The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1003: Ben Wittes: Putin Makes A Fool of Trump, Again

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

The Art of the Deal guy gave a master class on how to get worked over by Putin: First, wait around for an hour like an obedient puppy only to have your ceasefire proposal summarily rejected. Then, watch the Kremlin issue a statement that flatly contradicts your claims of what transpired during a phone call on Ukraine. Will there ever be a point when Putin embarrasses Trump so much that he has to defend his manhood? Plus, the possible interpretations of John Roberts's rebuke of Trump, and the administration's sacrifice of even more U.S. power—by silencing the Voice of America. Ben Wittes joins Tim Miller. show notes Ben's Lawfare piece on Trump destroying the Voice of America Tim's and Sam's interview with Tim Mak on the Trump-Putin phone call NYT story on the possibly deleted data on kidnapped Ukrainian children (gifted

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Wednesday. So, if you're looking for some political chatter or you want to hear some takes on the Minnesota state senator who tried to make Trump derangement syndrome and official mental illness in the state of Minnesota, and then a few hours later was caught in a sting trying to have sex with a 16-year-old girl. That was truly such a shame. Too bad. Tough break for that guy. If you want to hear more about that

over on the next level, it's Wednesday. So go check out the next level. Download that podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, it'll be up late Wednesday. But we're going to focus on serious matters here, legal matters. And I'm delighted to have with me the editor in chief of lawfare and senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Also the author of Dog Shirt Daily in a Dog Shirt as we speak, it's Ben Wittes. Ben Wittes Good to see you. Ben Wittes What's happening, man? Welcome back. Ben Wittes So good to be here. Ben Wittes Yeah, how's the lawfare traffic these days?

Website traffic, kind of, let's chart go up. It kind of looked like the Ethereum stock chart a little bit, maybe? Yeah. The worst things get, the better it is for us. And so, you know, we're always have mixed feelings about doom and gloom democracy-wise because it's good for business. I talked about this with Jessica Charloff yesterday. Do you have any kind of emotional hedge?

Do you have any issues, any therapy that you need to do or about this natural inclination to kind of get a little excited when something absolutely terrible happens for this administration because you're kind of rooting against America? Do you have any issues with that that you're dealing with? I actually struggle with this a lot because I am by inclination, deeply, deeply anti-Leninist, you know, that whole maximize the contradictions thing. I really don't believe in it.

I really think we should always hope we're wrong and that the country prospers and that, you know, you know, I didn't vote for president so and so, but I hope every reason that I had to fear his rule was wrong and that we do great under him. And boy, do I not feel that right now. At all. At all. Yeah. at all. I feel like bring it on. We deserve the punishment of Trump's rule and we should feel it to the

maximum extent possible. And I find myself rooting for bad things to happen because the pain is like a refiner's fire and it purges us of sin and the infliction of that pain on the body politic will be the thing that reminds people of the sin we committed and will begin to purge it. And so, I feel like a combination of Lenin and a Southern Baptist preacher. Yeah, I was going to say, this sounds to me like the hardline Catholic priests, like the ones I always didn't like growing up, you know, I was more about the Jesuits, you know, the love and the supporting your neighbor and the public service and, you know, great feeling thanks to the greater glory of God, AMDG and all that. But, you know, great doing things for the greater glory of God, AMDG and all that. But, you know, it is kind of reminiscent of some of the other

sermons I went through. Pete Slauson Fire and brimstone. Pete Slauson Yeah, that we need pain. Pete Slauson We need pain. Pete Slauson You know, that we're sinners. Pete Slauson There's a redemptive quality to the pain. Pete Slauson Yeah, that we're sinners. We need to be brought to confession on our knees. Something to be said for that.

Okay, well, I'll float that past my mother's priest to see what he thinks about whether we're doing anything wrong here. What's up, Father Pat? In the meantime, I want to read, I'm going to summarize as best I can an article you wrote for Lawfare about what you call the full scale situations that we face right now. Point one in the full scale situation is that we have a reorientation of US foreign policy towards our foes and away from our friends. Point two is a war on bureaucracy and a total dismantling of federal agencies.

