I Know the Secret of Why Trump Truly Fears Putin

Hey friends Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. election register or get tailored support at votefromabroad.org Look state deadlines are super close so don't waste another second go to votefromabroad.org now and click "request my ballot" Ask to receive it by email all you got to do is fill it out and send it back in Don't miss this chance to shape the future don't delay votefromabroad.org Imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. I think Trump is afraid of Putin. One former British intelligence guy, MI6 guy, I spoke to him. It's the Manchurian candidate on steroids. I think some kind of compromise is the best working explanation. The FSB KGB are adept at surveillance. They break in and watch everybody. And of course that means that we trumps of Donald Trump, tapes of Donald Trump during his visit for example in 2013 for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. And really you just have to ask yourself what did Trump do there? Whatever happened there or didn't happen there. Trump knows the Putin knows. And I think it's this kind of Trump knowing the Putin knowing gives Putin leveraged. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Don't forget to like and smash the subscribe button because we are independent media. This is how you show your support. And it's why we can bring you conversations like the one we have this afternoon which I found fascinating about Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin who is just invited to the G20 summit in December. It will be the first time that Putin has attended the summit for seven years and certainly the first time since he invaded Ukraine. At the center of our conversation is this book betrayal which has not been allowed to be published in the US and will get into why. But the author Luke Harden really gets into this mystifying relationship between Putin and Donald Trump. What does Trump get out of it? What do the Russians get out of it? So no more ado, let's get into it. Luke, welcome. Joanna, great to be with you. Hello. Hello, hello. So you say that the Trump Putin relationship is the biggest mystery in international politics. Where do we begin with that? But what do you think? What do you think is at the heart of that mystery? Well, I mean, I think there are several overlapping factors and I was halfway through writing this book last year when of course Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin to Alaska for a summit in Anchorage. And this is one image I couldn't shake which which you have to kind of go over where Trump is on Air Force one. He comes down the steps are looking lethargic and uncharacteristically nervous, lacking his usual alpha swagger and he stands at the sort of red carpet tea and then Vladimir Putin, this sort of chilly small figure and suit emerges and walks towards him. And then Trump starts. Manically applauding like a seal like a seal and you know in footage, which is so kind of cringy that the White House kind of removed it from its social media feeds from from the summit and so there's the mad applause. Then of course they have to have talks about about Ukraine, then there's a press conference afterwards with the whole world's media, you know, flying into here to hear. We've got a deal on Ukraine, what's going on and of course it's an American president on American soil, so he goes first, right, except he doesn't. Trump then prefers to put in who makes a kind of rambling speech about history for eight or nine minutes in Russian. And then that's that's a wrap. There are no questions and off they go and the thing is whether you think it's a conspiracy or whether you think there is something as I do in terms of the Trump Putin relationship. You need to explain what's going on and really I think there is definitely dictator envy, which is a phrase used by Fiona Hill who work for Trump in the first Trump administration. In other words, I think Trump envies Putin's ability to make money, make even more money than he has billions, tens of billions over over a quarter of a century. Putin is reputed to be the richest man in the world, right. I mean, I think he is. And I think everyone in the Russian political elite understands that fits. Obviously, Joanna, if you go to, you know, if you go to Chase Manhattan in New York and say if you've got an account in the name of Mr Vladimir, Vladimir of rich Putin, they say, no, sorry, nothing here, but everybody inside Russia understands that his assets are held for a series of proxies and friends and relatives. I found some of his money in the Panama papers. You remember that offshore leak and the paradise papers and yeah, and he can he can use this for personal projects or national projects, but he's worth hundreds of billions of dollars for sure. And, and of course, Putin, the other thing Putin can do that Trump can't do is murder his opponents, closing them up and shoved out of windows. Right. And he really has comprehensively rolled up the political opposition in Russia in a way that Trump has not yet may wish to do, but has not been able to do in the States. And then on top of that, I think there's what you might call ideological convergence. In other words, there are quite a few people in mega, including Tucker Carlson, for example, you know, who look at Russia