Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
As you well know, I studied foreign policy in college.
I studied Soviet politics, Chinese politics.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Nuclear strategy, national security.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And you know that, especially as local radio talk hosts
go in this country's probably not very many people who
are more interested in foreign policy questions. And probably, frankly
pat myself on the back a little, probably not a
lot of local radio talk show hosts are better at
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
But there's still a lot I don't know. And it's
not like I watch this every.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Day and right now, well not right now, but in
about three hours, President Trump is going to be meeting
with Russian dictator President Vladimir Putin for well, they're going
to have some kind of conversation that President Trump hopes
will lead to a cessation of hostilities. I don't know,
but I wanted to have someone on the show who
(00:48):
knows a lot more than I do and has been
around the situation and has been around the players, and
has been around all of this, and so I'm very
pleased to have Kevin Sirelli joining the show.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He is the founder of a.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Very cool substack called Meet the Future Right. MTF dot
tv is one website where can find in or Meetthefuture
dot substack dot com and Kevin was the chief Washington
correspondent for Bloomberg TV and Radio, one of the first
journalists who was covering Donald Trump when he started running
(01:20):
for president in twenty fifteen, and he was actually at
the Helsinki summitt in twenty eighteen that had its own
controversies at summit between Trump and Putin. So Kevin, welcome
to Koway. Thanks for making time for us.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you for having me. And I'm familiar with your show,
and truly there is no one better in the country
who knows these topics, so hopefully I can learn from
you as well. So thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
All Right, sorry, but I just have to ask, how
the heck are you familiar with my show?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And why I try to google.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I try to google before I go on Uh huh.
I like the I don't like to go on programs
if I don't know the chefs of what I'm getting
myself into.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
A right, I've learned the hard way guy who does
his homework very good. Okay, So I've got many questions,
so we'll just jump into some of them in.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No particular order.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
What do you think President Trump's true goal is today,
maybe an achievable goal for today.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Good guide toward peace, and a piece that maintains US interests.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
For decades to come.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And the reason I say that is because I remember
being in Helsinki in twenty eighteen covering Trump and Putin
in the meeting, and it was a very different President
Trump in the sense that this is someone who faced
a lot of domestic questions about his relationships with Russia.
Fast forward to twenty twenty five, and this is an
emboldened president who is meeting with I would describe a
(02:49):
thug Vladimir Putin. And Putin is incredibly weak right now.
He's weak in the sense that he grossly miscalculated.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
His egregious war with Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
They have lost more than one million lives. Russian lives
lost one million. I mean, if there's one number I
hope people remember today, it's that when you're listening to
Vladimir Putin later this afternoon, or you're watching him on
the news, that's the guy who cost his country a
million lives so that he could invade Ukraine. Ukrainians have
lost more than one hundred thousand lives. So that's what's
happening on the hot warfront. Then you look at the
(03:22):
economic war, the economic war, and regardless of whether you're
a supporter or the detractor of President Trump, the US
has been somewhat emphasis on somewhat consistent in the sanctions
that they have navigated in appro and heart and waging
against Moscow. The US, I would argue, is winning the
economic war because we are an economic war with Russia.
(03:44):
And the third point, as it relates to the digital
and I spent a lot of time on the future
and the future economies and whatnot, and that is genuinely
what I love to cover. The third front is on
this for the future. If we all remember the disastrous
over lost this meeting between Zelenski and Trump, right we can.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It all went viral and there was a.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Disaster and blah blah blah blah blah. But what happened
after that meeting was that there was a lot of
discussions that I'm calling the pre deal, which is about
how the United States is signaling they're not going anywhere
on the economic front with rare earth minerals in the
reconstruction of Ukraine when there is an inevitable piece. And
as a result of that that on the economic war
(04:24):
is a long term strategic play to protect Yes, rare
earth minerals, but what did the rare earth minerals build.
They build battery for electric vehicles, they build help to
contribute to the semiconductor ships supply chains, and also space satellites,
and I believe space is the final domain, and I
think that space is a huge part of this as well.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So what I'm one of the things I'm wondering about
on the economic warfare thing is we've got all these sanctions,
and we've got these secondary sanctions going with India right now,
which is an interesting play.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But my sense is.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
That even though Russia's economy is strugg I doubt that
there is any economic pressure that Russia fears other than
if somehow China were convinced to stop buying Russian energy,
and I think that's close to impossible. So I don't
know what Trump could threaten Russia with that Putin would
(05:18):
think is a big enough threat for him to back
away from what he considers to be a historical imperative
to recapture Ukraine, which is a place he thinks should
never have existed as an independent country.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I think it's a great point, and I called them,
the totalitarian twins Shijingping and Vladimir Putin, who, by the way,
are conducting military exercises for the past several months off
the coast of Alaska, which is just a brazen, thuggish
attempt to signal lord knows what. But I do think
that the weakening, if President Trump is able to over
the next year weaken the dynamic between Shijingping and Vladimir Putin,
(05:55):
that that overall is in the US best interest. If
any president is able to do that, uh, that that
is in in the US best interest. But the cozying
up of Russia and China should alarm everyone.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, in terms of your.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Question about the economics of this, totally totally see what
you're saying, and and and and hear you out one
thousand percent. But my my, my response to that would be,
but there are a lot of rich oligarchs, thugs who
surround Putin and their international business portfolios, and the pressure
that the US is able to deploy on them, you know,
(06:30):
it could put pressure invert by default on Putin. And
so I think that from from the apparatus of like
the octopuses tentacles, I think that that that could that
could negatively impact Putin over over the long term.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
We're talking with Kevin Sirelli.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
He's founder of m t F dot TV's Meet the Future,
Meet the Future dot substack dot com. And like I said,
MTF dot dot tv. So it must have been fascinating
for you to be on the ground in Helsinki, and
there was a there was a lot of controversy that
came out of that because I believe that was the
meeting where Trump expressed a little more confidence in well
(07:09):
in believing what Vladimir Putin said versus what his own
intelligence agencies said. And you were talking correctly about how
there was this kind well Trump calls it a witch
hunt and really unfair stuff about Trump that dogged him
through his entire first term based on lies about his
involvement with or being a pawn of Russia. And at
(07:30):
some points it kind of seemed like he just wanted
to put a thumb in the eye of the people
who were saying that stuff by pretending to be, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Tight with Russia, just to mess with people.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Now he's not like that anymore, Kevin, I think, But
still Trump has often seemed like a guy who was
easily manipulated by whoever spoke to him last. And there's
no better manipulator than Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So how concerned do you.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Think Ukraine and then by extension, Europe should be that
Putin smooth talks Trump into doing more or less what
Russia wants.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So I made a decision a long time ago try
to not be the mood reader of Donald Trump. And
I do remember being in Helsinki, and what I remember
is the soccer ball, which is I was dusting off
my notebooks and looking at some old reporting stuff that
I did in prepping for today from the Helsinky summit.
