The Bulwark Podcast - Andrew Weissmann and Michael Weiss: Valentine's Massacre

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Unlike the cowardly Republican senators who are rolling over in the face of Kash Patel's bald-faced lies, the men and women of the Justice Department are taking their oaths of office seriously by refusing to comply with a blatantly political order to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Meanwhile, Trump is just over the moon with Vladimir Putin—even though his army is performing quite poorly on the battlefield against Ukraine. Plus, the makeup heir advising Trump on foreign policy, Emil Bove is this moment's cartoon villain, and Pizzagate's Jack Posobiec is somehow inside the administration's inner circle.  Andrew Weissmann and Michael Weiss join Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Support "Orange Ribbons for Jamie" here, formed in honor of Parkland shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg Details on Zelensky offering Trump a Ukrainian boxer's championship belt Tim's playlist

Hey y'all, I hope you're listening to the Bullock podcast with me every day. But as we're learning in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, a lot of crazy shit can happen in 24 hours. And stuff can happen after I tape. Or stuff can be really crazy and important, but not make it into the hour that I have with you guys. I don't know. Here are some examples from the last week.

Maybe Elon Musk will try to shut down an entire federal agency, or Trump will try to turn a foreign country into the Riviera of the Middle East, or JD Vance will tweet out that saying, I am a racist is not a cause for firing in this administration. When that stuff's happening, and I have a little five or 10 minute rant that I want to get out, I'm turning to a new podcast feed along with a lot of my pals. It's called Bullwork Takes. Bullwork Takes is our rapid response to breaking news and you get short takes from your favorite contributors like me, Sarah Longwell, JVL, Sam Stein, Will Salaton and more.

So you don't have to wait till the next day to hear our expert analysis and commentary on what's going on out there. You can search Bullwork Takes on Apple podcasts and subscribe if you want audio only, or you can head over to our YouTube channel to find the takes in video form too. So if we're going to be suffering throughout all this, come hang out with us. Subscribe to Bullwork Takes. We'll be seeing you around. We'll be seeing you around. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today's the seventh anniversary of the Parkland tragedy.

I hate that we only discuss these horrors in like the couple days after they happen and then move on. So more to come on that next week, but we've put a link to Fred Guttenberg's orange ribbons for Jamie charity and the show notes, please go ahead and give him a little love and support. And everybody else that was affected by that tragedy. But today we are jam packed with news and segment two, we've got Michael Weiss on Trump's, uh, negotiation or submission to Putin and she, whatever you want to

call it, but first he's back already. We've got a lot of relevant news for him. It's Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel, former Justice Department prosecutor, chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of New York. He's now co-host of the MSNBC podcast, Main Justice. He's got a newsletter on Substack. We got Weiss Weissman. If only we had Allen Weisselberg, we could have the full gamut. We got Weiss Weissman, if only we had Allen Weisselberg, we could have the full, just full gamut. Panoply, right?

Thank you for returning so soon. We're in a little bit of a pinch and the news is just screaming for you, given what happened yesterday at DOJ. Six senior Justice Department officials resigned. Rather than comply with the order to drop the Eric Adams investigation, they include basically the entire public corruption unit at DOJ, who needs that? Plus Kevin Driscoll from the criminal division, and then most notably the US attorney from the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon.

So what the fuck happened? Let's start there, Andrew. Okay. What do we know? We know that there was a meeting last Friday with Danielle Sassoon and her deputies she was in charge of in her office in charge of The criminal case against the mayor of the city of New York Eric Adams. It was brought about nine months ago and The defense lawyers were there and Amiel Bovove was there. He is the acting Deputy Attorney General.

New York Minute ago, he was one of the criminal defense lawyers for Donald Trump. So he is a placeholder for the Trump administration in that position. And he's going to become the number two to the number two when Tom Blanch becomes the Deputy Attorney General. His confirmation hearing is pending in the Senate right now. Todd Blanch. Todd Blanch. So there's various disputes as to what happened at that meeting, but Danielle Sassoon, the

head of the, or now former head of the Southern District of New York says essentially, there was sort of laid out a quid pro quo of I will sort of enforce your immigration policy in exchange for your dismissing the case. That has been disputed by Eric Adams, defense counsel, understandable he would dispute it even if it happened, it's possible that there's just two different versions of what happened. More on that later. Yeah. Okay.

That is then followed up by a directive from Neil Bove on Monday to the Southern District of New York saying, you need to dismiss this case without prejudice. I'm not basing this on the facts or the law. I'm basing it on two things. One, the case was brought too close to the New York City primary. That's a bogus, absurd argument. It was about nine months before the primary and there's zero DOJ rules about not bringing a case within nine months of a primary. So that's just a fictitious reason. And it's important that you make that judgment because it's like, why would you come up with that fictitious reason?