and see a well-organized Christian, socially conservative anti-woke kindred state where you know what, a few years ago, hitting your wife was decriminalized in Russia. And where the rhetoric or of the state is directed against liberals, gay people degenerate Europeans and so on. And so, you know, there's a sort of affinity to the degree where some American evangelicals have actually moved to Russia to go and live there. And then I think the real key to the mystery is what the KGB called Compromise or Compromising Information. And, you know, what we know as fact, rather than as speculation, is that Eastern European, you know, spy agencies back in the Cold War had been spying on Trump for half a century. So since the late 1970s, when he married a woman from behind the iron curtain from from from red Czechoslovakia. And I've been to Prague and looked in the archives of the STB, which is the Czechoslovak intelligence agency. And there are lots of files about the Trump family about little Donald junior, you know, breaking his leg about a fauna and her modeling career. And, of course, this product was sent back to to Moscow. And then if you fast forward to the mid 1980s, the save it ambassador. And it goes, goes into Trump, tie invites all Trump to visit Moscow in the Leningrad, which is what he does. And what you have to understand is, you know, at the same time, the KGB was sending memos, secret memos, which were leaked to British intelligence by. Oh, good. You have ski famous to factor. Basically, berating KGB offices abroad and saying, you are not recruiting enough Americans. We need more Americans as assets as confidential contacts. And oh, and by the way, here's a checklist of what we're looking for in a potential asset. And it includes being a bad analyst, being bribable, having affairs on the side, not having any great principles, being sympathetic to Russia. And you get on this list and it basically is Trump. If a chef came out in a restaurant and said, I've never actually cooked this before, but how hard can it be? You'd probably head to another cafe. Because when something really matters, experience isn't a bonus. It's the whole point. That's why so many people turn to Morgan and Morgan, which is America's largest injury law firm. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for the people for over 35 years with over 35 billion dollars recovered for their clients. Morgan and Morgan knows a thing or two about fighting to get you the compensation you deserve. So if your car gets totalled, you get hurt at work or someone else's bad decision becomes your very expensive problem. You can check out Morgan and Morgan. And their fee is free unless they win to see if you have a case you can go to for the people dot com slash daily beast. That's for the people dot com slash daily beast. I have to stop you because I found this absolutely riveting and I am one of the very few people Luke who actually read Ivana Trump's memoir odd but true. In it, she talks about one of the reasons that she was allowed in and out of the country because she was a junior Olympic team skier was the fact that she would always give them a very efficient download or debrief of her travel. back, she would sit with the Czechoslovakian intelligence services and talk quite happily to them. And I found it fascinating that they then shared those records with the Russians. The Russians, then, she's still doing this when she's married to Trump. And I guess she's used to it. I mean, to an American or to a Brit, the idea that you would be being debrief when you come back from travels that you would expect is that you would give them certain amounts of information. It's obviously sort of a nathema, but Ivana Trump was used to it. And as you say, the Russian, the Russian ambassador then approaches Donald Trump and encourages him to come for a visit, which he does, right? He does. So can you pick up this the story from Donald Trump first of here? You've got Gorodewski saying we must have more Americans. A 1985 questionnaire set out what sorts of targets might be of interest to the KGB. The agency wanted to know about an individual's attitude to Soviet and American foreign policy and their career prospects. For example, how likely was it that the subject could come to power, occupy the post of President or Prime Minister, also of interest, were personality traits that might be exploited are pride, arrogance, egoism, ambition, or vanity among the subject's natural characteristics. I mean, Ivana had already told them that her husband was interested in politics. It's impossible not to believe that Donald Trump was clearly a person, if not a Russian asset, as you lay out, he was very clearly a person of to be influenced. Yeah, that's right. And also, by the way, we should remember that Donald Trump's father-in-law, Ivana's father, also reported to the secret police. I mean, he's in the files as well. I mean, he would update them and brief them. And actually, when I was in Prague, I knocked on the door of one of the, one of the retard, secret agents who had been pursuing the Trump family. And, anyway, he didn't want to talk to me. He said, you're trying to put me in, you're trying to put me in my grave, and then he shut the door. Yes, I thought that was an amazing line. Actually, it's a very chilling line. And I think he, in the book, he