And I don't know if people even remember this, but
(08:29):
Putin gifted a soccer ball to Trump, who then tossed
it to Milania in the front row. And yeah, like
that was the whole viral thing at that time that
everybody forgets about, as it relates directly to the risk
that President Trump faces and the risks that Putin faces. Look,
there is a significant risk that if President Trump, and
(08:50):
he's already forecasted how he would get out of it,
which is that he would just end the meeting immediately.
But if Putin tries to go off the rails, as
his top diplomat did with former Secretary of State and
the Biden administration in Alaska where they had a screaming
match for like twenty minutes when they sat down. I
don't know if people remember that, but you can google
it or YouTube and it's riveting to watch diplomacy breakdown.
(09:13):
If that were to happen, Trump says that he would
just get up and walk out, and you know, that
would signal both in the markets but also geopolitically that
this was a dud. But for Trump, you cannot, I
cannot overstate this. He cannot risk being the commander in
chief and being embarrassed on US soil by a hostile
foreign actor, especially at a military basement. Nonetheless, so there
(09:36):
is significant risk, but there's also a significant opportunity. And
for Putin, you know, he he if he plays his
cards wrong, the White House is indicated that again there's
sanctions or those additional stranglehold of the of the Russian
economy could be something that is on the table within
(10:00):
next twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
To be honest, one of the things I wonder about,
and I think it's a long shot, but it's popped
up in conversation the past couple of days is the
idea of the US somehow being part of a broader
package of security guarantees for Ukraine, which has always seemed
like something Trump was very very much against, and yet
it seems to be being whispered about.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, and you're talking about, well, I think the US
is already doing it. I mean, I would even says
I'm being whispered about it. It's being openly discussed. And
I think whether it's a Landslop agreement or concessions for
the rare earth minerals, because that's really again to go
back to the rare earth minerals, the US is playing
a very strategic long game, regardless of political party. I
(10:43):
would argue in terms of signaling to the region, the
Europeans and the Ukrainians that as it relates to rare
earth minerals, the US is strategically intertwining itself in the
future of Ukraine's reconstruction. We're not going anywhere, and we
can't anywhere. All you have to do is look at history.
When a sug like Putin says that he's not going
(11:04):
to stop after Ukraine, believe him. Just look at World
War Two and what happened there. But where I would
argue that the US is having our freedom of speech
weaponized against US is on the digital disinformation front. When
I say digital disinformation, I'm not talking about necessarily the
twenty sixteen and I'm not relitigating that. I'm talking about
(11:27):
disinformation as it relates to misinformation related to Russia's war
against Ukraine. And we've seen the Chinese deploy this, the Iranians,
and the North Koreans to some extent, and of course Russia.
And so the digital disinformation campaign that those players that
I just articulated, that they're able to deploy and penetrate
our own information ecosystems of trusted information is something that
(11:52):
the US needs to do a better job descending himself against.
So those four domains, the hot war, economy, the economic warcraft,
and disinformation, I think are the four domains that I'm
looking at this through.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
All Right, we're just about out of time here, Kevin.
So one last question for you.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
If you were a betting man, would you bet for
or against there being a at least somewhat durable cease
fire in this war by the end of this year, Yes.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I absolutely would. I think everybody wants peace and I'm
an optimist, and I think that you know, I'm I
would hope that everybody's rooting for peace, that the staggering
loss of life.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Is truly hard to comprehend.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I just think that it's also important to note that
it's a it's an enduring piece and one that keeps
that checks Putin, and that Putin understands that he lost,
he lost an incredible amount, And that you are not
going to break up NATO. You are not even a
Ukraine's not in it. But I would argue, in the
long run, they're going to be in it, and and
you're not going to break up the US and our
(12:57):
support of Europe.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I'm less optimistic than you are, but I'm going to
hope that you're right and I'm wrong. Kevin Sarelli is
founder of Meet the Future MTF dot tv or Meetthefuture
dot substack dot com. Great to have you here, Kevin.
We'll definitely have you back. Thanks for making time.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Thank you having a great weekend.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
All right, you
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Two, all right, you got it.