Why not just go with the truth if what you're doing is real? The second reason was sort of saying the quiet part out loud, which we're used to, which was the criminal indictment is going to interfere with the mayor's ability to carry out Donald Trump's immigration policies. That seems to corroborate what Danielle Sassoon said happened on Friday. Notably, by the way, in her letter describing what happened, she says at that meeting, her deputies took notes and Emile Bové, at the end of the meeting, said, don't take notes and confiscated them and took them. Again, why would you possibly care about somebody taking notes,

which people do all the time if nothing was being said that you in any way thought was improper? It was the most remarkable part of a remarkable letter. I mean, it's like this three page letter and then she ducks into footnote number one. Oh, by the way, Mr. Beauvais admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. It's like, this is why you always read the footnotes. That's where the good stuff is happening. Totally. It's funny. I always tell my law students, I teach at a law school, I always say, read the footnotes. That's where the people say, Oh, yeah, by the

way, here's a little factoid that tells you what's going on. And notably, the direction from Amo Boves to the Southern District of New York was to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning that as everyone has talked about, there's a sort of Damocles hanging over Eric Adams had, or as I like to say, a choke collar. And you've already seen the effects of that choke collar, which is, it has been widely reported that on Monday,

which feels like a million years ago, but just this past Monday, Eric Adams met with his entire leadership team, every senior agency head and their general counsels, and said, do not speak ill of Donald Trump. Mr. Trump. And then second yesterday, he said, I'm going to allow ICE agents into local prisons like Rikers to effectuate immigration arrests. That is in violation of local law. So I mean, it's just remarkable. So here's a guy

who's under indictment out on bail saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm authorizing them to violate local law. The mayor is not allowed to do that. Just to be clear, the mayor has no power to say violate local law any more than Tim, you and I saying that. So there is now this standoff because where we are right now is Daniel Sassoon has said, I am not doing this. I'm resigning rather than carry out what she believed and I can agree with her is both an improper and arguably illegal order from Emil Bove.

He then says, I'm moving the case, the prosecutor's assigned to the case, I'm moving it from New York to Washington, D.C. to the public integrity section. Now, just to be clear, the criminal case is still pending in the Southern District of New York. He can't change that. The judge who has the case has the case. But it gets assigned to the public integrity section. And that's why, Tim, each person, like the Saturday Massacre, is saying, no, no, no,

no, no. So you have six people who have now resigned. I'm sure everyone at the Department of Justice is saying, I'm not answering my phone because it could be, for the sake of I want you to go to the Southern District of New York and do this. Could you explain that to me for kind of a novice on this? So why does somebody else have to take it up to close it? Right?

Like, well, I can't, I mean, I guess Trump could just pardon him. Could the DOJ, why does it have to be a specific person within the DOJ to shut down the case? So there's a pending criminal case. And in order for that case to disappear from the docket, there needs to be a motion. So somebody has to say discontinue it. And that has to have court approval. The court has limited authority to say no. But if it was shown to be in illegal order

or for improper purposes, there are a number of things the judge could do. The most extreme would be he could hold a hearing to say what happened here, I want to know if this is an illegal scheme, I think he should have a hearing. And here's the really extraordinary thing that he could do is he could say no I am NOT doing this, I think this is part of a quid pro quo. I don't think you have a valid basis to dismiss it. At that point, the prosecutors, the plaintiffs in the case are saying, I'm not going forward because Emile Boves is saying I'm not doing it. So what could the judge do? He could appoint an independent team to prosecute the case. That has happened in a case called Donziger. A colleague of Judge Ho, Louis Kaplan,

whom some of your listeners may remember, he had the Eugene Carroll case, where there were two separate verdicts in favor of Eugene Carroll, and he was the judge who oversaw that case. So in a separate case, he actually appointed a special prosecutor to go forward with a case which he thought was meritorious. Couldn't Boves or Blanche just withdraw the prosecution? Couldn't they take it on? I mean,

if they, but they have to be confirmed, I guess. Let's assume that Emil can't find a prosecutor. He goes through thousands of people, but let's say he does it or he finds somebody to do it. And they go into court and they say, Judge Ho, we would like to withdraw this case. The judge does not have to agree to that. The judge could say, why? Why do you want to do this? And if the judge were to hold a hearing and conclude that there was an improper quid pro quo here, the judge would be, again, it's limited authority,

but he'd be within his rights to say, the court is not going to be a part of this and then the case is not dismissed. So it's not a unilateral authority for the prosecutors to say we're not going forward. Pete Slauson Got it. Okay. So, much more to get into here. We have, as we're, I think, going to a lot during the next four years, have Some heroes and villains morality plays. Let's talk about Danielle Sassoon for a second. She's not You know, she's not some deep state lib like Andrew Weissman. She isn't She isn't I you know, it's so funny She will be though because she is going to be vilified the way bill Barr is now viewed like bill Barr and Andrew Weissman

Are now it's like they're one in the same. It's like, why? Because we did something that Donald Trump doesn't like. Well, congrats. You know, we have one of those paintings, like one of those dumb dog poker paintings, and it'll be you and Bill Barr and, you know, like a cave and like all memorialized forever.

Sassoon was appointed by Trump. She's a Federalist Society, longtime member. She clerked for Reagan appointee, Judge Harvey Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit. Then she clerked for Antonin Scalia, not exactly a squish. She was awarded the FBI Director's Award for outstanding criminal investigation last year. It is noteworthy that she would do this given that background, right? Like you could imagine, not to impugn your business there, Andrew, but you could imagine a prosecutor who likes the cameras, who maybe doesn't like Donald Trump and sees an opportunity here to be whatever, like you could imagine somebody

to making that political choice, like this is not it, like this is somebody that has been a down the line, you know, by the book prosecutor who is appointed by and served for Republicans or conservative justices, just saying absolutely not three weeks after she was sworn back in. And that's pretty remarkable. It is, you know, this is where, I mean,

