8-18-25 - 6am - Putin Isn't Very Nice

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Putin isn't very nice. Did she say Putin isn't very nice? Correct? Yes, Okay,
well that's actually.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
A very nice that's actually a very good and pertinent
talk back to start today's program out, because I am
fommixed by how desperate the cabal is to make what
occurred in Alaska on Friday an utter failure, an utter failure.

(00:33):
Let's start with I guess this is a caveat, This
is a forward, this is a baseline. This is something
that I want to make certain you understand that I
know and probably actually know it better than you do.
For one simple reason is because I've dealt with his

(00:55):
people before, and that is that Vladimir Putin is a sociopath.
He's a psychopath, whichever one, they're kind of interchangeable, but
he is.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
He's kind of a modern day Hitler.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
He may not be engaging in technically genocide, but he has.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
No concern at all, zero concern for.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
The number of people on either side of this battle
that are being killed. A lot of people like to
make a big deal out of the fact that he
is a wanted fugitive from the International Quarter Criminal Justice. Yeah, well, BFD,
we're not a part of that group that belonged to

(01:47):
the International Quarter Criminal Justice, And I personally, quite frankly
think the International Quarter Criminal Justice is about as worthless
as the United Nations. But that's another story there. I
saw people that suggested on x that when Putin was

(02:08):
walking down the red carpet at at the air base,
that we should someone should have shot him, somebody should
have assassinated him. I kind of chuckled, because that too
shows some naivety about really you you want you want
us out of whether US means did you want one

(02:31):
of the soldiers that you'll hear us sound like in
a minute. Do you want one of the soldiers that
was long on their knees rolling out the red carpet.
Did you want one of them to just stand up
and fire a pistol point blank range in his head?
Did you want some assassin that was, you know, sitting
somewhere up maybe in the control tower to take him out?

(02:53):
Did you want just some citizen? I mean, think about
what it would would what would happen if we have allowed,
or we had a security breach that were allowed Putin
to have been assassinated on American soil?

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Do you think I would have solved the problem.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I'm just I am truly fascinated by people have gone
to their corners about the Ukraine Russian War and they
and oftentimes what's ironic is they're clearly on the side
of I don't think anybody's on the side of Russia. However,

(03:30):
you look at the Israeli Hamas gosing conflict, and there
are some people in this country who are clearly on
the side of the aggressors, but they're not on the
side of the aggressor Vladimir Putin, who has lost upwards
of I've heard different estimates, but you know, the round
figure is a million soldiers. Now, some of those obviously

(03:51):
are North Korean or they're from other foreign countries, but nonetheless,
he is throwing soldiers into a meat grinder and without
any regard whatsoever for human life. Likewise, I understand he
is engaged in violation of international law, the international law

(04:14):
of war, and he is violating human rights by targeting,
specifically targeting civilian locations. So let me emphasize that he
is a sociopath. He's a psychopath, he's a dirt bag
a he's a genocidal Well it's not genocidal, but he's

(04:37):
a maniac. He's an absolute maniac. He has conquered territory.
How did we get there? How do we get to
where we are today? People instantly want to look over
their shoulder about two inches and say, we got here

(05:01):
because of Donald Trump. No, no, we really didn't get
here because of Donald Trump. We got here because of
Barack Obama, and we got here because of Joe Biden.
Now set aside that the fact that Vladimir Putin said
something to well, he said in the speech that you know,
miss you know, your president often says something to the

(05:22):
effect that, you know, this war would not have started
if he had been president. And I want to tell
you that is true. I give no credence to that
statement whatsoever. Now, I do believe that had Donald Trump
been president, that Putin would not have invaded because Putin
already saw a huge difference between a Barack Obama and

(05:44):
a Joe Biden. And yes, I also understand that to
some degree. And I think it is a matter of
degrees that Trump has not drawn red lines. Maybe he's wrong,
kind of pinkish line, they're not fully read, but he
has said don't do this, don't do this, or you know,

(06:06):
and let me be phrase it, but I think more succinctly,
more precisely, Trump has said things like, there will be
severe sanctions, there will be a heavy price to pay
if he, you know, doesn't, you know, reach an agreement.
He started out with ceasefire. I never believed the cease

(06:28):
fire was ever in the cards, although I'm sure that's
what Trump wanted. I don't think a ceasefire was ever
in the cards. You know why ceasefire was never in
the cards because that does two things. That allows both
sides to wrest their soldiers. It allows them to rearm everybody.

