Dan Mitchinson: US correspondent on Donald Trump's planned meeting with Putin getting shelved

Plans for a second Trump-Putin meeting to discuss the Ukraine war have been shelved, days after they were proposed.

Last week, Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest to discuss the war in Ukraine.

US correspondent Dan Mitchinson says reports claim Russia isn't happy with some proposed terms.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International Correspondence with Ends and Eye Insurance Peace of Mind
for New Zealand Business. Yeah, mis UIs correspondent. So that's
hello Dan, Hello Heather. Okay, So the Putin meetings off, why.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, well, I mean that's a good question, isn't it.
I think, just like you mentioned in the in the
World Wires, I think it's just Russia saying, oh, we're
not gonna We're not going to stop fighting at the
at the front line right now. And you know, Donald
Trump is like, well, why go all the way to
this next meeting and spend three hours or more talking
and come out and say, well, we still are at
a stalemate. Yeah, And it looks like that is you

(00:33):
know exactly what would have happened.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Well, because Putin's gonna keep fighting because he's not getting
what he wants, right, which is is Zelenski to give
up land.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean I mean he had
that that call last week with President Trump and it
was there was a lot of speculation that we were
going to send long range Tomahawk missiles over to Ukraine
and and those are our missiles that Putin doesn't want
to see because they can go way into Russia, and
Zelenzas said that it was a Tomahawk's issue that forced

(01:01):
Russia to engage in a discussion. But now apparently Putin's saying, oh, no,
we're not going to do this, and Trump doesn't want
to not come out with something that he can sort
of spin around as being a successful agreement, or at
least on the path towards a successful agreement.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Listen, this business with Virginia Giufrey and the book. Is
this putting pressure on the law makers in your part
of the world to release the Epstein files.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I you know, I don't know. I think this is
so cyclical. We seem to go through this every couple
of weeks where there seems to be a big push
and then something else in the news cycle kind of,
you know, pushes this out of the way. But again,
I mean this memoir that just came out, you know,
she talks about how she was beaten, how she was
sexually attacked by an unidentified prime minister, and that's got

(01:42):
a lot of speculation because she said she was fearing
that she might die a sex slave. And in the meantime,
you've got Republicans over here that are saying, okay, We've
got to get former President Clinton into this investigation right
now because he knew Epstein as well. So now the
Oversight Committee is trying to work on arranging some kind

(02:04):
of meeting. It'll be a closed door meeting with the
former president to see what he knew and when he
knew it and if there's anything that can actually move
this forward.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, hold on the tech. I mean, are they interviewing
Bill because Bill was kind of mites with people at
the time, or have they starting to frame him up
as some sort of a suspect.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
You I think they're just trying to talk to him
because he knew Epstein and that is all that we
know at this point in time. I think Clinton's going
to deny. I mean that he has in the past
it was nothing more than a passing acquaintanceship. I mean,
you know Epstein has got there's pictures with everybody, isn't there.
I mean everybody in Hollywood seems to have had their picture,

(02:40):
or at least quite a few people in Hollywood and
politicians have had their picture with Epstein at one time
or another. And it's just the way it is when
you move in those circles. But how well he knew
him and what he knew. I mean, that's what this
whole thing. May you know, come out and tell us.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, okay, now, the Warner Brothers Paramount deal is an ideal.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well no, I mean they wanted they were offering some
kind of a you know, ridiculous amount of money right
right now, like you know, you know, basically, people are saying, well,
why is this such a big deal. They said no
to a sixty billion dollar offer, by the way, which
is a heck of a lot of money. But we
know that streaming has transformed the industry. It's stealing audiences
away from traditional TV broadcasts, that is sapping advertising revenue.

(03:22):
So what they're thinking is that any deal that Warner
Brothers Discovery would give a buyer, you'd have a major studio,
you'd have a leading streaming service, but you'd also have
a lot of debt. I think there was you know,
thirty five to forty million dollars in debt there, so
Paramount most likely to purchase the company. They're saying, Netflix
has been in the works. The thing is, streaming services
are becoming so powerful right now, I mean, and they're

(03:44):
all raising their rates. Remember how we we dumped cable.
We cut the cord because we said we were tired
of paying two or three hundred dollars a month for cable.
We're going to go to streaming services. Now everybody's got six,
seven or eight different streaming services and you're paying just
as much or more as you were. So these guys
really do hold the hold the strings of this Thingday's.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Very good point actually there, Dan, Thanks very much, mate.
Dan Mitchison, US correspondent. For more from Hither Duplessy, Allen Drive,
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