I don't know. We get, we get, we get a lot of thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth? It's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. Okay, well, Trump, the master dealmaker and negotiator, seems [00:00:17] to have met his match in Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, who has been notoriously difficult for American presidents to work with. But new audio reveals that while Trump was on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, he was bragging about his ability to scare leaders like Putin [00:00:34] and XI Jinping into submission. His strategy the more unhinged, the better. And I said, if you go in the Ukraine with Obama, I'm telling you, I had no choice. The public, the public, the public. [00:00:53] So he goes like, I don't believe you, I said. He said, no way. And I said, way. And then he goes like, I don't believe you. But the truth is, he believed me 10%. And I told you this. He believes 10%. I don't believe President XI of China. But I said the same thing to them. [00:01:11] I said, you know, if you go to Taiwan, I'm going to bomb Beijing. He thought I was crazy. He said. To me, I said, I have no choice. I got to tell them we're going to bomb. And he didn't believe me either. Except 10% and 10% is all you need. [00:01:27] In fact, 5% would have been okay too. And we never had a problem. We would have never had a problem. I love that audio. He was like, hey, Putin, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to bomb Moscow. And he goes, no way. And I said, way. [00:01:42] Like, for real? Watch out. Just. I might just bomb Moscow. You never know. He's so crazy. He's so unhinged. That's that's the the strategy there. So Trump, according to Trump, threatened to bomb the capital cities of both Russia and China in order to get the leaders of those countries to behave the way [00:01:59] that he would like them to behave. And this is the first time that we're learning about these alleged threats that were made in the past. He had often suggested that he had one that had he won the presidency in 2020, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine in the first place. [00:02:15] He said that he had some strongly worded, private discussions with Putin that had dissuaded him from taking military action against Ukraine. But then once Trump was ousted and was no longer in office, then Putin felt free to invade without the threat of a crazy Trump looming over his head. [00:02:32] So at the time, Trump never went into any detail about what those discussions entailed. Here's what he said. I had a very strong conversation with President Putin, and he understood. And I won't go into the details of the conversation because nobody has to know that. [00:02:49] But I will tell you, it never, ever would have happened. I don't want to say it, but did they fear me? - I suspect they did. - It. Either way, there's no way to prove or disprove that one. Any of these conversations or threats actually took place, or two, [00:03:07] that either Putin or XI Jinping abstained from taking military action specifically because they were so scared of what Trump might do. So these audio recordings were obtained by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf. They're the authors of the new book, 2024 How Trump Retook the White House [00:03:27] and the Democrats Lost America. Quite a title. And the timing of this audio release is interesting because Trump is currently struggling to get, it seems, any world leader, let alone Vladimir Putin or XI Jinping, to do what he wants them to do. [00:03:42] For instance, he just threatened new tariffs on nations supporting the anti American BRICs nations. Of course, China and Russia are both founding BRICs countries. His State Department has failed to secure the release of Americans [00:03:57] being held in Venezuela right now. So that is not exactly a win for the State Department. And despite a freeze from the Pentagon, Trump announced while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was sitting right next to him, that the United States would in fact [00:04:12] be sending more weapons to Ukraine. Take a look. Are you planning to send more weapons to Ukraine? We're going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They're getting hit very hard now. They're getting hit very hard. We're going to have to send more weapons. [00:04:29] Defensive weapons primarily, but they're getting hit very, very hard. - So many people are dying in that mess. - I'm sorry. I meant to tell you guys to pay attention to that space in that clip, [00:04:45] because he's just sitting there kind of puzzled and nodding along and blinking very erratically because he's just like, what are you what is he saying? Because Hegseth Seth and the Defense Department had just put a freeze on sending these weapons to Ukraine. And here is Trump saying something else. There was. [00:05:01] This is not an isolated incident where we're seeing Trump kind of undermine the other people in his cabinet. He's done it with Marco Rubio, his secretary of state. He's done it now. In that clip you just saw with Hegseth, his secretary of defense, and he also [00:05:17] is seen on camera not really knowing what's going on with his own tariffs. And now he's making all these threats to nations saying I'm going to increase the tariffs if you don't back away from supporting these BRICs nations. So he thinks I guess in his mind, he thinks this makes [00:05:34] him look like a strong man. He's like, don't don't you do it or else I'm going to put more tariffs on you. It is weak right. He's he's having to threaten them. He's trying to scare these people or these countries into submission. When the reality is these countries are going to go, they're going [00:05:49] to align themselves with whichever country is the most beneficial for them. So if Trump just had something better to offer these nations, he wouldn't have to threaten them in order to get them away from the allure of of Russia and China. So it seems weak. It seems like he has nothing to offer. [00:06:07] He also seems kind of like he's being Israel's, little puppet there, because the clip that we just saw with him and Pete Hegseth, that was at a dinner with Benjamin Netanyahu. And allegedly it was at the behest of Netanyahu that Trump said, yeah, we have to send more weapons to Ukraine. [00:06:24] So what are your thoughts on, on, on all of this? It's quite a lot, actually. I mean, you shouldn't really be surprised in terms of Russia's response to Trump being like, remember on the campaign, I'm going [00:06:40] to end the war in Ukraine on day one. But the bottom line is the Americans, as Donald Trump told, you know, the Ukrainian prime minister. Have no cards. They've levied every single sanction. [00:06:59] They sold Ukraine, every single weapon like they were. These sanctions, we were told, the most onerous in the history of the American empire, were supposed to cripple Russia and their economy. The opposite has happened. [00:07:14] They've actually become more self-sufficient. Their economy has actually grown in the time since the sanctions happened. So you can't give Ukraine anymore what you can give them more weapons, but it's not going to help them. They're losing the war. You can put more sanctions on levy, more sanctions on Russia. [00:07:31] It's not going to change anything. They have no incentive to be bullied by the United States here. To be honest, the only thing that would make sense is total capitulation on the part of Ukraine. And everybody admitting this was all a big mistake. We need to stop, let Ukraine just keep the territory that it currently occupies [00:07:49] and holds and accept the L because Russia has no incentive to capitulate at all. And you know, his whole thing about. Oh, I told him I was going to bomb like Trump, like, really admires Richard Nixon, which is hilarious and like, obvious in so many ways. [00:08:06] And Nixon kind of coined the madman theory during the war in Vietnam, where I guess he taught the Vietcong soldiers would be like scared if he did an indiscriminate carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos. You know, just so you guys know, they were not they ended up winning the [00:08:24] Vietnam War, despite the madman theory, which is just so stupid. Like you're using a theory that was proven not to work. But. Yeah, it's it's just crazy. And, you know, of course, the bluster, the idea that China and Russia are scared that you're going to bomb them when those guys can strike America at the, [00:08:42] at the, you know, I mean, the snap of a finger. And Trump would like, you know, over Taiwan and Ukraine, Rain. We're going to attack the two biggest military powers in the world outside of ours, and have freaking California or New York get blown to smithereens because [00:08:59] Trump wanted to preemptively attack. Like, this is all just nonsense and Trump bluster, but we shouldn't be surprised by now. I think, you know, he's he's been shown with the tariffs, with the Ukraine war, with the war in the Middle East. He's got his tail between his legs. [00:09:15] None of his campaign promises are coming true at all. Yeah. And though he he promised 90 deals and 90 days, I believe. - Correct me if I'm wrong. - Are we 90 days in? Today is day 90. Yeah, today it's right now. And I haven't seen the deals. I don't know where they are. [00:09:31] Maybe. Maybe they're coming. He still has a few more hours before the end of the day. But. But you're absolutely right. And about about the bluster. Right. Because a lot of what he's saying now, you can't prove it one way or the other. You can't prove that Putin made a certain decision, or XI Jinping made a certain decision based on what Trump said or did or didn't do. [00:09:49] And an example of that is, China and Taiwan. Trump said, you know, if you if you invade Taiwan, I'm going to have to bomb Beijing. And maybe XI Jinping believed him five, 10%, whatever his number was. [00:10:04] But the thing is, the Biden administration also threatened military action against China if they invaded Taiwan. So I don't know if Trump is saying, well, my threat was better than what Biden was doing. It was more acute. It was more it was more, you know, antagonistic and more inflammatory. [00:10:21] But either way, there's a lot of reasons why XI Jinping has chosen could could have chosen not to invade Taiwan, at least as of as of yet. Right. There's political reasons. There's economic reasons. And also there is the threat of military action from the United States. [00:10:37] But that didn't just come from Trump. That's been there throughout the whole Biden administration. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.