Point three is a remake of the power ministries of justice and the FBI to have them to be installed with hacks, political hacks. Fourth point to the situation is that now our legal policies in the spirit of a Roman general, no better friend, no worse enemy than our Justice Department. You write there are other aspects of the full scale situation that are maybe a tear down from those four in seriousness such as immigration actions, indiscriminate war on DEI programs, the bizarre economic policies that are rattling markets, the attempt to oust transgender people from the military, the overt corruption, such as the president turning the White House lawn

into a car dealership showroom. And with that, you get the point. The full scale situation involves a significant measure of everything everywhere all at once. Would you like to expound on that? Did I summarize it well? You know, the phrase the full-scale situation is of course a joke on the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the reference is the idea that, you know, if you talk to Ukrainians, the war has been going on since 2014, which is by the way, right around the same time that the situation, i.e. Trump, arose in the United States. But then there was this acute moment in February 24th of 2022,

when it became a full-scale invasion, which is when Americans tend to, and Europeans tend to say, the war started, right? And this, we've had the situation for a long time, but then there's this acute moment, January 20th, where we started dealing with the full-scale situation. And the point that I was trying to make in that column is that one of the reasons the thing feels so overwhelming is that each and every one of these major areas that you just identified would be an absolute revolution in American politics and policy all by itself. If all you had the last two months was a wholesale revolution in US foreign policy, that would be a dramatic earthquake of a change. If all you had was the turning of the power ministries into instruments of power against enemies and impunity of friends, that would feel revolutionary. If all you had was the

war on the bureaucracy, that would feel revolutionary. To do all of this all at the same time, it creates this sense of overwhelming, it's like being hit with a tsunami and then with an earthquake and then with all right at the same time. All of that makes it very, very difficult to assess in real time, how's it going? It feels awful, right? But is he winning or is he kind of supernovaing, right? Is it more important that the economic data is pretty bad on this stuff, right?

Or is it more important that he's successfully gotten rid of a gazillion public servants, right? It's very hard to prioritize analytically and figure out what really is going on, how effective is the judicial pushback, for example. I guess the point I was trying to make in the column is, you know, if it feels overwhelming, it's because it actually is overwhelming, and it's going to take a while for it to sort out. And don't try to assess it now, just try to, you know, breathe through it. So I can't ask you to assess it now? That's what you're telling me? I can't say, well, Ben, what is the thing that you think has the biggest, longest term

ramifications? So I guess what I would say is almost all the things that we focus on intensely for very good reasons. So let's consider the matter that you've been blowing steam out your ear about the Venezuelan deportations. This has enormous consequences for the liberty of a bunch of individuals, some of whom are probably not gang members. In the broad scheme of things, it's hugely important for the people in question. And ultimately, America has seen improper deportations without due process before and

survived it reasonably intact. Some of the issues, the destruction of the bureaucracy is going to pull at people's heartstrings a little bit less unless they know people who've been dismissed or agencies that have been destroyed. And yet, if you're talking about what the long-term consequences are, this is just enormously important stuff for the ability of, it's very hard to rebuild an agency that you've destroyed. And then similarly at the tectonic level, and this one honestly I'm a little bit more encouraged by, it's not clear to me that he's made any real progress with the impoundment stuff.

So I do think that's at the democratic tectonic level the most important question we're dealing with. It's the least important for human liberty and justice. Pete For people that's ears glazed over whenever I mention impoundment, can you just explain what you're referring to? David So, an impoundment is when Congress appropriates money to do thing X and the President says I'm not doing thing X, not spending that money. No. So this doesn't have consequences for human liberty. It's not a matter of justice or

it's just a matter of whether Congress is really a co-equal branch or not. And whether when Congress says we're giving appropriating money to do something, whether the president has to do it or whether the president really actually controls the other purse string. It's a revolution in constitutional law and the question is whether he's going to get away with it. So far, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that he's getting away with it. And, and so I do think that side of it is pretty encouraging, although very preliminary. Elevating your style used to mean breaking the bank, but with Quince, you

can get high end versatile pieces at prices you can afford. Now you can update your style by snagging killer luxury essentials that sync with your vibe and wallet. Quince has all the must haves like Mongolian cashmere sweaters from 50 bucks, iconic 100% leather jackets, and comfortable pants for every occasion. The best part, all Quince items are priced at 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. By partnering directly with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the middleman and passes the savings on to us. I never know until I sit in the chair who our sponsor is for the day. So this is the first

time it's happened. I'm wearing my Quince shirt right now for YouTube viewers. You can see it here. I'm really enjoying it. I like the piping. The listeners, you can't tell, but you can come look at a picture of me on the bulwark on YouTube or you can just imagine it in your head. This little navy blue short sleeve number looks nice. It's good for a podcast. It might be good for a little ride on the Mississippi. If I wanted to get out on a boat and have a glass of rose, this would be a nice shirt to wear.

