Michael McFaul: Trump Is Just 'Fine' with Mass Murder

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and member of the National Security Council during the Obama administration. He's now a political science professor at Stanford. He's written 10 books. His last one, he told me in the green room, was Autocrats vs. Democrats, China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. It's Michael McFaul. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Well, shit. Much to talk about in your area of expertise this week. So I appreciate you giving us the time. Yeah. I guess I wanted to start with the big picture before we kind of go with the blow by blow. You posted this yesterday. If you haven't studied the history, culture, politics, or language of these countries, and it's very convenient to have a theory of the world which asserts that all states behave alike, unitary actors guided by rational calculations of self-interest, i.e. they're just like us, but they aren't. Putin does not think like us. Why did you share that? Where are we at in the biggest picture as far as how Putin is looking at the scenario we're in right now? Well, I shared that in part because there's an academic tradition in international relations called realism. I don't think it's very realistic, but what I just described there is their theory. And there are folks in the Trump administration, around the Trump administration, I don't know about President Trump. I'm guessing he doesn't know what realism is. But they have this attitude that we're all just seeking our national interests and transactions, and this is the way the world is, like it or not, this is the way it is. And Putin is just like that. And I don't think that's true for any country. Imagine having that theory for the United States of America, that leaders don't matter, ideas don't matter, we just have our rational national interests. And whether it's Trump or Obama, we behave the same. So that would be ludicrous in my mind to have that theory about us. But a lot of people have that about Putin. And it's just if we could just treat him nicer, do transactions that he likes, we'll get along with them, we'll end this war, and we can make a lot of money. And I was just pointing out that those theories tend to be championed by people that don't know much about other countries. And I realize there's a selection bias there, because I've lived many years of my life abroad, including in Russia, and I speak Russian, and I've met Putin many times, I've dealt with him. Not lately, he doesn't really like me, he banned me from his country in 2014. But this notion that this is all about a transaction, you just give him another thing, you cut off assistance to Ukraine, he's going to be our friend. You say Ukraine can never be in NATO, he's going to be our friend. The latest rounds, buying his diesel fuel or cutting off the Ukrainians from our intelligence, and then he'll be our friend, and I'll do things we want. That's not the Putin I know. And tragically, that's the Putin that Trump thinks he knows. But I don't think it's ended very well for the Ukrainians, for the Europeans, or most importantly, for me, for Americans in our national interests. Trump might not know academic realism, but I think he does think he's doing a real estate deal. Yes. Which in some ways is similar, right? Very related. Yes. Yeah, down market version of it, at least. So talk about what you think Putin's mindset is right now. I mean, he has been, you know, they have been at a basic stalemate for quite a long time. Obviously, this did not go as he had hoped. He lost a lot of troops. Ukraine's technological advances have kind of run circles around them. But like, he's in this moment now where it feels like he has geopolitical momentum, I guess, at the very least with with Trump. What do you think's in his mind right now? Is what is achievable or what they might want? You know, tragically, I think he's just locked into his original wartime objectives. He gave a big speech. It was 73 minutes long, two days before he launched his full scale invasion. I watched every word of it. I'm probably the only one that watched to the end, but I wanted to hear the whole thing. And he outlined his strategy. He wanted to unite the Slavic people, right? Because he doesn't think Ukrainians are a separate nation. They're just Russians with accents. He said that too. He wanted to rule by proxy the territory of Ukraine with his occupied forces. And he used this horrible phrase to describe what he wanted to do with Zelensky did not suffocation. So to get rid of the regime there, three wanted to demilitarize Ukraine and fourth stop NATO. And when you go back and you look at that list, he's failed at all of them, right? He hasn't conquered Ukraine. As you just pointed out, he's stuck in a stalemate and he's even losing territory in the last few weeks, by the way, on the front line. So that hasn't worked out. Zelensky's still in power despite his best efforts and the efforts now of people like Trump, who say he needs to step down, but he's the democratically elected president governing under their constitution, including a clause that allows for martial law. He's still there. Militarization, it's gone way up. So that's a giant defeat. And now Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. And those are real countries. With real armies, by the way. So he hasn't won on any of those fronts. And if we were talking a year ago and especially two years ago before Trump was reelected and came back to office, I heard anxiety in Putin's voice because he was losing a lot of soldiers. Like you said, his economy was suffering and it wasn't clear that they could go forward for much longer. But Trump has thrown him this lifeline by getting involved, saying he's going to end the war. Trump has this theory of give him concessions, appease Putin, and then he'll finally end the war. I don't think it works generally, by the way. It's just diplomacy 101. Give the other side everything they want and then hope they'll do what you want. I've negotiated with the Russians. It most certainly doesn't work with the Russians. But that's been his strategy. And so if you're Putin, you now think that time is on your side. We cut military assistance. We cut economic assistance. We're now opening up trading with them, buying some of their assets. You listen to the way Trump speaks. He speaks so insultingly about Zelensky. He never says