The Ben Mulroney Show - Donald Trump has made it very clear he wants a relationship with Vladimir Putin. So where does that leave Ukraine?

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Donald Trump makes it very clear. He wants a relationship with Vladimir Putin with Guest: Marcus Kolga, Senior Fellow MacDonald Laurier institute and Founder of DisInfoWatch If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Donald Trump and Donald Trump tariffs. It's what we've been talking about since the day the guy came into office. Not a day goes by that it doesn't mean the whole thing is built on shifting sands, it seems. What he says on one day, it doesn't mean that that's what's the what the lay of the land will be the next day. And US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he intends to impose auto tariffs,

quote, in the neighborhood of 25% and similar duties on semiconductors and pharmaceutical imports. This is the latest in his attempt to upend the world of international trade. So he said that these automotive tariffs could come in as soon as April 2nd. Now that is the day after members of his cabinet have been told that they are due to deliver reports

to him outlining options for a range of import duties as he seeks to reshape global trade. Essentially what he's asked his cabinet to go do research to come back with reports on I guess the impact of these various trade tariffs. And for the first time that I've noticed, he's really focusing on the European Union. And for instance, the European Union collects a 10% duty on vehicle imports, which is four

times that of the US passenger car tariff at two and a half percent. So he wants to even the scales. I suspect, and I don't know anything here, like anybody who thinks they can predict what Donald Trump is going to do, they're fooling you. They're selling you a bill of goods. But if I'm his trade, the people involved in trade in his cabinet, and I've been asked, go do some research for me on the impact of 25% tariffs on automotive products coming in from Canada.

I suspect that the facts and the data would dictate that what I would hand back to him would say something in the line of, don't do it, sir. Don't do it unless you want to decimate and destroy and shut down the automotive industry, both in Canada, but especially here in the United States. The supply chains are so completely integrated that automotive components

have to go back and forth across the border, nearly a dozen times before they become a fully finished automobile. And if each time those products have to go across the border, they are subject to not only our 25% tariffs, but reciprocal 25% tariffs, you're gonna double the cost of a car. Now I'm making up those numbers, obviously,

but it ain't going to be cheap. And it simply will not be of value. And in the interest of the Fords and the Chevrolet's of the world, the GMC's, the Stellantis is of the world, to make cars anymore, they would rather shut down, then, then build a car that they know they can't sell. They're not going to sit on inventory and they'd rather shut down than have to do, than have to play by these rules. So my hope, and again, it's only a hope. You don't know what Donald Trump will do. Even if you hand him levelheaded good faith data and the conclusions

that come from that data that say, don't do this, sir. You will paralyze the industry. You don't know if he is going to respond logically to that input. So yeah, April 2nd, April 2nd, we'll have to wait and see, who knows? One thing that he has absolutely done, that's to wait and see who knows one thing that he's absolutely done.

That's something he might do. But one thing he has done is he has banned the Associated Press from both the Oval Office and Air Force One. Let's let's take a listen to that did that decision from the horse's mouth. Well, I do think that some of the phrases that they want to use are ridiculous. And I think, frankly, they become obsolete they want to use are ridiculous, and I think frankly they become obsolete, especially in the last three weeks, because many things have happened in the last three weeks.

And I didn't know about that, but I would say that if they want to use certain phrases like that, and I guess some are okay, but many aren't, but the Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It's called the Gulf of America now. It's not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it just like we have the right to do Mount McKinley, and nobody's even challenging that. But only the Associated Press.

Essentially, it's primarily the Associated Press. And I don't know what they're doing, but I just say that we're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America. We're very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America. As I understand it, a lot of this has to do with the AP's style guide, right? So journalistic organizations generally have style guides,

words and expressions that they insist that the people who work for them use so that there's consistency across across their platform. And in the case of the AP, some of the sticking points that Donald Trump has is the use of the name Gulf of America. I believe in their style guide, it says that they will continue to refer to it as Gulf of Mexico. But then there's also ideas of gender affirming care. According to Donald Trump and the

executive orders that he has signed, there is no longer consensus if there ever was one in the United States over what that means. And I guess in the in the opinion of Donald Trump and his administration, gender affirming care, that expression is a loaded expression. It implies that the care given is quote-unquote gender affirming. People on his side of the fence would say it is anything but. And so he does not want to have those battles in his in the Oval Office or on Air Force One and therefore he has banned them. Now I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm simply trying to give you the lay of the land. Now you'll remember

that Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN, was locked in a battle for years with Donald Trump and it looks like Donald Trump got the last laugh because Jim Acosta was unceremoniously, not fired, he was offered a terrible time slot on CNN. They essentially moved him to the midnight slot or something like that. And he didn't take it, so he resigned. But that doesn't mean you've seen or heard the last of Jim Acosta. And he recently popped up on a podcast

to give listeners and viewers the counterpoint to Donald Trump. Here's what he had to say. We've reached a point now where, you know, I think the press needs to do a bit more. And that's a tough nut to crack, as I found, you know, covering him the first time around, you know, it's a little like herding cats trying to get everybody

in the press corps to act in a uniform fashion. But when you have the White House banning the AP from the Oval Office, banning the AP from Air Force One, and just to explain this to people, I mean, the Associated Press, the AP, is an institution that's been around for over 100 years. They're in about 100 countries. They're in about 100 countries. They're in all 50 states.

I believe their journalism is read and viewed by, you know, some 4 billion people around the world. And just about every news outlet in the United States relies on the Associated Press. So when the White House kicks the AP out of the Oval Office, off of Air Force One, it has a major impact on the information that people are receiving around this country.

And I just don't think it's something that should be, you know, should just be tolerated at this point. And then Mr. Acosta goes on to explain what he thinks could be the next steps in this battle between the AP and the White House. I think that the AP should look at whether or not they should sue the administration. I think the AP needs to look at other options in terms

of what can be done. And I think the rest of the press corps needs to start giving some serious consideration to whether or not it's worth sending everybody into the Oval Office, sending everybody on Air Force One, sending everybody into the Oval Office, sending everybody on Air Force One, sending everybody into the briefing room. And I know some of my friends over there at the White House Press Corps will say, hang on a second,

how are we supposed to cover this guy? I understand that. It's difficult if we're not there. But, you know, I do think for a moment, let the American people out there see this image of this aspiring autocrat in the Oval Office surrounded by just his propaganda outlets and right wing hacks. That's not a good look for him. Yeah, it might not be a good look for him. But I believe that the mainstream media needs Donald Trump a heck of a lot more than he needs them at least at this point. Yes, he might

not like the fact that CNN's not covering him, but CNN needs him for the ratings. They get a Trump bump better than anybody else. Donald Trump, Russia, and Ukraine, and the democracy of it all. It is a very touchy subject. It makes even some of Donald Trump's most avid supporters

uncomfortable. His seemingly warm relationship with Vladimir Putin at the expense of the democracy that is Ukraine that was invaded violently by Vladimir Putin. It is not something that a lot of his supporters enjoy talking about. And as we get deeper into this, the early days of this administration,

it's getting increasingly uncomfortable for anybody because it just doesn't look right. The US has started talks with Russia on ending this war without Ukraine at the table. And at this first meeting, Donald Trump got in front of the microphones and talked about how this could have been said a long time ago.

Well, I think I'm really disappointed in what's happened. I've been watching this for three years. It's a war that would have never happened if I was president. And I've been watching these people being killed at levels that you've rarely seen not not even close Since the Second World War and I'm very disappointed. I hear that, you know, there's upset about not having a seat Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily just a half

half-baked Negotiator could have settled this years ago, without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land. All right, here to discuss it and wade into these waters and help us make sense of it is Marcus Kolga, the senior fellow at MacDonald-Laurier Institute and founder of DisinfoWatch.

Marcus, thank you so much for being here on the Ben Mulroney Show. Thanks for having me on, Ben. Yeah, I look, I'm one of the things I learned in law school is the appearance of propriety is as important as propriety itself. If something doesn't look right, then it doesn't matter if it is right. It's not right. And this doesn't look right, that Russia, the aggressor in this war is sitting down with the United States to figure out a solution to a war without the victim there. Yeah, well, Ben, I mean, it smells like 19th century diplomacy, where you had massive imperial powers coming together to decide the fate of smaller nations. I mean, we haven't engaged in this sort of diplomacy for like a hundred years. And so yeah, it doesn't smell right. It doesn't

smell right because it is Ukraine here that is the victim. And it has been a victim going back all the way to 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea. You know, in your clip, Donald Trump says that Ukraine had a seat for three years. Yeah, it had a front row seat to witness the destruction of that nation, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, apartment buildings, hospitals, the kidnapping of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children by Vladimir Putin who were taken to Russia and brainwashed, many of them sent back to the front line to fight against their own people. And never mind the billions of dollars in destruction that Russia has caused. So yeah, they've had a front seat there and they've been asking for peace all along.