A lot of options, very versatile, a lot of stuff at Quince. Highly recommend it. So indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash the bulwark to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash the bulwark. Let's transition this nicely to the encouraging preliminary comments from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court about the rolling constitutional crisis that we are experiencing. This was with regards to the, I guess he didn't say that it was with regards to Trump's statements, but there were statements by several people, including the president, about the Judge Boesberg that had put the

stay on the aforementioned Venezuelan deportation case that I have steam coming out of my ears over. And several people were saying that this judge should be impeached. And Tom Homan, the immigration czar, said directly that he doesn't think the administration should listen to judges or follow their orders when it comes to these deportations. The Chief Justice said this yesterday, for more than two centuries, it's been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists instead for that purpose. You know, not exactly a rip roaring denunciation that would do well on a TikTok, but pretty clear disagreement with the president's statements on this. So I'm wondering what you made of it.

Pete Slauson All right. So, John Roberts, first of all, is an extremely measured human being. He, you know, think of somebody who has been planning to be Chief Justice of the United States since he was nine or 10. He is enormously careful with what he says, and when he issues a statement like that, it is worth parsing every word of it and noting what he did say and what he didn't say. And so he says there are three things. The first is talk about impeaching judges because you disagree with them is dangerous. The second is, if you disagree with a judge, appeal it, right? As in send it up to me because, you know, he sits atop the appellate hierarchy. And here you can split the analysis.

You can say, if you have a problem with Judge Boesberg, bring it to us and we'll fix it. Don't bring up this impeachment stuff. We're reasonable up here. If you got a problem with him, bring it to us. So that would be the cynical way to look at it. The other way to look at it is to note that John Roberts appointed Boesberg to be the chief judge of the FISA court at one point. He's the chief judge of the DC District Court. This is a guy who Roberts knows and Roberts is saying here, hey, you got a problem with

the DC Circuit District Judge. you got a problem with the DC Circuit District Judge, you got a problem with us, bring it on. I have followed this case pretty closely. I watched the hearing or listened to the hearing that Boasberg had on Monday. There's a jurisdictional question as to whether this case should be in front of Judge Boasberg at all, but this is a very measured and serious district judge. I think what Roberts is saying here is stop political attacks on district judges and particularly ones who are doing their jobs and trying to rule in hard cases under very difficult circumstances.

I want to get back to Roberts, just because I want to pick your brain on SCOTUS, but just since you've been following that case closely, let's get into the Boasberg case a little bit. What do you make of, I guess, the disagreement at this point, right? The administration is saying essentially that this plane was already in the air over international waters. You can't turn it around. They don't have jurisdiction.

Boasberg is saying essentially they haven't proven it, I guess, that the plane actually was over international waters. I guess, is that the crux of the disagreement at this point? Well, I think there's a deeper level of disagreement, which is that this was originally styled as a habeas case. Normally you bring a habeas case where the prisoner is being held, which in this case would be the fifth circuit down your way, but it was brought in the DC court. The petitioners seem to have dropped the habeas component of it, but it's

not clear to me what's left. And so the administration was extremely aggressive in how they dealt with Judge Boesberg's order over the weekend or on Friday. The aggressive in one sense. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, he ordered the planes turn around and they ignored that. And there is going to be a contempt question as a result of that. He's been quite measured in not racing to get to that

question. And what he did on Monday is he said to the administration, you know, you need to give me chapter and verse on what happened with each of these planes by tomorrow, which was yesterday. So the administration responded by saying in court, we can't give you that information. And he said, basically, is it classified? And they said, no, not really, but or they wouldn't say it was classified. And so the first thing that's going to happen here is he's going to try to find out what he can find out from them. And then he's going to hold it up against, you know, his order and say, can this plausibly be said to be compliant with the order? I think the answer to that question is no. But then he may get tripped up along the way by the fact that it's not clear that he has jurisdiction

over the matter in the first place. And so all of this is going to come to a head on Friday when there is a hearing scheduled. And I fear that the administration will get away with this because they were basically the plaintiffs may have brought the case in the wrong court in the first place. And so he may have issued an order that he didn't really have the authority to issue under the specific circumstances. So some of these people have been deported, you know, have attorneys, some of them don't, right? Like some of them, you know, were Right? Like some of them, you know, were apprehended and, you know, never, you know, had got access to an attorney. Correct.