I hate to sound Pollyannish or naive or be on a soapbox, but what you are seeing at the Southern District of New York at main justice in the public integrity section, and just let's not remember that this is all on the heels of everything we're seeing at the FBI, which is also not a hotbed of the deep state. It is a conservative organization where the acting head of the FBI, special agent Driscoll was also selected by Trump to lead that agency while they await the confirmation of cash cartel. All of them have been pushing back and that's where what I would tell you, and again, I don't mean to sound Pollyannaish, but people act out of principle. All of these people, when I was in the department, there's their policies you agree with, and

you're disagree with their Democrats and Republicans in the White House that come in all the time. And you're used to policy directives that you have to implement. And if you can't stomach it at all, you can leave. But it is so rare that you ever see a situation where prosecutors and agents are resisting because something they believe is illegal. The last time we saw this was Trump 1.0 when prosecutors resigned in the Roger Stone case. I was so taken aback, it does not happen. And the only other time I can think of of note

is the Saturday Night Massacre. Well, maybe part of the reason why it sounds Pollyannaish and people are skeptical of all this is just because we've seen so little principle out of the political wing, right? In the morning newsletter I sat in this morning and I wrote about the Cash Patel lies and we talked about this earlier in the week with Carol Lenig, just his bald-faced lies to senators

about his involvement in that purge at the FBI that you referenced, right? And we see no, not a single Republican senator, not a single Republican elected official, not a single staffer who cares about federal law enforcement saying, no, we should not confirm somebody that is going to lie to our face about the politicized manner in which he purged the FBI. We've seen none of it. The behaviorist of soon and the other people that resigned just does stand in stark contrast to what we've seen from the political class. Absolutely. I mean, what you are seeing within the Department of Justice, including the FBI, is a sort of I am Spartacus moment where people are really standing up. And that is why Emil

Bové has gone through six, count them, six people who all say, I am not carrying out what has been described as a quid pro quo. So the public integrity division, and there's got to be some long-term, at least short-term consequences to the fact that like the public corruption unit is now emptied out. I don't know. It doesn't seem like Pam Bondi is going to be quick to the draw to be replacing people in that division. You worked in the building. I'm just kind of wondering what kind of stuff will

be going unmonitored now. A friend of mine who is a white collar defense lawyer said when Pam Bondi issued her first day memos that this is the golden era for white collar criminals. She basically was like, you know what, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, gone. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, gone. I mean, her policies are really favorable for sort of rich white criminals and large corporations. And also corrupt prominent black criminals as well,

turns out. Public corruption cases, CEG, Eric Adams and Rod Blagojevich, and foreign nation states where the foreign election interference task force and the kleptocracy unit and all of these things that were put in place to prevent foreign adversaries from acting here illegally, all disbanded. I want to get in a little bit more to this Emil Bove. Is that really how you say his name?

It's such a pretentious way to pronounce the name. I might just start pronouncing it Bove. I love it. For the rest of that. That is my I am Spartacus moment. I'm just gonna mispronounce his name intentionally going forward. Maybe we'll call you Timay. Timay.

Timothay. Timothay. He is emerging as kind of one of the main nefarious characters. Villains. Yeah, villains. Sure. He was the one in the aforementioned Cash Patel in the whistleblower report. I mean, we're three weeks in, we're not even a full four weeks in, and he's already been in two whistleblower

reports named specifically this one person, right? The whistleblower in the Patel situation said that it was Emil Boeve that was telling FBI agents that it was Stephen Miller and Cash Patel that were calling for the purge. And now we have Sassoon saying he was the one that's doing this quid pro quo, allegedly, with Eric Adams and telling people to confiscating the notes that were taken, because you're not supposed to take notes on a criminal conspiracy, as we know. By the way, he has admitted that. He has not denied that he did that. He has said, I did it because I was concerned about leaks. I'm not really sure how being concerned about leaks is dealt with by taking notes because people can still talk.

But just to be clear, he has not denied that he did that. Interesting. Muzzles, maybe look into muzzles. The other thing is like in his memo about rationalizing, you know, ending the prosecution of Adams, he compares it to the Victor boot prisoner swap, which is like an insane comparison, right? Because it's like I'm criticizing the Biden administration for doing this deal for a Russian arms dealer in exchange for Brittany Greiner. And so that gives me justification to do a quid pro quo as if Eric Adams is the Russian arms dealer in this analogy.

So anyway, talk to us about this guy. Well, Danielle Sassoon brings that up. She says the analogy to the Victor boot quid pro quo, she said, well, that's alarming because that was the White House. They're entitled to say, you know what, we'll give you this person, we'll give that person, you do a swap. That is not allowed in the criminal law to say you advance our policy agenda and we'll give you essentially the in effect a pardon, but keep it hanging over your head to make sure that you're you're on this choke collar. She's just like

that makes it even worse. And you know, it's such a tell that Emil Boves in his direction has a footnote to your point, look at the footnotes that says, to be clear, this is not a quid pro quo. Like it just, it just happens to be on his brain. Oh yeah. I need to make sure I say that I'm not doing this while I do it. Yeah. My, this is not a quid pro quo shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are answered by my shirt. So is there anything else we should know about this guy? I mean, it's a pretty- Yeah, there is. So another thing that has been reported

is that he, according to the New York Times, after the Trump election, met personally with Eric Adams to work out the strategy that Eric Adams should use in meeting with Donald Trump in order to undermine the DOJ case. This is the person who's the number two at the Justice Department figuring out how to undermine their own case, which smacks of sort of obstruction. You want to talk about sort of potential obstruction of justice. I mean, that is unbelievable to be meeting with the defendant

to talk about what's the strategy to make it look sort of good and put the packaging on this and lipstick on a pig. Crazy. I'm blown away by the depoliticized Justice Department. They really are just, you know, just going right by the book. All right. Lastly, what now? I mean, this is one case, right? But it certainly is indicative of sort of what's to come for the Trump 2.0 Justice Department.