used the word tomb. Right. He says, you're trying to put me in my tomb. And I thought, oh, the word tomb, it was so gloomy. So gloomy. So what we can say for, I think two points. One is, yes, there was an extensive late Cold War cultivation exercise by the KGB to kind of, you know, to see, to see where Trump would go and to kind of push in and support him. But I think the other key point to make is, is not that the KGB are, they're not sort of bon villains stroking a cat who pressed the button and things happen. They didn't know what would happen with Trump. They're basically their method. Both then and now is opportunistic. So they approach a wide range of potential targets. I mean, Trump, we have to, we agree, is a very promising one. And knowing that most of them would fall down would not become prime minister or president, you know, but might be useful. And I think what they identified in, in Trump was his sort of chaos. He brought the divisiveness and the fact that he here is someone who could really, if he, if he went all the way, you know, damage and undermine America, which the KGB always referred to as the Globney Prathevnik, meaning the main adversary. And that, that was the goal. The goal was to undermine and sabotage American democracy. And in Trump, I think they found someone, they thought they could do business with. Can they believe their luck that they happened among, as you say, they cast a wide net of other people. And I'd love to know some of the other business people that they thought might be useful. But, but I mean, what is the feeling about Trump in Moscow? I mean, what do, what do Putin and the Russian intelligence, the FSB? What, what, what do they say about Trump? And I, I should just point out as well that you mentioned the Alaska summit. Um, the Alaska summit was set up on a misconception by Steve Whitkoff that the Russians actually wanted something when, in fact, because he hadn't taken his interpreter with him, he had misunderstood. And the entire summit, which we remember was very hastily flung together, was, in fact, because Steve Whitkoff had got, had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, right? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I compare Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, President Sun and Lord to two characters from famous Samuel Beckett play waiting for God ever. I call them the Vladimir and Estregon of international diplomacy, because they, they make these endless trips, which are kind of looping and, and circular and absurd, where they end up in the same place from where they started, and where actually nothing happens. Of course, there is no peace in Ukraine because Vladimir Putin doesn't want to stop the war and, and Trump doesn't want to exert any pressure on Putin to make him stop. Um, so that their, you know, ridiculous characters, and it would be darkly comic were it not so consequential for Ukrainians who are being bombed every night by, by, by Russian ballistic missiles and, and jet-powered drones in recent months, which is a simply collecting terrible damage. But on, on your question about, you know, how does Russian intelligence see Trump? They really regarded his victory in 2016 as a triumph for their espionage methods, probably the greatest Trump through, through the whole, a Cold War and post-Cold War period. Um, and, you know, let's acknowledge they were all in for, for Trump. I mean, the Munna report describes their operation as sweeping and systematic. I mean, they wanted him to, to win. I mean, I think they thought he wouldn't win. But obviously they did everything in their power to, to help him win from hacking Hillary Clinton's, you know, Democratic party emails, dumping it out to, to media outlets. Um, and there was, there was classic espionage as well. So, so, and, and they're thrilled that he's, he's, he's back in power. Um, so, I mean, they were popping champagne corks in the duma went, went when Trump won, um, and that they regard him basically as their guy. I mean, not, not someone that they manually control, but they can influence who is endlessly susceptible to Russian propaganda and disinformation. So, Russian disinformation becomes American disinformation. This is a perfect validation loop for them. So, what are the biggest wins for the Russians in terms of Trump's own policies? I mean, the biggest win, I mean, my book is called betrayal. The biggest win is, is the fact that the direct US military assistance to Ukraine has stopped. And, and the, the thing that the, the, the, the lot of Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, really wants at the moment are these high-end patriot interceptor missiles, which can shoot down these hypersonic, you know, fast-moving Russian missiles before they land and kill people. And a lot of them got squandered in Trump's war in Iran. They said they're in short supply. And, you know, Zelensky has said, okay, well, give us some and give us the blueprint so we can make our own. I mean, it'll take a while, but the Ukraine is pretty, pretty ingenious and creative. And Trump has refused that as well. And, and the consequences that the civilian death toll this year has, has, has gone way up. Um, and of course, you know, the thing he's done really is humiliate Zelensky. I mean, last year, they're bust up in the Oval Office, which I, I