anything critical about Putin. So you think on that front, the correlation of forces, that's this Russian phrase they have, is moving in his direction. And then add to that on the battlefield a couple of details. So on the front line, stalemate. If not, don't. Ukrainians are making progress there. And that's been a big failure. But as a result of that, Putin has now launched this terrorist campaign. I don't think there's any other way to describe it. Killing civilians, wiping out their energy infrastructure, their water infrastructure. That doesn't get enough attention. And his theory is in doing this, Ukrainian society will rise up and say, Zelensky, we got to cut a deal. And in the last several weeks, they have had a technological breakthrough. So you rightly pointed out, Ukrainians have been doing this. But they've had this new one, this drone slash rocket. It's called the Garon 5. It has a rocket motor as opposed to those propellers. And the Ukrainians can't shoot it down. And they most certainly can't shoot it down if Starlink or Star Shield is not working. And so if you're Putin, you think, well, maybe the tide has now turned and time is now on your side. A couple of things on that. I want to talk about both the terror and kind of Putin feeling like the tide has turned. But just so on the terror part first, I just was looking at this before we got on. There's this group, a research group called the Ukraine Evidence Hub that's trying to kind of like verify, put out verifiable data about the war crimes that have been happening in Ukraine. And they have like 17,605 civilians killed since 2022. And that doesn't include kind of what's happened here over the last month, basically, when they've had this uptick. And I talked to Caelan Robertson for the YouTube the other day, and he was like, they've hit the buses, they hit his old apartment building in Odessa. And so like their terror campaign targeting civilians has, which was already, I mean, 17,000 deaths, and is now escalating. It's definitely escalating. And Trump always likes to say, well, there would have been no war if I were president. He says that 4,000 times. Well, the war has radically escalated since he's been president, and especially this terrorist campaign that you just described. I didn't realize the numbers were that high. You know, I talk to Ukrainians every single day. I do a lot of work with Ukrainians and the feeling of terror. What are we going to do for the winter? Where do we move our kids, especially if you live in the capital? That is the sentiment. At the same time, you asked me what Putin thinks, and that's what he desires. But it's important to remember what Ukrainians think. Even despite all of that, if you look at opinion poll data, and the best one for those who want to go look at it, it's called KIS, K-I-I-S. Google KIS Ukraine. You can see this data. It's in English. Pretty steady, solid support for Zelensky and continuing to fight against the Russians. So the idea that they're going to bomb them into capitulation aided by Trump is not working. But the last thing I just want to say, Tim, just listening to what you just said. Like just think about, we're talking very analytic right now, rightfully so. Yeah. But think about what Trump is doing. He's not just flipped onto the side of the autocrats and banning the Democrats. He's supporting this terrorist campaign. Yes. Like what happened to us as a country where we're now supporting terrorist imperial dictatorships, where it's just OK to call him a good guy whose strategy is to literally kill civilians to try to win a war. And I just as an American, I just find this this last couple of days have been really, really deeply infuriating, disappointing, embarrassing for me as an American. Yeah. I'll add sickening on top of that. I mean, just let's just give you a couple of things that they've done. Trump today said Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't done much. As we said, as they're waging a campaign of terror. Against civilians who are just going about their lives, riding the bus. Here was Marco yesterday. I want to contrast that because Marco Rubio, the secretary of the state of state and national security advisor, the person people go to is like, well, the rational one or the reasonable one, the one that's trying to push Trump in the right direction on all this. He tries to get inside Trump's brain and and present a vision of a totally different person. You know, as Trump says that Russia hasn't done much. Here's what Marco says. Said about whether the president likes what Russia is doing. The president does not like to see this image of a ballistic missile hitting into an apartment building in Kiev and innocent civilians being wiped out as a result of it. He doesn't like that either. That's why this has been so frustrating to try to get resolution to it. He doesn't like it. How would we know that? He doesn't say that. You know, that's Marco talking to Breitbart, an unserious propaganda outlet. It's like Trump's out there today saying Russia hasn't done anything. So like this whole attempt to, you know, kind of whitewash what what Marco is supporting is almost as sickening as the action itself. I agree. I didn't realize that was with Breitbart. He's an Uzbekistan. Yeah, that was with Breitbart. OK, two things. One, I've never heard President Trump speak that way. I've never heard him say, I don't like my friend Putin killing civilians. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, somebody can correct me and find one quote. But usually he blames Zelensky. Zelensky for the war. Usually he says Zelensky just wants to keep fighting. I haven't spoken to Zelensky for a while, but I do know him. And I hosted him here at Stanford, by the way, six months before the war. And when I was talking to him, he's the last person in the world that wants to keep fighting. I mean, think about it. Every day he gets the reports that you just told us about of the people dying. And he doesn't have a way to defend his citizens. But then he's not just rhetorically not saying. Trump, or in his administration, it's a, you know, nobody really wants to own this one, right? But somebody here in the United States, Elon Musk, the Pentagon, the White House, we're not exactly sure. But somebody's helping Putin now kill those civilians by turning off their ability to see these weapons. They need Starlink, Star, I keep calling it Star Defense, Star Shield. And it's