But to now impose this sort of peace on Ukraine is, as you say, it's not right. It doesn't smell right. Something is definitely off here. And, you know, something that needs to be repeated and people tend to forget that the history of the fall of the Soviet Union, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the third largest repository of nuclear weapons on the planet.

They voluntarily gave them up at the request of the United States in order to sort of join the the the community of nations and they but they were promised protection by the West yeah and you're you're absolutely right and part of that agreement the Budapest memorandum as you've noted was a guarantee from Russia that they would not invade Ukraine that they would respect the sovereignty of Ukraine's borders. And so Ukraine, you're right,

they gave up that nuclear deterrent for those guarantees that Russia would not invade them. And so, you know, when Donald Trump talked about negotiation, that negotiation ended in 1991. And I should say also it was a certain degree, with the involvement of Canada's then Prime Minister, Brian Mulvaney. But I would love for there to have been some pushback by these journalists to say, oh, the war never would have started.

I said, well, what about the pretext for the war, the nonsense pretext that Putin had that he was going in there to denazify Ukraine. You're absolutely right. The justification for this was that there were Nazis running Ukraine. Of course, President Glebsky himself is a member of the Jewish community in Ukraine, but that was the justification that Russia was going in to denotify this country, that Ukraine somehow posed some form of a threat to Russia. I mean, there was no threat there ever. Ukraine never threatened to invade Russia. And of course, Vladimir Putin promised his own people that this war would end in three

days. We're now a few days away from the third anniversary, the third year of this war would end in three days. We're now a few days away from the third anniversary, the third year of this war. And this is what also is rather perplexing about Donald Trump's position in giving Vladimir Putin everything that he wanted. Just a month ago, you know, Vladimir Putin was on his heels. Things were not going well on the front lines. His economy is in tatters because of his war. His own people are not happy with the direction that Vladimir Putin has taken his country and the oligarchs that support him were questioning Vladimir Putin's own policy in terms of this war.

Marcus, I want to get to another I want to get to another clip here because all of those things are happening but it seems now I mean if I'm those oligarchs who are worried, I'm less worried today because it seems like I have an ally in Donald Trump. Here's what he had to say about what it seems like he's talking about the undemocratic aspect of Ukraine right now. Let's listen. Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine,

where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine — I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4 percent approval rating — and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got — most of the cities are laying on their sides. The buildings are collapsed. It looks like a massive demolition site.

The whole — I mean, so many of the cities, I mean, they haven't done it in Kiev because I guess they don't want to shoot too many rockets in there. They've done it 20 percent, but they haven't done it 100 percent. If they wanted to do it 100 percent, it would probably happen very quickly. But you have cities that are absolutely decimated. And yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want to seat at the table, you could say the people have to win the people of Ukraine have to say like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election. That's not a Russia thing. That's something

coming from me and coming from many other countries also. Marcus Colga, what do you make of that? I mean, nobody would suggest that the elections in Russia are anywhere near free and fair. And so this, the fact that he's demanding an election in one place where we know the elections are completely rigged on the other side shows that this negotiation is rigged. Yeah. I mean, the whole interview there, that whole segment, I mean, it's just absurd. You know, Ukraine

has been under attack for the past three years. I mean any nation that is in that situation, I mean elections unfortunately need to get delayed because in order to ensure their ability to defend themselves and the stability of that regime. It's happened in multiple other nations including England during the Second World War, so that's nothing new. And your point about Russia, I mean, if this is a Russia thing, as Donald Trump has suggested, maybe he should be talking to Vladimir Putin,

who has been in power for 25 years. There hasn't been a free and fair election in that country during that time. And so I wouldn't be so worried about elections in Ukraine as I would be about elections in Russia, which like I say haven't happened in 25 years. Marcus Kolga, senior fellow at the McDonnell Laureate Institute and founder of DisinfoWatch. What a great conversation. I hope you come back so we can chat again. Anytime. Back to you, Ben.

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