In this Briefing, Jon Decker breaks down President Trump’s latest moves on the global and domestic stage. From navigating the high-stakes peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to confronting the challenges facing Kyiv, Decker explores the complexities of the ongoing conflict. Closer to home, the Briefing covers Trump’s new initiatives to tackle rising crime in Washington, D.C., and the latest legal developments surrounding the Trump Organization. The White House Briefing Room can be heard daily on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the White House Briefing Room for Friday, August
the twenty second. I'm John Decker. President Trump on Thursday
took to social media to weigh in on the war
in Ukraine, just days after hosting two separate summits aimed
at ending the conflict. What the President wrote is getting
a lot of attention in Europe, in Ukraine, and likely
(00:25):
in Moscow as well. I'll get to that in a moment.
Back here at home, the President thanked federal law enforcement
officials for their efforts in cracking down on crime in
the nation's capital.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And I just think it's really it's such an honor
to be with you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And we're going to make Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Grade again. We're making our country grade again. The country
is very close to being great. When they say it's
the hottest country in the world, they mean it. And
this capital is right now after four days, five days,
it's at a level that you haven't seen it a
long time.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And it's all because of you. So I want to
thank you, oh very much. It's an honor to be
with you.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We begin first with the President's latest thinking regarding the
war in Ukraine. Just days after meeting Ukrainian President Vladimir
Zelenski and European leaders at the White House now. On Monday,
President Trump boasted about quickly brokering peace to end the
war in Ukraine. It's been going on since February twenty
(01:23):
twenty two, and the President in just the past week
has met with both Russian President Vladimir Putin as well
as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski. And there seemed to be
a lot of momentum, certainly after those two meetings. But
for all of that optimism, much of it in just
the past two days has gone away. The President less
(01:46):
optimistic in fact, in something that he posted on social media,
on truth Social, the President said Thursday that Ukraine would
have to continue attacks on Russia to have any hope
of winning the war. And this, of course is just
days after hosting those two summits which were designed to
end the war in Ukraine. The President wrote on truth Social,
(02:10):
it is very hard, if not impossible, to win a
war without attacking an invaderous country.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
It's like a.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Great team in sports that has a fantastic defense but
is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance,
the President wrote, of winning, and he wrote, it's like
that with Ukraine and Russia, and then the president blamed
former President Joe Biden for Russia's invasion of Ukraine on
(02:40):
his watch and for at times not allowing Ukraine to
use US arms to strike within Russian territory. The President
wrote again on social media, Joe Biden would not let
Ukraine fight back and only defend Now. The President's analysis
in terms of that post on social media is partly
(03:03):
right on point. When Russia attacked Ukraine in February of
twenty twenty two, with that full scale invasion, President Biden
and his national security team were reluctant to provide Ukraine
with offensive weapons. I remember this in the days after
(03:24):
that invasion in February of twenty twenty two, and I
asked questions of White House Press Secretary Jensaki, why are
you not allowing Ukraine to go on the offensive? Why
are you not providing them with offensive weapons? And they
became very defensive with that line of questioning. In any case,
(03:47):
President Biden at the time, his national security team at
the time, they were worried that direct attacks from Ukraine
could prompt Moscow to escalate its invasion, and of course
they had a different way of thinking in just a
matter of weeks, if not a matter of months. In fact,
it took months before the Biden administration gave a green
(04:10):
light for Ukraine to launch American missiles at Russian targets,
and it took them months to transfer American weapons with
longer ranges. So the president's social media post has a
lot of accuracy to it in terms of his view
(04:31):
about why this war escalated to the point it did
and the fact that Biden did not come immediately to
Ukraine's defense in providing them the necessary offensive weapons to
essentially even out the fight between Russia and Ukraine. Now,
(04:51):
President Trump his hopes for a summit with Russian President
Putin and Ukrainian President Zelenski to hammer out a piece
deal that has not materialized. The President again had that
momentum coming out of Monday's meeting in the Oval Office
with President Zelensky, his East Room summit with those seven
(05:12):
European leaders who came to Washington, who came to the
White House to meet with President Trump. But all of
that optimism seems to have flittered away. And one of
the reasons that it has flittered away is because of
what Moscow has said what Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
has said in just the past forty eight hours. He
(05:35):
has essentially said there will be no bilateral meeting happening
anytime soon between President Putin and President Zelensky. He's also said,
you need to resolve a lot of issues before anything
happens in terms of that bilateral meeting. In fact, in
recent days, several senior Russian officials, including Russia's Foreign Minister
(06:00):
Sergei Lavrov, have balked at this idea of a one
on one meeting between Putin and Zelensky. They say there
needs to be many lower level discussions and agreements that
need to take place before such a one on one
meeting could take place. And that is very different from
(06:22):
what President Putin said in Anchorage, Alaska, exactly one week ago.