So let me just address what I think can happen in this particular case. There are a number of things. One is the thing that's never going to happen, which is the Senate could actually do something because they do have the Todd Blanch nomination before them. So they could actually call him back. They could investigate all of these things that are pipe dreams because, as you said, they have no backbone and they're not doing anything. So that's one. Two, and I think much more realistic, is that Judge Ho is going to have a hearing.

That is the judge overseeing the case. And that could be really explosive, and he could require Emil Bové to appear to talk about what's going on. Three, Kathy Hochul, the New York state governor, has the authority to remove the mayor. I don't know how she doesn't exercise that at this point. I know that she is talking about, she does that undermine democracy, but I think there's an equally good argument that when the mayor is so conflicted and has, as I said, this choke collar on, he is not representing the

people who elected him. He is representing somebody who was not elected as mayor of New York, which is the president of the United States. And he is also directing ICE and his people to violate local law. So she has sort of every reason to say it actually upholds democracy to say there needs to be a new election because this person cannot be operating in an unconflicted way. So those are three things. I also think you're going to see, operating in an unconflicted way. So those are three things. I also think you're gonna see, and this is sort of, you know, in my little nerdy world,

I think with respect to lawyers, I think you're going to see complaints in the bar with respect to Emil Boves' license, because there'll be allegations about what he is doing and the propriety of it, and the bar associations that are supposed to oversee us and have done a pretty good job with respect to people like Rudy Giuliani, for instance. I think you're going to see some action there. Again, I know that's sort of a small bore in terms of democracy writ large, but in terms of my little profession, it's kind of nice to see

people policing themselves. What are the other US attorneys thinking right now? I mean, it has to have also impact on that, on recruitment, on other people's and their jobs. I don't know. Well, widespread support. For Cessun? Every single person I know within and alums within the FBI, outside of the FBI, Justice Department, everybody is fully supportive. I think that is why you were seeing so many people resign.

And so I don't know how Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch and Amal Bové go forward leading this organization. I mean, you need a certain number of horses to pull a wagon along and there is widespread revolt. And just to be clear, it's not just because of policy, it's because these people are trained to adhere to the rule of law. Well, thank you so much for pinch hitting today, Andrew.

It's good to see you again twice this month. It feels like we're going to get to hang out a lot, unfortunately, going forward. So very much appreciate it. Everybody check out his sub-stack and his podcast, Main Justice. We'll be seeing you soon. Okay. Take care.

All right. Up next, my friend, Michael Weiss. All right. We're back with friend of the show, editor of the insider, a Russia focused independent media outlet, former investigative reporter for CNN. He's the author of ISIS Inside the Army of Terror and has a forthcoming book about the GRU, Russia's intel agency. It's Michael Weiss.

How are you doing, man? I'm well. How are you? Lots happening. We had a bilateral press conference with Modi yesterday, as well as an Oval Office press conference about the negotiation, if we want to call it that, with Russia. We're getting some mixed signals from Trump and Hegseth and Vance on this matter. So I want to get into the details of what we heard at the press conference.

But I want to start with this question that was posed by Matt Pierce. What is the foreign policy of the US government right now? I don't think the US government is quite sure of that, to be honest. You're seeing a lot of contradictory lines of communication, and I think it's indicative of just sort of how amateur the current lineup is. Hegseth, from what I've been able to report so far was not cleared to give the statement he gave, which sort of blew back in his face. So he's had to walk it back.

It's been repudiated by other members of the administration. But then Trump just real quick, but then Trump basically kind of concurred with it also. Yeah. Well, evidently the original draft of what Hegseth was going to say, alluded to the Istanbul deal in the early draft of what Hegseth was going to say alluded to the Istanbul deal in the early part of the war, which the Russians keep citing as evidence that the Ukrainians missed an opportunity to end the war, complete fugazi nonsense.

It was really bad. And I'm hearing it was actually DOT staffers, many of them from Koch-funded think tanks, who ended up drafting this thing. I mean, Hegseth is the guy who strikes me as he probably thought NATO was a type of Mezcal before his confirmation hearing, right? I mean, not the sharpest tool in the shed and very easily manipulated in running one of the largest entities in the world, which is the Pentagon. Yeah.

Yeah. Trump too, saying a lot of strange and unpleasant and alarming things. I mean, my European friends are like, oh, so he wants to cut American military spending in half, which would make the percentage of America's GDP that is spent on defense something like 1.68%. Meanwhile, he wants all NATO allies to spend 5%. So that's, you know, physician, physician heal thyself. And then he wants the burden to of course be passed to the Europeans to sustain a war that he also says is going to be

wrapped up in short order with a beautiful peace deal that nobody knows the contours or details of because I don't think he does. But I mean, Hegseth's amateur rookie mistake was to offer everything up to the Russians that they want, by the way, in advance of even entering into negotiations. So foreclosing on the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, it's an open secret that Ukraine is not going to be in NATO in the short or midterm. Biden says the future of Ukraine is in NATO. But at the Vilnius summit several summers ago, Ukrainians

were hopping mad that there was no credible path for accession, right? That's an obvious thing. He says that Ukraine cannot claw back all the territory it controlled in 2014. Well, President Zelensky has essentially said the same thing. And that's also that's not even an open secret. That's just accepted reality. But again, you don't articulate these things publicly and affirm them before you enter into what is going to be a very prolonged and possibly nasty and arduous set of negotiations with the Russians.