described as one of the dark, the most darkly electrifying moments in political history. What was a, it was an ambush. It was premeditated. And, I think the idea was to kind of nudge American popular opinion away from away from Ukraine towards Russia in a more Russia-friendly direction. And, and the other thing I, I just think is the sort of disinformation. I mean, Trump will say things like, you should never have started it to Zelensky. I mean, I was in Kiev in February 2022 when Russian tanks were coming towards me in the capital having, having crossed the border from, from Belarus. I mean, Ukraine did not start this war, but, but Trump's kind of, Trump basically gives the impression that the problem personality is Zelensky and keeps posting of his very, very good relationship with Vladimir Putin, the man he applauds constantly. And really Joanna America's swap sides either by which I mean the Trump administration either supports Russia and wants Putin to win or is entirely indifferent to Ukraine's fate and the suffering of its people or both. Okay, so can we then extend that into what Mark Carney referred to earlier this year at Davos as the end of the global world order that the world order that had essentially stood post-second world war has, has basically been entirely upended by Donald Trump. And you now have Mark Carney reaching out to the EU and saying, you know, we want to, we want to essentially become an associate member of, of the EU. And European countries no longer relying on America as their chief ally. I mean, you know, even the essence of NATO now feels very vulnerable. That also is I am assuming a huge win for Vladimir Putin. It's a huge win for Vladimir Putin is almost as if a kind of retired KGB general sitting in his dacha outside Moscow has, has penned a kind of a novel or a thriller, an update to version of the Manchurian candidate where a pro-Russian American president comes to power, basically trashes the transatlantic alliance, which really was a kind of fundamental aspect of international security architecture for 80 years. You know, trash talks, Kierstama, former British prime minister describing there's no Churchill, dismisses the Italian leader, Georgian Maloney as a fan girl, and basically kind of a stranger or alienates traditional Western allies while embracing the autocrats and the shape of Putin, but also to some degree, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, and Xi Jinping who's about to meet in China. This is not normal. This is not, this is unprecedented. It does enormous damage to America standing in the world, and really to the idea of America as a shining city on a hill or a place which aspires to global leadership, and look, I'm not in the US, but from my vantage point, it looks like a kind of grubby, predatory, shabby country, just like any other. I mean, the leadership thing has gone in the age of Trump, and of course, the Russians are putting their hands up and applauding, and just one final point, which is that what Trump has done with his rhetoric to his threats to an ex- Greenland and to Menace Canada, kidnapped the Venezuelan president, proclaimed the Americas as an exclusively kind of American zone, is to actually legitimize what Putin is doing in Europe, in other words, conquering Ukraine. So you have one imperialist in the shape of Putin, and you have Trump as a kind of co-imperialist or a sort of meta-co-imperialist because, you know, sometimes these are empty threats. And a real sense that together with Xi, they're trying to divide the world up between them. So you've also, however, got, and there's so much one pack here, Luke, but you've also got two men stuck in a forever war. I mean, Trump has been now at Iran for six months. The Ukraine Russian war, which Trump, of course, claimed he was going to solve within the first day of him taking office, has now lasted four and a half years longer than the first world war, is Putin as invulnerable as he seems? I mean, we've done a lot of reporting at the Daily Beast with our reporter Alison Quinn about sort of internal efforts to prop Putin up because he's more vulnerable than he seems, certainly, to us in the West. What's your sense of his vulnerability? Yeah, I mean, I mean, just to say you have to acknowledge that both Putin and Trump are not very good imperialists. Actually, they've got stuck by this. They've both got stuck. I mean, Putin thought he would take care from three days. I mean, that's what his intelligence chief's told him. They said the Ukrainians would not resist. And he thinks they're Russians anyway, would greet invading Russian soldiers with flowers. And of course, they didn't. They blew them up and continued to blow them up. Right. And Trump likewise, you know, really, from what I hear of our sort of Pentagon people also thought that this shock or nor operation in Iran would lead to kind of quick victory and the overthrow of the regime. And he's in a quagmire there as well. But in terms of Putin's position, I mean, I think what you have to understand is that, well, I was in Russia for four years, reporting for my newspaper, The Guardian. I was kicked out in 2011. And back then, Russia was, it was an autocracy, essentially, with a few kind of democratic aspects left over from the 90s. But now it's a totalitarian or near totalitarian state where dissent is