But I want to stop the war. I don't want that war to continue. And I'll stop that war. Mark my words. I'll stop that war in 24 hours. We need to figure out here now with a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it's not, then I think we're just going to move on [00:00:17] from our perspective that the president feels very strongly about that. Those two guys should probably talk. Of course, that was Donald Trump back in 2023, back when he was in the mode of claiming that he would accomplish everything in 24 hours, including ending the war in Ukraine. He told us to mark his words, and we have. [00:00:34] And it doesn't matter because the buck stops anywhere other than with Donald Trump. He probably doesn't even remember the conflict is even happening. But, but he's also, over the past couple of months, been implying that he's going to force Ukraine to accept some sort of deal on the terms of Russia. [00:00:51] And, that sounded bad enough. Now, according to Marco Rubio, there might not be anything. He might just wash his hands of the entire thing and let Russia do literally 100% of whatever they want. Which, maybe not the biggest surprise, but this is just another area where Trump [00:01:08] might be preemptively either giving up or letting someone else control what happens. Part of the deal. No kidding. No. So bit of a disaster here. The main question I have, and we'll see if we can answer it in, in, giving you the details of the story is. [00:01:26] Yes, but what happens when we just let it go? Does that mean we let the Ukrainians go and let the Russians just do whatever they want to them? Does that mean we keep funding them at the same rate that we're funding them? What in the world does he mean? Let's try to figure it out. [00:01:43] Yeah, I'd guess it's pretty much what you said. I think it's letting whatever Russia wants happen, happen. That's my fear. But that said, let's hear more from Marco Rubio and see what he has to say about it. I think it's important to remind everybody that the Ukraine war is a terrible thing, but it's not our war. We didn't start it. [00:01:58] The United States has been helping Ukraine over the last three years, and we want it to end. Ten, but it's not our war. I want everyone to understand that. And the reason why I make that point is the president has spent 87 days at the highest level of his government, repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. [00:02:14] We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not. I can tell you this. This war has no military solution to it. It really doesn't. It's not going to be decided with neither side has some strategic capability to end this war quickly. [00:02:30] And so what we're talking about here is avoiding thousands and thousands of people from dying over the next year. We're trying to avoid that. We saw what happened last weekend with a missile strike in Sumy, where people died on Palm Sunday. We're just going to see more like that on both sides. We're going to see more of that. We're trying to prevent it, but we're not going to continue to fly all over the [00:02:47] world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made. So if they're serious about peace, either side or both, we want to help. If it's not going to happen, then we're just going to move on. Oh, I was actually prepared in this segment to be pretty critical of the Secretary of State, effectively washing his hands of this conflict. [00:03:05] I didn't know that he had to fly places and take meetings. That does sound very exhausting. People talk so much about, like the strength and toughness of the Ukrainian people have they had to fly around the world? Have they had to take meetings? [00:03:21] They don't know the first thing about suffering. Marco Rubio is the one who's suffering in this thing. But anyway, he's much more focused there on saying that it's not our conflict. We didn't start it. Who did start it? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you ask literally anyone who knows what's going on. Obviously it was Russia, but if you ask the Trump administration, it was Ukraine. [00:03:39] One of the fundamental issues, probably making it more difficult for them to actually end this conflict, that they refuse to even acknowledge the truth about it or what Ukraine maybe deserves coming out of it. So why would Ukraine accept any of the horribly biased deals that they're offering right now? [00:03:55] That said, we're going to have Trump and JD Vance take on all of this. But Jake, I wanted to give you a chance to jump in and respond to Rubio there. Yeah. So Trump's going to back him up as you're going to see in a second. So, look, first, I guess a lot of the right wing thinks that they've just [00:04:13] accepted that he's an absurd human being. But I wish we hadn't accepted that in our president. And here's what I mean by that, that he was going to solve it in 24 hours. Like, did anyone really believe that? And are you now are you, like, super frustrated, with Trump, that he [00:04:33] didn't solve it magically and in 24 hours? Or have you moved the goalpost along with him and said, oh no, we didn't mean 24 hours and we didn't mean three months. We meant maybe never. And so that's moving a lot of gold brothers. Okay. [00:04:49] So now his second