The Bulwark Podcast - James Carville and Michael Weiss: The Whole Country Could Go Under

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Trump is anti-American and seems to hate this country: How else can his behavior be explained? The tariffs, the austerity, the threat of a default, along with the corruption and grift— it feels like we're at the beginning stage of something that could go very, very bad. Meanwhile, Trump may not have the cards himself on Ukraine. Europe and the rest of the West have the economic might to continue to back Ukraine. And if that coalition maintains a united front, it would have the power to reject a 'peace' deal imposed by the US and Russia.  James Carville and Michael Weiss join Tim Miller. show notes Carville's NYT piece on his advice to the Dems (gifted) Michael's piece on Europe backing Ukraine alone A cyber truck getting pelted at the Orpheus parade in NOLA Monday night

Hello and welcome to the Bulldog podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It has become an Amartya girl tradition. I'm here today on this Mardi Gras morning with the raging Cajun himself, James Carville, former veteran democratic strategist, cohost of the politics war room podcast. He's also a competitor in the YouTube space. You've had some YouTube videos going mega viral lately, man. How you doing?

Happy Carnival. Well, thank you. Of course, we love Carnival down here. A lot of things that cracks me up is people think it's a tourist event. Tim Miller and James Carver go to Carnival. This is 98% of the people are within a three-hour radius of New Orleans. It's the most organic local thing that exists. I got to tell you, there were things I didn't even know about until I moved here as a transplant.

There are whole parades and some of my favorite events are things that nobody even knows about. You can DM me if you want to know the secret for next year. But there's politics in the way of kind of good fun, good spirited teasing of politicians that you have in during carnival season. There's not a ton of politics, which is nice. It's a nice reason to be down here. One thing that accidentally overlapped into politics last night, the Orpheus Parade, one of my favorites, I was there with my daughter till way too late last night. Beautiful floats.

Harry Connick Jr. Started it. Bianca Del Rio from Drag Race was the queen of the parade, but they also had Cybertrucks and every time one of those things came by, those guys were getting pelted with beads. I felt so bad for the Cybertruck guys. They were getting booed and pelted with beads. So bad for the cyber truck guys. They were getting booed and pelted with beads. So I don't, I don't know that Elon's

popularity was too high down at Conway. I didn't, I didn't realize that. I saw, I just love Harry Carter Jr. And that parade is so good. And to have, I'm so naive. I thought RuPaul's drag race was actually about drag racing. You know, two guys riding up in a car.

And my kids, my two daughters love drag. I mean, they go, they know, I went on some big drag first, had a podcast. I could have been on, I don't know, Taylor Swift's podcast there would not be any more in for us. But it was fun. It was great. And that's what you love about Mardi Gras. It was wonderful. We had a good time.

All right. We got to do a little politics. You've been pushing in some of your interviews recently, the idea that Trump will collapse. And for some people, it's like, okay, this is resistance nonsense. This is spin. This is bullshit. But here we are just a few days after you're saying it. This morning as we tape, the market is down.

It looks like another 600 points. The down is down right now and we'll see what happens the rest of the day. It was down about 1.5% yesterday as well. Very negative response to the tariffs. It's a shit show in Europe. And I don't know, things look pretty collapse adjacent, I guess, maybe we're not there yet, but how do you assess things?

Well, I think it's happening, if anything is happening somewhat quicker than I anticipated. But let me tell you a real faulty line of thinking, and this is more true of Democrats and people on the left. Something must be done. This is something.

Ergo, let's do it. Okay? All right, you just can't, James, you're sitting here, we just got to sit here and tell you we got to do nothing. All right? So we're going to do something. I remember when you started the Bolshevik revolution, it was, what is to be done? Okay?

Yeah, ruin the whole goddamn world. But what I'm trying to do is the impulse against just charging ahead. What a party brand that's frankly in decline, I would say it's in crisis, you have a chance to build it up. And by the way, this is a war that's not gonna be culminated in a short, the first major battle's gonna be the first Tuesday in November of 2026.

So let's leave the light brigade in reserve right now. I'm not saying we shouldn't use it, okay? That's my rationale is I just wanna tell people, yeah, we gotta do something, but we gotta do something, but we got to do something smart that has a long-term plan. And that's the focus behind this. All right. Let's talk about it. I hate leading off the politics, the podcast with a little, with maybe a slight disagreement. We can hash it out.

Okay. So you wrote the column and you wrote basically this, with no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it's time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party, roll over and play dead. Obviously, you're being a little cheeky there, a little with that phrase. You don't literally mean that. But I mean, I guess my view is that isn't what Mitch McConnell did. That isn't what Trump did.

Like when Obama got in, Mitch McConnell immediately tried to make him a failed president. When Biden got in, Trump immediately started calling him Dementia Joe and saying he was illegitimate and all that. So I don't know why we couldn't learn a little bit from those guys. So this is a very different time. This is time for literally no other because we have a guy in the Oval Office that at best, the best interpretation of him, he's anti-American. I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that he actually hates the country. It's the only thing that

I, in my mind, that can explain what he's doing. So March 14th, I think is the deadline. I'm certainly not advocating playing possum there. But what I'm saying is let them, you know like the Japanese did to us in Okinawa, they let us come in. We eventually beat them, but God damn, what a palatable price we paid. You know what the czar, our General Kutsunov did in 1812.

Come on in, Napoleon. You'll enjoy yourself, and then you won't enjoy yourself very much. I mean, there's a long history of what I referred to in the piece, and I got this from General Ty Sebbial, who's a former chairman of the history department at the United States Military Academy at West Point, that it's called tactical pause. It's actually a smart move. And I understand inclination. They didn't give Obama any quarter.

They didn't give Clinton any votes. They didn't give anything. Why? That's just like Democrats. You're being pussies. You know, you're retreating. What I'm calling for in the last paragraph, I embraced Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy. Now, no one ever thought Muhammad Ali was a retreater, but he would just bounce around for the first five or six rounds, all right? And then he'd come in and frankly knock you out. All right. He didn't come out the first round just blasting away.