impossible. So it doesn't really matter how badly the war goes. I mean, we're talking about 1.4 million Russian soldiers killed or injured, 1.4 million. There is no avenue for kind of public process or dissent. The cleverest, most creative Russians, younger Russians, many of them fled in 2022. And the remaining population is passive, either supports the war or tolerates the war, fatalistic in quite a sort of Soviet Russian way and is not going to be storming the Kremlin anytime soon. And so, you know, Putin will outlast Trump, that I can guarantee. I mean, there are lots of rumors about his health, which I'm told by my sources, not true. He has very good doctors. There are other rumors that he has body doubles. I think that's rumours are true. I mean, because you see you see a chilly Putin five meters away from his conversation partner on a very kind of long Kremlin table. That's the real one. And then sometimes you see another Putin film from behind plunging into crowds and hugging babies. And I think probably that's the fake Putin. That's the fake one. And certainly, you Kremlin intelligence think there are several Putin's. And probably the double has a double for when the double has a day off. You know, we don't know, but they're right. And actually, you know, only a true wizard, you know, would be able to replicate themselves many times. So there's some kind of leaning into this idea from the Kremlin as well. But really, the conclusion is the war goes on. Unfortunately, Europe is biggest war. Most terrible war since 1945. So long as Putin lives in breeze and is in the Kremlin. And I think it will only stop or pause when he's carried out horizontally in a coffin. And you remember, you know, whenever Soviet leaders died back in the 1980s, there was Swan Lake ballerinas dancing to Swan Lake. So I think it won't stop until we get Russia has its Swan Lake moment. Well, well, that's bad news for all those young men in Russia and other countries that are being recruited to fight on Russia's behalf. So, so Luke, I realize also I, I, I, we shot off in another direction in terms of trumps having been bailed out by the Russians. Can you just talk us a little bit through that too? So, so they get to know him in the 80s. He goes for a visit. He goes back a couple more times because he's talking to them about real estate deals. He launches Trump vodka, which is you point out quickly, flops. No surprise there. Trump water, flop, Trump steaks, need I go on Trump University and people still think he's a good businessman. It's a, it's a mystery. But, um, but the Russians do end up bailing him out, don't they? And they do end up paying for a house that he has in Florida, that he buys are actually in a competitive situation with Jeffrey Epstein, which is why he and Jeffrey Epstein fall out. Yeah. I mean, this, um, story is, um, filled with bizarre and, and troubling moments. And that was certainly one of them. He, yeah, he bought a, a house in, in Florida in 2004, um, uh, and then sold it to, to, uh, Russian oligarch called, called rebel of left, uh, a couple years later for, for, for, for twice, yeah, more than twice, the oligarch never lived there, uh, and eventually demolished it. And, and by the way, in case for any lawyers watching, I taught his representatives who insisted it was a good deal. And also it was unclear where Trump got the first 40, whatever it was, 42 million to buy the property in the first place, correct? Yeah. I mean, I mean, these, these are sort of aspects of, of Trump's backstory. I explored in, in, in collusion, my, my previous book, which came out in his first presidential term, but there was a very strange pattern of lending from Deutsche Bank, which led money to all of the Trumps in fact. He lost all his money at, for his points in the 1990s and normally, whether, you know, conventional bank, that, that would be it. He wouldn't then, then lend, but, but even though Trump's, um, liquidity was, was kind of very dubious. Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank continued to lend him large sums. There are similar questions about his finances now, about how much money he's made during his second term, and investment flooding into Jared Kushner's, um, uh, fund from, from Gal State, which the New Yorker wrote about very well last week. So, so it's murky and you, you know, you wonder, uh, if the Democrats do in Congress, uh, in November, whether they'll be as a shine, some light on that. So Luke, when you look at this picture, what, is Trump afraid of Putin? I, I think Trump is afraid of Putin. I mean, I mean, the novosity. I mean, there's a, there's a real sort of plain sightness to all this. I mean, people kind of try and dance around this subject because it seems so, you know, she's a bonkers, bonkers are crazy. I mean, and like I said, like a spine novel, like the Manchurian candidate, I mean, one, one former British intelligence guy, am I six guy? I, I, I spoke to you said, it's, it's the Manchurian candidate on, on steroids. But, but I think some kind of compromise is the best working explanation. I mean, if I can tell you about what happened to me in Moscow, when I arrived as a correspondent in 2007, um, within about three months, the FSB Putin spy agency, which used to run before, before he took over his president, broke into my family apartment and put various