The President's Daily Brief - March 18th, 2025: Trump’s High Stakes Meeting With Putin & A Shocking Lab Leak Admission

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: President Trump speaks with Vladimir Putin today, pushing for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. But Russia isn’t budging—demanding “ironclad” guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO as part of any deal. The U.S. ramps up airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthis, keeping the pressure on the Iran-backed terror group as its sponsors in Tehran vow retaliation. Venezuela blasts the White House for deporting hundreds of Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador, calling the move illegal. And in today’s Back of the Brief—after years of dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, The New York Times is finally acknowledging what many have suspected all along: a lab accident in China may have been the real origin of COVID-19. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You talking to me? Kayak, got that right. It's Tuesday, the 18th of March. Welcome to the president's daily brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. President Trump is set to speak directly with Russian President Putin today, pushing for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.

But Russia isn't budgeant demanding iron-clad guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO as part of any deal. Later in the show, the U.S. ramps up air strikes on Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, keeping the pressure on the group as its sponsors in Tehran vow retaliation. Plus, Venezuela is blasting the White House for the deportation of hundreds of Trenneragua gang members, also known as TDA, to El Salvador, calling the move illegal. That's coming, of course, from Nicholas Maduro. We'll examine if the White House actually cares what the despotic Maduro regime says about anything. Okay, look, you and I know that the White House, in fact,

doesn't care what Maduro says. In reality, the Venezuelan strongman has stolen more elections than even Putin. And in today's back of the brief, after years of dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, the New York Times is finally acknowledging what many sane people have suspected all along, that a lab accident in China may have been the real origin of COVID-19. And U.S. government officials, well, worked to suppress the notion of a lab leak during the pandemic. I, for one, am shocked that there's gambling at Ricks. But first, in today's PDB spotlight. President Trump is set to speak one-on-one with Russian President Putin today,

marking the most direct effort yet to get Putin on board with the President. the ceasefire in Ukraine. It's a high-stakes move because while Ukraine and the U.S. signed off on a 30-day ceasefire during talks in Saudi Arabia last week, Russia hasn't budged from its maximalist position. And last time we checked, a ceasefire only works if both sides stop shooting. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he and Putin would discuss, quote, dividing up certain assets. That would include land and, curiously, power plans. Now, one assumes that the Ukrainians would also want to say in divvying up Ukrainian assets. When referencing power plants, Trump didn't elaborate on what exactly that means,

but most likely he was referring to the massive Zapolitia nuclear power plant. Yeah, it's the largest power plant in Europe, and it's currently sitting, well, smack in the middle of Russian-occupied Ukraine. Trump appeared to be somewhat optimistic ahead of the phone call, telling reporters, quote, we want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I think we have a very good chance, end quote. But here's the problem. Putin has shown no interest. That would be zero interest in a ceasefire unless it locks in Russia's gains from the war. He's been clear about his priorities. He'll keep the land that he's taken, and he'll shut the door on Ukraine ever joining NATO. Deputy Russian Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, reinforced that message, telling Russian media that the Kremlin will demand, quote, ironclad security guarantees, meaning that Keev would be permanently excluded from NATO, and Ukraine would have to agree to total neutrality. And it's not just about land or alliances.

Grushko also made it clear that Russia wants no foreign troops, not even peacekeepers, on Ukrainian soil as part of any post-war deal. That could be a sticking point because both Britain and France have floated the idea of sending forces to monitor any ceasefire. So, you ask yourself, what does all this mean for Ukraine? Well, it's not great. And by that I mean, it's the opposite of great. And as we've been reporting here on the PDB, Ukraine's position is frankly weakening by the day. They've now been all but completely pushed out of the small foothold they had in Russia's Kursk region. That's a position that, at its peak last August, covered some 500 square miles of Russian territory.

It was a massive propaganda win at the time and a potential point of leverage to at least have a card to bring to the negotiating table. Now, that's been whittled down to a tiny sliver on the border. The fighting there is less about holding land at this point, and more about survival, preventing Russia breaking through and pushing deeper into Ukraine's Sumi region. That would open up a whole new front in the war, something that Ukrainian forces, which are already stretched thin, can hardly afford. So with Ukraine losing ground, and Russia unwilling to negotiate without major concessions, you ask yourself, again, you keep asking yourself questions, what can Trump actually offer Putin to get him on board? That's the big question heading into today's call, because right now, Russia appears to hold all the

cards, and Putin seems to be well aware of his hand. We'll keep a close eye on what comes out of this conversation today, but frankly don't expect any breakthroughs, at least not without Ukraine, making some painful compromises. All right, coming up after the break, the U.S. steps up air strikes on Yemen's Qutis as Iran vows retaliation. And Venezuela slams the White House for deporting TDA gang members to El Salvador. Now, to be fair, Venezuela's Maduro went to a lot of trouble to export his TDA criminals to the U.S. And now he probably feels like all that work went for nothing. I'll be right back. If you're a QuickBooks customer looking to grow your business without the growing pains, you need the Intuit ERP.