I understand that the impulse for right now, did you see the event was sent to show me the center Warren in front of the treasury building? Oh, that doesn't scare you to death. I don't know what will. And the time frame I'm talking about is very limited, but the only way you can start this discussion is to say, let's do nothing, let's play dead. You know what I was just watching, Morning Joe,

and like my different Molly Joan Fass is like criticizing me too. I don't give a shit. I threw it out, you know what? I hear you. Well, let's talk about a process. I mean, I do think that there's a practical, the main practical opposition I have to it, I think is that the Democratic voters are going to fucking revolt if they don't see something, you know? And like you do have to be responsive to your own voters.

They're going to see something by the middle of March. Yeah, that's true. They're not going to vote until,. They're going to see something by the middle of March. Yeah, that's true. They're not going to vote until, they're not going to vote until- That's not going to happen until March. Cause that really is, there were two things I wanted to ask you about just like tactically, like where the rubber meets the road on this strategy. So you're not saying that the Democrats should bail them out in the March budget? No.

What are you saying? in the March budget to me? What are you saying? No, no. All right. First of all, I am convinced that the Democratic House leadership actually has a unified plan to deal with this, particularly on the debt ceiling. And I'm trying to give these guys some cover. I'm trying to say, hey, Hakeem, take your time.

I got your back. You know, I know you got a plan because any number of people have like called and said, you know, I think we got a pretty good thing. I think the caucus is pretty unified on it. And a plan is a time to execute it. And I'm just trying to give them cover that when they come out, but the reason that democratic image is so low is Republicans don't like it, but they come out. But the reason that democratic image is so low is well, Republicans don't like it, but

they never have. Well, I don't like my own party at last. Why does a political party exist? It exists to win a fucking election. Well, when you lose it, I'm mad at you. Yeah. Okay? And we can't pacify them.

You know, they called me and people worked for me or close friends. I'll tell you, how can you say this? This is raving a white flag in front of treason. How can you do this to us? I'm not saying go. I'm saying it might be mid-March before we really break. Just get our artillery in peace and then start firing. Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, the Hakeem thing, I do think it's interesting. They might have a plan now. I do think that they were thinking about negotiating and there was discussions of a negotiation and a deal. Then I think the Elon stuff happened with Doge and all the insanity of the last two months. I do think something's congealing. I mean, there's just news this morning that there was a private meeting where Huckie was asking members if they were willing to stick with opposing Doge

and opposing any Republican budget all the way to a shutdown. I want to interrupt you. This is something big on this. Never say Doge. Say Elon Musk Doge. Okay. If you do a favorability, do you feel favorability toward the public? People, oh, I don't know. It's not that good. You know? But once you put Musk's name on it, drops 15, 20 points.

Hence the beads getting tossed at the, getting chucked at the Cybertruck. Elon Musk Doge. Yeah. He was asking members, right? Like, I had Moskowitz on to discuss this. And basically the point is, even if they wanted to negotiate on a budget, you can't do it as long as Elon Musk is illegally firing people and shutting down the veterans affairs department as we were reporting on this morning in the bulwark and all that.

Like, so you can't even, you know, negotiate with them until they agree that they would abide by whatever came out of the negotiation as such. I think the question is, will the caucus hold together and not vote on anything? And it seems like the answer is yes, which is encouraging actually. Look, I don't think anybody has to be convinced at the moment to end. What it might end up is just really short term status quo. Okay, we'll give you 30 days status quo and then come back after 30 days. That's a real possibility to say, hey, given the perilous nature of the economy right now,

I'll tell you a story. Roger Altman is a close friend of mine. He had Evercore, a big corporate consulting firm probably in the world. He was deputy attorney secretary, and he was talking about growth. And I said, actually, Atlanta Fed says we Fed says we have negative growth in the first quarter He said well, I don't believe that he takes me back and said Mark Zandi says it's gonna be coming at 1.2 percent. I said I'll take the under one for a state Dinner in Manhattan and he said I'm not taking that bet

Yeah, but dinner in Manhattan and he said, I'm not taking that bet. But when you have what just seems to be a real possibility that by the middle of March, we'll have a real crisis in this country, certainly crisis in the markets. And if you say it, well, we can have this, we can give them 30 days. I'd rather make a bad deal for a month than a pretty good deal for six months. Yeah. Oh, I'm not interested in any six month deals, but we'll talk about it once we see what comes. Right.

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She feels uncomfortable legitimizing what he's doing. I'll just watch it on TV. There's some other Democrats who told Axios they're planning to disrupt the speech using noisemakers and hand clappers and eggs and signs. And that was like just just imagining that image in my head made me think, you know, maybe I actually want them to do less. Maybe AOC is on the right page here. Go home, tweet about it, let him make an ass of himself. Where are you? First of all, I think she's smart. I've been going out of my way to say she has really good staff work.

She's very well prepared in committee. She's a very good communicator. I think that she's a savvy operator. She has a, she has her own base. She has her own thing. But as opposed to some of these people, I respect her talent. I respect her abilities. I think she's right. This moment, I'm speaking to the House Democratic Caucus a week from

Thursday. If you view this like I do, this is not, I don't like the Iraq war, so I'm going to be against it, okay? This is a moment where the whole country could go under. Really, we had an infection point. So what I'm going to suggest is treat it like that. No speeches and cadence, no groups of threes, no contrast and pairs, no if not us who, if not now when we stand on the precipice, you know, the depth of the abyss faces us. Act very, very determined and very serious.

Rise to the moment. is act very, very determined and very serious. Rise to the moment. And of course, rising to the moment means that you fight effectively and cleverly. I'm not in the hoo-hawk hawk. Oh, God damn it, let's go. We're on, we're charging, we're going to walk out. We're going to come in with whoopee cushions and whatever else you can think of. No, don't do that.