I was there. I was in that press conference when
that statement was made by President Putin, which seemed to
indicate he is on board the idea of providing security
guarantees for Ukraine, paving the way for a peace deal.
(06:44):
And here we are several days later, and Russia has
a change of opinion concerning security guarantees and what role
Russia should have. Russia says, if there are security guarantees,
or even discussions about security guarantees, we need to have
(07:05):
a seat at the table. Those seven months into his
second term, President Trump needs to decide how far is
he willing to go in backing Ukraine, backing President Zelenski,
how far is he willing to go in terms of
pressuring Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We know that
(07:28):
the President has threatened these secondary tariffs on any country
that does trade with Russia, any country that purchases oil
from Russia. But the President hasn't pulled the trigger on
those secondary tariffs just yet. That could potentially squeeze Russia's
economy and force Russia to the negotiating table and force
(07:52):
Putin to meet one on one with President Zelenski. It's
important to keep in mind that since that summit on
Monday in the Oval Office, when the President took a
variety of questions, including two for me in the Oval Office,
including the question I asked, why have you dropped this
threat of imposing what he called severe consequences on Russia
(08:16):
for not accepting a ceasefire. Since that time, since Monday,
the President has taken no questions, zero questions on the
war in Ukraine. And perhaps he'll do that on Friday,
when there is an opportunity for the press corps that's
in the pool to ask questions of the President on
(08:38):
a variety of subjects. Back here at home, here in Washington,
President Trump visited federal law enforcement officials at a US
Park Police Operations Center in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC.
And this is amid the president's cracked down on crime
in the nation's capital. And during this visit, he touted
(09:01):
what he described as significant decreases, significant declines in crime
in the nation's capital. The President spoke to hundreds of
federal law enforcement officers, those from the FBI, the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the DEA, the National Guard.
They were all there as the President made his remarks.
(09:24):
The President's crack down on crime began a little over
ten days ago. That's when he announced a takeover of
the Metropolitan Police Department, and the President vowed on Thursday
to have federal law enforcement stay in DC for a while.
He also suggested that he'll ask Congress for funding to
spruce up the city.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So we're going to be rebuilding all of your parks
and it's going to happen fast.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It's going to go up like a miracle.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So you do the job on safety, and I'll get
this place fixed up physically, and we're going to be
so proud of it at the end of six months.
But let's say at the end of a year, this
place will be maxed out in terms of beauty. You'll
have all new surfaces, you'll have all new medians.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Everything's going to look beautiful. A lot of your signs
are going to be taken down. They've been up for
forty years. They look like hell. They look they're barely
standing up.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
They're falling off their holders.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
And we're gonna have all new everything. Now.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
As of Wednesday night, more than two thousand federal agents
have participated in law enforcement efforts in Washington, DC, and
on hand for when the President went to Anacostia was
the Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, and the President handed the
microphone over to Secretary Burgham to weigh in on the
efforts to lower crime in the nation's capital. Let's listen
(10:41):
to what Secretary Burgham had to say in Washington on
Thursday's been.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
In a matter of a week.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
This is a message to every city in the country,
and it's a message to every capital in the world
that America, the greatest country in the world, is going
to have the most beautiful capital and the safest capital
in the world because because of all of you. So
thank you, everybody that's here tonight. Thank you President Trump
for making it all possible.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Also on Thursday, the President got a court victory. A
New York appeals court threw out a more than five
hundred million dollar penalty against President Trump and the Trump Organization.