The ones that do have representation, either ACLU or immigrant defenders, they're now disappeared in El Salvador. Like a lot of these lawyers don't even actually know, aren't even sure that they're in El Salvador, but they just presume. But they're not American citizens. They're not American citizens and they're no longer in US custody. So is there any remedy for those individuals in court? Like, are there any individual cases that could still come up or is this all more of a constitutional question at this point?

Well, so first of all, the named petitioners and plaintiffs are all still in the country. And Boesberg verified that the other day. This again gets to this question of how the case is styled, right? If it's styled as a habeas case, we don't have custody of these people anymore unless you can make an argument that the Salvadorans are holding them for us, which I assume the plaintiffs will try to make because they're being paid there. So could you make an argument that they're constructively in US custody? It's going to be tough. To the extent that the case is not a habeas case, but some other kind of case.

The complaint throws in a lot of different claims. It's conceivable to me that there's a remedy, but I think the question of what this case is bears on that a lot, and because it was generated so quickly, it's actually hard to pin down precisely what the question is. That's so fucking enraging.

So back to the Supreme Court. There's an Axios story out this morning by our old colleague, Marco Puto, talking about what the administration's strategy is here to accept they have a strategy. And essentially, the article states that they want to force these immigration cases up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has traditionally been somewhat reluctant to take on immigration cases for variety of reasons, but they want to force their hand. Trump advisor says to Caputo, we have the law and we have the numbers on the court.

We've always known this is where this all ends up. So like they on the questions particularly related to the Alien Enemies Act, which is this Venezuela case and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which is related to the Khalil case and the deportation of the student protesters. They essentially want the Supreme Court to be the final arbiter on all this. I'm curious what you make of that and whether there's any Roberts creminology as these cases start to head his way. Yeah.

So let's break it down by different subject matter areas. So there is no doubt that there is a lot of very strong statutory law that gives the administration a lot of power in the immigration space, particularly if somebody is not already in the United States, right? Then you can deny them a visa. It's almost plenary. Or if they even had a visa and they left, being Crystal gave a pretty sympathetic read of the Brown professor situation on Monday's pod before all the information came out.

And as we have more information like that one is like, I don't know, I think that woman is in a lot tougher of a situation. She had gone to Lebanon to go to the funeral of Nasrallah or something and like tries to come back into the country and that becomes very, very dicey for having, you know, your visa getting pulled for that or your visa getting pulled if you're working in the country and you're not supposed to be, right? So like pulling people's visas for that sort of stuff, they've got a lot of power.

They've got a lot of power. So the flip side is that there are these statutes that give them so much power that it is actually hard to square with other constitutional norms. And the provision that says if the Secretary of State decides that you are a threat to US foreign policy, they can throw you out of the country or revoke your lawful permanent residence status. That's going to be a real question. There's no doubt that the statutory law is strong on the executive branch's side. Other executives have been careful about how they use it because it does rub up against certain due process and

First Amendment norms. You have as a lawful permanent resident First Amendment rights, except that the government can revoke your lawful permanent resident status over it, right? There's a real conundrum there that successive that- You have First Amendment rights, caveat, caveat, caveat. Right. And, you know, this is an issue that's been lurking around actually with Palestinian sympathetic or sometimes activists, a case involving eight guys in Los Angeles and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under this statute was one of the first national security cases I ever wrote about in the 90s.

This issue has been around for a long time. It first came up in the context of communists in the 1950s. Most administrations have dealt with it by being very careful with the statute. This administration, the whole careful thing, they don't do that. We're going to find out. Now, there are other immigration-related provisions that I think are just delusional if they think they're just going to win. Let's start with the birthright citizenship stuff.

No judge anywhere in the country has sided with them in their reading the birthright citizenship stuff. No judge anywhere in the country has sided with them in their reading of birthright citizenship. I don't think that's going to be different at the Supreme Court. You know, do they maybe have two votes for that? Sure. If you roll the dice well, could they get three? Yeah, I don't think they're getting five. And I don't care how much chest thumping they do about it. The Alien Enemies Act is more similar to that than to- Oh, really? The Alien Enemies Act, here's what it actually says. Whenever there is a declared war between

the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government." So that's the precondition for invoking the Alien Enemies Act. So, Alien Enemies Act. So tell me, is there a declared war? Do we have a foreign government that has made a predatory incursion against the United States? I just don't see the preconditions of the statute having been even approached, let alone met. Now, I know you can issue an executive order, an executive order from this administration is really just a fancy word for press release that says, you know, we're invoking the Alien Enemies Act, but in a US district court or at the Supreme Court, you actually have to argue that the Alien Enemies Act lets you do this. And I don't see where you get the votes

for that. So, look, have I been wrong about the Supreme Court on the optimistic side before? Yes. Am I confident that these are losing arguments before this Supreme Court? No. But the day that I say, okay, the Supreme Court is just a rubber stamp for the Trump administration, I may as well go into a different business. My job is to read the law and say, you know, what should happen and what... Well, and we've already had, we should say, like, David French does like to point out that the Supreme Court, the first Trump 1.0, you know, went against, but the government was arguing more times than any court since FDR.