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the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since taking office. The strikes come on the heels of the interception of roughly a dozen Houthi drones on Sunday, which the U.S. military says were targeting the U.S. Sahari-Truman aircraft carrier strike group in the Red Sea. A U.S. official told Reuters that none of the drones came close to the Truman before being shot down, and U.S. forces also tracked a missile net splashed down off the coast of Yemen. The Iran-backed Houthi leader, Abdomal-Liq al-Futi, has vowed retaliation against U.S. ships if the strikes continue, warning, quote, if they continue their aggression, we will continue the escalation. Now, the terror group has also threatened to resume attacks on Israeli-linked vessels, though no such strikes have yet materialized.

A Houthi military spokesman, without providing any evidence, claimed the Iran-backed terror group launched a second attack on the Truman strike group. Amid the growing escalation, U.S. air defense stockpiles are being rapidly depleted to counter-Hutti drone in missile barrages, raising concerns about the sustainability of interception efforts. MIGOT maintains that its latest operations aimed to, quote, defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation. A U.S. official told Reuters that the air campaign could extend for weeks, as Washington simultaneously tightens economic pressure on Iran while seeking leverage in nuclear negotiations. In a post on truth social, Trump escalated his rhetoric against the Iranian regime, posting, quote, every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon as,

as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of Iran, end quote. The president accused the Mullahs and their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps of the IRGC of, quote, dictating every move by the Khutis and fueling their terror attacks with weapons and funding and intelligence. Well, he's not wrong. Iran predictably dismissed U.S. claims that it directly controls Houthi military operations. Iranian state media continue to insist that the Khutis act independently. In response to the U.S. airstrikes, IRGC General Hussein Salami warned that Tehran would respond, quote,

decisively and destructively to any perceived threats from Washington. As regional tensions intensify, analysts warned that continued U.S. air strikes could backfire, bolstering the Qutis resolve rather than degrading their capabilities. You see, despite relentless Saudi-led bombardment during Yemen's civil war, the terror group has demonstrated impressive resilience, embedding itself further into regional power struggles. Okay, turning now to the intensifying fallout from President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, which triggered a legal standoff in the U.S., as Venezuelan strongman, Nicholas Maduro, blasts the mass deportation of TDA gang members to El Salvador.

As we reported Monday on the PDB, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, is a wartime law granting the president broad authority to detain or expel foreign nationals from enemy nations with minimal due process. Now, the law has remained dormant for more than 80 years. It was last used during World War II to justify the internment of Japanese Americans. Now, Trump's executive order is bringing it back to life, specifically targeting Venezuelan nationals aged 14 and older on allegations of TDA gang affiliations. Maduro's regime wasted no time in denouncing the deportations, framing them as, quote, kidnapping of 14-year-old children, end quote. His outrage, however, well, it does kind of

ring hollow against the backdrop of his regime's well-documented political crackdowns, arbitrary detentions, election thefts, and state-sanctioned violence against any dissenters. Seeking regional backing, though, Maduro appealed to the community of Latin American and Caribbean states to formally condemn Trump's move, setting the stage for a broader geopolitical standoff. Meanwhile, El Salvador's president, Naib Buckele, confirmed early Sunday that the 238 TDA deportees arrived in the country and were immediately transferred to a high-security terrorism detention center. We also learned from the Associated Press, citing an internal memo, that Washington paid San Salvador six

million dollars for the arrangement, money that also covered the deportation of 23 MS-13 gang members. Back in the U.S., the legal pushback was swift. Just hours after deportation flights departed, a federal judge in Washington issued an emergency order, halting further removals and ordering any airborne flights to return. The Justice Department, however, countered that the ruling came too late as deportees had already left American airspace. The administration's response to the judicial order has been anything but conciliatory. Trump's borders are Tom Holman openly defied the ruling in a Fox News interview Monday, calling the deportation policy a, quote, game changer.

