The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Putin derails peace talks and Iranian protesters take to the streets

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to watch and listen to full episodes of Friday Focus with Janice Stein. Your donor membership comes with other great perks like access to the videos of our main stage debates and full length episodes of our weekly podcasts with Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne. Rudyard and Janice open today's Friday Focus with Russia's allegation of a Ukraine drone attack on Putin which took momentum away from Zelensky's attempts to negotiate an end to the war. Why does Putin have a hold over Trump? Does this have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to Iran and growing domestic unrest that has spread beyond the streets of Tehran. In a surprising move the President of Iran has said he wants to speak with the protesters and suggested that the government has failed to meet the needs of its citizens. In the long history of this regime, no president has talked this way so openly. Their currency is in free fall, there is a weakened supreme leader and deepening divisions among the political elite. Will the Revolutionary Guards be ordered to take to the streets and brutally suppress these protests like they have done in the past? Or will this time prove different?   This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the first Friday focus podcast of 2026. I'm Redyard Griffiths, chair of the monk debates, joined by my wingwoman, Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Hey, Janice, how's it going? Not badly at all, Roger, and a happy new year to you and to everyone who's listening. Absolutely. And I thought we'd have a quiet week this week between Christmas and Christmas. New Year's, but if it's any indication of where 2026 is headed, the last seven days, has been busy on the international news front. So let's dig in right away and talk first about the flips and flops and twists and turns of so-called peace talks between Ukraine, the United States and the Russian Federation. We end the week with. I don't know, just at a strange moment of what seems to be kind of brazen Russian disinformation

about an alleged drone attack on President Putin's, one of his many, I'm sure, private residence is this one outside of St. Petersburg, ostensibly to take, as it seems, any momentum that was coming out of what seemed to be very positive meetings, at least superficially. you'd ever know on the surface between Zelensky, his counterparts in the U.S. administration, and then over last weekend, the U.S. president. That, you know, that claim that his house had been targeted by a drone attack was clearly designed to change Donald Trump's moves. This is the best way to think about this, Roger, is this is now a battle for Donald Trump

for his attention and for his affection. Who does he like this week and who gets to him last? Because you see the swings. He will compliment Zelensky. Zolensky and his team actually worked very hard with Donald Trump's team. And they actually, there's some movement on the Ukrainian side. The risk here, Roger, is negotiating against themselves because so far Putin has made no move whatsoever, no concession, which is meaningful, whatsoever. And there was an interesting expose that came out in the New York Times, which by a reporter who went behind the scenes, David Antus.

He's done this before. And it describes again and again this pattern that there are conversations, but it's all about Donald Trump. It's all about Vladimir Putin timing those interventions to pull Trump back every time there's progress in the talks. Putin's convinced he's going to win. Yeah. So he called Trump really just, I believe,

the morning before he was scheduled to meet with Zelensky. and Marlago announcing this alleged attack. It's the president then, I think subsequently the day after was asked by a reporter, well, sir, what if the attack was made up? What if it was fake, fake news, as the president likes to lambast the mainstream media? What if Vladimir Putin was? a purveyor of fake news and the president said wow I didn't I didn't think of that I mean what are we to make of that Janice why why does it seem that the president has this

strange predilection to give probably the one person that you would trust least in the world Vladimir Putin consistently the benefit of the doubt and is he doing this consciously or maybe more worryingly, unconsciously, what did that comment reveal? It's a very instructive comment when he says that because I think it's inconceivable to you and to me, Roger, that you wouldn't think about deception when you think about Russia. You know, it's one of the biggest interferers in election space. It's got a long record of corporate assets. It's very skilled at all that, and it's been so well documented.

So how we could say I never thought of that one, it frankly blows your mind. Now, you know, why is this, there is this consistent pattern to try to make excuses for Trump, for Putin, to reach back to him all the time? It all starts with the election of 2016. It goes back to that visceral moment for him. And the story of the Ukrainians who allegedly supported Hillary Clinton, he's never gotten over that. That's kind of the base focal point. He comes back to it again and again and again.

And when there's so when there's doubt, you know, he's going to go back to a pre-election. to favor Russia over Ukraine. It starts there. And Vladimir Zelensky is just pushing the ball up the hill like Sisyphus all the time. Let me just for fun, float a bunch more controversial theory, maybe a conspiracy theory. You have to wonder, you have to wonder, Ockham's Razor, you know, the simplest answer is the right one. what if there's a connection between the Epstein files, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin?

