... can it make a difference?

So the short answer is no.

The, the longer answer is that the, um, according to industry experts I've spoken to, the, um, amount of diesel that was agreed to is basically what Russia is already exporting.

So Russia isn't not selling to the global market at all.

It just hasn't been selling to the West or, uh, the countries that have sanctioned it since 2022.

Uh, the levels at which they've agreed that Russia supply diesel, uh, under these lifted sanctions to the world are already at the level they're export- you know, producing and exporting.

So it doesn't, it's not really a material change.

Could you give a, a, us a sense a little bit of the latest with that?

... can it make a difference?

So the short answer is no.

The, the longer answer is that the, um, according to industry experts I've spoken to, the, um, amount of diesel that was agreed to is basically what Russia is already exporting.

So Russia isn't not selling to the global market at all.

It just hasn't been selling to the West or, uh, the countries that have sanctioned it since 2022.

Uh, the levels at which they've agreed that Russia supply diesel, uh, under these lifted sanctions to the world are already at the level they're export- you know, producing and exporting.

So it doesn't, it's not really a material change.

Could you give a, a, us a sense, a little bit, of the latest with that?

Now it feels like they're kind of doing that all the time.

Yeah.

Well, I think Ukraine has several strategic goals here.

The first is to, uh, target the infrastructure of the war.

You know, for example, one of the things they targeted this summer were the Wildberries warehouses.

Wildberries is like a homegrown Amazon essentially, and it's where a lot of small, uh, Russian business people do commerce, sell things, um, to each other, but it's also where drone parts, for example, were built and stored and sold.

So, um, they're targeting part of the infrastructure that supports the war.

So, you know, do you think that this could have an impact on how US energy markets work, or is this m- mostly a ploy by Donald Trump, announced on Truth Social, to show that he's fighting for the American voter?

[laughs]

Like, with all the strings.

Yeah.

And it's just like, yeah, y- you know, of course this makes sense.

And they're all tangled and knotted.

I feel like this is just so simple.

Like, we live in just much simpler times now, where Trump even said, you know, to the New York Times, he said, "I tried so hard to avoid conflicts of interest," which, like, asterisk, he did not, "in the first administration.

Le Chevalier, excuse me.

If you were assessing A leader's son-in-law as their top diplomat who had investments to the, that we know about, in the billions of dollars in the governments in which he was negotiating, how would you describe that in a briefing for a leader?

I would say they were deeply compromised.

If the reporting is true, that he's accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from the same countries that he's negotiating with in his own, uh, government capacity, I, I can't think of another case where this has occurred.

In my 20 years of being a CIA officer, if I ever attempted to do these two jobs, I would be, I would be walked out.

I wouldn't be there for another hour.

They would cl- pull my clearance and walk me out of the building.

The FBI would be investigating.

I mean, what is just the, the almost technical national security risk of having someone like that representing our government and our country?

... about that fateful event at the White House on Tuesday?

Trump got on stage and told this story about being down on the pile and rescuing people and having to be dragged out of it by two burly, muscular, totally ripped firemen-

What?

You can't tell me that somebody at Walmart isn't watching this program and will FedEx a rotisserie chicken purse to Amber Ruffin overnight.

She has, she has done nothing-

W- was Hegseth resistant to doing those things, or was Hegseth just resistant to the idea that somebody else wanted to bring some big ideas to the table when h- you know, Hegseth clearly thinks, "This is my building"?

It's definitely and obviously the latter.

Uh, he didn't want Driscoll and Randy George getting credit for this.

There was a point when he tried to kind of take credit for the modernization initiative and give this big speech, and was like, "Actually, this is all my idea," and George and Driscoll were happy to let him have it, 'cause they were like, "Fine, whatever.

However this gets done, we get the politics of it." But that really wasn't enough for Hegseth, in part because he's really vain and thin-skinned and vindictive, unlike anybody else in Washington, especially in this administration, and he didn't like the flattering coverage that Dan Driscoll was getting, uh, including, he felt, in Puck, and he just didn't want any attention for anybody else.

The other thing was that he was ...

It's not that this administration is against big tech.

So how did that flare, like, actually between the two of them?

So looking at the data, using your big old brain there, what do you think the impact of foreign policy's going to be on 2026?