(06:49):
It allows them to reposition, recalibrate, kind of gather up
and get ready to push forward again. So I don't
think a ceasefire was ever a realistic thought, even though
it may have been in Trump's head. So again, look
over your shoulder. How do we get here? Well, you
have the two Minsk agreements that Obama engaged in or

(07:14):
agreed to with putin. Those kind of paved the way
for this aggression. And Obama never did anything to enforce
the Minx Minskawan or Menskuit didn't do anything to enforce those.
And yes, NATO did expand eastward. And whether you want

(07:36):
to put the full blame for NATO expansion eastward on NATO,
or you want to put it on some of the
eastern European countries, or you want to put some of
it to on Russia, it doesn't make any difference to me.
The fact is NATO did move eastward, and you have
to understand that Putin saw that as a threat because

(07:57):
Ukraine was that neutral territory and still is to some
degree neutral territory between NATO and Russia. You go back
even further during my old Bosses administration, when we were
trying to get Putin and Russia into either as part
of NATO or at least part of the European Union

(08:19):
or at least part of you know, the G twenty
or the G seven, and get him back involved, make
him a part of all of the global trade and
everything else that we do as part of all those
different units. And then I'm sitting there in Brussels negotiating,
trying to get some movement on the part of the
French and the British and the others to allow Russia

(08:42):
to at least be a part of some of these
trade agreements. And there was just this absolute non start. No,
we're not going to do any of that. So we
isolated him. We completely and totally isolated him. And being
you know, being a short little man, that's a thug
to be a sociopath, a p sychopath to begin with,

(09:03):
plus a thug that pissed him off. And you know,
he was like, okay, well, you know, hold my beer,
I'll show you something. And it took a while, but
eventually he did. So we are where we are today,
and it's not where anybody wants to be. It's not
where Zelenski wants to be. It's not where the Ukrainian
people want to be. And in fact, you think about

(09:25):
the Ukrainians, they had a Soviet they had a Russian
puppet government in place that was tying them squarely, I
mean really good type square knots with Russia, and the
Ukrainian people didn't like it, and they threw him out.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
They threw him.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Out in an election, and in fact he is living
in exile in Russia as we speak. I think he's
still alive. And you end up with Zelensky. Now where
are we well today is what we have to deal with.
You have to understand the history. But in understanding the history,

(10:08):
which I'm being very superficial about. You understand that Putin
saw his opportunity because there are a couple of things
in his brain. He sincerely and I think in some
cases is partially I hesitate, I hesitate to even say
he's even partly right because people will misread that. But

(10:30):
he is right in this sense that culturally, socially, in
terms of familial ties, in terms of how for example,
I'm trying to think of a good example, Seattle and Vancouver,
or Detroit and Windsor Canada, there's an awful lot of

(10:54):
back and forth. Well along some of those borders, there
is an awful lot of back in fourth family ties,
business ties, commercial ties, all sorts of trade going back
and forth. And that is a reality of some of
those oblasts that Trump or Trump that Putin has taken

(11:16):
control of, at least partially in some instances. So historically
there were ties to some of that Ukrainian territory to Russia.
You couple that with Putin's desire to you know, he
thinks that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the
greatest historical, you know, disaster of the twentieth and twenty

(11:40):
first century, and he would love to rebuild the old
Soviet Union. In fact, Lazrov, his foreign minister, showed up
wearing a CCCP, which stands for the Old Union of
Soviet Socialist Republic sweatshirt when they got off when he
was there for the pre meetings. So that's their mindset,

(12:03):
and that's the mindset that you have to deal with.
You don't have to like it, you don't have to
agree with it, but you have to recognize it if
you're going to negotiate, you have to when you're sitting
across the table in negotiations, you have to understand where
they're coming from. If you don't, your negotiations are doomed
to failure. Putin likewise, understands where we're coming from. He

(12:29):
understands that we've been supplying and NATO's been supplying all
of the armaments, but not really personnel, but the AMMO
and the arments and the equipment and everything else. In
order to keep pushing him back. He went into this
battle back in twenty twenty two, this invasion, thinking that
I believe he really thought he could take over the

(12:50):
entire country of Ukraine in thirty days. We got a
thirty day war here and I'll have the entire country.
And he walked in to a buzzsaw that he did
not expect, which also tells you something about their arrogance,
the Soviets, because it's so intertwined. The Russian Federation is