super confusing. I've been talking to all of my friends and experts, including the people that worked on this deal in the Biden administration. What exactly happened? So I don't want to pretend I know. But we do know that the intelligence that Ukrainians used to have to help defend their civilians against these rockets, they don't have now. And that's because of the Trump administration and the people around him. So if he wants to save civilians, they're not asking for help to launch offensive rockets against Russians. They're just asking for intelligence help to defend their citizens. And yet, you know, President Trump doesn't want to do that. And one thing on Senator, I just called him Senator, Secretary Marco Rubio. I don't know him well. Little Marco, we can call him. It's fine. Okay. All right. He was at my confirmation hearings back a long time ago, 2011. I mean, I followed him. He was a Russian hawk then. Well, that's the thing. So two things. One, where is he? He had a record. And whether you agreed with it or not, he had a consistent record. He's just completely abandoned it to be in the Trump administration. And then second, he's in Uzbekistan today, right? Have you ever noticed that he's like never where the action is? He's always where the periphery is. You know, he doesn't go to Kiev. He doesn't go to Moscow. He doesn't go to the Middle East, Gaza, Israel. He's just like avoiding the war. somehow thinking that everybody's going to forget that he was the Secretary of State. You know more about American politics than I'll ever know, but I don't understand what the play is here because he doesn't look like a very effective member of the cabinet right now. Marco understands that this is a shit show. I mean, there's a reason he's not the point person on Iran in particular. He wants to keep optionality. He wants to be seen as a loyal soldier for Trump. And he's trying to navigate that as best as he can. And the thing is, let's steal man the best case argument for them. Okay, let's say it's true that there's something else happening, that it was not Elon, it was not Trump, it was not somebody in the Department of War that has caused the throttling of Starlink. Right. And that has limited their ability to use Star Shield as Russia's had these advances that have killed innocent Ukrainians. Well, right. If that happened, like if that was an accident, or if that was some technological failure or something, right, and they couldn't, they didn't really know. How would a country that was on the side of Ukraine and wanted to protect its citizens be acting then? Right. They would be, the way that they would be talking about this would be like, you know, we're doing everything we can to help Ukraine. We've offered them, you know, our military level Star Shield in the meantime, while we figure this out, like we want to protect Ukrainian citizens. That's not what they're doing. They're attacking Zelensky. Like they're saying that Zelensky should be kicked out of Ukraine. And they're like, kind of parsing what's happening. Right. You know what I mean? Like, exactly. So to me, just like their actions betray that they knew that they know what they're doing. That's a great point. That's a great way to phrase it. Because if they wanted to fix it, they couldn't be leaning in to try to fix it. And not attacking the guy and the country that they're supposedly are trying to help. I'm getting hot back to Zelensky. I was watching him on the, he looks tired. I mean, that's like, you know, and he looks really worn down. And I do think that, you know, I mean, he's had to suffer a lot of indignities at the hands of this administration. And so, you know, it's human nature to kind of lash out. But I think that maybe, you know, his, his wick might be shorter for, you know, kind of playing the game here. And like some of the things that he said this last week, were maybe, you know, trumping on the wrong side of history or whatever, like, it's maybe not that helpful in the grand scheme of things. But he met with U.S. lawmakers on Monday. He said he asked senators to try to pressure Trump to restore the intel sharing and access. Again, like, it seems like everybody's actions, like Zelensky thinks that this is a choice by the administration, and he's trying to get other people to put pressure on Trump. And meanwhile, Trump is kind of saying that Zelensky should be removed. Like, basically, right? And is that how you see what's happening, basically, from Zelensky's point of view right now? Yeah, all of your points, I agree with. So on the, you know, just tired, you know, less tolerant of taking these indignities. I also think, you know, because I know the, the governments that have been around him, the people around him, he just doesn't have, you know, his close confidants that he'd had back in 2022. He's got a new government, new chief of staff. I think that wears on him. What is the reason for that? I know nothing about that. Well, this is ancient history. No, no, this, it all has to do with alleged corruption scandal, and, but if you go back and you look, there's this very famous photo that they took, you know, at the beginning of the invasion, when, when we were asking him to leave, and he said, you know, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. And they took this selfie with his closest folks. I'm pretty sure none of those people still work for him. And some of these people are controversial people, his chief of staff, in particular, this guy, Yermak. But I know for a fact that he could lean on them and talk to them. And I think that's a very important thing. And he just doesn't, he doesn't have that kind of support right now. Explanation, not excuse. But I think those are some of the reasons he had a great press secretary, you know, two years ago, that doesn't work for him anymore. So I think you're seeing that. But then in addition, you know, there's a school of thought in Ukraine, and among my friends, that just say to hell with this guy, like, how much more can we put up with them? And they look at others. To hell with Trump. Yeah, to hell with Trump. Oh, I should have made that clear. To hell with Trump. And, you know, look how Xi Jinping treated him. Look how Prime Minister Carney treated him. You know, we want to be part of that. And they're kind of, you know, it's not rational, but this intelligence sharing is the main thing, right? Remember, we're not giving him anything in terms of his