All right. in with whoopee cushions and whatever else you can think of. No, don't do that. All right. I want to go back to the whole country could collapse, which is something you said, which is like, you feel crazy sometimes you feel like an alarmist when you're saying stuff like this, you know, but I just look across all of the variables of what you're seeing with the tariffs and the trade wars, what you're seeing with the corruption and the grift, what you're seeing with the tariffs and the trade wars, what you're seeing with the corruption and the grift, what you're seeing with the austerity, the inflation, Trump trying maybe gonna bully the feds, Scott Besson's out this morning talking about how they need to lower rates, which is also inflationary

and on top of that we'll get to in segment two all the Ukraine stuff. It does feel unbelievably tenuous, right? Like we're at the beginning stages of something that could go very, very bad. does feel unbelievably tenuous, right? Like we're at the beginning stages of something that could go very, very bad. Yes, of course, it is. And you have these tariffs of which, even if you just think about them, how could they be a good idea?

Some people say, well, we had a tariff in the early 80s to save the American car industry, it was pretty limited. You have the tariffs against Mexico. Well, Mexico, if you want to send four assemblies of plant in Mexico and they send wheels from their Dallas area plant, do they have to pay 20% for the steering wheel to cross the border? I don't know. And then when it comes back, I have no idea, the head explodes. And then when you put on top of this the possibility

of a default, it's real dangerous. Now, what I'd say about interest rates, actually the yield of a 10-year treasury is going down, but don't understand why that's happening. Investors have no confidence that the economy is going to grow in the next 10 years because of this. And one says, you know what?

Easiest way to kill inflation and to get low interest rates is start a goddamn depression, okay? That will handle the problem pretty quickly and effectively. Oh my God. I mean, think about it. It's ugly. It's really ugly. It's hard being right, James.

Well, in case you're wondering if we've got the best and brightest at the tiller here as we face these problems, nobody talks about Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins. So it's like maybe you wonder, oh, I know that Ag sets the clown. I know some of these other people are clowns. Maybe some of the other people I don't know are better. Well, here's the Agriculture secretary talking about how she thinks people should deal with high egg prices on Fox Business. I think the silver lining in all of this is how do we in our backyards, we've got chickens in our backyard, how do we solve for something

like this? And people are sort of looking around thinking, wow, well, maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard. And it's awesome. I agree. Yeah. I think everyone who isn't a farmer right now wants to be. So you're in the right department, Brooke. Maybe everybody could just start growing a little farm in their backyard, a little chicken. Oh, of course. Let me tell you how you can expand that program. Okay? You get you some chickens and you can't afford healthcare, bring it as bought as to see a doctor, say, hey, I'll give you 10 chickens if you take my blood pressure. Okay? The possibilities of backyard chicken farming, they're boundless, they're unbelievable.

And she actually said that. I'm so glad you picked that up. Like, no, I didn't hear the secretary back go to say, well, you could grow chickens in your backyard. Jack said it. I mean, yeah, everybody should get them. Yeah, we cut the Medicaid, you're right. Maybe some bartering. I don't know if it helps short term for people on the egg prices right now. And it's going to take a little while. You think the Agriculture Secretary would have some thoughts about like, you know, the chickens just don't start producing eggs, you know, immediately. There are a lot of problems with it. Other people have jobs,

working people have jobs. Yeah, the problem too is if everybody went out and bought a chicken at the same time, the chicken becomes more expensive than the egg. Okay? And that's something that we need to mull over, okay? Because if you got to pay a lot for a chicken, then the egg becomes more expensive because I don't think you can have an egg without a chicken. Okay. People have been thinking about this since time immemorial. What is it?

The chicken or the egg? So if you want to have, so if everybody would put chickens in the backyard, there'd be a tremendous demand for chickens, which would cause the price of chickens to go up. Now you would have more eggs, which maybe would cause the price of eggs to go down. There you go. If I was an economic teacher, I could give an exam on this. These guys don't seem to really adhere to the supply and demand ethos.

It's not your old school Republicans. This is an Adam Smith here. This is Donald Trump picking winners and losers. I mean, have you been following the crypto thing? They're going to buy a strategic reserve of Bitcoin and Ethereum with our money? Yes. And what it's going to do is it's going to make the crypto go up for a short period of time of which they're all going to cash in.

And one of the reasons I would always ask people, look I don't know what this shit is, I ain't buying it, but could it be like what the housing market did in 2008? Could this thing bring the whole fucking thing down? And people say, no, not really, the risk is, now we are assuming the risk, okay? So if you want to go buy something that ain't worth the shit or you think it's worth the shit and I don't, I don't have a problem with that so much. But now you want me? No.

And people have to understand that. And if they're throwing fucking beads at Cybertruck, you can imagine where they're going to be in two months. Maybe we need a strategic reserve of Mardi Gras beads. Maybe that's what we need a strategic reserve of. We should be investing in kind of the rare, the glass beads, you know, the rare beads of value might go up in the future. I did a chart on the value of a cornrow bead.

So it's in your hand, you're on the floor. It reaches its peak value as it reaches the top of a curb, right? The apex. And once it gets in your hand, it's not worth the shit. But once it's on the ground, it's trash. Okay. But at one, at one period, when that carnival bead is, I think you're on the apex. I don't know what the right word is, but it's right there. It's values infinitely more it is when it's your hand or when it falls on the ground

because no one can stoop down and pick one up. I think there's something to that and then maybe there's a parallel there to the crypto situation. I just, your point about the systemic risk, right? It was like one thing when this was all happening on the blockchain and people are putting money in it, they're like, that's one thing. Once the big institutional banks start including it in their system, and then once the fucking federal government starts investing in it, it becomes a massive structural risk. It's a really good point.

It was not my problem that they're loaning money to somebody that makes $9 an hour and has six mortgages. Well, if you want to do that, you lose your money. I don't give a shit. But wait a minute. I didn't realize that you had all of these CDOs and you had these trenches and, oh my God, then you bought the whole shit and bootle down with you. That's what they do. Now they're putting this at a point of infection.

Now I have to be an economist to see how this could end up. All right. I've got two more things for you. One, one serious and one may be to see how this could end up. All right. I've got two more things for you. One serious and one maybe serious. We'll see. Okay. When you got a podcast where you're bringing in a Russian GRU expert to talk about fears of Russian cyber attacks and the collapse of the Western order and the United States turning

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It's not real. It's coming up in November. We got a few months ahead, but I did notice in your New York Times piece, you called it one of the most important inflection points coming up and so this is kind of your wheelhouse, right? So I just wanted to let you roll on it. There's a site called Predict It, where you can actually bet on the outcome of election.