He vowed defiantly that deportation flights would continue daily, regardless of judicial or political pushback. Holman stated, quote, we are going to make this country safe again, before doubling down and stating, also, we are not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks, end quote. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt was equally unyielding, dismissing the judge's ruling is having, quote, no lawful basis

and signaling that the administration is prepared to escalate the legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the White House is standing firm on its hardline stance, urging illegal immigrants to, quote, self-deport. As the legal and political firestorm intensifies, this confrontation is shaping up to be a defining test of executive power, judicial oversight, and the limits of immigration enforcement in the United States, not to mention the ability of a trial judge to interfere with U.S. foreign policy and national security actions. Regardless, with an overall approval rating hovering somewhere around

27% or so, that's just above the basement level, the lowest in decades, might we add, the Democrats find themselves having to explain to the public why they are fighting for the rights of criminal gang members operating in the U.S. illegally. While they obviously oppose anything coming out of the Trump White House, well, they might want to think about the optics, and perhaps be a little more careful about picking their battles. All right, coming up in the back of the brief. After years of dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, the New York Times is finally admitting that a lab accident in China may have been the real origin of COVID-19. Imagine that. I'll be right back.

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Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis. Before starting Epgless, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about Ebglis and visit Ebglis. that lily.com or call 1-800-LillyRX or 1-800 545-5979. In today's back of the brief, well, it only took, what, five years, but it looks like the New York

Times is finally ready to acknowledge the possible true origins of COVID-19. In a new opinion piece, columnist Zeynep Tufekshi lays out a damning case that the so-called consensus on the virus's origins wasn't just wrong, it was actively manipulated. Tuvecchi highlights how in early 2020, the lab leak theory was dismissed as a conspiracy, remember then, despite real concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology's research. She writes, to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices, and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order

to keep the public from hearing the whole story, end quote. Now, that's not just scientific debate. That's a coordinated effort to control the narrative, to manipulate the narrative. She points to the now infamous Nature Medicine paper from March 2020, which ruled out a lab leak. But internal communications later revealed that some of its authors actually believed a lab leak was likely. One of them, evolutionary biologist Christian Anderson, wrote privately, The lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario."

And yet, in public, he and his colleagues insisted the opposite. Why? Well, according to Tefaxi, they sought guidance from Jeremy Farrar, who's now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization. Ferrar even suggested they revised their paper to more forcefully, rule out a lab leak. And then there's the Lancet letter, which dismissed the lab leak theory as a conspiracy. Turns out, that letter was secretly organized by Peter Dazek, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, the same nonprofit that funneled U.S. grant money to the Wuhan lab for risky virus research. Dazac even strategized on how to hide his involvement. Tufexhi also points to nearly surfaced communications from Dr. Anthony

Fauci's senior advisor, David Morens, who wrote in an email, quote, we're all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did, we wouldn't put them in emails, and if we found them, we delete them, end quote. Oh my, well, how about that? That sounds an awful lot like an admission of a cover-up. So what now? Tufecci argues that we still haven't learned our lesson. Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology are still conducting dangerous research on bat coronaviruses under questionable safety protocols. She concludes, we may not know exactly how the COVID pandemic started, but if research activities were involved, that would mean two out of the last four or five pandemics were

caused by our own scientific mishaps. Let's not make it a third, end quote. All right, well, it's swell that the New York Times has decided to run an op-ed of this sort, but it's five years after Elvis has left the building. And it falls seriously short of the New York Times using their extensive resources to do what used to be referred to as, what did they call it? Oh, serious investigative journalism. I mean, developing actual human sources, digging through mountains of paper to uncover just how complicit the Chinese regime under Xi Jinping was in covering up the origins of the pandemic. You'd think the Times would consider that effort, newsworthy, I mean, if for no other reason than perhaps scoring another Pulitzer.

The Chinese regime has basically received a free pass over the years. The global community failed to demand transparency from them, and there was never any hope that Xi's government would on its own offer up serious cooperation or assistance in understanding what happened. It may sound like I'm simply talking about history now. I'm just rehashing what happened in the past, but I'm actually talking about the future. there is no doubt that will have another global pandemic. And our response is going to be less effective to the next pandemic

because the Chinese regime failed to open up the Wuhan lab to the scientific community to understand everything possible about the origins and early days of COVID-19. And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief for Tuesday, the 18th of March. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirstTV.com. And to listen to the show ad-free, well, I suspect you know what to do.

Become a premium member of the president's daily brief simply by visiting PDB premium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Ryan Reynolds here from IntMobil. I don't know if you knew this,

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