support. When Trump claims we gave him billions and billions, that's before he came in. He's claiming credit for it, and then he's the one that cut it off. But intelligence sharing is real. But there's just this, this frustration, I hear, with Ukrainians with us. And they try to disaggregate between Trump and Americans. But they got politics there, too. So, you know, you know, just to acquiesce to Trump and just to say, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That doesn't play well in Ukrainian society. That is not what they want from their leader. And now a message from our sponsor, The Reading Room. Here at The Bulwark, we talk a lot about Jeffrey Epstein and how important it is to keep the story in the news. Well, some of our friends actually printed out all 3.5 million of the released Epstein files, bound them into 3,437 volumes and built a free traveling exhibit so the public can bear witness to these crimes. It's called the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, which is a hell of a name and it works how it sounds. 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Their request in exchange was for Patriot interceptors to help defend their people against these missiles you've been talking about. That report said Witkoff and Kushner have shown little interest in the proposal. Axios is the hotline of choice for Witkoff and Kushner, so I take that to be accurate reporting. Right. The Post is also reporting that Hegseth is opposed to the transfer of interceptor missiles. So, I mean, A, and just like the rejection of that deal, any response to that? But then just more broadly, like having Witkoff and Kushner be like in a quasi role that you were playing, assess kind of what we're getting out of them. Yeah, so I saw that reporting too, and that's disappointing. That seemed like a good trade. And let's all remember these interceptors are defensive weapons. They're not going to be shot at Russians. They're going to be shot at Russian missiles and Russian drones. There is a deficit in the world with them because we launched so many of them in the Middle East and in this incredible asymmetric way. These are like $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, depending on which one we're talking about, that we were launching against drones, $100,000 weapons. That is no way to fight a war. But back to the negotiators, you know, I would just say this. If you go back to the very first meeting that Secretary Rubio had with Ukraine. I think it was in the first meeting that he said, you know, we're going to have to do this. You know, we're going to have to do this. I used to do this, you know, and we always want to know who's at the table and who's where. And on the Russian side, by the way, all the three top guys are all three people that I used to deal with. So their team never changes. It was Lavrov, Yuri Ushakov, who's the foreign policy advisor to Putin, but then a really important guy that I want to underscore. His name's Kirill Dmitryov. I was about to ask you about him. So you beat me to the punch. Okay, so I know him. I used to deal with him. And there he was. And I was like, what is he doing there? He runs the Russian Investment Fund. Well, on our side was Rubio and then Witkoff and then Khrushchev. Just really quick for you, Tarzan. So in what context would you have dealt with? To me, like, why were you surprised that he was there? Like, what was his prior kind of role when you were dealing with him? So he's a super sophisticated business guy. You know, he has degrees, I have to admit it, from Stanford and Harvard. It's just a fact. You can all look it up. You know, and he worked in investment banks. Like a lot of these people did in the 90s. And, you know, with our banks, he's part of that whole ecosystem. And then he was made the head of, you know, the equivalent of their sovereign wealth fund. And back when I was ambassador, we were still, you know, this is before the first invasion. We still had companies that were doing business in Russia. And, you know, so they would meet and they would come to events. And I would, your job as ambassador is to talk to everybody. And he was one of the guys I talked to. But never did he show up at a meeting about arms control. Never did he show up at a meeting. We had, when I was there, we had lots of meetings about how to try to end the war in Syria, right? That was our negotiations. And, you know, Kerry would come over. Various administration officials would come over. Kirill Dmitriev was never part of that. But with the Trump people, he's there and he's there for a very explicit strategy that they're running. And then he's there for a very explicit strategy that they're running. And they pretty much talk about it openly. They want to do business with Team Trump. And they've decided, and again, you know this group a lot better than I do. But they're thinking, and this is something, let me make it broader than that. Actually, Putin thinks this about all people in the West. I've heard him talk about it. We don't have any values. We don't have any morals. We don't have any sense of history. We just want to make money. And everybody has their price. That's the way he thinks. And that, you know, the kind of quintessential case study of this is the former chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, who he got close to. And then when he stepped down, he made him, I think, the chairman of the board of Rosneft, their largest oil company. And then he had a really big role in another company called Nord Stream 2, this gas pipeline. And he just paid him. And Schroeder, guess what? Did what he wanted to do and helped him in domestic politics in Germany. So that's the way they think. That's the way they think about Team Trump. And Kirill, in particular, Dmitry, he keeps saying, let's get this Ukraine thing out of the way so that we can get on with doing business. At one point, he floated a number of $14 trillion in joint ventures that we can do together. The Russian economy, I think, is, you know, under $2 trillion. But I always thought that those were things that were laying out to get Trump to put pressure on Zelensky and the war. And then there was Trump. And now we're going to do these deals. What's striking about the last couple of weeks is they're now starting to do the deals without the war ending. So there was this great reporting about, in the New York Times, about these assets owned by another Russian