Well, I think it's going to be big, but for the exact reasons you said, and it already has been big, right? Uh, you know, I spoke to the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, which is one of my favorite newsletters to read, and he was saying that, look, if the Democrats win the Senate, which is still a big if, he said that you can lay squarely at the feet of Donald Trump's decision to attack Iran in February because it has driven up gas prices.

Gas is over $4 a gallon in some places.

It's created all kinds of inflationary pressures, and that is the kind of stuff that makes foreign policy tangible to people.

Otherwise, America's protected by its massive economy, by two oceans on the east and west of it, two friendly neighbors to the north and south, and unlike many other countries, it is quite insulated from the rest of the world, to its great luck.

Uh, but this year, you know, it's bursting through, and I think what's really interesting is I was also digging through the Echelon numbers last night, and what struck me was they asked people to pick what the biggest issue they think is facing the country today, and cost of living was the combined first and second choice for 48% of people they talked to.

But national security came in at 10%, and it was the first choice for only 4% of respondents, which is interesting because those two things are so, as you and I have just discussed, are so interconnected, right? The cost of living is being pushed up by decisions that Donald Trump is making abroad, and I don't just mean the Iran war.

Mm-hmm.

Is that a good, simple model of it?

Yes, I think so, and those are the women I grew up with, where you do everything and you make it look easy.

This Soviet historian said women had to do these jobs, you know, her work outside the home, household work, and raising the children as if each of them were her only job, and I would add, as if it were her job alone.

Pretty much all women worked outside the home.

That was also mandated in 1920, that women had to work.

When they implemented the policy to try to get a baby boom after the war, they tried to make sure that women wouldn't just be stay-at-home moms by tying food places and daycare nurseries to a woman's workplace to keep them in the workforce, 'cause they could not, given the catastrophic losses they suffered in World War II and the years preceding it, they couldn't afford to have women stay at home the way they could in the West.

So women worked outside the home.

And all these gender attitudes taken as a whole, how do they feed into Russian politics today with Putin and autocracy and militarism and nationalism? Is that a close connection in your mind or somewhat contingent or...?

Mm-hmm

... uh, not just for Ukraine, but for Israel.

And it's really interesting to see how MAGA, now that it's in power, is fracturing in part because of these foreign policy disputes.

This MAGA foreign policy split I think is going to be interesting come 2028.

Uh, I don't know that it's very interesting right now because Donald Trump is...

Unless he runs for a third term, which he might.

Um, if he doesn't run in 2028, he's a lame duck.

First of all, explain the significance of why she was even in Ukraine, and second, how'd you get her on the phone?

Mm-hmm

...

this is after Crimea, after, uh, the protests against him, which were led by kind of pro-Western s- urban liberals, and he was like, "Screw these people.

I'm, I'm going hard right, um, traditionalist, and I'm gonna talk about family values and cultural values, and the ties that, kind of the ancient ties that bind Rus- Russian society together," and one of those was the church.

And I remember traveling around Russia talking to these conservatives and, and, um, uh, church officials, and they-- What struck me was they were so proud of the fact that Russia never had a reformation, like a Protestant Reformation, and unlike the Catholic Church, uh, they hadn't even had a Counter-Reformation to kind of address some of the things that the Protestants were yelling about and to not, you know, to keep some of their parishioners.

Um, they were like, "We have existed in this exact form for 2,000 years, and we haven't changed, and that's, um, our pride."

Right

...

How can you account for her about face?

You know, I was surprised as well, which is why I shot her text and said, how's Kiev? And she said, Kiev is amazing.

The people are so nice.

And I thought, okay, do you want to talk to me? And so we talked for about an hour from her hotel room in Kiev.

And my sense, and I could be mistaken, but my sense of it comes down to two things.

The first being, anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel sentiment that has blossomed so fully on the right where she lives.

And the second is the principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Is that the sense that the Ukrainians are like, hey, this is an unlikely ally, but we'll take it?

Right

... being able to come on board with Donald Trump.

In JD Vance's case, I think he has always had this...

I think one particular through line though for him that you can trace is, uh, this anti-interventionist streak, and there's a lot of people like him, uh, in Republican politics.

They're millennial men who answered the call of duty, as it were, and signed up with the US military in the years after 9/11, and were deployed repeatedly to the wars to fight in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Uh, JD Vance was in the Marines, but he was a, a public affairs officer who wrote articles and took photographs.

