The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - What Happens After Trump and Putin Split? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

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Hey everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from Colorado. And today we're going to talk about Donald Trump and Russia and the Ukraine war and tariffs and sanctions and blah, blah, blah. So in the last couple of days, Donald Trump has gone out publicly and said repeatedly that he's really pissed off at Vladimir Putin because Vladimir Putin has been saying all the nice things and then it's all bullshit. And he just continues the war. Now, anyone who has been following the Ukraine war at all or really Russian relations for the last 35 years knows that this is not a new thing. thing. The Russians lie a lot. And on the Ukraine war specifically, they feel that this is a strategic issue for them and they will say anything to continue the conflict. They will continue not just until they have conquered all of Ukraine, but until they've gotten a number of countries further to

the West. Donald Trump came in saying that he knows Putin very well and he can negotiate a truce in a day. And obviously things have not worked out that way. And so with every stage, Putin has basically lied to Trump more and more and more. And it has made Trump look like a fool in the of the international community and not just a few Republicans back at home in the United States. And it seems that in the last couple of weeks, that has finally reached a critical mass. So the current threat from Donald Trump is if in 50 days, Vladimir Putin has not agreed to some sort of ceasefire and peace deal, details TBD, then there will be a 50 to 100 percent tariff on everything from Russia and in another 50 to 100 percent tariff on anyone who buys stuff from

Russia. Now, the logistics of implementing this would be colorful because we don't have an institution in the United States to handle things, secondary sanctions, especially not at that kind of volume because it would apply among other things to China. But let's just assume for the moment that Trump is serious about this. For this to happen, three things have to go down in the Trump cabinet. Because remember, remember, remember, Donald Trump has the least staffed government in American history. He still hasn't filled out over 90% of the appointed positions. He has the least capable and least competent national security team. And the one person on his national security team where actually knows what's what is the secretary of state, Markerubio, who's been

pushed to the side and really has no impact on meaningful policy. So there's three personalities. You need to watch how Trump interacts with them. The first one is a guy named Steve Whitkoff who does not belong in government at all. He is a real estate developer in New York. He's an old buddy of Trump. And Trump has been throwing him at every international issue. The Ukraine-Russian negotiations, the Iranian negotiations, the Israeli-Gazan negotiations, and this guy knows nothing about any of it.

And it's obvious because as soon as he gets into the room, whichever group happens to have the best PR, basically twists them around their little finger, and gets him to spout their propaganda up to and including in Donald Trump's ear. And that is absolutely how the Russian situation has evolved. Whitkoff is the primary reason why Trump looks so dumb when he's talking about Ukraine and Russia, specifically, and in foreign affairs in general. So Whitkoff probably has now been edged out because it's difficult to imagine how Donald Trump would have had a change of heart to this degree if Whitkoff were still being allowed in the room.

Time will tell, but it looks like. he's already gone. That's number one. Number two, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard has been a Russian plant and a Russian agent since long, long before she joined the government, long, long before she became a Republican. She used to be a Democrat, and part of the presidential debate briefings were about how she was somebody who was probably already on the Russian payroll. And even if you don't believe any of that, look at her foreign policy stances. If it involves the United States, Tulsi Gabbard has been on the opposite side of the United States on all issues regarding China and North Korea and Iran and Syria

and Libya and of course Russia going back 20 years. And one of the first things that she did when she took over his DNI was to basically fire everyone on the Russian desk who would tell the truth to the president. And then she spent most of her time going through whatever had been published and redacting it to put in Russian propaganda. And Russian propaganda to this day remains her primary source of information. So if she's not specifically and directly working for Vladimir Putin, then the then diagram that represents the worldviews is almost a perfect circle. It's probably 99% overlap with the remaining 1% being hairstyles because Putin is bald and Tulsi Gabbard, I will give this to her. Her hair is fabulous. Number three, Vance. J.D. Vance is part of a group of

people that are directly in the U.S. government or one foot in, one foot out like say Elon Musk. who are a certain flavor of white ultranationalist, Christian ultranationalists, based on how you want to phrase that. Anyway, they see Russia as the great white hope as the country that has been suffering and pushing to protect the white race. Now, of course, that is unmitigated bullshit because the Russians are equal opportunity genociders, and the Ukrainians are whiter than the Russians. But he's the vice president, and he can't just be pushed to the side and set out to pasture like, say, Whitcock. And even somebody like, say, Tulsi Gabbard can just be fired on a whim. Vice president is a little different.

Even if formally, officially, the president can just fire the VP, which there would be a court case. Congress is going to get involved one way or the other. It's a big step for Trump to turn on advance. Now, I'm not saying that any of these are going to happen. I'm saying that this is what has to go down if we're going to see a meaningful change. in foreign policy out of this administration on the question of Ukraine and Russia. Now, does that change need to happen? Oh, dear God, yes. We've had some really disastrous decisions made on national security as regard this topic. But even if all three of those people

were suddenly gone, that doesn't really solve the overall problem. Trump has a real issue with letting people in the room who know more about a topic than he does. That's one of the reasons why the government is so lightly staffed. That's one of the reasons why Rubio has been managed to the sidelines. And so he would have to do one of two things. Number one, he'd have to dedicate his entire presidency to this one question, because this is a lot. And just keeping up to date on it would be robust,

especially if you don't have any deputies. Or number two, we'd have to see him turn the page back quite a ways to something that more resembled what he did in the first Trump presidency. When he brought in lots of people from the national security establishment and from the Republican Party and actually stabbed up a proper government. Now, that didn't work very well because as soon as they said anything that made him feel little or unintelligent, he fired them. But the whole point of being a good leader is to know what you don't know and surround yourself with people who do know. He hasn't done that.

If he starts to do that, then we're looking at a very different presidency. But there's a saying about carts and horses, and we are not there yet.