So the Russians, I think, were kind of rubbing their hands with glee about this. But now you have this weird stuff happening. JD Vance. Just real quick before you get to JD Vance, the funniest part of the Hegseth presser for me, everyone would be dumber for having listened to it. So we're not going to pull the full audio of this, but people can Google it if they want. He was asked, like, you've told us what concessions that you're asking for from Ukraine. What concessions are you asking for from Russia? And his answer was like, Mr. Trump's strong.

And like he goes on for two minutes with nothing, because he had nothing. There wasn't even a fig leaf. Right. And he's probably not even aware of what concessions could be wrung from Russia. There are a couple of things that are happening right now, which make all of this incredibly ill timed. The first is there are Republicans who are putting forth a suite of possible sanctions against Russia that would really hammer the energy economy, I mean, basically destroy

Russia's economy even more so than it has been already, right? If Biden administration sanctions were a six out of 10, this would ratchet it up to about an eight or nine out of 10. This is probably something that the Trump administration will not do, but at least they could use it as a cudgel or as a threat that if you do not meet us to the point at which we need to be met for any kind of negotiations, we have this at our disposal. Nobody's talking about that. The second thing is that actually the Russians are performing quite poorly right now on the

battlefield. They are slowing down in the pace of their advance in Donbass. I'm hearing reports, credible reports from Ukrainian officers in the field that their rate of fires is dramatically reduced along the contact line. So basically they're not bombing, they're not hitting the Ukrainians with artillery anymore. Whether or not this is a hiccup that gets adapted and goes away on the Russian side, or whether or not it's indicative of something more systemic and problematic in their war

machinery, I don't know. But it seems like now is the time to pause and maybe wait and find out before we start giving the store away for free. And you keep in mind, Putin doesn't just want a US president to say Ukraine will not be a native. Biden kind of sort of came close and before the full scale invasion, that administration was essentially offering that to the Russian side as a way to deter, stop them from invading. Putin has been around long enough, several presidents on the American side, he wants

a treaty, which means he wants it ratified by Congress, that essentially Russia gets a veto on NATO expansion, that they will not incorporate more countries. That's not going to happen in Congress, even under this current GOP. But suddenly, we are bending over backwards to try and convince the Russians that Ukraine will not be in NATO ever. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be using the very slowness of our own political machinery as an advantage on our side of the ledger.

We're not doing that either. It's a very bizarre kind of time to sort of insist that Ukraine be wrapped up here. The third point I should make, and this comes right from the mind of Tucker Carlson, who has made a few trips to Russia. It is absolutely one of the demands of the Kremlin, is that Ukraine have elections. They do not want Zelensky, the wartime president, to remain wartime president. They think, and this I think is more suggestive of how the Russians completely misread the

Ukrainian body politic, which landed them in this mess of invading when they thought the entire population would greet them as liberators and go over to their side, they think that they can install through their bag of dirty tricks, election interference, political warfare, a more pliant asset in Kiev who will certify any deal that essentially cedes the sovereignty of the country over to Russia. Zelensky is still, I think, the most favored candidate in whatever polling is being conducted now, but all that to one side. There is no Ukrainian politician who's going to emerge to say, we must look eastward once

again. There's no Yanukovych in the offing here, right? Everybody wants to be part of the EU. Everybody sees themselves as a member of the Western community. The Russians don't appreciate that fact. But we seem to be now suggesting, I mean, Bloomberg just had a piece today that the Trump people are telling Zelensky you have to have elections. The sheer logistics of which are going to be quite difficult because 20% of the country is occupied. Missiles are still landing in Tkiv and Kharkiv and you're going to have

a ceasefire before, which will be kind of fitfully maintained and then you're going to go to the polls. It doesn't make much sense, but this is another demand the Russians have. I'm curious what you think Putin ultimately wants, but I want to, before we get Michael Weiss to take, I want to listen to what Trump thinks and whether he trusts that Putin is dealing with him in good faith. This was him yesterday in the Oval Office. He says that he really wants peace. Do you believe him? Yeah, I do. I believe he wants peace. I believe that President Putin, when I spoke to him yesterday, I mean, I know him very well. Yeah, I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn't.

I think I'd like to see peace. Do you trust President Putin? I believe that, yeah, I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject. Trust him on this subject. Trust him on this subject. He would tell me if he were lying. He would. He would.

He would be a case officer. He wouldn't do the dirty on me. Because we have such a good relationship. Yeah. Totally preposterous, almost ridiculous to even take it seriously if he wasn't the President of the United States. But I am curious, like, what you think Putin wants out of this current negotiation because I think it's a little opaque, right?

And it kind of is related to your point about what about the weakening on the battlefields, right? I mean, I think that there was some thinking that maybe he didn't even really want a peace deal, you know, when Russia was pressing ahead, but maybe he kind of does want a temporary pause now. I don't know. What do you suspect? Do some Kremlin ology for me?