It was a sharply splintered ruling and it paves the
way for likely an appeal by New York State Attorney
General Letitia James to New York State's highest court. The
(11:28):
decision came from a five judge panel of the New
York Appellate Division's First Department. It's a significant legal victory
for President Trump. It frees him for now from a
massive penalty that caused him a lot of financial headaches
last year. And the President, while he was speaking to
law enforcement, made reference to this legal victory. Let's hear
(11:52):
what the President had to say, Because I had.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
A victory today.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You know, they stole five hundred and fifty million with
a fake case and was overturned.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
They said this was a fake case.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
It's a terrible thing, but that's a nice victory.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
The decision was a partial victory for President Trump. The
reason I say that is because it still leaves in
place restrictions on the ability of the Trump Organization to
do business, including a bar on two of the President's sons,
Eric and Donald Junior, from serving as officers of any
(12:30):
New York company for two years. So that's something that
still needs to be resolved by the highest court in
New York State. As for Friday, not much as on
the President's schedule. The only thing that is on the
schedule as of right now is what's listed as a
twelve pm Eastern Time announcement by the President in the
(12:52):
Oval Office. This will be an opportunity for the Pool
to ask the President a variety of questions regarding a
number of subjects, the war in Ukraine, crime in the
District of Columbia, and the court case that I just
mentioned in which the President scored a partial victory. So
that's what's on tap for Friday. Not much on the schedule,
(13:12):
but an opportunity to ask the President his thoughts on
some of the latest domestic and foreign policy challenges that
his administration is now facing. That's it for the White
House Briefing Room for Friday, August the twenty second. I'm
John Decker. Have a great weekend and I'll talk to
you on Monday.
Welcome to the White House Briefing Room for Friday, August
the twenty second. I'm John Decker. President Trump on Thursday
took to social media to weigh in on the war
in Ukraine, just days after hosting two separate summits aimed
at ending the conflict. What the President wrote is getting
a lot of attention in Europe, in Ukraine, and likely
(00:25):
in Moscow as well. I'll get to that in a moment.
Back here at home, the President thanked federal law enforcement
officials for their efforts in cracking down on crime in
the nation's capital.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And I just think it's really it's such an honor
to be with you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And we're going to make Washington, d c.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Grade again. We're making our country grade again. The country
is very close to being great. When they say it's
the hottest country in the world, they mean it. And
this capital is right now after four days, five days,
it's at a level that you haven't seen it a
long time.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And it's all because of you. So I want to
thank you, oh very much. It's an honor to be
with you.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We begin first with the President's latest thinking regarding the
war in Ukraine. Just days after meeting Ukrainian President Vladimir
Zelenski and European leaders at the White House now. On Monday,
President Trump boasted about quickly brokering peace to end the
war in Ukraine. It's been going on since February twenty
(01:23):
twenty two, and the President in just the past week
has met with both Russian President Vladimir Putin as well
as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski. And there seemed to be
a lot of momentum, certainly after those two meetings. But
for all of that optimism, much of it in just
the past two days has gone away. The President less
(01:46):
optimistic in fact, in something that he posted on social media,
on truth Social, the President said Thursday that Ukraine would
have to continue attacks on Russia to have any hope
of winning the war. And this, of course is just
days after hosting those two summits which were designed to
end the war in Ukraine. The President wrote on truth Social,
(02:10):
it is very hard, if not impossible, to win a
war without attacking an invaderous country.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
It's like a.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Great team in sports that has a fantastic defense but
is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance,
the President wrote, of winning, and he wrote, it's like
that with Ukraine and Russia, and then the president blamed