Uh, and I remember one, um, Republican Hill, uh, Senate staffer telling me, you know, there's this, there's this feeling of, you know, "I saw my friends die in Iraq.

Mm-hmm

Are you floating the honey trap theory? [laughs]

Well, I don't, like, I- I truly don't know why he, like what the policy goals would be.

We don't cooperate with them on anything anymore.

Like, the FBI used to cooperate with Russia on counter-terrorism.

That was one of the last things to go when the US started kinda snipping the ties after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

But even that, you know, after the 2016 election meddling that Russia did, and the fact that a lot of counter-terrorism folks in the American intelligence community and the CT community were like, "Russia doesn't actually really help us.

They just take our information, don't give much back.

Those are all some big foreign policy players in the Senate

Why do they like Kash Patel so much?

Julia, I think they like Kash Patel.

Yes, I think they like Kash Patel for the same reason that they like Donald Trump and everybody else who came in with him in 2024, which is that they saw him as the wrecking ball.

I remember in 2018, I went to the NATO summit in Brussels and I ran into a former advisor of former President Dmitry Medvedev.

And I said, you know, this is Trump one.

I said, hey, so how are you guys seeing Donald Trump? Like, how does he come across to you? And this guy said, give me a line I'll never forget.

He said he's a wrecking ball, but he's our wrecking ball.

So, Julie, can you tell me, can you make an assessment, an educated assessment on why they would want to host Kash Patel?

Julia, give me more of this reporting.

Well, people are pointing out that, look, it wasn't always this way.

In the 77 years of NATO's history, there were only 35 summits.

So do the math.

That's not every year.

And in fact, during the Cold War, NATO only had 10 summits.

It took about eight years from NATO's founding for it to have its first summit.

What's it scaled back to?

Mm-hmm

... you know, he's, in some ways, this was not out of the ordinary for him.

He's become kind of the scolder in chief, right? He scolded, uh, America's allies at the Munich Security Forum in February 2025, just hot out of the gate, said that you guys are basically antithetical to all the values we hold dear because you are trying to sideline these far right parties that are simpatico to MAGA.

Shortly thereafter, he dressed down Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House, in the Oval Office, saying essentially, "You're ungrateful.

You're an ungrateful vassal." And I would say that the isolationist camp, uh, the restrainer camp, the so-called realist camp on the right that is headed by JD Vance and features other prominent thinkers like Bridge Colby, who's now at the Pentagon, takes this very kind of condescending view toward our allies, that, you know, you should be so grateful.

You need, um, let's not forget who the senior partner and who the junior partner is in these, in all of these arrangements.

And what I found remarkable about JD Vance's, um, kind of tongue-lashing of Israel, Israel was kind of talked about in those terms behind closed doors in DC by Democrats, by Republicans, like how demanding they would be in meetings, how they would forget their place-

Mm.

Things are changing every single day.

Well, it's not just that.

It also feels bad because it doesn't promise much, but it does also promise a lot.

And even if n- no deal is going to, like no real deal gets signed in the end, and they don't agree on nuclear disarmament, and they don't agree on all the different things that they, um, said that they were going to discuss in the 60 days that the MOU spelled out, it has already put on the table things for Iran that are massive rewards, culminating in the US going to the UN n- uh, Security Council and lifting the multilateral sanctions on Iran, uh, that had been put there by the world for Iran's actions.

At the same time, it has already taken off the table things that Republicans had previously excoriated Obama for not including in his 2015 deal, which is missiles, which, uh, you know, now the Kuwaitis, and the Emiratis, and the Israelis can tell you all about.

And the proxies, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, these terrorist proxies that have been, uh, sowing chaos and bloodshed in the region, they are now off the table.

And so it, it sets up a framework for negotiating a future nuclear deal that is already far less strict than what the JCPOA outlined.

Mm-hmm

But also, why say that aloud? Why tell the Iranians that his pain point is the American economy when Iran has the ability to choke off the strait?

Well, I'm sure you remember covering the 2016 campaign and a lot of Americans lauding him for the fact of saying what everybody is thinking, right? This is kind of his trademark.

He just says it.

But it is interesting in the global sense that other world powers that are our adversaries or enemies, like Iran, like China, like Russia, have always known this about us.

And they see us as fundamentally weak and soft and cowardly because we are never able to kind of put imperial geostrategic gain ahead of our own citizens' comfort.

I think from an American point of view, that's not a terrible thing.