And we've already seen in Trump 2.0 now, you know, Barrett and Roberts side against them on some of these Doge cases. So. We should all be appropriately cynical about the Supreme Court. Yeah. But you shouldn't be overly cynical about it, right? It's not a body like Congress, where you can say, okay, Donald Trump says X and there are 220 Republicans, so 220 Republicans

in the House are going to vote for X. It's not that simple. Law does matter still a bit. Are you sure about that? Because the co-president, Elon Musk, quote tweeted yesterday, Valentina Gomez, longtime listeners of the pod will know this niche character. She was running for office in Missouri as a Republican in a primary as a mega Republican and did a big ad about how people should not be fake and gay. She posted an image yesterday of her that sort of like, it's kind of like some ISIS cosplay where she had the gun in front of somebody's head who was tied to a chair and had like a bag, a black bag over their head.

Elon retweeted this great American when she wrote that the only path forward is impeaching all the corrupt judges. Government shouldn't follow these district judges orders. Elon says this is the only path forward is impeaching all the corrupt judges, government shouldn't follow these district judges orders, Elon says this is the only way. Right. So I would say they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't fear that the judges were actually likely to rule against them. And that, do I think that rhetoric is disgusting?

Absolutely. But I also think it reflects the fact that they at least perceive the courts as a real impediment. And if you look at the courts behavior over the last 60 days, it has been an impediment, perhaps not as much of one as we would like, but it has been, the courts have been real. There's a Trump Putin call yesterday. Putin made Trump wait for an hour or more while he was on stage at some event, somebody shouted out to Putin that like you shouldn't be on with Trump.

Now he's kind of like dismisses it says, Oh, you know, he can wait. So Putin makes Trump wait for an hour. They have a lengthy call. The US statement on the call I want to read from the leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on the implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea with full ceasefire and permanent peace, hopefully coming after these negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East. The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between

the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved. That was the US statement. Putin put out a much longer statement that listed all the things that he's demanding from the US that Trump had not agreed to, including his top priority being end to all foreign military aid and assistance into Ukraine. Later Trump in an interview said that they had not discussed that. Later the crowd went out a statement that said, oh yeah, actually we did discuss that

while that back and forth was going on. Russia was bombing energy infrastructure in Ukraine, which is an interesting interpretation of an energy and infrastructure ceasefire. So we sit here today, Wednesday morning with that as the state of play. What do you make of it? All right. A few things. The first is, I think it is interesting that Putin wants any ceasefire to start with energy infrastructure.

That's interesting because this is an area where he hits Ukrainian power grids. That's energy infrastructure. Ukrainian hit Russian oil depots and refining capacity. And the Ukrainians have been actually quite effective at reducing Russia's capacity to produce oil, which is its most important export and funding mechanism. And so this is an area where the war is not reciprocal because the Russians are targeting Ukrainian civilian power, right?

Whereas the Ukrainians are targeting the Russian capacity to make war. But it's not completely unreciprocal in that both sides have vulnerabilities here and both sides. I think it's actually a reflection of Russian vulnerability on the energy front that Putin wants to start here. That said, the larger picture is that Putin doesn't want to ceasefire. He's narrowing and narrowing and narrowing the zone of what ceasefires can cover until it basically says, look, I'll stop hitting civilian power plants and you stop hitting my refineries. That's Putin's idea of a ceasefire.

It is embarrassing that the United States is characterizing this as constructive. This is like, I'm going to keep the president of the United States waiting for an hour and then say no to him and say, yeah, my idea of a ceasefire is that the Ukrainians stop hitting my refineries for 30 days and then I'll screw things up. We sell that as this was a constructive call. I think the real question here is, at what point, if any, does Trump get impatient with this? Does he realize that he's being taken for a ride in a very North Korean kind of way? Or is he so committed for whatever reason to his pro-Putin sentiment that Putin can kind of in the long run make a fool of him the way he has done in the short run? And I fear the answer is the latter and hope very much that the answer is the former.

There are so many words contained within for whatever reason, you know, uh, there's like there are essays and books and histories that could be written within for whatever reason. I want to say I am genuinely agnostic about what the reason is. Like it, you know, interpersonal, is it Krasnov? Is it pettiness? Is it, is there money? Is there Russian crypto money? Like, you know, all of the above.

Or is it just that, you know, people like me have been saying for eight years, why are you, you know, kowtowing to Putin? And so he's just doubled down on it so many times that it's like, you know, his answer to everything is Russia, Russia, Russia. How much of it is just a robotic response? I really don't know the answer. Or this impression, I think it was me and Bill, I mean, like, the lights are talking about this, like, it was so revealing, you know, after the just sham of that Oval Office

meeting with Zelensky, you know, when he said that, you know, Putin's been going through this. Like there's this Russia investigation and Putin's been going through this. Like he does seem to believe that like him and Putin are kind of in this together at some level against these other forces of globalism that are trying to bring both of them down, you know? And so that situation only exists in his own head, but it was an informative aside, an insight into how he thinks about this. One of the weird things about him, and you see this in the original Zelensky phone call too, that he does have a way of internalizing his own bullshit.

And so remember there was this crazy Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theory that the DNC server somehow ended up in Ukraine or ended up. I wrote like a 3000 word explanation of this conspiracy. I'm very, I'm very deep on the server. Crowd strike. You read the transcript of that phone call. The first thing he says, I, you know, people say the server was controlled by a Ukrainian company.

Like it wasn't just a, like he at some level believed it enough to raise it with the president of Ukraine. Right. And I do think there's some level of smoking your own supply in that stuff. So yeah, for whatever reason was meant to cover a lot of ground and it's a very rich territory what it could imply. I told Tim Mack over the counter offensive a little bit yesterday. People can check that out on YouTube or on the on the Bullork Takes feed. But you know you have a lot of contacts also on the

Ukrainian and kind of Ukrainian circles. I don't know if I'm going to say it. Resistance and the Ukrainian resistance. What does everybody make of all this at this point? I mean there seemed to be maybe, obviously you can paint with a broad brush, Ukraine's a big country, people have different views, but there was some kind of false hope, I think, after the election that maybe this would be similar to Trump 1.0, where like when push came to shove to your point, like if can eventually Putin would embarrass him enough that Trump would feel just like, you know, almost as a man to have to protect his manhood, that he would have to,

you know, give Ukraine what is necessary to defend itself. The hope for that, I think, seems to be dwindling substantially. And I'm wondering what you perceive as the view from the Ukraine side at this point. All right. So first of all, there's Ukraine is an enormously complicated relationship with the United States right now because they are super aware that the White House is spouting Kremlin propaganda. They are very, very sensitive to signs of rapprochement between Washington and Putin. And they're also super, super aware of the fact that they don't have obvious alternatives to the United States, right?

So if you're Europe, you can say, this is an opportunity for us to step up, right? But nobody really knows how much Europe is gonna be capable of stepping up and their actual historical capacity to do it is, it's not a story that's shrouded in glory and there's a lot of mistrust between the Ukrainians and the Europeans. Unlike almost anybody else in the world who can shift in some ways, the Ukrainians are

really, really dependent on continued US backing. And by the way, this plays out in the course of a war that they are actually fighting right now. There's nothing hypothetical about it. And so I would describe the reaction as a combination of deep, deep betrayal, sense of betrayal that is going to take a generation as a combination of deep, deep betrayal,

sense of betrayal that is going to take a generation for us to deal with. You're quite correct that there was a sense of false hope, even Trump optimism that was pervasive in Kiev after the election, largely as a function of frustration with Joe Biden, who they thought of as very slow. They were kind of attracted or a lot of Ukrainians were kind of attracted to the idea that Trump was a macho blowhard who, you know, we can just get him to blow hard in the right direction, right? Yeah, right. Yeah get him to blow hard in the right direction.

Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cowboy kind of American cowboy. Exactly. A little bit of confusion of Trump with George W. Bush.

Yeah. Right. And then there's also, and this is the part that's just heartbreaking is a sense of despair and what the hell are we going to do now? Because it's not like there's an obvious place to turn instead. And Ukrainians, because of lots of aspects of their history, it's a fairly stoic culture that doesn't value emotive expressions of despair.

The rhetoric will all be, we're going to keep on fighting, you know, that sort of thing. But there's a real sense of we are fucked. And, you know, for a lot of them, it's not just about lost territory. It's about the future capacity of the country to prevent Russia from destroying it. It's about family members who are in occupied territories of which it's 20% of the country.