I think limited in size, but whatever the odds are, take the Democrats in the Virginia governor's race. All right. And if you can get over five, even over seven, take it. So James, what do you say? Well, first of all, history argues that the Virginia governor's race follows the presidential race,

with the exception of Terry in 2013, it always goes to the out party. Secondly, let's try to estimate the turnout among federal employees, their dependents, okay? The dry cleaner in Arlington, the landscaper in Loudoun County, multiply all of that and try to figure out what that's going to mean. I'll tell you what it's going to mean. High democratic turnout, particularly in Northern Virginia.

Not high, astronomically high. We're not going to lose that. We're not going to lose that. The last one, you keep mentioning that you think Donald Trump has syphilis. Okay. We talked about it once and I just, I got to ask, do you really think he has syphilis or do you think, is this a bit? It's still 70% a bit.

Okay. 30% of possibility, but there's something I, I intentionally held this off in the hopes that you would ask me about. On January the 17th, 2017, Keith Schiller and two other goons broke into the office of Dr. Bornstein, who was the GI specialist who was Trump's internist, I mean, I don't know what that means, and confiscated Trump's health records.

We have never seen those health records. Now, maybe there's something in there a little more significant than an enlarged prostate, right? I'm saying that causes me great suspicion. Why would you send people in to confiscate your own health records? And Bornstein said, I felt violated. I mean, he actually, he's deceased now. So if it's 30%, which I think it is, we know he has unprotected sex with people who have

other partners. That's pretty clear. Okay? Yeah. Gross to think about that people would want to do that with him, but yeah. We do know that he had red splotches on his hand. I've had 2.2 million hits and probably 26,000 comments. That must be 50 of them from doctors.

I mean, you're getting out there. Do you ever have any splotches on your hands? You ever getting any weird splotches? Well, it's safe to masturbate too much. You can get hairs between your fingers. I think I need a shot. I need a haircut. I'm still clear.

I'm still clear. That's good news. All right. Well, something's happening is what you're saying. I'm still clear. That's good news. All right. Well, something's happening is what you're saying. You think something's happening.

Something has to explain what happened. You know, and what I said in the piece, you know, you say, well, so and so dropped dead of a heart attack. No one hit, no, you know, in the simply, generally that's not the case. Generally you're disregarding something. What happened there was such a meltdown, it was like a much more serious equivalent than what happened to President Biden on June 27th, 2024. This was a significant deterioration even by Trump and standards.

So we ask ourselves why? The fact that given everything about him, that there's some mental issue, some mental and physical issue that's driving this behavior, I don't think you can discount it. I really don't. I don't either, James. He's always been crazy, but this was like, this was on the other side of him, even James he's always been crazy, but this was like this was on the other side Even if you know we've been crazy I mean he was shouting about shit in the White House like he was a ranged comment section monster

It was very strange to behavior for a president James Carville You know it's not a Mardi Gras unless we're talking to James Carville about masturbation and relative relative bead value after the toss and so I hope everybody enjoyed it appreciate you very much James. Thank you man I'll see you next Monday. Go Tigers! Go Tigers! I'll see you soon. Up next Michael Weiss. All right, we are back. Kind of a sharp turn from our Carnival, segment one with James Carville to Michael Weiss, editor of the Insider, a Russia focused independent media outlet, and he's a contributing editor at New Lines Magazine.

He is back. You've got a new piece out in New Lines Magazine, Can Europe Back Ukraine's Fight Alone? That's a pretty ominous headline for a piece. I don't know that it's something we're all worried about maybe when you were last on here, but things have changed dramatically. And it's kind of, I don't really know where to start with you. We've got, I guess Trump has paused military aid to Ukraine. They want Zelensky to apologize if they're going to do the rare earth minerals deal.

The rare earth minerals deal might not even bring arms delivery back. They might do sanctions relief on Russia, Lech Walesa's thrashing Trump. Vance is on Hannity shitting on our European allies for doing what he asked them to do. How do you even begin with the state of play? Well, as they said in the movie Quiz Show, I'd like to take the last question first, please. Let's start with JD Vance, who went on Hannity. We actually have the audio.

If you want to start there, since you're running the show, let's listen to JD Vance on Hannity. If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine. That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years. Okay, so let's start with 20 to 30,000 troops from, quote, some random country that hasn't fought a war in 20 to 30,000 troops from quote, some random country that hasn't fought a war in 20 to 30 years.

The idea of sending European peacekeepers to Ukraine has come from two not so random countries, the United Kingdom and France, both of which up until quite recently were engaged in active combat in Afghanistan on behalf of the United States because the only time in the history of NATO that Article 5 was invoked was after 9-11. So what's happened is now the UK press and UK parliamentarians and policymakers are seething. They think JD Fance, as one pundit put it, is a vice president as aggressive as he is dumb. It's one thing to have disagreements in foreign policy, to have a cordial dispute with our cousins abroad.

It's another thing to piss on the graves of dead British soldiers. And that's what Vance is doing. Now he's trying furiously to wind this back saying, oh, I didn't mean the UK. I didn't mean France. I meant other countries. Well, he followed up on Twitter. He's our first poster vice president. Exactly. It's real. poster vice president. Exactly.

It really hurts me as a poster for it to be JD Vance is the first representing us, but he wrote this, but let's be direct. There are many countries who are volunteering support who have neither battlefield experience nor the military equipment to do anything meaningful. So Sam trying to back off saying he was talking about the UK and France, then he says, let's be direct. It's not clear who he's talking about. So he's trying to back off saying he was talking about the UK and France, then he says let's be direct.