That might make it a nice place to live, that you're not constantly sacrificing your sons and daughters and your comfort for some greater idea of empire.

J.D. Vance, is he in an impossible situation right now, the Kamala Harris situation, given all the responsibility but none of the power?

Okay.

Uh, increasingly impactful, um, you know, to the point where in January and February it looked like the Russian economy was teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Like, people are really unhappy in Russia right now, and the economy is not doing well.

Um- Now the, the surge in oil prices is letting them kind of paper over the deficit, but it's still a temporary fix, and, um, the Russian- the fundamentals are so- are not strong.

At the same time, as Cliff Gaddy once said of the Russian economy, it's a cockroach economy.

It's incredibly rudimentary and, uh, hardy, and it w- and it can survive in some form.

So it's helped, but it's also, you know, the Iranians are a close ally of the, of the Russian regime.

He has a total stranglehold on the media there, does he not?

Mm

... on Netanyahu.

The Israelis and the Lebani- or, and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire.

In the meantime, Hezbollah and Israel have been shooting each other ever since the ceasefire started, so it's a ceasefire where the fire hasn't ceased, and it's a war, but it's not a war, and it's not not a war.

Uh, and then in most recently, Israel, in response to these, uh, constant Hezbollah attacks, uh, decided to push even further into Lebanon.

They told the entire city of Tyre to evacuate.

That's insane.

Mm

Mm

... our consumption.

And I think that is true here, and you really see the kind of, the Floridification of American politics really on display here.

The extent to which Venezuela, Cuba are done with an eye toward, uh, Trump's other home state of Florida, right? To these constituencies that have been hardcore MAGA for a long time, and hardcore Republican before that.

And given who came out to this indictment, the way that it wasn't just, uh, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general.

It was various figures in the Cuban American political establishment in Florida, that it was done at Freedom Tower, where f- uh, Cuban refugees had been processed for decades, that it was done on Cuban Independence Day.

And then you had Marco Rubio coming out, posting this five-minute video in perfect Spanish, talking about this thing called GAESA.

[laughs]

[laughs]

Uh, then in, and then I was like, well, okay, I've said everything in the sample chapter that needs to be said, so I don't know what else the book would be about.

And in talking to the editor, talking to my agent, I realized that the very fact that that lineage, to me, is so boring and ordinary, but to an American obviously is not, because that is not what women were doing in the 1930s in America.

Like, it was not a commonplace thing for your doctor to be a woman in the 1930s, or in the 1960s, or in the 1970s, whereas by the time my mom went to medical school in the Soviet Union in the late '70s, uh, 70% of doctors were women in the Soviet Union.

And that's another can of worms that we can get into later.

But, um, it truly was ordinary.

But, and then I realized th- in that gap there, uh, I recently heard it, uh, a marketer call it the curiosity gap, which is ridiculous, but there's that curiosity gap.

So what characteristics of strength did you find through all these women that you inter- that you wrote about?

What do you think? Will this one-page memo end the war? Is the war over?

Well, okay, so a couple of things.

First is, I don't know if you remember from Trump One, but a one-page memo is about as many pages of memo that Donald Trump will ever read.

So that's the max number of pages that a memo can be.

Two, what you didn't mention Trump saying is that he's going to guess the card you have pulled from the deck.

Like, all of this feels very much like a shitty street magician being like, "Okay, and now we're gonna call it something else," and just trying to do these little tricks on messaging, calling it something that it's not.

You know, that operation that hit the 60-day mark for when it would have needed congressional authorization magically ended, and it's now a different operation with a different name, and so the clock has restarted.And, oh, that one's over the day after we launched it, because it achieved its goals by not achieving any of its goals.

He's always hated Obama's.

Just to level set here, go through, you don't have to name every single name, but since Pete Hegseth came in as Secretary of Defense, secretary of war and war fighting, tell me about some of the people he has let go and why, before getting into this new chief of staff of the US Army that he seems to like.

Well, um, so I don't have a full list, because it's a very long list.

At this count, it's over, well over 20, getting close to 30, uh, general officers, so that's generals and admirals of various levels, va- various ranks, that Hegseth has fired.

Um, some of them he has fired for being...

Well, let's just say a lot of them, we don't know why he's fired.

People have to guess.

People have been guessing why he's firing.

So why is General LaNeve, uh, getting laddered up, uh, while all these other folks are being sidelined?