oil company. It's called Lukoil. They're sanctioned. These assets are abroad. And now they're working on a deal to sell them to people close to the Trump folks. Nord Stream 2 that I just mentioned, this pipeline, there's all kinds of interesting, not precise reporting, so I want to be careful here. But allegedly, some American, again, close to Witkoff and Kushner, are going to buy that. And then more generally, I would just say, you know, when I hear Mr. Witkoff speak, and, you know, I'm not a real estate guy. You know, I haven't done big businesses, you know, buying places there. I don't know how it works there. But I do know how it works in diplomacy. And it's pretty elementary. Like, if you give. The other side something, you should get something in return. And I can't imagine that Witkoff is just, like, giving away buildings and getting nothing in return. Like, you know, that's called a market transaction. I think even in his world, everybody has to benefit from the deal. But when I look at the way he negotiates with Putin, two things are striking. He just gives him everything he wants, concession after concession, and then puts some pressure on Zelensky. But that is the way. That is the way he talks about Putin that, I got to tell you, just gets under my skin. Yeah. Because I've known Putin for a long time. You know, he's killed a couple of my Russian friends, just so we're clear. So maybe I'm biased. You know, he killed Alexei Navalny. He was a friend of mine. He killed Boris Nemesov. I think it's pretty fair bias to be upset at somebody who killed your friends. I don't think. Yeah, so, okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for that indulgence. But even, like, set that aside. Like, in fact, this is something I learned from George Shultz, former Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan. He was. He was here at Stanford at the Hoover Institution for many decades. He was a mentor of mine. And George, he writes this in his memoirs, 1,200 pages long, so nobody's ever read it. But it's really great about diplomacy. I can't say I've read the whole thing, but I have read the sections on things I care about. And when he writes about dealing with the Soviets, he says, look, you got to deal with bad guys. We have interests. We have to engage with them. But he says, you don't have to check your values at the door. And you don't. You don't have to pretend that you're their friend. And I'm just paraphrasing here. That's not exactly what he says. But Witkoff is always trying to be Putin's friend. And I can tell you from experience with that guy and watching him for decades. I met him in 1991, so we have a long history. He looks at that as weakness. He said, when you're trying to, you know, genuflect to him and say what a great guy you are, he doesn't respect that. He just pockets your concession and then say, what are you going to do for me the next time? And that's why I just think these guys are way over their heads. Well, it is weakness. He says it was weakness because it is. And there's almost something. I almost hope the Witkoff kids are making bank off of the Russians because the alternative story is so pathetic that it's almost hard to even process. I mean, Steve Witkoff just sees himself as some like Forrest Gump-like figure who's just so excited to be around this mass murderer. So he has an interesting story for his. memoirs and like that, he seems like that when he talks about it, he's like, oh, we have these great stories. together it's like well why you've been flying to moscow over and over again like putin's been kidnapping children and killing people like killing ukrainians how could you possibly sit there and just with the shitty and grit on your face and so i mean i think that the corruption story is is the more likely one and you know i mean there's definitely something to i don't know wickhoff i think he's feeling the pressure i heard from a from a friend he was supposed to speak at harvard the other day and had a little i don't know exactly what happened so i don't i don't want to make an allegation with a little panic attack i don't know a little wimp out i don't know exactly what happened but he decided not to go at the last second and so um i don't know i wouldn't want to be in the public domain if i were him right now yeah yeah that's probably prudent but you know it is interesting your two theories and i obviously i don't know which is which maybe a false binary could be a little both it could be a little both of course but he just to your point tim like he goes out of his way to say that like that that thing we heard about oh we're all going to be telling war stories someday to our grandchildren you don't have to say that i don't know something is deeply troubling about those comments to me i guess one more example i just wanted to mention on the zlansky thing just about why this is so urgent right now and like why zlansky is is trying to get senators to put pressure on the you know there's this story from yesterday morning where um there's a park in kharkiv and uh you know there's a a missile one of these missiles we've been discussing from russia hit the park three children were among the dead and it was like another missed warning these are the kinds of things that ukraine was able to block up until a week or two ago and like this is happening right now these kids are dying and it's like at this moment that the administration seems to be turning harder against them and i don't understand it i mean people make arguments that this is somehow going to help them in the elections you can speak to that i don't i can't connect the dots this is not that i just think this is trump just leaning into the guy he's always wanted to embrace but we're still not a dictatorship here we're still not a monarchy um and you know zlansky's got to lean in to do what he's doing i mean on this one you know we don't have many polls as you know that we get 80 percent of americans to agree but that's most americans think this is a really bad guy and i just hope that you know we'll have a congress that might think a little more strategically about putting more pressure to do something i am not the expert on those kinds of things i talked to members of congress and senators from time to time it would be nice though if if there was more pushback from that particular body and people say well mike just wait till after the elections it's going to come it's going to come uh and i reported that i just had a group of ukrainians at my house uh last week and there's like you know that's a long time from now yeah that was their response uh january is really far away professor mcfall yeah kids are dying today no that's right um i do think that there probably will be pressure put on the lame duck but then again like how much how much pressure how much can be done right and if these guys are unilaterally stopping intelligence sharing you know are is a republican are the republican senators really going to be willing to go to the mat to stop some other priority that trump wants i find that hard to believe you know what i mean so i do think that they'll that that's the tune will change but that's the problem this is unilateral stuff we got off just a little bit on the dimitri of it i was just kind of wondering if you had any other thoughts on because he does keep showing up yeah it was him that had that had like kind of the initial peace proposal initial russia friendly peace proposal that included taking donetsk and stuff everybody said was yeah that everybody so it's fake end up being real and he keeps popping up so is there anything else kind of about you know what you've been seeing from him lately or or what you expect there well i'm glad you brought up that peace plan because i do think you know he's the main intermediary as again from the reporting i have no inside information i have neither inside information for the trump administration or the putin uh kremlin i know things about the government in kiev but not those two i'm not i don't not being right you met carol and i have not so you're you're you know you're a step ahead of me but what was striking to me is i think he convinced witkoff i can't prove this with evidence but watching the tea leaves and the arc of their conversations and the floating of these ideas i think he convinced witkoff that if trump could just get zelensky to give all of donbass right so the russians have most of it and putin's really focused on conquering it all then they could do a deal and i think they came with that idea to the alaska summit and this is all demetrius doing and they must have talked about it and trump you know trump will just again you know better than i but i've heard in my work my domain space including about me when he said 2018 at a summit with uh putin putin asked him can we interrogate a bunch of americans and and he said yeah that's a great idea and one of them was me uh so he said that about me personally i've i've seen that i'll just say that and he said yeah that's a great idea and one of them was me and this diesel deal there's just no doubt putin floated and he said oh that's a great idea let's do this i think they said that about this deal and then you know maybe it was rubio i don't know but then people are like really we're gonna go on stage and say we've we've committed to this and i think that's why the press conference got pulled down that's why the luncheon got pulled down because otherwise it's really hard to explain but that's what he's focused on his big thing is give us donbass and we can we can then uh convince the big boss for a ceasefire and here's the one thing that i guess marco at least seems to be being honest about um he discussed this also yesterday let's just listen to that really quick russians occupy all but about 11 of that area in that province donetsk or in that region of donetsk the ukrainians have a defensive line that they've embedded themselves in they argue and military strategists say is true that it is the last defensible line that if they give that up there is nothing to defend kiev from there it's just a straight shot into kiev the core of this conflict is russia demands all of donetsk including that defensive line as part of their territory that's what they've defined as victory that was also part of the breitbart interview it seems like you tell me that the facts of kind of you know what the argument is in this dispute over territory is accurate but it's interesting how he phrases it that that's like the core the core of the dispute is russia's desire for donetsk i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct i don't think that's correct exactly so that's that's the part he's leaving out so in the the the negotiations that they're involved in i i think he does describe it accurately and there are these fortress cities and ukrainians will tell you if they fall it's a straight shot to kiev but if the war would end and there'd be peace forever then they wouldn't have to worry about a straight shot to kiev but guess what they're worrying about the straight shot to kiev because they've been there before right they're not going to be able to do anything about it they're not going to be able to do anything about it they're not going to be able to do anything about it they're not going to be able to do anything they were invaded in 2014 and so ukrainians say that we can't give up those cities and the other thing that's interesting you know he sounds like me like he's like an analyst on tv this is what they want this is what they want you know hold on man you're the secretary of state and you should say you know a real leader would say and under no circumstances should we give putin those cities because that would lead to more warfare in the future and we're going to do whatever we can do to create the line before then and i want to also say something very important zelensky if you listen to him closely he's ready to allow the russians to continue to occupy the territory they have right now he will never say it he'll never say it that bluntly he'll never acknowledge it de jure right he'll never sign a treaty but de facto he is ready to do that because they they you know they think it can be like a north korea south korea thing and you know one day putin may fall and they'll get their territory back or more like they they would prefer west germany east germany um but but they can't give up these cities because of the reasons that the secretary of state just described but he shouldn't just be an innocent bystander in this he should be trying to change history not just observe it especially again going back to marco who like was once an advocate of the freedom agenda it's like oh you want to subjugate you know in addition to the freedom agenda it's like oh you want to subjugate you know in addition to the freedom agenda it's like oh you want to subjugate you know in addition to the freedom agenda it's like oh you want to subjugate you know 11 percent of the non-boss to authoritarian rule you know when they're kidnapping these people's children it's just it's it's sick i just want to kind of just brought it out to a couple other geopolitical things so the relationship talk about like where china fits in in this relationship i mean putin uh and applebaum wrote that you know putin's dream for years was that his country you know would be treated as equal to us and china that's why putin is pushing for this trilateral you know summit to discuss the future of ukraine just disgusting that trump wouldn't they wouldn't even have zelensky there but but talk about like why he wants china involved like what is the china russia relationship now and um and kind of how you see that evolving so putin like trump thinks in kind of 18th century 19th century terms right spheres of influence i'll take eurasia you take asia uh china xi jinping you know trump you get north america south america that's the way he thinks and trump does too like you we've seen this, right? He thinks in those terms. So this, that's a play of that, right? We'll get together. We'll just like they did in the 19th century. Let's just carve up Africa. Okay. We're going to get together and carve up Ukraine or whatever analogy you like, right? Sure. I want, I almost said Yalta, but Yalta was different because we did have people there, you know, actually pushing back and that wasn't such a good outcome here. Just be three people on one side of the table. Who's on the other side of the table? There's nobody representing Ukraine or the free world. So that's a very odd thing. And gosh, I hope that will not happen. That would be a horrible outcome. But I think the Chinese and Xi Jinping, their situation is a little more complicated. I'm explaining, not excusing, right? So on the one hand, Putin and Xi Jinping, they are tight. They've had 55,000 meetings. They're united. The autocrats are united. It's the Democrats, you know, on the other side in the world that we're not united, but they're united with their sidekicks, Iran and North Korea. They're coordinating a lot of stuff, sharing technology with the North Korean sharing soldiers. That's all happening. And most tragically, we were talking about this Garan 5, this, you know, rocket slash drone that the Russians, you know, have in this escalation game that is killing a lot of Ukrainians. The engine for that, the rocket engine from that came from China. And that was disappointing to the Ukrainians who've been working really hard to keep the Chinese, you know, not full in. That was a big move on Xi Jinping's part to put, you know, more skin in the game to help Putin. At the same time, at the same time, he's not 100% in. And there's some data points on that. So whenever there's a UN vote about invading Ukraine, going back to 2014, it used to be the case that there was six or seven rogue states, you know, Belarus, North Korea, I think Nicaragua, you know, Cuba, they would vote with Russia against the resolution. We, in the free world, we would vote for these resolutions condemning, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both in 14 and 2022. Xi Jinping would always abstain, never voted with Russia, never sided with him, because he's got an interest in the international system working. They don't want to blow up the whole system and go back to the 19th century. They want the UN to work. They don't want annexation, you know, here and there. That's chaos. They benefit from the system. By the way, we flipped when Trump came back in, in these votes, when they happen now, we now vote with Russia, you know, and we're all together now. We vote. Lukashenko. Lukashenko. We're now with them. The Chinese are abstaining. We're voting with Putin. Second, you know, Putin has been trying to open up a new gas pipeline to China for years. They met again in May. I actually was in China right when Putin showed up. He came in just a few days after Trump was there. And they said, no, we don't want to do it. And the Russians were really pissed off. We talked about Russian drones, but let's talk about Ukrainian drones. They're not all made in Ukraine, all those components. There's a lot of Chinese components that go into their different drone systems. And so if you're friends without limits, how do you explain that? And I don't want to overplay it. You know, I want to be clear that when push comes to shove, Xi Jinping's firmly with Putin. He most certainly doesn't want Putin to lose. But he also, you know, it's a much more complicated relationship than I think when you dig one or two layers deeper. And then what about the kind of Putin-Iranian relationship and kind of how the interplay with the two wars is going? Obviously, in one of the other despicable things Trump did the other day was put out a statement about how Russia is not actually helping Iran that much, kind of absolving them of that. But like, what do you think is like the truth about that? What do you think is the truth about Trump's relationship as it stands? Well, first, Trump's war against Iran was a giant, another gift to Putin, right? First and foremost, because oil prices went up all over the world. Russia makes billions and billions of dollars off of that. But second, because in other parts of the world, you know, I travel a lot for my job. We now look like we're the Russians, right? You know, they have their war, you have your war, you're all the same. Do you know whose image in the world has gone way up over the last 18 months? China, including in our democratic allies. The data, it's a Gallup poll. I have it right here. Many people in the countries now view China more positively than the United States. And we're not talking about the rogue states I was just trying to remember. We're talking about France, Germany, Australia, Canada, Canada. The war itself helped Putin, but Putin has not been a great ally for those in trouble, right? When Pushkin was the president, he was a great ally for those in trouble, right? When Pushkin was the president, he was a great ally for those in trouble, to shove. He let Assad go in Syria. He didn't fight for him there. We took out Maduro. He didn't do much there. So, you know, the Iranians must feel that. But at the same time, they don't want them to lose. They want us to be bogged down there. And I don't know, again, it's really hard to report on or comment