He's already eased these sanctions and held off on further sanctions, all while Putin continues to attack Ukraine.

Yeah.

And I mean, he cut security assistance to Ukraine, which is to say money that was being spent on, well, actually investing in the armaments industry and defense industry in the United States, but also providing weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.

He cut that to zero when he returned to office.

And so now all of the kit is that Ukraine requires that's manufactured in the United States is purchased by Europe through something known as the Pearl Mechanism, which is the prioritized Ukraine requirements list that NATO basically put together to keep Ukraine defendable or defensible, rather.

in trump too so that was the start of it um the diesel deal which let's be very clear uh i think the first ships left port last week they're not going to reach these shores before the midterms and even if they did the amount of diesel that was agreed to would you know basically keep the lights on for you know a few hours maybe a day or two in the united states this is not going to have any measurable impact on oil consumption affordability in the united states so this is just basically you know pr gambit by trump but really the the the goal here is economic normalization with russia in pursuit of rapprochement at a minimum but i would argue the the ambitions are greater strategic realignment with russia which, of course, the Kremlin would be all too happy to see.

I mean, they have begun talking about the United States.

So I wonder how much, I mean, this opinion is being mirrored by fellow Republicans.

Yes.

Then he says, "We had to do this.

We had to waive sanctions on Russia and start, kickstart a process of economic normalization with the Kremlin in order to get one American," who, as you rightly point out, was taken hostage, released by Russia.

In twenty twenty-five, Russia released, um, another American who had been taken hostage, uh, named Marc Fogel.

We didn't have to waive or lift any sanctions.

A year prior to that, the Biden administration, since he's invoking, uh, Sleepy Joe, uh, in concert with Germany and a bunch of other countries, traded, and this was a very difficult trade, um, fraught with all kinds of moral hazard.

Vadim Krasikov, this is per- Putin's personal contract killer or hitman, who had murdered, uh, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian, uh, actually a Chechen dissident who had gone to work for the Georgian government as an informant, helping to do counterterrorism stuff and also to do counterintelligence stuff in Georgia against the FSB and ISIS guys.

Right

American

soldiers to the Iranians.

We went in.

One of the strategic objectives of that war, Operation Epic Fury, was what? To destroy Iran's missile program, right? Not only did we not destroy it.

At the outset.

And not only are they rebuilding, but guess who is supplying them with advanced anti-ship missiles with which they are chivvying our tankers and our Navy in the Strait of Hormuz? Russia.

OK, so he's completely full of shit, even if he meant Iran and not Ukraine.

What are some of the things that can be done in kind of pushing back on what would be a historic strategic shift for the United States?

In the meantime, Russia has only ratcheted up their attacks in recent days.

Correct.

So Witkoff and Kushner were in Miami with the Ukrainians and the Europeans to negotiate basically the beginning of the end of the war.

So all of the same subject matters, territorial concessions, security guarantees.

The Ukrainians have been proposing an energy ceasefire.

Now, the thing about a ceasefire is it's its own reward for both sides, right? They stopped striking Russian refineries and energy infrastructure, and the Russians do likewise.

That's not what's happening here.

She's also a contributing writer for The New York Times

Zelensky is saying, "Hey, okay, fine, we'll go with it, but Russia's gotta stop, too." In the meantime, Russia has only ratcheted up their attacks in recent days.

Correct.

So, uh, Witkoff and Kushner were in Miami with the Ukrainians and the Europeans to negotiate basically the beginning of the end of the war.

So all of the same subject matters, territorial concessions, security guarantees.

Ukrainians had been proposing an energy ceasefire.

Now the thing about a ceasefire is it's its own reward for both sides, right? They stop striking, uh, Russian refineries and energy infrastructure, and the Russians do likewise.

That's not what's happening here.

And, and Michael, with that in mind, we're also, the other subplot here is, as the Middle East further destabilizes, as that war widens, f- less and less energy's gonna get out, oil price is gonna keep going up, Trump's gonna keep blaming Ukraine.

... going on in that neck of the wood?

I mean, y- you'd kinda have to ask Marco Rubio, you know? So I w- I would imagine he's none too pleased by all of this, because it, it casts a pall on the State Department.

He's probably being told, "Go out there, you know, make kissy face with the Greeks, and just reassure everybody that, that sh- she's our woman in Athens." But we knew on the last pod that we did that there was more reporting coming, right? We...

I'm a journalist.

Mark talks to journalists all the time.

I knew The New York Times was working on something.

Obviously, The Journal was working on this.

Remember, Trump is not a guy who likes, uh, alcohol consumption or consumption of any other thing, right? 'Cause his brother died a drunk, and he's a famous teetle- teetaler, toter- toter himself, right? Um-

Right

... and now it's this traffic both ways is, is quite common.

Israelis going on ski trips, ski, ski holidays in the UAE.

So the Emiratis will be all over this.

Now, Oman is an interesting case.

Um, I was actually meeting with, um, an intelligence officer here in New York during UNGA, where we were discussing the role that Oman has been playing with respect to the war in Iran and trying to resolve it.

Obviously, they're a key intermediary for the United States and have been for a long time.

[laughs]

So how do you, what is the experience that I get at Yala Vasta? How do I find, does it all come together? Do you take people places? How does that work?

So basically we're trying to bring the DNA of the Israeli society and the DNA of this land through food.

And I wish Jesus would come with us and join the 70 different traditions that now exist in Israel.

Now, the same way the Israeli society has been recognized to be a melting pot, of different cultures from different countries throughout the areas.

The same way the Israeli cuisine or the Israeli kitchen is being built and comprised from 70 different traditions.

70, not 5, not 10, not 15, 70.