I mean, we know increasingly from the release of these Epstein documents that Epstein in some of these documents seems to be communicating directly with the Kremlin. He actually seems to blow off a kind of grid and grip with Putin at a summit or something saying in a sense, you know, unless he was going to get a one-on-one, he wasn't going to meet with Putin. in this time. So this is a guy clearly who, as we're seeing, had high-level connections with heads of state, with intelligence services, clearly with the Russians. There seems to be more evidence coming out of the Epstein documents that a lot of Epstein's wealth was tied to the kind of gray or dark parts of international finance tied to weapons, shipments, other kind of illegal activities, money laundering, we don't know, but it's starting to point in that direction that this was someone who people used and trusted to do bad things and work in bad places.

And you have to wonder, Janice, is there not the possibility here that, not that Epstein was a Russian agent, but that this would have been somebody who would have come to the attention of the Russian intelligence and security services, that they would have probably seen a lot of value in penetrating him and his network and potentially his information, either physical or not. And we see, just to round out this wonderful conspiracy theory at the start of 2036, we see Trump's kind of Pavlovian reaction to everything and anything. Epstein. This is clearly something that is absolutely fixated him and the contortions and the convoluted approach that his department has taken to the Epstein files, including what we've seen

over the last week of more redactions that have nothing to do with the congressional legislation that was passed or in complete violation of it, declarations that there's even more documents, It's over five million documents now that are potentially months or more of releases to come. I don't know, Janice. Conjecture, whatever it is, conspiracy, just good old clean fun. I feel like there's something there that puts these two things together and could explain why Putin has this holdover Trump. Trump knows or fears maybe that Putin and the Russian intelligence services have the parts of the Epstein file that he will, his administration will never release. And he's holding that over the president's head.

You know, Richard, I'm not going to dismiss what you say at all because there is a mystery here that nobody's been able to solve. What does Vladimir Putin's hold over Donald Trump? And this has been a question that the intelligence committee in the United States has asked repeatedly. They dug deep. And when you think about it really, the usual operations for the Russians to get something on somebody is, you know, sexual blackmail. That you trap people. This is an old playbook in Moscow. top people while they're in Moscow or elsewhere.

You get films and then you've got blackmail. Well, frankly, that wouldn't work against Donald Trump. I don't think his wife is going to be terribly shocked if she's told that there are activities that Donald Trump has engaged or anybody else for that matter. He's talked about it, so it's not sex. Money, nobody's been able to spend a huge effort to follow the money and find the story here.

So is there something, and you're right, that he has, you know, an inexplicable reaction to the Epstein files, based on what's come out so far. Yes, he traveled on plane. Yes, he hung around with him. But that would not explain the visceral reaction that Donald Trump has. There must be something else there. There's got to be something else there.

and this huge effort not to release the documents and then to edit the documents. And in fact, he's made it a story by the visceral reaction that he's had. If he'd left it alone, it would probably be a lot better. So there's something here. And it certainly, Epstein and its network and the people that Epstein hung around with would be of obvious interest to the Russian intelligence community. There's no doubt about it. That's an entirely credible argument.

So I'm going to say, who knows what you've said is a perfectly plausible story, frankly, and layer that on top of the visceral anger that he has, which we know about, at the Ukrainians, since 2016, this is a story. Boy, Richard, you look at the diplomatic record, which is a story, which is. and you know which is open relatively speaking and you see Donald Trump's team divided on Ukraine working hard to move the football forward. Fox News hopes calling the president to get him to back off

not resupplying Ukraine with artillery shells and that changes his mind for a period of time. time, Donald Trump shifts literally with the last person that he spoke to, but always against the background, give Vladimir Putin the benefit of the deaths. Recently, the monk debates hosted a fascinating debate about the two-state solution, but 90 minutes on this contentious topic can also barely scratch the surface. After all, Israel is a hotbed of conflicting ideologies, identities, interests, and historical narratives. even for experts, that's a lot to keep up with.