It's a very tragic situation that one of the interesting things about has been the rallying behind Zelensky. You know, he, two months ago, real politics had returned to Ukraine and there was a lot of criticism of Zelensky. Not now. And you know, you humiliate a country's democratically elected leader in the White House and you're going to learn something about the way the country rallies behind him. And so there's a lot of pride in Zelensky and there's a lot of sense of, I'm a domestic political opponent of his, but you can't treat my president that way. And so it's a very complicated set of feelings.

And I would say the only, you know, it's in some ways similar to the reaction in Canada. Canada, I was going to say the parallels are pretty striking, obviously. More intense in Ukraine. More intense, but also less intimate. Right. And Canada doesn't have an ongoing shooting war that they're completely dependent on, but the sense of decoupling from something that has broken bad all of a sudden in ways and for reasons that you

don't understand and that is weirdly directed at you is very similar. The other thing to rightfully despair over, the Trump administration halts the program to track abducted Ukrainian children. Lawmakers say I'm trying to get Greg Landsman, who's a Democratic lawmaker, on to discuss this. So later check out our YouTube or the Bulwark page. Hopefully we can have that up to there tomorrow. Landsman wrote this in a letter, the US now has reason to believe that data from this

repository has been permanently deleted. If true, there'd be devastating consequences. The repository was basically this trove of research that we had been providing, including satellite imagery and other data about some of the 30,000 children that had been abducted from Ukraine. Apparently, the State Department has just erased it. Yeah.

So I read that story in the New York Times this morning and I have to say I couldn't get through it. I literally couldn't believe it's true. I texted Landsman. I was like, this cannot possibly be true. Like I have no information to add this. So this is an issue that I've spent a lot of time on. A bunch of my projections at the Russian embassy are about the stolen kids.

And one of the many maddening things about the Russian full-scale invasion has been the theft of children. And by the way, they're not subtle about it. There was a woman who has a stolen Ukrainian child who was talking about it on Russian television with Putin that she's, you know, they couldn't have children and those she got this Ukrainian child. I mean, I mean, it's really, it's really vile. And to have the US administration not merely not playing a constructive role, but dropping hints and

news that we're going to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, which is a place where the Russians engaged in a recent, 1944, genocidal deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population. The fact that we are contemplating recognizing the legitimacy of the Russian invasion of Crimea, that we are actively erasing the data that we helped collect on 20,000 Ukrainian children forcibly deported, stolen from their parents and deported to Russia. I mean, I just don't know how to talk about it except with stuttering anger and rage. It's just that there's nothing to be said for it other than that it is, we're trying or the administration is trying to make its own deals with Russia more palatable by erasing the evidence of their evil.

Okay. Let's close with Voice of America. My old friend, Kerry Lake, is gutting it. You wrote about this at length for lawfare, unilateral disarmament and the disinformation wars. I don't think I've talked about this VOA at all really on the pod. So why don't you give people a brief on what's happening there? All right. So what happened was Trump issued an executive order on Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which it was, that basically ordered USAGM, which is the parent organization

of VOA, to shut down, except to the extent that it's statutorily required. VOA then put essentially all of its journalists on leave and then terminated them the next day. So VOA effectively doesn't exist anymore. This is mostly invisible to Americans because VOA doesn't broadcast to Americans. VOA broadcasts in 49 languages to 355 million people every week, all over the world in areas where good, honest news is difficult to come by. This is one of the great news organizations in the world. I have dealt extensively with their Eastern Europe language services, both their Russian and Ukrainian services because of my Russian embassy protests.

But everything I'm about to say, you're interested in Cambodia, you're interested in, it's an extraordinary operation, or it was until this weekend. And why do we do this? The answer is during World War II, actually getting truthful news into the ecosystems of occupied Europe was important. During the Cold War, getting news, most Ukrainians found out about Chernobyl because of Voice of America. To this day, Ukrainians in occupied parts of the country get their news from VOA. And I think there were about a hundred people in the Russian language service

and about 40 in the Ukrainian language service. All of them are unemployed today. You know, play that out over whatever, you know, broadcasting in Swahili, broadcasting in French, broadcasting in Spanish. There are lots of people around the world that this is going to affect in terms of the quality of their information supply. You ask yourself the question, why would the administration do this? The answer is actually completely simple, which is if you don't want to counter Russian disinformation,

