing ukraine to just like you know, collapse in catastrophic defeat would be like a good thing for this like, you know, Putin or puppeteered Trump that doesn't exist.

But yeah, it's very, very weird. I spoke to a very prominent Democrat last night who shall go unnamed for the time being. And her theory was that part of the reason why everything seemed to go so smoothly and maybe counterintuitively well from her perspective at the NATO summit was that Trump was like on cloud nine given the perceived success of his Iran bombing. Totally. And it's time for it's. I mean, I think there is something to that, especially given that all these European

officials decided that they were not going to preen about international law for the time being. They took it out of the declaration or the the communicate. That's right. You pointed that out. So I haven't actually gone and checked that closely. There's no reference to I'll read it. International order or international law or whatever in this year's communicate. Exactly. From 2002 until last year, every year it said we adhere to international law and to the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations and are committed to upholding the rules based order. All of that was taken out this time. So nobody that's perfect. That's absolutely perfect. Yeah. Because there's no way to square that really with them all lining up behind Trump bombing Iran and also

Trump enabling and facilitating Israel launching what they call a preemptive strike on Iran. I mean, preemption is not admissible under international law, right? Right. Exactly. And so, like, I interviewed the prime minister of Sweden because I ended up in a Swedish press briefing as well. Thankfully, that one was in English. Of course. So I could at least follow along. And I think I might have told you about this. But in any event, and this was on a Greenwald show.

People missed it last week. Maybe I'll try to repost it or something. Actually, I can pull it up. Give me one second. Yeah. I have all this magical technology before me, so why not? I will hold it up and we can react and reflect. This one was for the public.

This was not like a secret briefing. This was a sweet. No, this was, well, this was in, this was like sort of another secret brief. No, this was a public, this was not a background briefing. Okay. This is a public sort of press conference. I think it was tailored to like the Swedish contingent or whatever. Right.

Which was somewhat minimal. Yeah. But no, it wasn't a background briefing. So it was all presumptively. on record, but then I also got a separate sort of individual interview with the Swedish Prime Minister just because I like ostentatiously like forced myself into the front of the line. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?

Um, bum, the Swedish Prime Minister is the guy from Karl Biltzp party. It's the moderate, the center right, right? Like, what's what's his name again? I forgot. It's Ulf. His first name is Ulf. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Christerson, I think. Yeah. Is that that's right, yeah. That's right, yeah.

It looks like a banker and Luxembourg or something. Like, they all do. I'm like, I don't know. I will find this in a moment. Is this the show you did in the Hague? Yeah, I did it. I did like a round up of some of the stuff that I did on day one. Okay. Why the hell can I find this?

Hmm. It's not on, hold on. I will find it. I wasn't where I thought it was going to be. Okay, found it, found it. That was exciting for people who are watching this for whatever reason. Sorry, didn't entertain people in the meantime. Yeah.

Yeah. Prime Minister of Sweden yesterday. Prime Minister. Sir, do you regard the U.S. bombings on Iran over the weekend as consistent with international law or the Israeli preemptive strike against Iran that then escalated into a large-scale bombing campaign that's consistent with international law? And how does that square with NATO's standing to condemn Russia as violating international law if the largest power in the block is completely?

committing such an act. Well, I will not be the judge on that. I think I would stick to what I've said previously, that there are a few core. He will not be the judge of whether a certain action violates international law. Like, really, that's Sweden's position? Anyway. Aspects here. One core aspect is, of course, that Iran should not be able to develop nuclear weapons.

That is a core international interest is of existential importance to Israel, but it's also a very, very, very very central importance also throughout the countries. That's one thing. The other thing is, of course, the soon you can get back to more peaceful forms of negotiation, the better it is. And I think we might be heading in that direction. So do you support the US bombing Iran? I don't give any, you know, I'm just saying that.

I think every conclusion. I don't give any opinion on that, I guess. right now. Every kind of very firm, decisive conclusion right now on what's going to happen is... So how long will it take for him to come up with a firm decisive conclusion? Can I... Can I head over to Stockholm, like, in a couple of days or like the next week and it'll have the firm conclusion developed? It's premature. So I say that it is of vital interest to stop the Iranian nuclear developments and it is of course also much better if we can de-escalate and if we can avoid a further military development yes and uh i wish they had left in because the the aid then

shooed me away because i was trying to go for a third question of course um and it was going to be the third question was also going to be interesting because i think i mentioned this to you as well like sweden had recognized a state of palestine 11 years ago Yeah. And what I wanted to know is that since Sweden has joined NATO formally as of 2024, has that complicated Sweden's ability to play what had been its customary role as sort of like an international mediator, especially including with respect to the Middle East, even then it's now sort of lost its neutrality that had maintained at least militarily.

Like hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. before I think it was, since literally Napoleon reign. It was a part of their identity. Like I mean, under Olaf Palma, they were like the kind of one country in Europe that was really respected, I guess, in parts of the, you know,

and parts of the so-called Global South, say, in Vietnam and so forth. They really just, yeah, they gave it all up. And the accession process to NATO for Sweden was really interesting because for every other major decision, Sweden is made to join an international institution like the Euro or the EU. They've had a referendum. And they didn't have a referendum on joining NATO. And if you ask people there, like, why not, why wouldn't you have a referendum?

It's very non-Swedish. They would just say, well, the polls are really high. People want to join NATO. And I was like, well, why don't you have, why do we even have elections then? If you can just go by polls and decide something, like why even? And so there is really, it was really quite kind of like rushed and very, very interesting how that all worked. But it was, it was similar with Finland.

Yes. Yeah. Not quite the same lineage of full neutrality, but going back to World War II had been militarily neutral. Finlandization being this whole model that countries could aspire to to maintain relations with different power, with both the Soviet and, you know, Western power block. And it had also been like basically a truism in Finnish politics that if they were to ever join NATO, it would of course require a popular referendum. Right.