(13:15):
humongous in terms of geography, it is humongous in terms
of the size of its military, but in terms of
its GDP and its size, it's ranking in world economies,
it's it's not number two, it's not it's probably it's
probably in the top ten, but it's certainly not number two.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
It's not China. So they come with a little.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Bit of a chip on the shoulder of they they
think they are more than what they really are. Then
you have to think about the nuclear weapons, and yes,
the United States and Russia have more nuclear weapons than
anybody else. Oh, China's built up there nuclear arsenal, and

(14:01):
they're trying to get as huge as they can. And
I understand that. But right now, the two of the
three superpowers in the world, of which we're still number one,
Russia is probably number two in terms in terms of
nuclear weapons. So again a reality that we have to

(14:21):
deal with. Where are we on the ground. Russia has
managed to conquer some territory, and I think that's the
appropriate word to use. They have conquered the territory. Is
it right no? Is it wrong yes?

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Is it offensive to us? Yes?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
But it is what it is. He indeed has captured
that territory. Whether you think it's right or wrong is
to some degree immaterial, because the facts on the ground
are he controls that territory.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Think of it in this terms.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
If if you are an individual who wants to push
Putin out of that territory, you have to admit that
first and foremost, the Ukrainians were unable to prevent them
from overtaking the territory. Now, how would you fix it

(15:32):
so that the Ukrainians could push Russia out of that territory.
The only thing I could come up with is that
the United States, NATO, and perhaps other countries maybe we
can get although I think diplomatically is unrealistic. But I'm
just as a thought project. Maybe we can get India.

(15:54):
Could we possibly get India to you know, supply some arms, uh,
maybe some tactical nukes if you want to go that
direction and push them out.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I don't think.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
I don't think we could provide enough armaments to push
them out of the conquered territory today. Oh we might
six months from now, we might a year from now,
and you'll have instead of a million people dead, you'll
have two, three, four five million people dead. It will
it will away exceeded World War Two. In fact, we

(16:28):
could reach the point where it exceeds both World War
One and World War two combined if we allow this,
if we allow this trench warfare to continue. So the
only way that I see that we could realistic. If
you if your objective is to push Putin out of
territory he's occupied, or boots on the ground. And I'm
not necessarily saying US boots on the ground, but certainly

(16:52):
European boots on the ground, Polish, British, Spanish, French, German, Estonian, Lithuanian,
just every European company you can imagine putting boots on
the ground and start a ground war to push them back.
Or we could do kind of like we've done in

(17:15):
other wars where we get sucked in. We could start
but again this has the same ramifications. If we're not
going to put boots on the ground, then we start
providing us air cover. What does that do? Yes, you
may push them out, but that escalates the war, prolongs
the war, makes it even worse. So I would take

(17:36):
that off the table. Where does that leave us conquered territory?
So what happened on fred what happened on Friday and Alaska?
If you look at the headlines, putin triumph, European leaders
rush to d c Zlensky set up to fail. Wall

(17:57):
Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times. Oh, this was
a complete and total failure.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
No, it's not, because they're meeting today. They're going to
meet today, Michael.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
No matter what happened, the left wing media will say
that Trump was a failure. I mean, there's no getting
out of this for clean. Zelensky's going to have to
give up something, the Food's going to have to give
a little bit, or this bloodshed will just keep going
and going and going. I say, we just cut them
off on money and weapons and see what happens after that.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
We may get to that point. I personally would rather
not do that. I'd rather see Trump negotiate a settlement
for all of the priftful benefits that would endure to us.
It would strengthen our relationship and our power and influence

(18:57):
with NATO. It would help with the European Union. It
would also show to the rest of the world China, Venezuela,
pick any third rate craphole country, and it would show
that America is back, Baby, America is back. But you're right,

(19:17):
it's and this is kind of what I'm leading up to.
But I want to give you some some things to
think about in terms of why what happened Friday I
thought was good. Was it as well as could be expected?
I actually think it was. Remember, you should never take

(19:43):
Trump literally. You should take him seriously, but not literally.
And I think that's the mistake that even many Trump
supporters make. When he says something, we take the words literally,
so we think that's what's going to happen. Did he
want to cease fire. I'm sure in his mind he
wanted to cease fire, But I never once took it literally.