on intelligence sharing or not, because it's all classified. But there's a lot of reporting out there that the Russians are helping Iran with intelligence, and that would be very consistent with the relationship they had when I was in the government. So there's no doubt that they're allies, whether that, you know, they're not going to, Russia's not going to go to war for the Iranians. But are they going to help us? Are they going to help Iran fight us? Absolutely. And the notion that Trump floated, well, we got him constrained now because we're doing this diesel deal. You know, we can't judge that evidence, but I'd be very skeptical that somehow they cut them off because we're buying a few billion dollars of diesel. It is unbelievably humiliating and so weak that Trump, like maybe the weakest thing that he's done in a long list, that he is going to absolve the Russians of their efforts to help kill American troops in the Iran war that he started. I mean, I just, I can't, I can't, if you guys had done that, I just came back when I was in my Republican hat and you were in there working for Obama. If you had done so, I mean, you would be wall to wall just talking about how, you know, embarrassing and weak Barack Obama is. And like, that is what Donald Trump is doing right now. And I don't think that's really sunk in with people like, you know, just, you know, the degree to which that he has weakened us on that front. I agree. I agree. It's tragic. And I don't think it sinks in partly because it's hard to report on as we were talking about. Right. But they're all allies. Let's be clear. Like my book's the Democrats. The autocrats are all coordinated. They, they have their clubs, they show up, they coordinate, they, they're in a, they're helping each other. They're all helping each other. Remember Putin needed the Iranians in the beginning of his war. He needed their Shaheed drones in the beginning of the war. We're the ones that are not united. We're the ones that are fighting amongst our allies. And I, when I say we, I want to be clear, I'm talking about the book. It is a book about, you know, decades of, of well, hundreds of years of history in the past. It starts in the 18th century, but it talks about what we're going to need to compete with this autocratic alliance over the decades. And two of the things, most of the book was written, you know, well before Trump came back into power, but I go through how we prevailed in the cold war. And we had two great things they didn't have. We had allies that were really strong and with us, not just kind of, uh, you know, enduring democratic allies that helped us in the cold war. And we have better ideas, you know, democracy is better than dictatorship. And, and we, you know, spread those ideas. Our economic system was, and free markets. Yes. Yeah. And that was, that was too. And on all of those fronts, um, he's blown up our allies. He's breaking down the economic trading system that, that we did so well in the 20th century. And he's abandoned, abandoning this idea that we are the leader of the free world. And, you know, you know, this is never a debate among Democrats and Republicans, right? You know, we had different nuances about how to do this, but nobody during the cold war thought for a minute that we were on the side of the autocrats or the Soviets. And now our president flirts with that from time to time, including this week was a pretty bad one for that flirtation. Indeed. Last thing I just curious, just want to pick your brain on, cause it was also in the news this week. And, um, you know, you were involved in these sorts of conversations about how to engage, um, in other countries was happening and it's just so fraught right now with Israel, but it was pretty striking to me this week, Trump puts out a video endorsing BB explicitly for reelection amidst, you know, the degree to which he's been our partner and cajole are in the Iran war. And then JD Vance, the vice president earlier today was asked about that. And he said that he doesn't want to get involved in foreign political elections and was going to be in the house. Yeah. But he had, as you know, endorsed Orban and AFD a few months ago. And man, if that is not, if that kind of tension is not a preview of where kind of mega world is going, in one little nutshell. I don't know what to tell you. But I'm curious what your thoughts were on just kind of how to gauge. Well, and not only did he endorse them, I was in Munich at the Munich Security Conference when he came and gave that just horrible speech. Vice President Vance saying, you know, you got more problems on democracies here in Europe than we got. And your real problems are not the Russians. Your real problems are here at home. I mean, I was sitting in a room with Europeans, just apoplectic. And they're all asking me to explain J.D. Vance. But then he met with Ofsted on that trip. And then he went to Hungary. It's one thing to put out a tweet. It's another thing to fly to Hungary. So the notion that he doesn't want to enter a meddle in the internal affairs of countries, obviously, that's not a principle of his. But I did not know that he did that. That you are right. This is going to be a big battle within that party coming up. And that's Michael McFaul. I appreciate the time so much this week. The book, as you mentioned, Autocrats vs. Democrats, your last. So, you know, you've done 10 of them. People should get the 10th. I would thank you to support you. We'll be checking in with you as news develops on this front in Russia and Ukraine. Thanks so much for your insight. Appreciate it. Great conversation. Thanks for having me, Tim. I would once again find me a friend Someone to walk with Too, too many boys Too small a town Feels like a dream Feels like I'm always wandering the grounds You call me up I let it ring Heartbreaking me Only one thing Got me again It's the end of the world Done with this year I miss drinking beer Miss singing songs for you Too slow to hate Summer came late I miss you Fire's on the west side I'm rolling the waves Let's misbehave Catch it before it's almost gone Try to pretend it's the end of the world So kiss me to death There's nothing left to decide Nothing to prove Nothing to lose Only to lose I'm gonna tell me a name We'll burn our mistakes and just run Through the end of the world The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DiCicco, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.