bugs in. I was told by the British embassy and I, you know, I went to go and see them and they said, yes, it's the FSB breaking into a apartment. Then I thought of all of these stupid clues that they've been inside and I said to, I said to the embassy, well, can you remove the bugs? They said, no, we can't. There's no point. I'll just put them back in again. And then I said, well, do they have video? And they said, yeah, possibly. And they said in the bedroom, and they sort of shrugged and said, "Well, you know, let's have a cup of tea." Which is what what what you know British emissaries do if you come in in a situation of parallel for you tea They can't do much because we're sort of we're not really well-parer anymore, but they'll they'll give you tea in a biscuit Right So that the fact was that you know that the FSP bothered they also kind of interrogated me at one point in their and their little President called the photo but they bothered to sort of spy on me and my wife in the marital bedroom for about three and a half years until I untucked my visa was canceled and was Deported and they made it clear that they were watching us because on one occasion We came out from a family holiday in Berlin and and they left a sex manual in Russian by the side of the marital bed And I had to say to my wife, you know darling It this really isn't mine. You know the case you've introduced this And I think they're basically saying we're watching it everything. But are they giving you? This is going to sound odd, but is that actually a sort of friendly thing to do where they're actually saying listen We've bugged your apartment. We have to do this with the FSP You know you're being bugged. We have left friendly clues. No, there was nothing there was nothing friendly about it at all The girl was basically to make you know make my wife say look I can't take this anymore and it only longer Let's go and meanwhile the foreign minister was hinting it would be better if I left You know and saying things like are you not worried that if you stay something will happen to your children On one occasion we came back and found that we're living on the 10th floor of a Moscow kind of high rise And the window next to our six-year-old son's little IKEA bed Which of course we double logged had been bust open whether with a long plunge to the icy courtyard below and the implication being that Maybe he would meet with an accident So I think they thought that this kind of people make me leave and and actually it didn't and then they just cancel my visa But but you know that the big point. I mean the reason I tell you this is that The the the FSP KGB are adapted surveillance that they break in and watch everybody and of course that means that we trumps of Donald Trump the tapes of Donald Trump During his visit for example in 2013 for the Miss Universe beauty pageant that we take some of a bomber of Hillary Clinton Of any high-profile American visitor will be bugged followed Intercepted they'll be an attempt to kind of compromise their electronic devices. That's just in a standard operating procedure So there will be tapes of Trump in Moscow and and really you just have to ask yourself what did Trump do there? I mean perhaps He had an early nights with a cup of herbal tea Started leafing through war and peace or something else by Tel Stoy Uh or maybe he had a more exotic and interesting experience, but the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 in a report you know The time chaired by Marco Rubio no less produced a report and confirmed that the FSP had surveillance cameras and guest bedrooms And the hotel where Trump stayed so there'll be tapes and the the crucial thing is you know rather than speculating what we can say is fact is that Whatever happened there or didn't happen there um Trump knows the Putin knows And I think it's this kind of Trump knowing the Putin knowing gives Putin Lieverage and I don't think Putin is sort of threatening to expose Donald Trump I think Putin basically flatters him like the kind of veteran KGB officer he is and says Donald we are beset by enemies. They're the same people trying to bring down our presidencies You are great historical figure on the world stage. I will always be your friend. I will always be your rock And oh and by the way is Lensky is a bad guy And Trump internalizes this and it and it works it works every time It works every time suit Imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip No tightness, no stickiness, no residue Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York Maybe it's Mabeline. So what are what have Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping sang to each other about Donald Trump? I mean, we've got the Chinese leader arriving tonight. We're recording this on Wednesday afternoon I think it's Wednesday. I mean, it's impossible these days everything just morphs so quickly into each other But it is Wednesday afternoon Chinese leader arrives for a state dinner And obviously meetings with with Donald Trump. What do you think the Russians and the Chinese say to each other about Donald Trump? I think they see Trump as someone they can manipulate and jube with relative ease Meanwhile they can they can while doing that they can kind of build their own project which is to revise the world order Make it less years dominated or the