It's unclear who he's talking about. So he's not being that direct. Well let's be direct. Which country does he refer to? Because every country that has even in principle considered being part of this Anglo-French peacekeeping force is either a NATO country or has also fought in and or has also fought in Afghanistan. And as far as military equipment, let's for instance take the Estonians, where I just was last

week. They have emptied their stocks of a certain kind of howitzer and given them all to Ukraine, which Ukraine is deeply grateful for. They also suffered, I think, the highest per capita rate of casualties in Afghanistan. It's a small country, 1.3 million people, but when they joined NATO in 2004, they were serious about it and they fought and bled and died on behalf of Americans. So, I mean, this is a guy who is within the space of a few weeks, essentially trying to destroy the transatlantic relationship. He goes to Munich and gives this speech, in effect endorsing Alternative for Germany,

the far right party that didn't do as well as people were fearing it might in the last German election, which is also considered or under suspicion as being an extremist group by German's own domestic security service, pissing off the Germans, including the now incoming Chancellor Mertz, who has basically said America's intervention in German politics, meaning Vance and also Musk, who explicitly endorsed AFD, is tantamount to what the Russians do. This is no small thing for Germany's foremost Atlanticist to be saying that America is now engaged in hostile action against this country.

And now this deeply insulting Shambhala claim that the UK is Madagascar at the level of geopolitics and hasn't fought in active combat. It's just- Well, and then on top of obviously the West Wing meeting where that he blows up and insults Zelensky and says they don't- Oh, totally.

They're losing, they don't have the cards, whatever. And I mean, dripping with contempt for Ukraine, telling Zelensky, you take journalists and policymakers on propaganda tours. By that, I think he's referring to going to Buczsa and European, the site of Russian massacres, right? Which has a deeply galvanizing effect on anybody who's been to these places, including European leaders.

And one of the reasons that Europeans are so pro-Ukraine is they've seen the horrors of occupation and war firsthand. I do not believe this line that's being peddled by MAGA and by including pro-Ukraine elements of MAGA that, oh, this was just a misunderstanding. It was actually Zelensky's fault for fact checking the president. I think this was an ambush. I think Vance's presence there was designed to provoke this kind of reaction from Zelensky and also essentially act as a spoiler for this rather weak tea minerals deal, which by the way,

the Ukrainians first proposed to the United States as a way of getting security guarantees that are now absent from this memorandum of understanding that Trump is so desperate apparently to have him signed. So all Zelensky did was say quite rightly, look, you know, we're for peace, we're for ending this war, we've suffered the most. But we can't do it, unless we know that there's something that's going to stop the Russians from coming back and doing it again. And you know, Vance does not want to

commit to anything concrete in that regard. And keep in mind, Tim, US US intelligence, as of mid-February, assessed Putin himself is not serious about a meaningful peace. So when Zelensky says in an interview, this war is going to go on for a very long time, he is not saying that as an endorsement of that assessment. He's just saying that that's just the state of play,

as per America's own spies, right? And Donald Trump goes ballistic and says, that's not the, that's the worst kind of thing you could say at this moment. Oh, so I think that the real premise here is, and this is now being tacitly acknowledged by MAGA. Our president is an emotional toddler. He is so sensitive. His fee fees are so important in any matter of statecraft that, you know,

the slightest miscue, you don't wear a suit and tie. You kind of sit there with a scowl. You dare to contradict or correct him. And he's basically willing to a licensed genocide on European soil. So you better watch your step. Everybody. What are we talking about here? Yeah.

The problem is the man, not the fucking protocol and the engagement with him. Right. And the man, not the fucking protocol and the engagement with him. Right? And the Europeans, I think, understand this. And this other thing that I can think transitions also into what Europeans are having to be forced to understand is even if you take the minerals deal at face value, right? Like even if you take Vance's argument to Hannity at the beginning of that clip before he shits on the Brits where he's like, actually it's better for Ukraine if we do a minerals deal because we'll have economic skin in the game and that is more of a security

guarantee than Europe. After watching these guys blow up the entire Western Alliance over, I guess, like getting mad at Zelensky for a personal slight, who could possibly trust that they would actually put American troops in harm's way, American troops in place to defend this country that they have such contempt for and to defend some, you know, whatever mine of minerals that they decided that they're going to get. Like, who would look at these guys and say these guys would go to the map for the minerals? I just find it very like, it's kind of silly on its face, really. Well, and there's also a very recent historical precedent for being deeply suspicious about America's resolve

and commitment to saving Ukraine. Let me read you a headline from the New York Times dated July 25, 2017. Headline, Trump finds reason for the US to remain in Afghanistan, colon, minerals. By the way, you know who's profiting from Afghan's sizable rare earths and mineral deposits now? The Russians, the GRU, the Russian Military Intelligence specifically, which is using it or was using it as a front for money laundering to pay the Taliban money to go after American and British and coalition soldiers.

That was one of the recent investigations the insider did naming names of the entire Afghan Taliban network, but leave that to one side. Absolutely. Let's say the United States signs some deal with the government of Ukraine to have the government of Ukraine allow access or revenue generation to the United States based on its mineral deposits. What happens if the Russians decide to take more territory including the land where these deposits are located, right? What's to stop the United States, Trump in particular, and especially from going to Putin and saying,

well, you control this terrain now, so I guess I have to do business with you. You know, where is the guarantee? That seems way more likely than he's gonna go to war with Putin over the minerals. No, he would just cut the deal with Putin. Exactly. I mean, there are American lives in Ukraine, volunteers, diplomats, people who do go pretty

close to the front line. It hasn't stopped the Russians from dropping bombs. I was in Kiev actually just before the war and then immediately after the liberation of the city. Diplomats there were saying what a near-run thing it was, those who actually remained. In fact, one of the diplomats I met in the weeks before the full-scale invasion, I had to meet him in a cafe because there were bomb scares being called in to all the major embassies of NATO at that time.

Guess where the bomb scares were coming from. So security guarantees mean you have soldiers on the ground with kit or, you know, you are prepared to protect the skies of Ukraine. You are prepared to do X, Y and Z. You are going to essentially go to war on behalf of this country. If it's invaded again, that's what the Ukrainians are looking for. Not, you know, well, we sent some hedge fund guys to a mine in Odessa and, yeah, there you go. We're safe and secure now.