question is if you think, well, no, look, I, I know the president is absurd and he says ridiculous things to get attention. And I've made my peace with it. And as long as he makes peace in this particular conflict, I don't care that he's, you know, grandiose and at times buffoonish. [00:05:10] I wish we hadn't made peace with that. And when it comes to being, you know, the president of the United States, I wish we had a serious person who actually meant what he said instead of making up ridiculous things. Now, to the heart of the issue. If all of this somehow magically gets them to a peace deal, then great. [00:05:26] I don't I don't really care about the the ups and downs of negotiations. ET cetera. But does it look like we're close to a peace deal? Because it doesn't look like it to me. And so now they're at the point where they're almost throwing their hands up. Right. So. Remember that one of the issues here [00:05:45] was that everything was going along well. Fine. They were at least doing negotiations. But then Trump and and the US demanded mineral rights in Ukraine. That did much, much worse since. Give up on. It's an epic disaster. [00:06:01] What's been incredibly unclear. You know, the whole time. I mean, first, Jen makes a great point that, the president boasted that within 24 hours he could end this conflict. I think he assumed that since he's so chummy with Putin that he would [00:06:16] actually be able to get through to Putin and negotiate some sort of deal that was good for Putin. And maybe, you know, forced to be accepted by the Ukrainians and all the rest of us. But clearly, we see that the president does not have nearly the power deal [00:06:37] making power or even the political power that he claims to have. After all of these theatrics and all of this sort of nauseating set of stories where he is essentially repeated systematically Russian state talking points and, [00:06:55] obviously publicly embarrassed Zelensky to try to push him into a leverage position where he would agree to the mineral deal. What is under discussed, as usual when it comes to this president is what exactly does he want? And what is the outcome he is pushing for? [00:07:13] And for Marco Rubio to basically say there's no military solution, but essentially say that the US is not able to do what it said it could do in 24 hours and broker an actual peace agreement is very telling. [00:07:28] It speaks to the weakness of this administration, the weakness of its political leverage, and the absence of a political vision. And one last point. Note, everybody, that there were a couple ceasefires that were agreed to [00:07:43] between the Ukrainians and the Russians, brokered by international parties. Those ceasefires are not being observed as we speak, including in the Black Sea, around grain shipments and so on. So nothing has been accomplished, rather than an enduring peace deal in 24 hours. [00:08:00] So take that as a contrast. He doesn't know anything about negotiations. He doesn't know anything about diplomacy. He blusters and he threatens. And sometimes if we happen in an area to have some sort of overwhelming advantage, we might get people to just cow before us or whatever, but even that doesn't operate [00:08:17] or work as often as he thinks it does. He thought that that would get him through this entire trade war thing, and it didn't work out that way. So he just he doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't care to know what Ukraine would need to actually, sign on to some sort of peace deal. [00:08:33] And so the future just looks really dark. That said, we did say that we would give you what Trump has to say about Rubio's most recent comments. So why don't we get to that? And then we'll update you on a few more of the recent wrinkles. Rubio said that the US will have to figure out whether a deal can be done [00:08:49] between Russia and Ukraine in a matter of days, or you will just move on. - Very. - Shortly. - How many days is that? - No specific number of days. But quickly, if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, [00:09:06] we're just going to say you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people, and we're going to just take a pass, but hopefully we won't have to do that. Okay, so importantly, there are two parts to that. So one is how many days? No specific number because he has no idea. [00:09:21] He has no idea with this as he does with anything else. Don't ask him for specifics on what his administration is going to do. He is clearly not in charge in many of these topics. The other area, though, is way clearer. He says, if you know if one of the side is being really irresponsible, [00:09:38] we're going to say that they're terrible, horrible people. I wonder which side he's talking about. I wonder, I wonder, probably both. I think he's probably willing to call Putin horrible, too. Not just Zelensky. And the Ukrainians know that's obviously ridiculous. And and look, that's supposed to be playing hardball. [00:09:54] But again, if you're Zelensky just constantly being punched in the face by this guy after you've already, as Jake alluded to, you've already agreed to an incredibly unjust mineral sharing deal sharing like we had any claim to it in the first place. [00:10:10] You've already given