And former president who was the most popular figure in Finland for years, Saul Nistro. Yeah. pledged that that would only come by way of a referendum. And then, yeah, after this expedited NATO admission or a session process, they totally bypass that. Yeah. And yeah, just. As Biden said, we got Finland into NATO. That was like his big foreign policy.

He thought that he was going to get reelected because Americans were going to be so impressed that he somehow got Finland and Sweden to NATO. The longstanding neutrals. I mean, the other, I mean, the full point you were getting at with Sweden, with recognizing Palestine under a social democratic government many years ago. The other question is like, you know, they've always really committed. to like nuclear dearmament and like working on and like can't the question that I always had for like the Finns

and the Swedes when they joined NATO was also can you continue to do that work as a member of like the most powerful military alliance in the world you know like I'm not sure if you can Did you ask any of them at the NATO summit? I didn't I didn't I knew I didn't run into there wasn't

one thing I noticed that Canadians I didn't run into any like I used to live in Sweden I used to have a Swedish husband so I'm always looking for them. Where haven't you lived? That's a good, good question. I didn't really live there for very long, but I had Swedish husband. But the, yeah, but so like, I'm always kind of like, because I can kind of like understand

most of what they're saying or some of what they're saying still. And so I didn't run into any Swedes. I didn't run into any, see, I don't think I really, I don't know, didn't really run into any Scandinavians. Definitely no friends. Yeah, one thing I noticed, because at the, at the 22 summit, I did run into like the Swedish the Finnish foreign minister. And I just ran into more sort of random people who were just kind of ambling around the press

center at times. Yeah. Like officials. And there was less, there was less of that from what I could gather at this year's summit. I don't know why exactly. It could just be as simple as like the summit logistics, like the makeup of the venue. The underground parking lot that we were in. Oh, was it a parking lot?

You know what? That should have been obvious to me that was a parking lot because you have to go down that big slope to get in. It didn't register to me that was a parking lot, but I guess it must have been. I think so. Yeah, it was kind of, I don't know, it wasn't entirely pleasant. But yeah, it was, I just couldn't believe, like, if I wouldn't have run into you, it would have been like such a failure for me. Because, like, finally, the last day. That's always the case. Everything is a failure unless I am run into in my experience. Really, you salvaged the entire event for me because, like, I mean, what a, like, high to go out on.

It was, like, Trump and then Erdogan. And I live, my two presidents, you know, I live in Turkey now. I've just moved here. So I got, and, like, we got, like, a really intimate crowd with the Turks. It was, like, I was, like, looking right into Erdogan's eyes. So after, after Trump, Erdogan came on for people who are, you don't know that. And it was the last press conference at the summit. And which is kind of appropriate because Turkey is going to be holding.

hosting it next year. So I'll see you next year here. Yes, next year in Istanbul. Yeah. Actually, it's going to be Ankara. Oh, is it? Okay. One said last night because they hosted it in Istanbul in 2004, I think, or 2003, 2004, yeah. So they're going to have it in Ankara, which is not as nice of a place. Like, maybe, I've never been there before. I shouldn't say that. Maybe it's, maybe it'll be okay. I'm sure it'll be good. I'm sure that the Turks will do an interesting job. Yeah. So I have the, I have my question here, with Erdogan that I can bring up. Wait, the one from this year, from 2020.

I have both, but I have the one from this year. I think we need to play the both of them are really good questions. Yeah, okay, so I'll play them. Given your views on situation. So just to cause context, this was right after the Trump press conference, you and I both mentioned this in our pieces. Yeah.

People can go, I linked yours in the YouTube description box if people want to go read it. But it was really embarrassing that the entirety of the American press contingent completely just emptied out right after the Trump press conference. As though they had something like supremely important to do where they couldn't have taken another hour to sit through a press conference from the second largest army in. Where's the respect for the Sultan? There's no respect for the Sultan with these people. What are they going to do next year? I just want to know, like, what did Ed O'Keefe and Caitlin Collins and Kelly O'Donnell think was so important for them to just rush out of the auditorium and not sit around and wait for, for, like, they couldn't muster a question to potentially ask the president of Turkey.

That's crazy, especially if you're at this international summit, but they don't really care about the underlying issues. They just want to get a soundbite with Trump. Like, that's their whole mission. where I would like to get a sound bite with Trump if I could, right? I attempted to. That's not the whole point. I made a fervent effort to get one, but, and I came within inches. I still maintain that he pointed, the angle at which he pointed, at least on least two occasions, was arguably at me such that I could have been the rightful recipient of the microphone.

When the Austrian guy was called, gave. Right. You saw that. So Carol Schaefer from the nation and I were like, let's be like, Michael's got it. I think he handed the mic to this Austrian guy. And I was like, I know on two occasions. I stood up like as though to receive the microphone.

Yeah. Ridiculous. But I didn't get it. But I figured that I would be easily able to ask Erdogan a question because everybody else empties out of the room. And I was able to ask him a question at the 22. summit and then it famously led to a memorable uh a memorable exchange and then led to me getting profiled on the turkish day's broadcaster they actually came to my hotel in madrid and they had me

what's that d rtt yeah oh that's great it's awesome that's great i'll send you the i'll send you the i'll send you the uh yeah i haven't seen it and they had me do the thing where like i had to pretend to work on my computer B-roll footage. I didn't realize. And they do like a voiceover. Michael Tracy has been blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they asked me, I remember, can you, do you have a computer?

Like, they have me, they have me come meet them in like the atrium of the hotel, the outdoor sort of courtyard. And they said, do you have the computer? I'm like, yeah, can you, they say, can you go get it? So I went up to my room and got the computer, came down. And they said, can you just pretend to work on your computer for a little while? I'm like, yeah, I'm good at pretending to work, so that's no problem. That's cute.