former President Joe Biden for Russia's invasion of Ukraine on
(02:40):
his watch and for at times not allowing Ukraine to
use US arms to strike within Russian territory. The President
wrote again on social media, Joe Biden would not let
Ukraine fight back and only defend Now. The President's analysis
in terms of that post on social media is partly
(03:03):
right on point. When Russia attacked Ukraine in February of
twenty twenty two, with that full scale invasion, President Biden
and his national security team were reluctant to provide Ukraine
with offensive weapons. I remember this in the days after
(03:24):
that invasion in February of twenty twenty two, and I
asked questions of White House Press Secretary Jensaki, why are
you not allowing Ukraine to go on the offensive? Why
are you not providing them with offensive weapons? And they
became very defensive with that line of questioning. In any case,
(03:47):
President Biden at the time, his national security team at
the time, they were worried that direct attacks from Ukraine
could prompt Moscow to escalate its invasion, and of course
they had a different way of thinking in just a
matter of weeks, if not a matter of months. In fact,
it took months before the Biden administration gave a green
(04:10):
light for Ukraine to launch American missiles at Russian targets,
and it took them months to transfer American weapons with
longer ranges. So the president's social media post has a
lot of accuracy to it in terms of his view
(04:31):
about why this war escalated to the point it did
and the fact that Biden did not come immediately to
Ukraine's defense in providing them the necessary offensive weapons to
essentially even out the fight between Russia and Ukraine. Now,
(04:51):
President Trump his hopes for a summit with Russian President
Putin and Ukrainian President Zelenski to hammer out a piece
deal that has not materialized. The President again had that
momentum coming out of Monday's meeting in the Oval Office
with President Zelensky, his East Room summit with those seven
(05:12):
European leaders who came to Washington, who came to the
White House to meet with President Trump. But all of
that optimism seems to have flittered away. And one of
the reasons that it has flittered away is because of
what Moscow has said what Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
has said in just the past forty eight hours. He
(05:35):
has essentially said there will be no bilateral meeting happening
anytime soon between President Putin and President Zelensky. He's also said,
you need to resolve a lot of issues before anything
happens in terms of that bilateral meeting. In fact, in
recent days, several senior Russian officials, including Russia's Foreign Minister
(06:00):
Sergei Lavrov, have balked at this idea of a one
on one meeting between Putin and Zelensky. They say there
needs to be many lower level discussions and agreements that
need to take place before such a one on one
meeting could take place. And that is very different from
(06:22):
what President Putin said in Anchorage, Alaska, exactly one week ago.
I was there. I was in that press conference when
that statement was made by President Putin, which seemed to
indicate he is on board the idea of providing security
guarantees for Ukraine, paving the way for a peace deal.
(06:44):
And here we are several days later, and Russia has
a change of opinion concerning security guarantees and what role
Russia should have. Russia says, if there are security guarantees,
or even discussions about security guarantees, we need to have
(07:05):
a seat at the table. Those seven months into his
second term, President Trump needs to decide how far is
he willing to go in backing Ukraine, backing President Zelenski,
how far is he willing to go in terms of
pressuring Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We know that
(07:28):
the President has threatened these secondary tariffs on any country
that does trade with Russia, any country that purchases oil
from Russia. But the President hasn't pulled the trigger on
those secondary tariffs just yet. That could potentially squeeze Russia's
economy and force Russia to the negotiating table and force
(07:52):
Putin to meet one on one with President Zelenski. It's
important to keep in mind that since that summit on
Monday in the Oval Office, when the President took a
variety of questions, including two for me in the Oval Office,
including the question I asked, why have you dropped this
threat of imposing what he called severe consequences on Russia
(08:16):
for not accepting a ceasefire. Since that time, since Monday,
the President has taken no questions, zero questions on the
war in Ukraine. And perhaps he'll do that on Friday,
when there is an opportunity for the press corps that's
in the pool to ask questions of the President on
(08:38):
a variety of subjects. Back here at home, here in Washington,
President Trump visited federal law enforcement officials at a US
Park Police Operations Center in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC.