Trump what he demanded his pound of flesh. And he's continually insulting you, your administration and the people of Ukraine. And now we find out that there was this this meeting yesterday, one of the the arduous meetings. That's so exhausting. [00:10:25] Marco Rubio, people from officials from Ukraine, Europe and the US all met in Paris. And at the meeting, US officials proposed a cease fire plan. And, here are some of the issues with it. According to European officials, the proposal would effectively freeze the war [00:10:41] with Ukrainian territories now occupied by Russia remaining under Moscow's control. Kiev's aspirations of joining NATO would also be off the table. And on top of that, Russia not giving up literally anything, not a foot of territory would also. [00:10:58] So now they never have to worry about Ukraine entering NATO. Okay, so Ukraine will be no better prepared for a follow on invasion a year or two years from now after this and Russia gets, relief from economic sanctions, they get everything, I guess, [00:11:14] other than the entirety of Ukraine offered up on a silver platter. But even that, they're only not getting that immediately. They're definitely getting that in a few years. All of this utter madness. And Russia says, even in response to all this, the root causes of the war [00:11:30] have to be addressed before committing to a cease fire. The root cause of the war, to be clear, was Vladimir Putin invading the goddamn country. That's the root cause of the war. I know the nonsense. They would spin that like, oh, Ukraine is talking about joining a defensive alliance or something. I just want you to think about how utterly insane that is. [00:11:47] Let's say I hear tell that one of my neighbors is talking with my other neighbor, and they're setting up some sort of deal where if I rob one of their houses, they'll both shoot me. And my response is, I rob his house that night. I don't seem like the good guy in that story, do I? [00:12:03] It seems like inevitably I was going to rob the house. I just wanted to do it under the right circumstances. And that is that is exactly what is going on with Russia. They were preparing to at some point invade and conquer Ukraine and likely other former Soviet republics. [00:12:19] And they didn't like the idea that Ukraine entering NATO would stop them from doing that. There is no reason that Ukraine, being a member of NATO, would bother a country that had no interest in actually invading it. It just doesn't make any logical sense. Ramesh, any thoughts about Donald Trump or any of the other stuff I've said? [00:12:36] Well, Russia has already showed long before this latest set of, you know, the last few years that it would invade Crimea and, and and you know, it is it is it's interesting how our current administration is sort of playing up isolationism in certain ways without recognizing our own kind [00:12:55] of complicity in militarizing the world. And I think a big part of that is, you know, the worship, as Jenk was alluding to earlier, of the Gilded Age that this administration has. We can stay isolated. We're just going to be about ourselves. But whenever we can do land grabs or resource grabs, let's do it, [00:13:12] which is an old school, colonial imperialist kind of approach. That said, I do think we have this is not any justification for any of Russia's actions who started the war, clearly. But the US has not been an honest partner, with its decisions. [00:13:31] Its, its stated after the fall of the Berlin Wall that it would not that that NATO would not expand east of Berlin. That said, you know, it's not there's there's clearly a reason why, all of these nations that are generally peaceful, want to join NATO. [00:13:50] So what is very sad to me is that the US did not show any leadership since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the fall of the Berlin Wall could have brokered an actual, real kind of peace agreement that we could be observing to this day, [00:14:07] propped up people like Yeltsin, who then, basically who's pathetic, regime led to the rise of Putin and the oligarchs and the deal he cut with the oligarchs. And some of that is uncannily like what we're looking at right now in this country. So it's very sad. [00:14:22] The US didn't show any leadership then, and it's not showing any leadership now. And that basically is going to give Russia carte blanche to be as aggressive and militaristic as it wants. And certainly it is not without question that Putin would want to expand and get back to something approximating the Russian Empire. [00:14:39] But the key for me is de-escalation rather than escalation. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I while all this is ongoing, I feel terrible for the people of Ukraine who have been through unimaginable situations for literally years now, effectively being told by what's supposed to be sort of like one of the moral forces [00:14:57] for safety, security, peace. All of that telling them, either give up your country now or we're not going to help you get any deal, and then it'll be taken from you over the next year or two. But a horrid abdication of our place in the world. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. [00:15:15] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.