Well, I mean, I think they want to drag this out as much as possible de facto ceasefire or anything that lowers the temperature is a boon for the Russians because it allow them to regenerate their forces and allow them to kind of pause and reconstitute and you know Bring new kit to the front Dial up more North Koreans that they can send into Kursk, whatever. I mean, but it also, frankly speaking, allowed the Ukrainians to do the same thing. I mean, Ukrainians are suffering pretty badly themselves. I mean, this is a matter of population differences. One of the big points of vulnerability for Zelensky is his refusal to lower the draft

age to 18 and bring more younger people to the—I mean, you've got, you know, 40 something year olds, in some cases, geriatrics who are now in trenches and Don boss fighting on the Ukrainian side. So they have a problem with manpower. But ultimately, look, I think the Russians understand that this is going to be a process. And so what they're trying to do is set the sort of players correctly, such that they can get the maximum concessions from the American side.

They don't really believe in negotiating with the Ukrainians at all. Remember, Ukraine has no agency. It practically does not exist as a sovereign entity unto itself. For them, this is really a war with the United States and NATO. So they want to talk only to Washington. And who do they want to talk to? So I think it was interesting. There was some misreporting that Kellogg, the special envoy to Ukraine, was

not going to Munich at all. When Trump did his social post about this, you know, sort of the preliminaries of this discussion, he did not mention Kellogg. Witkoff, his buddy, a fellow billionaire, the guy who got the American school teacher released by the Russian side. That's all purpose. The Russians see Witkoff as their man, not because he's necessarily pro-Russian, but he doesn't understand anything about this part of the world. He's completely green, whereas Kellogg lives, breathes, and speaks Ukraine-Russia 24-7.

That's his portfolio. You can also probably do some backchannel deals with him because Witkoff's son is the co-owner of the Trump crypto scheme with the Trump kids. So the Trump kids and the Wittkopf kids are together on their cryptocurrency. To the Russian mind, I mean, Wittkopf is just another oligarch, a boyar who is surrounded by the czar on the American side. So they would rather-

That's about as close as you can get. I mean, there's a great example in recent time where we have a president who appointed his business partner's dad to a special envoy position, right? I mean, it's pretty similar actually to the Russian side. Yeah. I mean, it's a political system that is governed by cronyism and backscratching. And so yeah, but with cough, they think, especially with the sweetener of this unexpected exchange

of, you know, on our side, we had a crypto grifting criminal that we gave to the Russians and they had a school teacher hostage. They think that they've now incentivized Trump to play nice and by all accounts, he is, you know, again, he trusts Putin, arguably more so than he does his own ministers and his own intelligence. Well, it's certainly more than Europe.

Let's listen, because I thought this was telling also from yesterday and this is, I'm curious to your view on how the Europeans are processing all this because she was asked about working with Europe in these negotiations. I think about, I don't remember if I mentioned it, but there, he's floated the idea there's a spring summit in Saudi Arabia. So home turf for Putin in the negotiations. And so the question was about whether he'd be working with Europe on that. And his answer is pretty gobsmacking. Let's listen. And we told the European Union, we told the NATO people largely they overlap. You have to pay more money because it's unfair what we're doing.

We're doing a tremendous amount more. We're probably $200 billion more going into Ukraine, using for Ukraine to fight. And Europe has not really carried its weight in terms of the money. It's not equitable. And we want to see a counterbalance. We want to have them put up more money. They have to do that. At the same time, we had a very good conversation with President Putin.

The question again was, are you going to be working with Europe on the negotiation? The answer there was trashing Europe and then reiterating that he had a great talk with Putin. Right. And expecting Europe to essentially shoulder, by the way, I mean, Europe does spend almost as much as we do on Ukraine. And if you measure it in both military and humanitarian assistance, I think you could even come up with a figure that's greater than what the US is doing.

So this is nonsense. Look, I'm an advocate for every NATO member to meet the 3% threshold for defense spending. I think it's a good idea. The Europeans have been talking about this since time immemorial. I mean, it was part of Macron's sort of, what did he call it, his sovereign hegemony, where he changed the term of art multiple times. But you know, the idea of Europe being able to defend itself outside of the American security umbrella is a good one. And especially it's a good one now that America is fast becoming the Venezuela of North America.

We might not be able to do things that we used to do before. And a lot of Europeans are very much in favor of this, which is why literally a few hours ago Vandalin announced at Munich that she's going to propose activating the escape clause for defense investments, which will allow European countries to spend even more on defense. That would, of course, help sustain the war on Ukraine. We've discussed before, and I want to reiterate this because it's very important, there is this grand misconception, and it is especially lapped up by the MAGA types, that the way that American security assistance for Ukraine works is pallets of cash on transport planes delivered to Kyiv, Zelensky pockets half of it, buys yachts in the Mediterranean

or whatever. Look, we spend the money here in the United States. The vast, overwhelming majority of the money that has been allocated for Ukraine gets invested in the U.S. It opens factories to manufacture artillery shells, weapon systems, modernizing our own arsenal, hiring American workers. It used to be a MAGA conceit that put the money here and bring our own proletariat up from its knees.

All these things get met with security assistance to Ukraine. And the best part is the stuff we end up giving them are old, outdated weapon systems. They still work and they still work a lot better than Russia's state-of-the-art weaponry. They're all too grateful to receive them. And then we end up revitalizing and modernizing our own military. The American Enterprise Institute also did a recent study that showed what would happen if Ukraine were to lose the war and Russia were to conquer this country in terms of America's defense posture in Europe.