phrase the Russians love to use is less unipolar Unipolar. They want a multipolar world. In other words, they're kind of Russia and China inflected world And their relationship is pragmatic, but it's very close I mean, I write about it in my book. I describe it as a kind of complex sibling tale because They were allies when it was Mao and Stalin that they fell out in the 1960s and had a brief border war Then then under Putin there's been this strategic partnership And the Chinese are supplying the Russian military with with optical equipment with all sorts of very useful goods Enabling you know the Russians to smash their Ukrainians. So Of course, you know China is pragmatic. It's less it's more risk of us than than than Russia But there's a very very close relationship between the two of them Donald Trump has talked about Prizing Russia away from China, but it's it's it's it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen this week and it's not gonna happen next week We've mentioned that both the Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have Got forever wars on their plate now Uh as part of that Donald Trump has pulled the last remaining aircraft carrier out of the South China seas Leaving Taiwan more vulnerable than it has been. Do you think this is a moment Where China could decide to take Taiwan I mean, I mean that that's that's a really um interesting Question and I sort of think You know a few years ago that you you might sort of speculate that that that that's the kind of imminent possibility I do think Putin's failure in Ukraine is failure to to to take care of to Topo Zelensky even to seize the Donbass region this this this part of eastern Ukraine that Putin really Badly wants and covers has had a kind of chasing effect on Xi Jinping because Oh, you know on paper seizing Taiwan looks relatively straightforward, right It's an island is relatively near you attack it with overwhelming multi multi multi-level force from the air from the sea You know you destroy its critical infrastructure I mean, it looks durable and and yet surely the lesson of of the Russian invasion is is the things can go wrong So I I think I think I'm I'm not a synologist, but I think I think She isn't kind of you know is in bite mode. He's he's he's waiting to see and certainly on a kind of on a kind of level of ideas What Trump is doing with with Greenland uh and and Canada and what Putin is doing in Europe also Means that the kind of Chinese excavators more likely right if the rules-based order is gone if we're back in a 19th century World of of great powers and spheres of influence And and China very much sees Taiwan as its own possession and the East China Sea as it's as it's domain That then anything is anything is possible. So we you know, we have to watch this space, but it may prove about harder than it looks It's yeah, it's a fascinating situation Michael Wolfe on our episode of inside Trump's head today Said he thought there was no better timing for the Chinese to do it because Trump is entirely vulnerable He'll probably lose the Congress in them in the midterms and that we've removed the one You know the one aircraft carrier from the region anyway We'll see and I'm sure Trump will Emerge from talks with she's saying that they've discussed it and she has told him that he's no intention of going into Taiwan Well, well Trump is president or at least that's what he's always said said before so I have a question for you actually about Trump's wife so his first wife Ivana comes from the Czech Republic Second wife Marlem Aples who he speeds through very quickly or she speeds through him very quickly Uh is Marlem Aples who's an American but his third wife is From Slovenia Do you think there's any connection? Do you think I mean there's been speculation that Melania somehow was a kind of also an agent of influence and again an amazing job because she's ended up as first lady Although she seems reluctant to accept the role at least full time um Have you have your sources talked about this at all does this seem possible? Uh, I mean I I think I think it seems less likely I mean the Ivana connection with with the Czechoslovak's Bayesian scene with Moscow is well done documented, as I said before, it's in the archives. We know we know about that operation. You know, Melania came slightly later. Slovenia, of course, is a small country. It's less influential, you know, it's biogencies, less adept, I think, than the Czechoslovak's who were pretty good at all this stuff, including Kalibugian surveillance. So I'm not convinced by that, but I do, there is one interesting, you know, there was one interesting Melania moment, I think, last year when Trump was tilting a little bit rhetorically, not practically towards Ukraine, when Russian TV started showing semi-nude photos of Melania to millions of Russians. And I mean, I don't know how you read that, but I certainly read that as a bit of a warning to the American president, but if he tells too far to what's Ukraine, you know, more stuff could be published. But I mean, hold on, hold on, I missed that episode. So they were showing old modeling photos of Melania when she was doing her sort of naked modeling. They were showing those pictures on Russian television. And what were they saying? What was the context of it, Luke? I mean, I mean, it was, I can't