(20:04):
I never once thought we would walk out with a ceasefire.
Now why did I think that? Because that would mean
that Putin would give up his leverage. He doesn't give
a ratsass whether the International Court or Criminal Appeal International,
the ICC, International Criminal Court. He doesn't care whether they

(20:28):
have indicted him, or they have a search and a
restaurant out for him.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
He doesn't care.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
He doesn't care if he kills civilians because again he
goes back to whether you want to use the term
sociopath or psychopath, I don't care. But he's won either
or both. He does not care, and he's not going
to give up that leverage. He's not going to give
up that constant bombardment in order to get what he wants,

(20:55):
which is whatever he can get, he wants the entire country.
I think he realizes, and I think what's going on
in his own country makes him realize. I said this
phrase on Saturday, and I want to repeat it again.
Dictatorships are very, very brittle. Dictatorships can easily, you know,
the least little crack in a dictatorship is a cause

(21:19):
for concern. And that's why they're so brutal, because one
little crack, one little descent, you've got to completely cut
you bury that, stifle it, stop it, because.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
That crack can grow and grow and grow, and the
next thing you know, you've been overthrown. Look at Ukraine.
That's what happened in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
So that's how Ukraine ended up being a quasi democratic
republic by overthrowing a Putin puppet, and of course that
pisses off Putin. Now again, he's conquered territory. And if
you want to push him out of that conquered territory,
I think that's a very that's a trip wire for

(22:05):
World War III. I think everybody knows that now. Zelensky
probably knows it, but he doesn't like it. He faces
his own See, these are all these factors that are
playing in. He faces his own internal political problems because

(22:28):
even though they've managed to save the country from being
completely overrun, it's come at a horrific cost. And now
that it is causing civilians to be attacked, that puts
even more pressure on him to do something. And at
some point people realize it is what it is. Let's

(22:50):
not let it get any worse. We may not be
able to get it back to the previous status quo,
but perhaps the existing status quo is better then letting
it continue to detegrate. There are bazillion factors going on
in these negotiations.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
I was astounded. I shouldn't be, but I was.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
I was astounded at one how stupid I've got both
CNN sound bites and CBS sound bites. I want you
to hear, and I want to start with Face to
the Nation. I'm going to start with Face to the
Nation because I actually saw the sound bites as they
were playing out in real time. But I don't want

(23:36):
to do it in the order that occurred on the program,
because it occurred in a particular order where she tried
to set up Marco Rubio, who, parenthetically, I will note,
has to be at the top of the dogpile in

(23:59):
terms of this administration. He has proven himself to be
utterly brilliant in dealing with these international affairs. Not that
the rest of them aren't doing great work, but in
terms of this he has just he's like one of

(24:21):
those Hollywood spotlights. He's really shining. So once they went
through the interview with Rubio, the cabal this is how
they set things up. They then bring in those detractors
to try to then establish that well, he really didn't
do very well at all. They brought on Fiona Hill,

(24:45):
which yes, I know at one time in Trump one
point zero worked for Trump. I also think she worked
part time in the in the Obama administration. I can't
I'm not quite certain of that. Probably shouldn't have even
said that. But she's now Brookings Institute. That tells you
all you need to know. Really, she's now at the
Brookings Institute. Margaret Brennan brought her on afterwards and she

(25:10):
said this.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Good morning. Margots.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Well, if on it.

Speaker 5 (25:13):
You were an advisor during that infamous Helsinki summit in
twenty eighteen. You've spoken about that in the past. I
wonder what you think about how this Alaska summit compared.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
Well, obviously quite different in many respects. Positive was the
fact that they decided to skip the one on one
meeting and the lunch. I mean, these are usually pouls.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Oh my gosh, they skipped a lot dragon they skipped lunch.
Dear god, those port sols.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
It was an utter failure. It was a three and
a half hour meeting. I I've been in meetings and
I'm not talking about it at iHeart. I've been in meetings
in foreign countries where the meetings going on and you're
making your you're you're making headway. You may not be

(26:04):
making the headway you expected, but you're making headway. And
the negotiations, the discussions, whatever is going on in the meeting,
whatever the agenda is. You are busy, and they want
to take you out because lunches of this type are
very formal. You have to get up, you have to
go to a different room. There's a seating chart, they're
all the you know, the formalities that you have to

(26:26):
do with the toasts and everything else. And no, you
say this people, no, no, skip skip lunch. But Theila
Hill wants you, wants the uninformed listener to think that,
oh my god, it was a failure because they canceled
the one on one meetings and they and they canceled lunch.
If Trump and Putin are in the room, and they

(26:48):
got Lazrath and they got Rubio, and if they got
an interpreter, and maybe they got a couple of other staffers, uh,
that's still a one on one meeting in my In
my books, now you can have a one on one
meeting where it's Putin and Trump and a translator.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
You could have that kind of one on one meeting too.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
So the definition of a one on one meeting is
is quite flexible. But they didn't cancel anything. They kept
going straight through. Oh my god, they went with straight
through lunch.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
As the sort of set of summits like this on
the press conference obviously was more of an announcement or
a set of announcements.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Do you know, why have you thought about it?