And this is amid the president's cracked down on crime
in the nation's capital. And during this visit, he touted
(09:01):
what he described as significant decreases, significant declines in crime
in the nation's capital. The President spoke to hundreds of
federal law enforcement officers, those from the FBI, the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the DEA, the National Guard.
They were all there as the President made his remarks.
(09:24):
The President's crack down on crime began a little over
ten days ago. That's when he announced a takeover of
the Metropolitan Police Department, and the President vowed on Thursday
to have federal law enforcement stay in DC for a while.
He also suggested that he'll ask Congress for funding to
spruce up the city.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So we're going to be rebuilding all of your parks
and it's going to happen fast.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
It's going to go up like a miracle.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
So you do the job on safety, and I'll get
this place fixed up physically, and we're going to be
so proud of it at the end of six months.
But let's say at the end of a year, this
place will be maxed out in terms of beauty. You'll
have all new surfaces, you'll have all new medians.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Everything's going to look beautiful. A lot of your signs
are going to be taken down. They've been up for
forty years. They look like hell. They look they're barely
standing up.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
They're falling off their holders.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
And we're gonna have all new everything. Now.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
As of Wednesday night, more than two thousand federal agents
have participated in law enforcement efforts in Washington, DC, and
on hand for when the President went to Anacostia was
the Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, and the President handed the
microphone over to Secretary Burgham to weigh in on the
efforts to lower crime in the nation's capital. Let's listen
(10:41):
to what Secretary Burgham had to say in Washington on
Thursday's been.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
In a matter of a week.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
This is a message to every city in the country,
and it's a message to every capital in the world
that America, the greatest country in the world, is going
to have the most beautiful capital and the safest capital
in the world because because of all of you. So
thank you, everybody that's here tonight. Thank you President Trump
for making it all possible.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Also on Thursday, the President got a court victory. A
New York appeals court threw out a more than five
hundred million dollar penalty against President Trump and the Trump Organization.
It was a sharply splintered ruling and it paves the
way for likely an appeal by New York State Attorney
General Letitia James to New York State's highest court. The
(11:28):
decision came from a five judge panel of the New
York Appellate Division's First Department. It's a significant legal victory
for President Trump. It frees him for now from a
massive penalty that caused him a lot of financial headaches
last year. And the President, while he was speaking to
law enforcement, made reference to this legal victory. Let's hear
(11:52):
what the President had to say, Because I had.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
A victory today.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You know, they stole five hundred and fifty million with
a fake case and was overturned.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
They said this was a fake case.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
It's a terrible thing, but that's a nice victory.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
The decision was a partial victory for President Trump. The
reason I say that is because it still leaves in
place restrictions on the ability of the Trump Organization to
do business, including a bar on two of the President's sons,
Eric and Donald Junior, from serving as officers of any
(12:30):
New York company for two years. So that's something that
still needs to be resolved by the highest court in
New York State. As for Friday, not much as on
the President's schedule. The only thing that is on the
schedule as of right now is what's listed as a
twelve pm Eastern Time announcement by the President in the
(12:52):
Oval Office. This will be an opportunity for the Pool
to ask the President a variety of questions regarding a
number of subjects, the war in Ukraine, crime in the
District of Columbia, and the court case that I just
mentioned in which the President scored a partial victory. So
that's what's on tap for Friday. Not much on the schedule,
(13:12):
but an opportunity to ask the President his thoughts on
some of the latest domestic and foreign policy challenges that
his administration is now facing. That's it for the White
House Briefing Room for Friday, August the twenty second. I'm
John Decker. Have a great weekend and I'll talk to
you on Monday.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel