The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why Trump's Stance on Ukraine Has Changed - Part 2 || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Let's unpack Trump's evolving stance on Ukraine a bit more today.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/trumps-stance-on-ukraine-pt-2

Now, when Trump was out of power, he had a beef with the Republican Party because there were people who had studied policy in the world in the Republican Party, who tried to steer his decision-making in a way that reflected history and economics. And one of the weaknesses of Donald Trump, not charisma, it's his ego. And he feels he has to be the smartest person on the room in any given topic. So while he was out of power, he restructured the Republican Party so that all of those folks were gone and basically turned it into an institution that was designed to glorify and re-elect him. And it worked. He comes into power. He no longer has a cadre of several hundred people behind him to help him make policy.

He just has a handful of people who, for their own personal reasons, have chosen to hook up. And he has a cluster of Russian agents up to an including. including Tulsi Gabbard, who is currently the director of national intelligence, who has been whispering in his ear and amending the national intelligence brief since day one with Russian propaganda. Well, as he comes in, he does the same thing to the federal bureaucracy that he did to the Republican Party and basically stripped it of expertise so that no one could ever tell him that, you know, he was wrong.

And what that meant is for the first six months, he was wrong. lot, especially as regards Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine War. We actually had some weird situations where Trump was blaming the Ukrainians for the Russian rape camps that had been set up, or the kidnapping of Ukrainian children that the Russian government set up a cabinet-level position to take care of, and the death camps and the mass murders, and, you know, on and on, using phosphorus to clear out villages. Fossphers is kind of. like me, pull him. Anyway, the turning point for Trump was in May and June. He engaged in personal diplomacy with Vladimir Putin. He decided that Steve Whitkoff, who had been his front

man, really didn't know what he's doing, and that was because Steve Whitkoff really didn't know what he's doing. And so Trump took it over directly. He couldn't hand it off to the State Department, because that is handled by Rubio, who's a guy he doesn't particularly like, and actually I'm a little surprised he hasn't fired Rubio. yet. He's basically just sidelined the entire national security and foreign service institutions. Put him under Rubio and then sent him off

to the side and told them to do nothing. Anyway, he takes over the negotiations himself. So that puts Putin in a position where he's lying to Trump's face repeatedly. And according to Trump's own words, on six different occasions we had a deal to

end the war. And then less than 24 hours later, the Russians would bomb a civilian target. a bomb, I mean sending several dozen, several hundred drones and missiles and bombs into major cities. The first five times this happened, Trump seemed annoyed but willing to give Putin the benefit of the doubt. But the sixth time, the sixth time, Melania Trump called Donald Trump out on it. And that apparently changed the minds. Keep in mind that Melania Trump was not born in the United States.

She was born on the other side of the Iron Curtain in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Slovenia. So she among Trump's inner circle now is the most aware of international relations of all because she's the only one who can't be fired. How useful that will come to be in the days and weeks and months to come. I have no idea.

But what she has done very successfully is convince Donald Trump that he was being played, that he was being lied to, and that he was being made to look quite unintelligent. And so a few weeks ago, no, two weeks ago, Trump gave Vladimir Putin a 50-day deadline to change policy. And in the last 48 hours, Trump has said, I'm not going to give him 50 days, because nothing's changing, and nothing will change. And that's part of the problem of this conflict. Putin accurately sees the Ukraine war as the beginning of Russia's last best chance to survive this century.

From the Russian point of view, and I think they're correct, if they cannot conquer all of these countries, not just Ukraine, the other 15 as well, Russia will vanish from the earth before 2100, based on how the war goes, potentially a lot faster. So there can be no peace treaty that the Russians can agree to that they will enforce. that leaves any of these countries independent. This is a country that is fighting for its existence. Unfortunately, for the Russians, in order to continue to exist, they have to conquer a number of people who collectively are of a greater number

than there are Russian ethnics on this planet. So from the American and the European point of view, the question wasn't, will we or won't we stand against the Russian? is where would we draw the line? Where is the point where we say no further? And for those of you who think that we can just wash our hands of this completely, a couple things to keep in mind. Number one, the Russians have more nukes than we do, and since they're on their way out, the incentive to use them is a lot higher because from their point of view in the long term, they have nothing to lose. Number two, if the line that we decide to defend is,

in Ukraine. Well, then all of the Europeans and all of the Ukrainians are between the Russians and us. And the war to this point, the United States really hasn't bled. We haven't really provided much cash, and we haven't provided much in terms of military equipment that we actually use. What the Ukrainians are using against the Russians, or at least until recently, has been American equipment that has been decommissioned since 1995. They are basically going through our hand-me-downs and holding the Russians off. And the cost to us is minimal. The alternative is, of course, to leave the Russians and the Ukrainians to it, break the

alliance go home and just hope that in everything that happens with the conflict and the time to come, the Russians just forget that we have been the target of all of their nukes and all of their propaganda since 1935, and hope that should they ever be stopped by someone else, that on their way out the door of history, they choose not to send a few hundred nukes our way, because they really do hate us massively. Anyway, for those of you who have bought the Russian propaganda, you're going to have some uncomfortable times in the days ahead. Donald Trump's ego has been bruised, and he is now starting to direct policy against the Putin government. There are a thousand ways that this can go. I can't predict

the specifics. People like Tulsi Gabbitt are still in place who are still beating the drum on behalf of the Russians inside the White House. This can go a lot of strange directions. But hopefully, this little brief gives you an idea of why things are happening the way that they are. And maybe, just maybe, it'll make you reconsider a few things. Thank you.