I'll send you that. Yeah, I would like to see that. Actually, I can pull it up once we finish this, because since you're in Turkey, it's an extra interest. This is my, yeah, this is my beat now. It's your new home. Yep. Given your view, thank you, Mr. President, given your views on the Gaza situation, what is your opinion of President Trump's proposal for the U.S. to,

quote, take over Gaza and turn it into some sort of military protectorate. Some people were criticizing me for asking this question saying that I'm latching on to or fixating on one stray remark that Trump made in February when he first introduced this proposal. But it's not just one stray remark. He's actually repeated it over and over. He repeated it even when he was on his big trip to the Gulf state in May. So it's not just some fleeting little idea that he was just fouting off about. It's come up and up again.

It's come up over and over again. I mean, he's brought it up over and over again. And also, it's been incorporated into the Israeli war planning for Gaza. Like there's a coalition statement that was put out in the beginning of May where the war objectives for the Israeli government now include achieving Trump's plan. Jesus Christ. So it actually has a real world impact. And Erdogan had just met with Trump at the summit.

And he had started his remarks with a big tirade against Israel. Right, right. And he called. And so like that's the, that's the basis for, that's the context for the question. And expel all the remaining Palestinians so that Trump and his business partners can, construct casinos and resorts. Have you discussed that proposal with President Trump? And in addition, what is your position on Trump's relationship with Israel writ large? Trump likes to boast about how he people also criticized me for asking too long-winded of questions, but like-

It's a long question. It's a long question, but is it that long? Like, you can't, they can't process like 45 seconds. We haven't finished it yet. He's the most pro-Israel president of all time. He said, God bless Israel when he bombed Iran over the weekend. He's touted how exceptionally close the Israeli bombing offensive against Iran was coordinated with the United States. He's expedited munitions to Israel. So given your strong views on Israel's conduct, do those views extend to the United States and President Trump being in a better of that Israeli conduct.

Okay, so maybe a long question, but I think I warranted one. That's just my position. Totally, yeah. In the evening, well, as of 11, half past 11, we had a meeting with President Trump yesterday for an hour and a half. We had the opportunity to sit down and talk. But during these talks, we actually... focused on the coastline of Gaza and how, I mean, we didn't talk about casinos, as you suggested, on the coastline of Gaza. If this were raised, I think people would know how I would react to such a proposal.

My standing, my stature is quite apparent. Trump is quite a smart guy and he knows what question to ask to whom and this never was discussed between the two of us. So thank you. It was never discussed between the two of them, but he's been repeating this plan over and over. Erdogan's been asked about it before. Oh, has he? It's commented on it.

I remember because I thought it was a really funny remark. He said something like, and this is of course a translation, something like there's no reason to listen to that to Trump about that there's no reason to even like consider it kind of he kind of was a very very dismissive obviously you know so I mean he's acting like just because he wasn't asked in person by Trump or like you know in a meeting between the two of them that it had never he didn't he wasn't going to comment on it very why would it have to come up in their personal meeting for it to rise the level of warranting his opinion you know but anyway it was it It was an artful evasion.

Yeah, artful, yeah. And I was thinking, like, it's sort of in retrospect, because I compared it to the question that I asked him in 2022, and I realized that, like, sort of, I guess my instinct in both questions was to try to probe for certain divides between Turkey and the United States, but in different context, right? So that was basically what I was attempting to do in both occasions. That's very, that's very virtual, obviously.

Right. And so here's the 2022 version. You are one of the very few NATO leaders who seems to have even brought up the prospect of pursuing a diplomatic solution. They showed me on camera at that one. I don't know. I guess I wasn't on camera this time around, which was unfortunate. Everyone would have loved to see me. the war in Ukraine.

Other leaders like Biden, Boris Johnson, they're emphasizing almost exclusively the military component. Biden just this afternoon announced new missile systems being deployed to Ukraine by the U.S. What accounts for this difference in philosophy, and do you think the path being chosen by the U.S. and the U.K. is overly aggressive and is going to prolong the war? Okay, so that was a shorter question.

So maybe I should, I should truncate myself. I'll admit that. Well, I will try to respond. And hopefully you will understand my language through interpretation. The proof is in the eating. There is a method and there's a style of everybody doing certain things. Do you have such an expression or a similar expression? This was so weird because he was like,

I got the impression, like, in real time, he was trying to ask me a question, but then there's a delay with the translation. So... And since you're really, Dineshe, I find a profus in the eating, there's a bit of mine. Boris is a close friend of mine.

It's a good friend of mine. And he has his own perspective. He has his own style of doing things, and I have my own style of things. Here, we have to establish a politics based on a balance. And I need to believe that diplomacy should be pursued. And if we take steps forward on a win-win scenario, everybody will enjoy more auspicious decisions and results, I believe. And so that's why we're talking to Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Putin under continuous spaces.

And once a week or every 10 days, we have telephone conversations with them, out of which I believe we will cultivate some results. Very reasonable. Yeah. Good question. Yeah, so there were Turkish people in the room that told me afterwards that what he actually said was it wasn't the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The saying is apparently every hero eats his yogurt in his own way or something like that. We're going to have to get that.

I'll ask after this. I'll ask some church. I'm Turkish friends. That's really funny. Everybody does their own, something differently. I don't, I don't, yeah, the proof isn't the eating. What the hell? I don't get it at all.

I don't get it. Yeah, I'll show you the little profile that was done on me now because it's pretty cool. Okay, great, great. Oh, yes, I want to see it. Well, the Turkish president's news conference at the end of the NATO's blasted for an hour. And for one journalist who was chosen at random to ask a question, it came as a surprise. Andrew Hopkins reports.