Speaking of that, the fact that the bombs are still dropping, it's another kind of point of the JD quote with Hannity, which is, again, in the most generous interpretation, he's trying to say that Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine again. I guess he had mean invade new territory from whatever we give them, but like they're actively invading Ukraine now still, right? Um, bombs were dropping in Kharkiv on Sunday. I'm sure other places, but that was just what I was reading about. What, like, what is your sense for like the state of and the ongoing war, war, not the war of words? Well, I would say this, and this is unfortunately being eclipsed by the sort of inanity of the

current news cycle, but one of the tragic ironies of giving the Russians this lifeline, right? I mean, right now, let's be clear, the United States is negotiating with one party, Ukraine, not with Russia. We are not really having an argument with Russia at all. We are offering them concessions preemptively, right? So, you know, to say that, you know, that this is the proper time to do it, unfortunately, neglects the fact that at the front, on the level of the battlefield now, Ukraine is actually doing a lot better than it was several weeks, certainly

several months ago. In Toretsk, they are practically encircling Russian columns who have overextended themselves. The former head of Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service does a daily brief, and the other day noted that about a third of Russia's glide bombs, so these are dumb bombs that become smart because of guidance systems that are in place, very devastating to Ukrainian defenders. A third of the glide bombs are now being dropped in Kursk, which is Russia bombing Russia to expel the Ukrainians from the enclave that they took back in August, right?

That's relieved some of the pressure. And also the nature of this war has changed rather dramatically from 2022, 2023. So, you know, I'm gonna upset some artillery specialists, including a good friend of mine when I say this, but artillery is not necessarily king any longer. What the Ukrainians are relying on increasingly are drones. This is a proper revolution in modern

Technologically savvy warfare. So they have manufactured at scale these first-person view drones Which are making up for their lack of air superiority and also Their manpower shortages and you don't have to take my word for it Look at what the Russians themselves are saying on telegram The drones are absolutely wreaking havoc on Russian positions and forcing the Russians now to slow down in their advances in Donbass. So at a moment like this, where it's actually not that bad, much less catastrophic as it seemed it was going to be several months ago, we are saying, well, whatever we can do to

help the Russians and grant them all the terrain that they've taken and possibly even more in some negotiation, seems to me ludicrous, right? You apply more pressure now, you don't relieve it on the adversary. But of course, we don't treat the Russians as adversaries. We treat them as the best friend we just haven't made yet. Ukraine is our adversary. Yeah, Sloansky is the adversary. Yeah, right, of course. The Russians in those kind of telegram conversations and just kind of monitoring the reporting

that you do, it's hard for me to tell based on the public comments, right? You have Peskov kind of rubbing our face and shit, being like, Americans just totally agree with our worldview now. And so it's hard to tell for me how much of that is bragging, is trying to humiliate Trump, how much of it is just like they can't believe their luck. Like what do you kind of sense is the, as kind of the point of view from GRU types, Russian types, people around Putin? Well, if you look at the immediate reaction to Trump's election in November, it wasn't

nearly as ecstatic and celebratory as it had been in 2016. And that's because the Russians understood that, well, wait a minute, we didn't get everything we wanted out of the first Trump administration, as he himself is fond of boasting, I provided javelins to the Ukrainians, I sanctioned North Street. His administration expelled more Russian spies from embassies and missions in the United States than at any point since the Cold War over the scribble of poisoning.

So they were very cautious. Now, I think they are hugging themselves with glee because not only is there a strategic realignment in favor of Russia happening by the United States, but it is happening so precipitously. And to their minds, and I think to the minds of a lot of Europeans unexpectedly, that they almost can't keep up. They don't even know what to do to be the proper beneficiary of all this largesse and good graces coming from Washington.

And like, honestly, I mean, if I'm trying to put myself in their shoes, but you're kind of like, do nothing and just kind of see how it happens. Everything keeps coming up Millhouse for Putin. And so why try to, why do something that might screw it up? Exactly. I think that if I'm sitting in the Kremlin or the aquarium, which is the GRU headquarters, my main concern right now would be, and I don't mean to be giving the enemy advice, but I'm a journalist.

I don't know that we're a ton of Russian listeners to the side. My main concern would be trying to stop Europe from playing the spoiler role that it has already begun to play and has in its capacity to play in a major key. So my argument has been to the Europeans and especially to the Ukrainians, listen, don't assume that Trump has all the cards. This is always casino metaphors, right? He doesn't. What he needs right now is, you know, Ukraine exists for him

is one of two things. Either it is an opportunity to advance his pivot toward Russia, his embrace of Russia, his bringing Russia in from the cold, or it's an obstacle to that. Right now, he sees it as an obstacle. That's a good thing because if Ukraine and Europe, by which I really mean the European Union plus Britain plus Norway plus Canada, also plus Australia and to some extent Japan,

the West in the collective imagination as it were. If they are a united front, if they form a real coalition at the diplomatic and rhetorical level even, and they say to the United States, you try to impose some fugazi deal on this war, we're going to say no, and we will keep it going, we will sustain it, we will finance it, we will send weapons, and by the way, you know, you have an economic incentive not to punish Europe. I mean, everyone's like, what is he going to do? Tariffs on Europe? Is he going to tell the US military industrial complex

and the defense contractors that their biggest marketplace is now off limits because the French and the Brits might turn around and take Atacams and Patriot batteries and just donate them to the Ukrainians. Good luck, babe. I mean, look at the lobbying effort that is going to be put in, in this country to stop him from doing that, right? So Trump needs to deliver something.

He cannot give the Russians something and if not everything in exchange for nothing. Because as much as he's okay with appearing a licks middle to Putin, he doesn't want to look like a chump, right? This is the art of the deal guy. Maybe too late for that, but yeah. Well, yeah, but you know, he needs to sell something, right? Right now he's desperately trying to sell his base on I can bring peace. Everyone else has brought war and destruction.

There was peace when I was president, only I can bring peace again. If he does not bring peace, because the terms of his peace are terms of conditional surrender by Ukraine unnecessarily, so then he's got nothing to show for it. Yeah. So this takes us back to your column. Can Europe do it? And by Europe, I guess the West broadly, including Canada, Australia, et cetera, like do they have the equipment, manpowerpower resources to do it?

They have the GDP to do it very easily. The question is it's one of will, right? So the equipment shortages, the shortfall in manufacturing, all of these things can be made up for if they do what now they are beginning to make noises about having to do. Increase their percent of GDP on defense spending. This is another thing that we should discuss. For now going back almost a decade, MAGA has been banging on about Europe as the welfare queen of NATO, bunch of freeloaders, don't they don't spend their fair share. We have to do everything for them. Suddenly, faced with this sort of existential crisis, this upending of 80 years of the post-war American-led security architecture,

they say, we're all gonna spend more. Maybe they're not spending enough more, but they're moving in the right direction. And what happens? Rick Rennell takes to Twitter, they're a bunch of anti-American warmongers. No, they're doing exactly what you've been saying as ambassador to Germany, among other things,

that they ought to be doing, right? They're just doing it in contravention of the broader policy that you have, which is, again, make nice with Moscow. Same as the JD Vance thing. It's like do more, pay more, pay more, put more money into defense, and then they say they're going to do it, then it's like, oh, wait, no, you guys can't do it. You're weak. Absolutely.

And so here's an interesting statistic. I'm actually going to give two versions of it because it's a little bit ambiguous. But the one version that was cited in the Wall Street Journal recently is even more optimistic for the argument I'm making. But let me let me use a version that came from a Ukrainian security official that we quoted in our piece. According to him, what Ukraine relies on militarily is 40% manufactured domestically in Ukraine. Right 30% comes from the United States. Another 30% comes from Europe. militarily is 40% manufactured domestically in Ukraine, right?

30% comes from the United States, another 30% comes from Europe. And according to him, even if the United States cuts us off completely, it'll be bad and there'll be things that we can't source so easily, but it ain't the end of the world, right? The Russians might take more territory a little more quickly, but we're not looking at a collapse of Kiev in two weeks or a month, or even necessarily six months, right? Which would buy time for the Europeans to try and source these things. The most important thing would be, of course, air

defense systems, including Patriot missile batteries, that's what they need to shoot the missiles down that are raining down on the capitals that and cities that the Russians don't already occupy. But as I mentioned earlier, there's a drone revolution in Ukraine, which is keeping the Russians at bay at the front line. That's just raw materials. That's stuff that can be bought on commercial markets or just investing in Ukraine's own

manufacturing capability, which is growing exponentially all the time. So that's the first set of statistics. The Wall Street Journal had a piece which cited and they didn't give a source for it, but they said, actually, it's 55% is coming from inside Ukraine already. And then the remainder comes from the Europeans and the Americans. So just to put things in perspective, and this is another lie that MAGA likes to tell that we have given more than the Europeans. No, we haven't. Not only have we not given more than the Europeans, they have outspent us, especially in the last year

when we had our supplemental freeze for six to eight months. But the Ukrainians themselves are standing up on their own two feet. I mean, remember, in the Soviet period, this was the industrial hub of the Soviet Union where all the components for their ICBMs and their tanks and everything came from Ukraine. So this is not a country that lacks for engineers or technical know-how.

They need money and they need, of course, the security to continue to build. In fact, one of the more interesting quotes in our piece comes from the CEO of Ryan Mattal, which by the way, if you look at the stocks of European defense companies, they have gone straight through the roof in the last few weeks because again, American betrayal is good for business abroad. The CEO of Ryan Mattel said, our problem isn't manufacturing more stuff here in Germany. Ironically, it's Ukrainian bureaucracy has kept us

from opening new plants and factories on sovereign Ukrainian soil. So everybody's kind of in Europe rubbing their hands, seeing opportunities. It's about lifting some of these breaks and these obstacles in place, which are all political and bureaucratic and allowing this production to commence.

So the short answer to your question is, I do think that Europe has a lot more capability than perhaps it itself would like to claim it does. How tempting is it to Zelensky at this point to just try to make that pivot? I don't, you know, I mean, at some level it seems like the conventional wisdom is that he's going to have to whatever, apologize and like rub Trump's belly and say, I'm sorry, sir. Uh, but like, is he going to have to?

I mean, I guess, I don't know. I think his instinct is correct, which is he kind of sees the writing on the wall. I mean, I spoke to a high level source in Ukrainian intelligence just this morning to get a sense. He's like, look, you guys are, you're pivoting to Russia, full stop. They're very clear-eyed about this. It's still such a wild sentence. It's like, I can't even.

Yeah. It's still such a wild sentence. I can't even yeah, I mean they rationalize and have sort of On air, you know back and forth and Trump is playing, you know Four-dimensional chest and and he's doing business to it now No, you're moving to Russia and I think Zelensky's instinct is to say we have lost the United States We have to consolidate our friends who are in Europe and they have it more more of a vested interest because this is happening on their doorstep the problem is You know the the old order is Disappearing and vanishing but we quote Alexander Herzen's great greatest Russian philosopher who says you know when the old order dies

It leaves not an heir but a pregnant widow and I think Europe now finds itself in this state of both being severely traumatized in the last weeks and also accidentally knocked up. What is it about to give birth to here? Its own security, autonomy, or strategic autonomy, as Macron puts it. I think Zelensky is inclined to say that's the direction we need to go. But Starmer,mer Macron Maloney Rutt these these people are saying no No, you have to make nice with with Trump if only just to kind of buy some breathing space and time

And so what does he do? He tweets just now and I read this carefully. He does not apologize He says it is regrettable what happened in the Oval Office emphasizing the importance of the Ukrainian-American relationship. And then he says, what we are prepared to do is a truce in the sky and at sea as a preliminary for a ceasefire, a proper ceasefire at the front, meaning guns go down on land. This idea comes from the Brits and the French. So I read this as Zelensky's counter offer to Trump, rather than his capitulation to Trump, which is interesting, because I think what Trump and MAGA want is this guy to get

down on all fours and just bow down and say, yes, master, whatever you want, because then he's cowed and the Russians will see he's cowed and the Russians will just simply do a deal with Washington. He's not prepared to do that. I think he's being smart. I just want to run Zelensky really quick. I guess I feel obligated to mention this since he is maybe the most influential person in the world.