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I mean, they make such a big deal that they
were going to have a press conference, and instead they
came out, Trump deferred to Putin, let Putin speak. Putin
didn't take any questions. Trump spoke very briefly, and then
they walked off. I'm sorry, Cabal, but sometimes they're not

(27:52):
gonna take your questions because they're still negotiating. Have concluded,
they've done all they can do in Alaska, and now
they're going to go back to the respective corners and
they're going to digest what they've done. They're going to
calculate their next moves. We're bringing Zelensky in, Starmar's coming in,

(28:16):
Mcron's coming in, I think what's her name from the
EU is coming in.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
And so now, in other.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Words, they're actually continuing the work. So I wasn't in
the least surprised that they didn't take questions. You don't
want to negotiate with the press, and they're inevitably and
invariably always going to ask questions that you cannot answer,
so to just cut it off.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
I saw it.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
See this shows how amazingly far apart one's perspective could be.
But when I watched them conclude and walk off the stage,
I actually see it. I to go back and watch the
video of it. But when I saw it, I was like, Yeah, perfectly.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Reasonable by both leet is much more by President Putin
and more of a commentary by President Trump. So there
wasn't but free for all of press questions, which I'm
sure was a bit disconcerting for you and others who
were present there.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Oh, he was disconcerting to the reporters there. You're not entitled.
You don't always have the right to ask questions, particularly
on sensitive matters of something as important as trying to
end the freaking war.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Hey, Michael.

Speaker 6 (29:37):
With regard to Zelenski, I think he's the one that's
really backed in a corner on this too, whether he
gives up territory, we're talking about an election that he's delayed.
I really believe that any way this thing turns out,
as far as negotiation and a resolution of this, he's
a marked man.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Oh, I agree, Zelensky's gone. The Ukrainian people have at
least based on the polling that I read and the
anecdotal stories that I read, and in the forum press
they're done with them. So yes, they're admiring for what
he's done, but his usefulness has expired, so let's let

(30:23):
him get this resolved and then let's move on. And
there's also a lot of conflicting information out there about
you know, yes, he's imposed martial law. So if if
it is going to require the Ukrainian Parliament to approve
land swaps or a treaty or anything else, martial law

(30:45):
is going to have to be lifted to do that.
And we can debate till the cows come home about
the the what whether martial law is the appropriate thing
to be imposing on the country right now or not.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
I think it is debatable.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
We can also not forget that that martial law also
impedes the natural course of elections that was supposed to
have right last year, right, so you don't have elections,
and I think people are frustrated by that, and so
it it's why Zelenski is the guy that you have
to deal with right now, whether you like it or not.
But you also have to take into consideration all of

(31:26):
the political ramifications of what he's done and the political
world that he now lives in. And as somebody pointed
out on the text line, just to put a kind
of a cherry on top of this particular Sunday about
the occupied territory that Putin is now occupying, somebody writes,
I heard a gentleman speaking on some station this weekend

(31:48):
who made a very good case for the people in
Ukraine where Putin is taking the land, that they were
Russian speaking and were being treated very badly, not by
the Russians, by the Ukrainians. And I guess there is
there's actually documentation to prove that I don't. I do
not support Zelenski or Ukraine whatsoever. I've had business dealings
with many Ukrainians here in Colorado, and I find them

(32:10):
to be very borish and somewhat dishonest. Well that's I
won't speak to the boration dishonesty part, but that is
one of the factors when I talked about the cultural
connections between some of these regions and Russia. It is historically, culturally, socially,

(32:32):
and even to some degree politically, more aligned with Russia
than it is with Ukraine. So when you hear about
conquered territory. You need to think about it in those contexts.
I guess simply because of time, because I want to
continue on, because I want you to hear the rest

(32:53):
of this. One thing that I want everybody to realize is,
regardless of what you think about the staging, regards to
what you think about the meeting on Friday, regards what
you think about what we will eventually hear about today,
one thing that Trump is doing is I even.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Heard Wolwell still refer to Trump as your Russian ascid?
Are you freaking kidding me?

Speaker 2 (33:21):
He's trying to deal with the world as it is.