Okay, good morning. Then I think we're ready to start. It's good to see you all. After three days of meetings and decisions, it was time for the NATO leaders to hold their press conferences. And Michael Tracy to ask the Turkish president the question. You are one of the very few NATO leaders who seems to have even brought up the prospect of pursuing a diplomatic. If you notice, I didn't get a profile. for the question asked that this year's summit,

so they enjoy this one much more. That solution for the war in Ukraine. Other leaders like Biden. His tweets on his experiences at the press conference prompted more than 300 comments, reactions supportive and critical, 1,000 retweets and 5,000 likes, including this one. Believe it or not, Erdogan just called on me

and answered my question. I noted he's one of the few or only NATO leaders calling for diplomacy in Ukraine, whereas US, UK are calling for military escalation. He said his approach is superior because the proof is in the pudding. Michael has been a journalist for 12 years and works at the online content platform substations. There's me a fake working on my computer. I had just come from the press conferences for the prime minister of the UK and the president of the US.

And those press conferences were very tightly controlled, very tightly regulated. So both Boris Johnson and Joe Biden had lists of journalists to call upon Michael surprised that he was a weird cut there that the Turkish president took more questions than the US working on my computer again has certainly increased social media engagement that's what I was looking for increased social media in Sweden an issue that dominated the summit and the reflection of the more than 20 questions as of the president, Andrew Hopkins, TRT World. There you go. Fantastic. I'm so glad.

Yeah, so one other thing that I wanted to bring up was that the German so-called background briefing, whose terms I didn't necessarily feel obliged to abide by, one of the big takeaways there, and again, people should look up the article I posted yesterday, mtracy.com. the endless self-promotion but hey um was that part of the strategic calculus in flattering trump so much and also getting on board with his bombing of iran according to this german official

was that it would set the groundwork for trump being cajoled or encouraged to endorse this pending legislation in the U.S. Congress or the Senate, sponsored by Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenfall, to radically increase sanctions on Russia, including secondary sanctions or secondary tariffs on any country that trades in oil or minerals with Russia. Yeah, that's big. And so that was like imparted to Trump. Like, thank you for everything that you've done on Iran. Now we hope that you'll join us and can on board with a new sanctions package against Russia.

We know one is pending because they coordinate or they're like aware of the minutia of the legislative maneuvering in the Congress. And like the guy, the German guy mentioned Graham by name. Wow. Okay. So this is interesting. And then sure enough, on Saturday, Trump and Lindsey Graham played golf naturally. Okay. And then on Sunday, Graham reported that there was.

a quote breakthrough, big breakthrough on the issue of this Graham-Bloomenthal sanctions bill, and Trump for the first time endorsed moving ahead with the bill. So the European strategy, such as it was geared toward setting the ground for or laying the ground for, as this German official put it, nudging Trump toward finally acting on this pending legislation, which was only going to get voted upon if Trump signs off on it, even if it has at this point 84 co-sponsors, which is huge in the Senate, including senators, including many senators that you would think as like MAGA or the, that would be the popular conception. So like Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ted

Bud of North Carolina, Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma. They're all co-sponsors, but they were, waiting for the Trump sign off. And sure enough, he was in such, he was in such a peaceful and moderate mood. After bombing Iran. After bombing Iran that the European flattery succeeded in prodding him to give Lindsay Graham the okay to move forward on the bill. And Graham says it will be voted on now after the July recess. So in like about a week, essentially, because they're now in the middle of their voterama thing on the big, beautiful bill. But after that, like the next order of business or one of them is going to be this long-sought sanctions package that would then really, really radically escalate the economic warfare against Russia.

It also even includes personal sanctions on Putin and the other top Russian officials. Wow. So the, I mean, okay, so I see all, I mean, I see the summit in a slightly different way now. because I wasn't aware of this part of it. So I can understand whether the Europeans are feeling very happy about how everything went and very kind of confident because, you know, if he could change his mind about other things with that, getting that those sanctions, additional sanctions placed on Russia would be a huge, huge victory for them. That's the huge, they've been hoping, wishing for that for a long time.

And so, yeah, that would be enormous. So interesting. You mentioned that the Swedish prime minister, you know, you didn't mention it. We heard him say, like there was no, he hadn't decided if there was a violation of international law. I just wanted to say I was at the first press conference of the summit was Mark Bruta alone on Monday. There was like a day. Yeah, I missed that one. It was totally missable.

There was nothing you needed to see. But Mark Roussey, like the second or third thing he said, it was the very beginning of this speech was, you know, that the NATO allies fully support the U.S. strikes on Iran. And there was a question very similar to the one you posed to the Swedish PM from the Al Jazeera correspondent. He said, like, don't you think it's hypocritical to talk about Russian violations of international law and not talk about U.S. bombing Iran, Iran. he said, no, not at all. He was less ambiguous. He just said there was no violation of international law. He didn't have to take a while to make a conclusive determination.

He just determined right in the spot there. Yeah. Yeah. I need to head. I'm going to make a plan to head to Stockholm just to verify that Prime Minister Ulf. Follow up. Follow up question. It is still inconclusive as to his big international law compliance determination.

You can ask him in Turkey. You can ask him in NATO Summit, 2006. Too late. Too late. No, I'm headed to Stockholm ASAP, I think. Just to follow up. I would like to go. I mean, maybe I've been trying to look around for the past couple of years to see if there's maybe some, like, smaller scale security summit type thing in Scandinavia to give me an excuse to go to Finland and or Sweden or maybe Norway.

And there are, usually in the fall, they have one. I just never got around to go on it. So maybe I'll try to organize that. Absolutely. That would be very, I mean, I think that Oslo has some. Yeah,

there's like an Oslo. Wait, no, Oslo has, there's some institute there. I can't remember. Yeah, there's like a,

there's, they have an institute. No, Stockholm, I know, has a conference. Stockholm has this organization that tracks international arms sales.

You know what I'm talking about? I think I've seen that. I don't remember the name. They have an annual conference and stuff, but there's actually, I know there's like a Helsinki security summit or something that's gotten more prominent lately. So maybe I'll check. All these countries.