And it's not just Israel. The Middle East is changing fast. Alliances are shifting. New power centers are emerging and longstanding assumptions are being rewritten in real time. If you want to understand what's really going on, I'd like to invite you to join me on the Call Me Back podcast. I'm Dan Cienor, host of Call Me Back. Our mission is to give you the facts, context, and insights you need to make sense of Israel and the region. Our contributors include some of the best source journalists in Israel like Nadavail and Amit Sego

and top thought leaders in the U.S. like Sam Harris and Scott Galloway. So if you're ready to go deeper, find me on Call Me Back wherever you get your podcasts. See you there. Two final observations before we wrap up this section. One, it's, again, you never know. But if this reporter is asking the president, you know, did you consider that this could have been staged? And the president is like, oh, gee whiz. Let me think about that.

Surely the U.S. intelligence services would have immediately have had some kind of briefing to the president about this alleged attack, the plausibility of it. You know, they've probably penetrated Ukrainian signals. And, you know, the Ukrainian special forces and intelligence groups are probably heavily compromised by. you know the CIA and other American intelligence assets. So again, it just, the comment to me is more revealing than just an aside. And then my final remark would be, the other answer is that this is a, this is a Chauncey Gardner presidency, you know, one of my favorite film is being there. That he's like Chauncey Gardner, he's watching.

TV and whether it's on Fox News or I don't know, some kind of Kremlin Fed Twitter feed that he's ingesting. You're right. Occam's Razor actually, it's not about the Epstein files. It's not about anything. The simplest answer is it's about Donald Trump. It's something that we talked about on our last, or second last show of 2025, which got a lot of attention.

reaction from our listeners, which was great, which is the potential for the president's kind of declining health and in some ways his temperament and maybe even his cognitive capacity. Who knows? Maybe we're just in 2026, maybe we've moved into the Chauncey Gardner presidency of Donald J. Trump. You know, Roger, just for the record, before we leave this subject, the CIA did come out. I'd say they had no, they could not find any evidence. of a Ukrainian drone attack on Vladimir Putin's home.

But he never thought about that. But it seems like the time, I mean, let's just end on that. It seems like the talks are off. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen anything from the president that suggests that he's now going to push back on this alleged attack and the allegations being made by Putin. And then we had, unfortunately, in the last 24 hours. is another or a Ukrainian drone attack that seems to have killed 24 or so Russian civilians in a cafe in Kerson.

So, I mean, that similarly obviously sets back the idea that whatever momentum was there in the preceding, you know, weeks will culminate in a ceasefire or something substantive. So let's just end on that, Janice. At what point should our listeners just set this all aside? I mean, how many times now have we been around this mulberry bush? Three? Is this the third time? It feels like the 15th. And at what point should this just be set aside?

Should we just stop talking about it on this show? Because nothing's going to happen. And it's all Kabuki theater. And it's all, again, the Europeans trying to conciliate. Trump trying to thread the needle with this U.S. administration. Zelensky trying his best to maintain U.S. support, but 2026 is not going to be a year for peace in the plains of the Dombas. No, look, we're right here. I'm the only thing that's going to get Vladimir put the table is if he loses confidence that he's winning on the battlefield.

Exactly the reverse is happening now. And the big question, frankly, for 2026, is do Ukrainian lines hold? That's the real issue. And that's why the Europeans cannot back off Donald Trump because Ukraine needs those military supplies from the United States if the lines are going to hold. That's really what the story is. It's not Vladimir Putin at the peace date.

Yeah. Okay, well, let's take goodbye to our complimentary listeners. Thank you for joining us for this first half of the first episode of 2026. If you're enjoying what you're listening, hang on to the back half of Friday Focus. Janice and I are going to talk about Iran, a very consequential week there. We've finally seen this regime crack under the pressure of mulks. multiple failures on multiple fronts. That's exclusive to our monk donors after this short break.

Thank you for listening to the first half of the Friday Focus podcast. To access the full episode, consider becoming a monk donor. For just $50 a year, that's less than a dollar a week, you get exclusive access to full-length editions of our weekly monk dialogues with Andrew Coyne, exclusive access to the live streams of our mainstays. debates and all kinds of other great perks and privileges simply go to our website triple w monk debates that's m unk debates with an s dot com and click on the join button on the top right-hand corner of our homepage again that website triple w dot monkdebates

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