Now, assuming that we have any interest whatsoever in the defense posture in Europe and that we're part of NATO and that, you know, we want to have a deterrent capability, they calculated it would cost $808 billion to the American taxpayer over the course of the next five years, an increase in $808 billion to essentially get our house in order in terms of air defense, sea defense, personnel, logistics, all the things that would have to be brought to bear to Europe because the border that NATO would share with Russia would grow exponentially as a result of Ukraine's defeat. Yeah.

So if you approach this purely from a utilitarian accounting- Yeah, and that assumes that they would then decide that they would want to defend that whole border. Right. If you're a businessman, this is the greatest investment you can possibly make because, and I don't mean to be cynical here and the Ukrainians make this argument, too We are not fighting a war with our strategic adversary. They are we're helping them We are bleeding Russia dry on a European battlefield such that Russia cannot invade another ally

An a NATO ally thus triggering article 5 thus bringing the United States into a shooting war with Russia and at the same time we are Upgrading our own arsenal. You know, what's not to like about this if all you care about is the money. I mean, I, I purposely leave aside the moral imperative and, you know, the values and all the, you know, bright shining city on a hill stuff, because most people that we're trying to persuade don't even care about that, right? They just want to know what's in it for me. What's what, what do we get out of this? The answer is you get it quite a lot. You just don't realize it. There were a couple of other noteworthy statements from the two pressers. I'm just

going to lump them all together and get your take. Trump wants Russia back in the G7, apparently. You referenced earlier that he said that he wants to meet with Putin and Xi and talk about cutting our military budgets in half, all of them. He went on a pretty negative tirade about Taiwan during one of the press conferences and about how they're stealing our jobs. Take all that together, and I think it paints a pretty clear picture

of what kind of world Trump wants to leave everybody, but I'm wondering what you think about all that. Well, I'm old enough to remember when spending money on Ukraine meant we weren't spending enough on Taiwan to defend them from the imminent and inevitable Chinese invasion. Yeah. So now all of a sudden Taiwan is our enemy or our rival taking our jobs. They annoy us.

Sealing our micro processing, and they annoy us, stealing our microprocessing industry, and they annoy us. So that doesn't sound like we're coming to their defense either. I mean, like you have a guy who fundamentally, he doesn't care about allies. He doesn't even really care about national or strategic interests. He cares about transactions, what's in it for me? What am I getting out of this? Everything else is just a dodge or a hustle or he thinks that we're being taken for a ride and all these other countries, they're the welfare queens of Pax Americana. He

doesn't understand the implications of just forfeiting our role in the world and allowing these countries to be gobbled up by their regional adversaries who then become, of course, and are already actually America's strategic adversaries. So it doesn't surprise me, given his style and his mode of thinking, you know, the countries that he tends to get on with the best, he would love to get on with Putin and Russia. There are some hurdles in the way here, but we've been discussing what they are.

He loves Erdogan and Turkey. Cause Erdogan has sort of managed democracy such that he's sort of the president slash dictator in perpetuity. Right. And he likes what Turkey has done, which is taken over Syria because Bashar al-Assad pissed off the Sultan. He can get along with a guy like that. He likes Netanyahu and Netanyahu sure loves him. I mean, Taj Mahal, Khan Yunus, David Petraeus' pit boss in Gaza. I mean, what's not to like there, right? Like riverfront property, the new Riviera in the most volatile and hostile piece of real estate in the Middle East.

Never seen Bibi smile so wide. Never smiled so wide as when he saw that. And Viktor Orban as well, who has managed to do the same kind of state capture in Hungary, although he's small beer because Hungary doesn't matter to the extent that these other countries do. Those are the only people that sort of likes the cut of their jib. Everybody else is like, all right, show me where on this dotted line I get what I want out of this, right. And you know, the Ukrainians to their credit, I think, have begun trying to play to some of these personality defects and

this sort of egomania. You'll notice Axios had a write up of the Trump-Zensky call. And among the, it's a minor point, but it's, I think kind of evocative of the way the Ukrainians now see the lay of the land. It says, Zelensky told Trump at the end of the call, he would give him a championship belt from Ukrainian heavyweight boxer, Oleksandr Usyk.

Right? It was like, Oh, I'm going to get a beautiful belt. You know, it's like Muhammad Ali's belt, it's coming from Ukraine. As I, the next step, I'm not kidding, the next step is extremely hot Ukrainian women in a delegation to the White House, right? We noticed that- Rare earth minerals, championship belt, hot blondes.

Rare earth minerals, lithium and all the stuff that goes into microprocessing. That idea came from Ron Lauder, by the way, who also gave him the idea, why don't we take Greenland because why the hell not? What's Greenland and who lives there? Again, it's like his business men friends, fellow oligarchs, tell him, hey, this is what I would do in your position. Let's talk about hostile takeovers, you know?

It's like a, you know, that Danny DeVito movie from the 80s, Other People's Money. Like, that's how Trump is governing as president. It's comforting to know that one of the co-founders of the Estee Lauder Cosmetics Company is leading our foreign policy. But if that doesn't leave you with any chill down your spine, did you see the other special advisor who was traveling with JD Vance? I think he was on two trips actually, two of the overseas trips. Which one is this?

This is my pal, Pizza Gate Jack Pasobiac. See this? Oh yeah. Yeah, Pizza Gate Jack. You might remember him from being at the pizza restaurant in DC where people were saying there was the frazzle drip happening in the basement where there was no basement to like kind of live streaming from there, you know, trying to get to the truth, get to the bottom of it.