It's like a thing you have to have now. Turkey has the Antalya diplomacy. Right. Did you go to that? I didn't. And I really, really wish I would have gone. I had just gotten my permission to stay here yet as a journalist, which I did acquire. But at the time, I was still in the application process.

so I couldn't attend. But I'll definitely go next year. So I'm looking forward to that. The new leader of Syria was there. He was like the big draw. So, yeah. Yeah, I've. Should go to that one too.

Sure, I'll go. I've been to, again, I try to do some balancing. So I went to the BRIC summit a year and a half ago or almost two years ago now. I want to go to the BRICS summit. In South Africa. Where's the one this year? Brazil. I think it's in Brazil. I think it like press accreditation just closed, I think, like two weeks ago. But it made me, I think I could have like hallucinated that while we were in the Hague. But I looked it up and I was like, it would be interesting to go to Bricks as well. Oh yeah. It's July 6th and 7th. Yeah, it took a couple days. I miss that. That sucks. It would have been great to do back to back, you know, the NATO summit and then bricks like just to see what they, not that Brits.

you know is really any that's basically what i did with going to briggs and then i went to this other strange thing in russia the same year which actually i was questioned about i don't know if you saw my tweet i didn't see uh on my uh as i was re-entering the u.s at new work airport i was uh called the side for secondary screening wait when you first went to russia no last weekend on saturday when i arrived they i had done some multiple international trips since I went to Russia in December of 2023 for this conference thing. But suddenly they told you.

And then all of a sudden for the first time, the CBP agent was flipping through my passport, saw my visa from the Russia trip and said, oh, you went to Russia? I'm like, yeah. And I was like surly because I was sleep deprived and everything. Yeah. And she said, you know, why did you go to Russia? to conference. Where'd you go in Russia?

Moscow and what's the big deal? How does this connect to, how does something from December of 2023 connect to my reentering the United States in June 2025? She's just like, you know, just want to ask you a few questions. So we're going to hold on to your passport. So, okay, so I stood

against the wall for a while and then they escorted me into this secondary questioning room. I don't know if you ever been in one of those. I have not. Not in the U.S. This is my second time being questioned in one of those rooms. Wow. Okay, you're going to have to explain both.

Okay. Well, the first one was in 2022. When the Ukraine war started, I went to, I flew to Warsaw. Okay, yeah. And I did, I reported from, like, Poland. I didn't go into Ukraine physically at the time. But I went to Warsaw, Yeshiv, Permitsil. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right.

It's basically right on the border with Ukraine. I went to, like, the border crossing. between Poland and Ukraine. I just did a bunch of, like I wanted to, I was trying to report on the American military buildup on the periphery of Ukraine. The base at Yeshyev, which is like the main distribution hub that the U.S. set up for arms provisions into Ukraine, has now basically become a permanent base in Poland, in Yeshif. So I did some stuff on that. And then I went to, from there, I went.

to London and then from London I went you know and I stayed for a while then I went back to the US via Newark and they called me aside for questioning it was much more intense question and this one ended up being but they actually brought me into one of those little interrogation rooms they told me they were they had looked at my social media um and they asked me if I was asked me if I was smuggling trying to smuggle weapons into Ukraine That's a very strange question. Wow. Or if I had handled any weapons or transported any weapons into Ukraine, I was like, no.

I told them where I had gone and everything. But after like two hours, finally they let me go. So this time around, I was just asked a few cursory questions by the initial border agent about this trip from over a year and a half ago to Russia. Yeah. And so, like, why are you asking me about this now? I've done, like, several international trips in the interim. And he said, did anybody ever ask you about going to Russia when you got back?

I said, no, which is true. Like, even when I returned from Russia, actually via Istanbul. Nice. I didn't actually get to go see the Istanbul, just the airport. Yeah. I came, I ended up having to come back through Miami. And nobody asked me anything about the Russia trip. And neither did they on several other, you know, international trips.

And so he said, okay, that's why as though like, I somehow got away with something by not having been asked before this about the Russia trip. So they took my passport. They sent me into the same room that I had been in 2020, just sat there for, I don't know, half hour maybe. And then they call my name and say, you're good to go. So they said, so what was the whole point of that? What was it about? And then they said, oh, we had to just check you with the system.

Oh. Whatever that is. Whatever like the Palantir system is. checking me out on wow scary I didn't find it that scary maybe I have hubris at this point I just found it

annoying or I just like the fact that there yeah I mean irks some not scary in the sense like you were in danger of being like I don't know I just knew I didn't do anything like I knew I could like invoke the First Amendment maybe that's sort of pie in the sky or whatever

but I should be like there was no illicit, like, behavior that they could, like, somehow discover, you know? Right, right, right. Maybe it would be more interesting if I had some illicit behavior to cover up, but unfortunately, I don't. Even though people might think that going to Russia is itself illicit behavior. I'm sure a lot of people do think that. Yeah, I mean, and I, yeah, I mean, it's a, I understand, I guess,

that perspective for some people, but, yeah. I mean, I understand it, but I was good. I just said, yeah, I was. doing journalism stuff. So that's why I went. Yeah, it's all public. I don't understand why they were. Yeah, I don't know.

It just, it was a bit odd, but hey. A couple of people I know have been pulled into those rooms in the U.S., like coming back from Lebanon recently. And, yeah, so I guess it's like, you know, it happens to people. And the UK is even worse, from what I understand. They've like, it's kind of even scarier. At least it, yeah, who, knows where the direction the US is going now now though with that kind of thing I don't know well

people might find it sort of surprising that under Trump like it asked about Russia right I don't know if you can necessarily like make a direct like policy connection between whatever administration is in power and the fact that some like random guy gets asked us about Russia but hey it's true it's wanted to to record it for posterity so I'm glad you did and also I think it's another it adds to the point you made earlier which is that there's just like total continuity between the administrations between the Biden administration and the Trump administration. Like in terms of foreign policy, there's just very little that's different. Yeah, it's not total continuity.

So people will always try to berate me to not assert total continuity. And it's true, like even the, even the fact that under Trump, some process for resumption of diplomatic engagement. That is, yeah. No, yeah. That is a difference. Like that's that's like dubish compared to the Biden attitude towards relations with Russia. Yeah, which is ridiculous.

It's completely childish. I mean, not childish. It's a it's like it's malpractice. Like it like that is your job. Like I mean, yeah, the one thing that I've always given Trump credit for, you know, is like meeting with the leader of North Korea. Like every establishing diplomatic ties with Russia. All that's very like that's great. Yeah.

Obama did that to some degree too. Like he met Raul Castro. Yeah. He obviously negotiated the Iran deal, which involved the first extensive direct negotiations with Iran. Yeah. Since 1979. So like there's there's somewhat of a pattern of like presidents deciding to make, deciding to transcend like a taboo against the engagement with a certain reviled leader or country that both Obama and Trump have acted.

upon. But with Trump, like the North Korea negotiations didn't amount to anything. I mean, it amounted to interesting spectacle. Like photo ops. Oh, yeah, photo ops. I mean, fair ops can have like an impact. I mean, they're not totally meaningless. I mean, Trump did step over the, uh, the 50 second parallel. Is that it is the 50 second? Yeah, the Z, the, uh, what's the name of it? Um, yeah, DMZ, the DMZ. The DMZ. So he stepped over the border. He was physically in North Korea for a minute. Again, so that's notable, but the underlying policy was not structured in such a way that

an actual lasting diplomatic accord could be reached. The U.S. retained its maximalist demands for total denuclearization of North Korea. And although while the negotiations were sort of in progress, North Korea sort of halted its firing of missiles into the sea of Japan and so forth it didn't amount to anything policy-wise ultimately and there's actually an interesting parallel with the Iran so-called negotiations that Trump just got done allegedly

overseeing which is that yeah it is noteworthy to even have done the negotiations in the first place. However, if they're structured in such a way that no rational diplomatic outcome could be conceivably attained, then the negotiations themselves don't have that much import other than just like negotiating for its own sake, you know? Right. It's mostly like, like, yeah, it's mostly some kind of spectacle of diplomacy rather than, like, that like if you're coming to the table with demands that no, no sovereign country or whatever agree to, then those talks are set up for, like, to effectively get nothing done. So, you know, for failure, basically. Like, so yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Is that what with, Whitkoff's been doing all this time? Like, what do you? I think, I think so. I mean, it's hard to tell. There's a debate raging now as to whether Trump ever, quote, unquote, wanted a deal. And I guess how I respond to that is, okay, he did initiate this diplomatic process. with an arbitrary 60-day time limit. Right, right. So the JCPO and or Obama took over two years to painstaking to negotiate and with like a sort of a lead-up process even before that. But the official negotiation took around two years. Trump said we're going to get a better deal somehow within 60 days and then edge is bilaterally between the United States and Iran after he had already withdrawn from the multilateral framework.

for the JCPOA. Yeah. And soon it became very clear that the non-negotiable demand that the U.S. was going to insist upon was elimination of all uranium enrichment, which Iran has been adamant it would never recede to for 25 years or something. Yeah. So was there some flicker of a thought bouncing around in Trump's brain that he would like to have a deal rather than military? action? Sure, it's possible he had that flicker of a thought somewhere, but if it doesn't translate to a diplomatic framework whereby a non-military solution can be attained, then like,

what's the difference? And I do think that there is increasing evidence that they sort of knew, ultimately this would culminate in some kind of military action that was, whether initiated by Israel or not. And so then Trump has said this basically overtly and so has Wickhoff now that the supposed intransigence of Iran to come to the negotiating table

meaning even though they were at the negotiating table if you want to put it that way they were just trying having to contend with these maximalist demands. The negotiations were structured in such a way to give a just

for the eventual initiation of the military action. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't... I don't know what else you can really infer. It was a very similar thing that happened to... Before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Iran-V-A agreement, was something that, like, no sovereign country would have agreed to, like, to it.

And it was kind of seen as, like, a requirement before military action was taken. You know, that you have to go through this sort of pantomime of... You have to, it has to, in order for it to be like a legitimate action, you have to like, all nonviolent or all diplomatic, you know, efforts have to be exhausted, right? So, yeah. That was Clinton and Tony Blair. Yeah. And who was the, who was the main, who was Clinton's envoy at that point?

I forget his name now. Um, um, uh, he also, he negotiated the, the Balkans deal in the 90s. Yeah. Yeah, I just wrote about him because it was just the date. I'm blanking on his name now. Oh. It's because he's like kind of, he was, hold on. I'm going to look at up because I just wrote about this.

He brings at Dayton. The Dayton piece of horse. Yes, yes, Dayton. It's, I'm going to like, yeah, it's really late here. So that's why I'm not, I can't thank really properly here. US broker. Let's see. Yeah.

Yeah, hold on. Richard Holbrook. Exactly, yeah. There's a Richard Holbrook, like, Hall in Dayton, Ohio, you know, now. There's no, like, Richard Holbrook street anywhere in the Balkans, weirdly enough. But, yeah, Richard Holbrook.

Richard Holbrook, yeah, the, in Bosnia. I guess the difference here would be that Richard Holbrook, I would have to go back and study that pre-Serbian war. I didn't mean to, like, you know, go a little bit more detail. No, no, it's an interesting,

It's interesting parallel. I would think that the difference would be that Trump, like the whole, whole Brooke at all would have conducted their negotiations, however sort of superficial they might have been or pretextual they might have been, within a more established institutionalized framework. Because it was the kind of conventional Democratic Party. Yeah. Well, whereas Trump, Trump's just like, oh, I'm going to just appoint my buddy for. from New York City real estate. Yeah. And he's just going to like just have this like new title that I invented.