why would you have a news service that tells the truth? People might believe it. It's counterproductive. If you don't want to counter Chinese disinformation, why on earth would you have a news service that brought people honest news in Chinese? If you don't want to undermine autocracies in Iran or the Gulf, why on earth would you do serious news in Persian or Arabic? This is an administration that wants to build entire edifices of foreign policy based on lies, as we were just discussing, erasing data about stolen Ukrainian children. If you're going to do that, it doesn't make sense to have a news service that's bringing people actively valuable information, but it is a profound, profound change from what Ronald Reagan said in 1982 or three in a 40th anniversary

speech at VOA where he said, you know, now as then the truth is a weapon on our side and you know Trump clearly doesn't believe that and so you erase data sets that reveal the truth and you also fire people whose job it is to reveal the truth. And if I sound emotional about this, I have a lot of friends who lost their jobs over this. And by the way, a bunch of them are gonna have visa problems now as a result of it,

to link it to your immigration points. God, that's really depressing, the truth not being on our side now. Let me give you the Magistral man on this. That would be, you know, the Winnie the Pooh and the tuxedo argument instead of the we're just on the side of the baddies now. And that is, you know, that all is before the internet. People can get information now in a variety of ways.

It's not like the old days where we need to radio in and people are overwhelmed with information, frankly, and maybe it's not a good use of resources anymore. Okay. That's a fine argument if you get rid of the whole technical barriers stuff, VPNs and whatever. People can get information. Who is producing high quality news about the United States in Russian? Who's doing it in Chinese? Who's doing it in Persian and Farsi? Maybe we don't want that actually, right? For the next four years, at least high quality information about what we're doing.

That's the point. Right? Like, yeah, can people access the New York Times if they have the right VPNs and if they know how to circumvent the Great Wall? Yeah, they can access the New York Times. Can they read it? Is somebody producing a product that is in their language useful to them? And by the way, VOA reports different things than the New York Times, because if you're living in Cambodia, what you want from Radio Free Asia is not the same information. New York Times isn't doing stuff on Cambodian politics, right? And so, yes, it is true that information is available to those who want to go out and

get it. But it is not, you know, 355 million people are not going to go get VPNs and do their own translations of the high quality information. I don't think that's how I was listening to the Pod Save the World guys talk about this and I have to close with this fuck around and find out from Marco Rubio. One of the other elements of VOA is this radio and TV Marty. This is in South Florida and Miami. It is a Spanish language news that targets Cuba.

Cuba started to block this and so a lot of the listeners of it are actually kind of like South Florida, Cuban exile hardliners and that shut that shuttered it. Radio TV, Marty shuttered. These have been big voters that moved towards Trump. Marco Rubio is on the secretary of state was a big advocate for radio. Marty funding, obviously, when he was in the Senate and representing Florida, there's an article I'm looking at right now of Mario Diaz, but Lart, that fucking cuck who is like saying, oh, I'm not worried We're gonna try to reverse it and who knows maybe they can maybe calls up Marco and we decide that that's the only Outlet of VOA that we continue to fund or they find some rich billionaire to do it

But it's pretty intriguing that a bunch of jobs lost not somewhere else But in in Miami for these outlets that have been serving Cuban Cubaniles and dissidents for 60, 70 years now. Yep. It's not just VOA. It's Radio Marti. It's Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe. It's a whole bunch of different organizations. And yeah, there's this perception that they're kind of Cold War relics. Tell that to the people who listen to them. These are admired and valued sources of news all over the world. It's because they don't have a domestic face that, sort of like USAID, they don't do things domestically. They do things overseas. They don't have, they don't do things domestically. They do things overseas.

They're an instrument of US soft power and they're very important to the people who they're important to. And we just decided not to do it anymore. Well, hope the Cubans are happy. Big move towards Trump down there in South Florida. I should say that Radio Marri has been around for 40 years. Ben Whittes, thank you for your insight, your anger, and everything else you guys are doing over there

at Lawfare. People should go to Lawfare, check it out, read it, subscribe if you can handle it, and we'll be talking to you again soon. Take care. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Borg Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. I wonder if there's a way to wipe, to clear away my crocodile Now, why you ask me about the problem?

It's just a Russian word for truth Your consciousness is not my problem Your uncle Henry lived in Moscow Your aunt Ludmila lived there too Irina grew up in Wisconsin I'm leaving at the rising of the moon The final moments in a doorway The sacred light of afternoon Something starts to shake the leaves You tuck them on your t-shirt sleeves And shift it to the rising of the moon Now why you ask me about the tribe, duh Doug It's just a Russian word for truth

Your consciousness is not my problem Cause when I come home, I won't be home to you The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.