I mean, he just has a massive hit list of conspiracies, mongering. And I guess he's like, he's in the inside circle. It's him, the crypto friends and the Estee Lauder guy. And you know, this is sort of who's the brain trust. And just to, again, to underscore kind of the willy-nilly nature of all this, because you really don't, people are very sure about what's going to happen. I'm not so sure because I don't know, you know, who's got the president's ear or what kind of impression has been made. I mean, to send out JD Vance, who is the most

hostile to Ukraine person in the U S government. His staff really hate Ukraine. And he literally said, I don't care what happens to Ukraine. Not only, I'll give you an anecdote. I know some died in the wool, hardcore Republicans who were fine with Trump. When he picked Vance as a running mate, I got calls vote for Biden, vote for Biden, vote

for Biden. Why? Say, Oh, his staff, particularly James Braid is legislative director, like these guys are like crazy, like beyond Cato Institute, libertarian isolationists, they think sanctions on Iran are escalatory, we can't get anything done with these people. Right So, Vance they saw as the real ideal. So now he sends JD Vance out after Hegseth steps on his own crank and Vance goes, we might go to war with Russia if they don't do what we want. Well, hang on a minute.

You were the guy who said, I don't care what happens to Ukraine. Now you say all options are on the table with the Russians. Now I get it. You know. It's kind of like, it's kind of like bluffing, but turning over your two twos, you know, and also bluffing so people, people can see what you got. Right. So you, you wanted me to do Kremlinology on the Russian side. If I do Kremlinology on the American side, I think they sent this guy to say this.

So they can kind of appear tough to a domestic audience, but the Russians really understand that JD Vance doesn't believe a word of what he's saying, right? So this is all just face-saving for Trump. The shafts of light here are Ukraine does get a say in its own future and fortune, right? Everybody who asked me about, well, what's their sovereignty of the United States? Remember, according to the United States, Ukraine should not exist right now. sovereignty of the United States. Remember, according to the United States, Ukraine should not exist right now.

Even under the Biden administration, they had three days, you know, until Kiev was toast, two weeks until the entire country was conquered by the Russian army, and they fought back. They did what we told them they couldn't do, and they succeeded. So they're clever and they're innovative and they'll find ways to resist.

Number two, if the Europeans really are serious about saving this country, which they should be, not everything Trump says is wrong. When he says, this affects Europe more than it affects us, he's right. It's on their doorstep. So the problem is they have to get their act together, particularly the Germans, but even without the Germans. I mean, if you look at the coalition of the most hawkish pro-Ukraine countries who have

given orders of magnitude, by proportion of weapons and money. You've got all the Scandinavian countries, you've got Sweden, you've got Denmark, which has emptied its stocks of artillery howitzers. The Baltic states, my friends in Estonia, I mean, their intelligence has single-handedly, frankly, helped Kyiv survive in the early days of the war.

They're the ones that told them about the air bridge that was being brought over by the Russian side. The Poles aren't going anywhere. The Brits are fine Tory labor. They compete with each other to be more pro-Ukraine. You actually have a pretty good assemblage of nations, all NATO members, by the way, that can help this country survive and fight back. So I understand the inclination toward pessimism, if not catastrophism. But the good news is, you know, America is

kind of a fallen or dilapidated power has empowered others to realize that they kind of have to take fortune into their own hands, as it were. And they need, they need plan B and plan C. One of the odd things about this election, and I think I mentioned this on the show the last time, is Europeans were not as aggrieved and panic stricken as a lot of Americans were.

They thought it was inevitable Trump was gonna come back, and there have been things in place for the last four years that anticipated this contingency. So I'm not trying to be Pollyanna-ish about this, I'm not, but I do think that we should not be writing Ukraine's obituary so prematurely. Let's send people into the weekend with some green shoots. And I guess just a brief update, what, can you tell us what's happening with the aviary in your home? Are you doing this

from inside? Birds? Yeah, are you doing this from inside a bird house at the Central Park Zoo or where are we? As I'm talking to you, my daughter just left on a weekend holiday to Maine with her best friend from school and their parents. I've got two squawking budgies in I don't know what room. We have to move them around because my golden doodle, who has gone from 10 pounds to 40

pounds in the space of like six weeks and whose permanent teeth magically came in overnight like overnight oats, he terrifies the birds. So I have a menagerie that's deeply dysfunctional and at odds with itself in this house and a lot of stuff going on here. And you know, thanks for being patient. I'm sorry for the background noise, but that's lovely. We'll just have to bring the budgies on to the next visit. Thanks so much, man.

You got it. All right, everybody. We'll be seeing you back here on Monday. I appreciate Andrew Weissman and Michael Weiss, the law firm of Weiss and Weissman. And we'll have as good of a weekend as you can. We'll be talking to you soon. Peace. Valentine told me who's to go Feelings he's treasured most of all

The teachers and the football star It's in his tiny face It's in his scrawny hand Valentine told his son He's got something to say It's Valentine's Day the rhythm of the crowd Teddy and Judy down, Valentine sees it all Valentine told me how he feels If all the world were under his heels or stumbling through the mall It's in his tiny face It's in his strong hand Valentine knows it all He's got something to say

It's Valentine's Day Valentine, Valentine Valentine, Valentine, it's in his swirly hand It's in his icy heart, it's happening today Valentine, Valentine, it's in his swirly hand It's in his icy heart, it's happening today. Valentine, Valentine. The Bulldog podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.