And he's not, he's kind of, I guess just sort of bypassed the State Department. Although there were elements of the State Department involved in like the supposed technical negotiations with Iran. So anyway, I think with Trump, it was kind of just more fly by the seat of your pants or something. Whereas with with Clinton, I would imagine it was kind of more of a regimented, bureaucratized, regimented thing. you know and it was also like you know there was not like almost a decade of war leading up to that decision you know so this was like actually something that you know had time to develop and had so this is much like i mean maybe maybe i don't know there might have been a lot more going on for a longer time behind the scenes and we know but certainly there wasn't like you know almost

a decade of like war um you know so that the united states i don't know so that the united states i don't know So, yeah, very, very interesting. The whole spectacle of negotiations. Are we, like, returning to negotiating with Iran now? I would be, I guess, maybe. I mean, Trump is saying that they would like to negotiate or he would want to negotiate. I can't imagine how Iran in their right minds would agree to negotiate. I think Trump is lucky or the way.

west of the U.S. is lucky that the current political leadership in Iran. So not the, I had told it necessarily, but the current president and therefore the foreign minister and stuff, they're relatively moderate compared to hard liners in Iran that

would probably be much more difficult to deal with. And they're also very legalistic, it seems, like they constantly invoke international law and like their proportionality of their responses to American actions as consistent with international law and so forth. It seems like they're kind of, you know, quite rational. Shooting themselves. Well, they'll, yeah, I mean, they have a certain mentality on this stuff.

But at a certain point, are they shooting themselves in the foot by even playing along with this negotiating exercise after it was just, it just blew up in their face, literally? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't trust, I mean, I would never trust the United States like a negotiation. I mean, I've just, you know, it's completely crazy. But it was fascinating while we were in, I guess it was like at the end of the summit. It was like, I don't remember which, I guess the second day or something, that there was that kind of carefully choreographed with Qatar response. I mean, wrong, like military, like strikes on the American base and Qatar. But like it was really clearly had something that had been implanned with.

Qatar like in advance. Yeah, they notified them in advance. That was, yeah, that was reported, yeah. It was supposedly like a face saving exercise, essentially, like in order to like, it seems, but if, but if Iran would only do a face saving exercise. Right. After being sneak attack twice, first by Israel in conjunction with the United States and then by the United States directly.

Right. And their only response is to do a face saving exercise. And we don't even know the full, I would like to see the full damage assessment of the strike on Qatar. I mean, who knows? It's not like we can necessarily take every report of face value. Maybe it was more extensive than we've been told. But regardless, like, if we just accept that it was a face-saving exercise, then, like, what deterrence does Iran have left? You know, it seems like they've kind of forfeited their deterrent.

They've shown themselves. People like to call it the paper tiger. Maybe it's a little derogatory, but it doesn't seem too off the mark to me. Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure. I mean, of course, there, if you talk to, people will say, like, this is the most united the country's ever been. We, we won. They defeated Israel, they claim. Yeah, I've seen that, yeah, repeatedly. Like, you know, how many senior Israeli officials did they kill versus how many Iranian senior officials were killed? I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can, and I totally understand the idea that, you know, the country has never been united behind its leadership this way. Like, even, like, even. Even people who were opposed to the government now support it. Right.

Like, you've, I've heard this from a lot of people or seen that comment a lot, which that, you know, that's something. Like, but I don't, but you're totally right when it comes to, you know, top officials. It, yeah, the balance is really, it's pretty, it's pretty, like, devastating for them. So, lost a lot of those people. So all of people, yeah. All right. So, uh, let's, uh, let's, uh,

wrap up. Any final thoughts about the NATO summit? Anything we didn't cover? Anything that's been sticking under Craw or you found amusing that we glossed over? Oh, my God. It was just, it was media dynamics or even the logistics. People like hearing about that, I think. Right. The logistics were like, I mean, okay, again, this is like, I'm, I'm just stereotyping the Northern European people, but like, I always assume that they're going to be like ruthlessly efficient, you know? And then like, especially the, like, the most expensive NATO summit history that cost apparently, like reportedly 1.2 million euros per minute.

For that, that we would have gotten a more, a smoother experience. And I'm kind of, we would have gotten, I don't know, some kind of a better app. Because the app really sucks. Yeah, that app, I don't know why. I never should have downloaded that app. I'm freaked out that I downloaded it. I'm freaked out that it's on my phone. I opened it last night, and I was just like, I wonder what does it look like now?

And it says like, hello, Lily. I like, it kind of has like, I think it's some app where like it's not, it wasn't a NATO summit specific app. It was some other app that they, they like integrated the NATO summit like, uh, itinerary into, but now like you can also use it for other events or something. I don't even know. It's like program management software kind of like. Yeah, yeah.

Like it's great. It's like really, it's ridiculous. Yeah, it was, I just felt like for that enormous cost, okay, so most of that was security. Like, for sure, I get that, but like, it just wasn't, I don't know, it was kind of like tacky. Like, and there was just certain huge fuck-ups, sorry, that the big one was the Ruta Trump press conference early in the day on the last day of the summit, which was like supposed to be streamed on the, on like the same, like, NATO channel that everything else was streamed on. And, like, at the last minute, they decided to, like, hold this event in a different

room. And so you didn't, like, none of, like, the wire reporters that were, like, were lying on that stream, like, saw that press conference. They had, like, find Reuters stream. It wasn't even, like, on the NATO. Anyway, so this is, it was, like, a real kind of, like, panic in the media, the international media center there in the parking garage. I mean, it was amazing how, like, in the, in the rare times where I found myself just sort of meandering around that media hall, which is pointless.