remember what the kind of pretext was from a news point of view, but the Sunday evening show hosted by, you know, well-known Kremlin propagandist is the main vehicle in which Russia sent its message out primarily to its domestic population, you know, to 110 million adult Russians. But also, it seems strange that you would alert these pictures and broadcast them on stage television. And I think that I think that was a message directed to Washington and the man sitting in the warehouse. I mean, probably he missed it. But nonetheless, it was there for Trump and Putin watches to ponder over. What is your understanding of what the Russian people think of Donald Trump? I think the Russian people think that Donald Trump is a disappointment, which is really what kind of state media is telling them. There were really high expectations when he became present again that he would deliver Ukraine on a plate. Essentially, Booly's Lensky into signing a peace deal, which essentially meant capitulation, all of Russia's wishes granted. And that didn't happen not least because actually by stopping military assistance to Ukraine, ironically, Trump had kind of fewer levers that he could pull than if he had actually been helping in any kind of meaningful way. So, so there's this sort of tone of whistfulness and regret that Trump is not abiding by what what the Russian state media calls the spirit of anchorage. In other words, what they thought was a stitch up where they would get, you know, Ukraine to give up territory and so on. So this year was a disappointment. But, but also the criticism is rather careful. The still are kind of fairly polite tone towards Trump at the same time that the Kremlin press is screaming at the Europeans, the degenerates and warmongers and fools and so on. So they kind of, you know, he's a friend, but he's a disappointing friend. Well, your book is absolutely fascinating. I will confess I didn't know a lot of it. And I was fascinated by the fact that they, I mean, it seems so obvious that the Russians and the Chinese would be thrilled by having Trump in the White House because it's only been good for them, despite his rhetoric, especially about the Chinese economy, but actually watching how carefully they essentially started courting him post, post having a relationship with Ivana is really, it's really fascinating. And also your interpretation of the Alaska summit, how it came about and then how humiliating it turned out to be for Donald Trump as, who as you pointed out and as we all saw at the time, didn't bother to take questions from the press Vladimir Putin held court and then everybody, everybody fled. Non the wiser and certainly nowhere near getting a peace deal with Ukraine, which of course was the goal. And it's also fascinating. I don't know if you've seen, have you seen the movie "Bring of War"? I have to confess I haven't tried it. Sorry. Well, it's really interesting. It's Jeff Daniels playing Reagan and it's the Reagan and Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik. And it's just a fascinating comparison between then and now anyway, for anybody who who is curious about that time and about Reagan's impact on the beginnings of Glastonoth and Perestroika and of course Gorbachev, it's really, it's really worth seeing. And interestingly, at the end of the movie, the version I saw, which was in Times Square, Jeff Daniels appears with a QR code and says, I feel so strongly about this movie and about, you know, the two sides working together for a greater peace that I will, if you download this QR code, you get a free ticket to send a friend, which I've never seen in the movies before. Anyway, I'm strongly recommending your book. I very much hope it will eventually be available here. Can people in the US buy it from Amazon.co.uk? They can or the Guardian book shop. And also, of course, it's available in Canada. It's available in Canada. If you have Canadian friends, you can bring it over. The, a giant of the Russians had a term for this, which is called "Samas Dad", you know, secretly published literature, smuggled into the Soviet Union. And in a way, I think my, I think betrayal is kind of "Samas Dad" for Trump's America. So get a Canadian Fred to bring it. Thank you so much for joining us. And I do hope you'll come back when Russia again is in the news, but you predict no end to the current conflict with Ukraine. You think it only works in Putin's interests. I'm afraid I don't. I mean, I'd love to tell you something more, more, more cheerful China, but I think the war continues so long as he is in the Kremlin upright. So it's not finishing this year. And I fear it won't finish next year either. Luke, thank you very much and take care of Ukraine. Thank you. What do you think? Do you think Donald Trump is actually a Russian asset or do you think they just got unbelievably lucky? And as you heard Luke say, they were popping champagne books when Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and they couldn't believe it when he was re-elected in 2024. And basically, what more could he be doing to help the Russians? If you have been, thank you for joining us and a big thank you to our production team, Ryan Murray, Rachel Pasa, Heather Posaro, John Romero and Neil Rosenhaus. So the good news is we have so many bee-beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.