Elon Musk tweeted, as distasteful as it is, Zelensky should be offered some kind of amnesty in a neutral country in exchange for a peaceful transition back to democracy in Ukraine. So that's an interesting negotiating position. This is what you say about a dictator whose regime you've just toppled. We're prepared to offer you amnesty or safe haven in some... I mean, it's insane. Musk, again.

And it's hard to say these words and much harder for people to fathom the implications of it. But our partners, our friends, our allies are now to be treated as adversaries and enemies. And it didn't just start with Ukraine. We were flirting with going to war with Denmark over Greenland. Canada, we're going to annex Canada, we're going to diminish the Prime Minister. Terrifying them right now. Yeah. Of a NATO ally and a Five Eyes member and refer to him as governor.

It's like locker room, a basement, humiliation. For nothing, actually, for harm. For nothing. It's not even like we're getting a good deal out of it. Right. We're getting a market crash. Musk has now, I think he agreed or retweeted somebody who said we should get out of NATO. You begin to see the writing on the wall here.

The transatlantic relationship is dead. Whatever Trump says tonight, I don't think there's a country in this alliance, which is the greatest defensive alliance ever constructed in the history of mankind. There's not a country in this alliance who believes that if they were invaded tomorrow, American troops would come to the rescue under this president. I think Article 5 is dead, at least for the time being. To that point, I mentioned at the top, like Valesa, just cook on this.

It was just an unbelievable letter from the Polish dissident who became the first elected president of Poland after the fall of communism. He said he reacted with horror and disgust at Trump's Oval Office meeting. He said, gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.

He also has some pretty dark comparisons for Trump. What did you make of it? I spoke also to my friend Dan Fried, ambassador to Poland, institution at the State Department, architect of sanctions, knows on a first name basis, every signatory of that letter. And I said, you know, the most impressive thing about that letter was for Rolessa to draw moral equivalence between the president of the United States and the Polish secret police under communism. He said, yeah, that struck me as kind of arresting as well. That's not something that's glibly or lightly done by the leader of solidarity, yeah. In fact, I don't like it when Americans say, you know, well, this is like Stalinism, man. No, but when a poll who

Basically, you know led his country out from under the yoke of Soviet totalitarianism or domination says this you have to sit back and wonder and and this I see this as a double-blasted shotgun Firing to the face of any remaining Reaganites in the Republican Party Whether or not they're in Perda or they're living in some underground, I don't know. But they can't have missed this. You would think that the Lech Walesa letter would make Marco Rubio look in the mirror and ask if he's the baddies.

But I don't know. We haven't seen a lot of evidence of it. Lil Marco needs to find his big boy pants at some point or resign. If he's just going to go along with this, he doesn't believe a word of what he's saying, you know, I mean, the look of him, he's like, he was like sinking so far into that couch. It was like that episode of always sunny in Philadelphia where Danny DeVito like literally pops out of the couch fabric.

I mean, it was, it was humiliating for him. And now he has to get up on cable news and say the same nonsense. Me and Bill Kristol were talking about this yesterday. The CNN story about how we are going to stop whatever offensive cyber operations against Russia was pretty vague. And we were trying to parse through what it actually meant. And I was wondering if you had anything to enlighten us on that. Well, I mean, I'm not read into exactly what we're doing at the offensive cyber level against Russia. I would hope it'd be quite a lot

given what they're doing to us. But, you know, one of the key components of this program is, as I said, espionage, which is very important. I mean, you do that even when you are in a mode of detente or you're trying to make nice because You want to know what the other side's thinking? Right. It worries me assuming this reporting is accurate that we are basically choosing to become Blind and deaf to what our adversary is thinking

I'm also hearing very alarming things from CIA FBI you know, whilst we might still collect on Russia, we're not necessarily gonna do analysis on that collection. Just recently, the FBI, SAC, and the New York Field Office was forced to retire. Now this guy is a counterintelligence specialist, which if you're based in New York means you focus mostly on Russia. The Russians have a huge outsized presence here in New York because of the United Nations and because of the consulate and Riverdale is, you know, they do their own signals,

intelligence collections from, you know, that part of the Bronx. And they have spies running around going to fancy restaurants and meeting with their agents and all that. So suddenly it seems like we don't want to know what the Russians are doing to us, which is highly suspicious to say the least. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that FBI forced retirement, the fire. Right. And that is gratuitous. If you want, like if you want to if you want to have some kind of deal, or some kind of grand bargain with the Russians, you still don't do that. I mean, we didn't stop spying on the Iranians when we entered into the the nuclear deal, right? In fact, we probably escalated our espionage to figure out what it is that they were thinking, so we could

better negotiate with them. This is bizarre, and very, very scary. And I can't emphasize that point enough. I mean, you know, it's one one thing if you're not particularly concerned about what's happening in Europe, although I would suggest you should be. It's another to not care what's happening on your own home turf with a hostile intelligence act. I mean, the largest cyber attack in history was perpetrated by the GRU, Russian military intelligence. It was called not Petya.

It was a piece of malware first uploaded to computer servers in Ukraine, but it spread like wildfire around the world, cost billions of dollars in damages to global commerce, and also affected hospital computers in Pennsylvania, where patients awaiting life-saving surgeries had their records deleted or frozen. This is what the Russians do to us all the time. And suddenly we're like, nah, it'll be all right. Don't worry. We don't need to check in on this. Well, that's a nice place to leave it. I'm sad we didn't have your birds this time to

at least give us some, you know, cheery chirping in the background. I told my wife I was coming on and she put the curtain over the birds. She's had to put the curtain over my heads just so I'll go to sleep in the last few days. I'm sure. So she's got a lot of practice keeping things quiet. Thank you for coming on, Michael. I really appreciate your insight and unfortunately, I feel like your expertise will be much needed in the months ahead.

So we'll be talking to you soon. Anytime. All right. Thanks talking to you soon. Anytime. All right. Thanks again also to James Carvel. Happy Mardi Gras everybody. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullock podcast. Peace. If you go to New Orleans, you ought to go see the mighty girl When you see the mighty girl, somebody'll tell you what's carnival for

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