I mean, there's no reason to go if you're just going to sit on your computer in the media hall. But, like, everybody was just like almost in a synchronized way, just pulling up every Trump truth social post. Yeah. And reading and laughing and saying, did you see this? So it was all about everything was all about Trump as usual. The world revolves around Trump. same so does my world i guess in a way so i'm not even excluding myself from this uh unfortunate dynamic we're all hostages i'm from i'll give you i'll give you a logistical anecdote i'm

i'm even sure i i told you but um on the first day that i was there so i didn't go on that like pre monday day where you could share the root of thing um the first uh monday on tuesday you could go to so i had i've never had more like ridiculous credentialing materialing materialing dangling from my neck with like different acronyms and different like color coding. But there was one time where they like if you go to the, if you went to the information desk, they told you that you could get an escort to take you to the public forum, which was separate from the media center. Like a personal escort?

Like or you could you could, you could go to the information desk at a certain time and there were at a gathering point. And then the group of people who wanted to go to a particular event at the, public forum would then be escorted by someone and they would be allowed to go in because you can't just go in on your own accord. Right, right. And so there was one event that I thought I might go to was with John Healy, who's the UK defense minister. It was like on Ukraine something or other. And no other journalist was gathering to go to this.

So it was just me as I was a group with a total of one person, me. Wow. And so I was escorted by this NATO, you know, operative woman. to the public forum, which is like a short walk away from the media center. Yeah. And I try to scan in with my credential on the scanner thing. And it comes up saying it rejected, not allowed. I'm like, what?

You got many badges. Like, well, how does that have that? I know, I know. I'm saying like, how could this be? Like, I know that I jump through every possible hoop to be able to be admitted to the stupid little side venue. And then so they said, oh, you have to go to. go back to the main to the church where they've made like the we're all like kidded out like army guys were standing go back to the church where you get you like people were picking up their credential or checking in to get into the secure area yeah and tell them there was a problem and they said oh there's no problem you should be able to get in uh you should tell them that you're part of the pool and i said i had this pool pass was like another pool pass you had to get and

So then I went back and explained to the people of the public forum. There must have been an error as to why I couldn't scan in. They told me I had the correct thing. And then I had to go back to the information desk to inquire again. I came back. Eventually, I just convinced them to let me in. No way. Without the scanning of the badge.

No, I scan the bat. Well, without the scanning of the badge, yes, because I have this other, like, cool pass. I don't know if you ever got one of those. Like in order to go to certain things, you had to like wind up and wait to get a pool pass. Yes, I tried that. I tried that. I tried to get that for the North Atlantic Council that I was turned away. They almost

gave it to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, it took like 45 minutes to get into something that should have been a five minute walk away. And so there's just like a million things like that. And then you know, as you know, when we tried to go to the building with the

media briefing rooms, we were told that you had to have an escort there as well. We had to have a green band on your credential. All the governments in advance and get like a. Yeah, or you have to, yeah, you have to find. I actually, I was so desperate that I even tried to do that. Like, they gave me a. I did too.

I sent WhatsApp messages and like nobody really responded. Because, like, of course, they're in the middle of a craze, like, if I had done that maybe a week in advance, maybe they would have responded. Yeah, but it's like three hours left of the entire event. Yeah, exactly. So they said that with the green band, you couldn't, you had to have a special green band to get into the briefing area. Yeah. And I said, that can't be right.

I was just in here yesterday until I interviewed the Swedish prime minister, et cetera. It was a great interaction. I was like, I'm like asking the guard. Like, I'm just, I hate arbitrary rules that people won't even explain. Yeah, yeah. Or like even accept that there's like contradictions embedded with it. I thought that was going to get escorted out. Yeah, so you and I were just like going to give up and then I just went back like, I don't know, half hour later.

And then the rules changed and we could go back, go in without the mysterious green band on our credentials. So it's just stuff like that. I mean, sometimes it makes you think that they're like the whole thing is organized in such a way to limit everyone's opportunity to do anything of interest. It could be that. It could be that. It would be like, yeah. I mean, that was so bizarre like how it was. because just like the rules would just change on a dime.

Yeah, it was really strange. But you have to, that's why you have to sort of be adventurous. You have to sort of be a little assertive and figure out things out, just kind of like make your way without necessarily sticking to the official dictates. My strategy was to like attach myself to a stronger, more brazen, like personality. Like you're like you. Yeah, you need a strong male escort like myself. I mean, it's a strong male escort, exactly.

That's the only context in which I could ever be a strong male escort to, any woman. It was great. You really salvage, I think that your listeners should know, like, that you really salvage the experience and that I think that my piece will be a lot better. Thank you. I'm the true hero, the NATO Summit. Not Donald Trump or Mark Ruta or Dick Schoof of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. It's me.

Yeah, I kept forgetting that guy. I rescued a damsel in distress. It's totally from the media center, from the international media center, like this underground garage. Thank you so much for that. And for this lovely stream. You are welcome.

I remember Richard Holbrook's name, which is like... I should remember that. No, I should remember that because I, like, I spent a lot of time in the Balkans, but it's really late and I'm a... Yeah, what can wrap up? It's really late for you. Over here in.

People can go tell your substack. It's linked to YouTube. Just give the URL if people want it. I think it's a lily lynch.substack.com. People can Google it. I'm on, I'm on Twitter. At Lee S. Lynch and my substack's on there. Okay.

And I've had several articles already on the NEOS summit. I think I'm going to do one more with some extraneous stuff. Squeeze one more out. milking it for all it's worth got to get the content factory shurning yeah no i'm going to do something it's not going to be solely on the nato summit but it's going to be around this like the fictitious narrative of maga having been divided over iran and maybe i'll bring in some color of the nato summit so anyway i'm sure everyone will enjoy that they're they're very uh they enjoy me banging that drum constantly so it's a i really i'll look forward to reading that because i hadn't noticed

that it was a fiction the that's my contention I would say largely fictitious. How about that? Okay. I like that. I like that. All right, everybody. Thank you, Lily.

Thank you, viewers. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a love for the weekend, guys. Or a week for the July. It's Tuesday. We're ready for the week. Well, Fourth of July is in three days.

Yeah. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye. It was so.