This is a number that is second to none.

How do you convince people from around the globe, come back, come and see Israel? I

What inspired this complete turnaround for Donald Trump?

he has a propensity to want to be best friends with other authoritarian leaders around the world.

I mean, most famously Vladimir Putin, it really strains Donald Trump's imagination to come up with a disobliging word for the Russian dictator who just basically had a rubber stamp election, really an exercise in performative genuflection yesterday to continue the war in Ukraine, a war, which by the way, the Chinese are helping Russia wage something like 90% of dual use technology, um, that the Russians are getting through sanctions evasion, they're getting because of China's enabling.

There's also been reporting that China might even be training some troops, Russian troops, to be deployed in Ukraine.

And now we find out, since the war in Iran that we started more than six months ago, both Russia and China are sharing satellite footage to target American bases and assets in the Persian Gulf.

You know, his his sort of his his desire for cuddliness with Xi is rather interesting, given that what's taken place in the last two years since since he became reentered the White House.

I mean, if anything, China has become more aggressive in its posture and more of an adversary to the United States.

Wouldn't it seem that China is more adversarial because of its relationship with Iran and not necessarily one you would buddy-buddy with?

both know Russian intelligence modus operandi, and this is just like, you know, it's like, you know, chumming in the water for a, for a shark.

So yeah, I mean, it is-- it's a huge disclosure and, and hats off to ProPublica for getting the scoop.

Um, the things that jumped out to me the most here were, so Don Jr. claims that he met this guy.

He's-- Kremlev is part of the Russian sort of boxing world, so he's big into international sporting competitions.

He's, he's into hunting.

So all, you know, that kind of macho, macho man stuff that Don Jr. likes to lean into.

He claims that that's, that's how he-- they became friends.

Yep

Does that indicate to you just how desperate Trump is to really be relaying this economic message that they've got a handle on things?

Yeah.

I mean, in term one, he, he really leaned into the economics of his administration, right? The economy wasn't doing so badly.

It was doing pretty well.

Then, of course, COVID hit, so he feel, he felt sort of like, you know, victory was snatched away from him, at least in, in terms of, of his popular political standing.

Of course, he insists that the election in 2020 was stolen, which, which it was not.

But hauling out Scott Bessent, saying, you know, his deeply unpopular tariff policies, don't worry about that.

So is Putin effectively asking Trump to cut off Ukraine's, you know, eyes and ears in exchange for a ceasefire, a ceasefire that he, they wouldn't respect and they, they haven't before?

Yeah

... you know, uh, just, just a few hours ago, I, I checked in.

There's a Finnish, um, war monitoring group called Blackbird.

They judge the Russian summer offensive to be a failure.

Also, the Ukrainians, people have to appreciate this.

They learn the hard way that it's best not to announce your tactical victories in real time because what that does is telegraphs to the Russians, "Hey, redeploy all your assets here to do a counteroffensive and push us out of the territory we've just retaken." So what's happened? Over the last several months, north of Lyman in Donbas, the Ukrainians have recaptured a significant amount of territory, a couple hundred kilometers.

Nobody knew this had happened until they just announced it today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So no, no biggie there.

I mean, there's a lot of things to say, uh, about this.

Number one, the scuttlebutt is this has been long in the making, and Driscoll is most likely to be part of, if not leading, J.D. Vance 2028.

So expect to see him involved in the vice president's presidential campaign soon.

They're best friends.

They went to Yale Law School together.

That's just one story, and there are a bunch of them.

... with their drones, and more rumblings out of Moscow, uh, just about the perhaps eve- running out of the ability to conduct this war at all.

In Crimea, there's no fuel.

I mean, there's no gas.

They're gonna have to import stuff because the Ukrainians have so effectively interdicted the direct line of communication from Russia to the occupied peninsula, right? Like, their drones are taking out truck convoys, rail terminals, you name it.

Um, Russia's not doing well economically at home.

Uh, they had a shot in the arm because we waived some of the sanctions that were imposed on their energy infrastructure as a result of our war in Ukraine.

But as you said, Ukraine's ability to project power deep into Russia, I mean, in the Far East with their long-range drones, taking out energy infrastructure.

Mm.

Yeah [laughs]

... especially when one of the operational objectives of this war was to destroy the Iranian missile program.

The other thing he said was, "Well, you know, let's not worry about the, the nuclear dust," as he calls it, the highly enriched uranium that's buried underground in Iran.

He said, "We might not need e- even need to get it.

It's not very valuable.

It's worth half a, half a million dollars," or something like that.

Basically dismissing, you know, the, the p- primary objective of the war, which was to eliminate the nuclear program once and for all.

What's the problem with Britain?

Yep, I agree.

Um, and if you read the N-two's piece, which I encourage everyone to do, you'll note that there was a kind of, um, I, I, I'm reluctant to call it like a fusion cell, but basically a coordination among several services, the Brits, which do excellent human intelligence, or used to, CIA, uh, the Dutch, and GUR.

And I know also the Estonians have had a hand in rehabilitating and professionalizing the Ukrainian services, particularly when it comes to counterintelligence, weeding out the Russian spies and so on.

Um, I don't think the Europeans are quite up to the challenge to inherit everything, which is why it's so critical to keep this intelligence sharing program in place.

But one important point, you know, and I, I've told the Ukrainians this from the beginning.

You're never gonna get Trump on your side.

You're never gonna convert him to be pro.

And so, you know, I don't know what the, what the meetings are like right now when he comes to the United States, but I can assure you, he's going to see some old friends that he's known for a good decade.

Mm-hmm

... um, we don't need to exfiltrate that.

We can deal with that later, if at all.

He, he described it as not very valuable, less than half a million...

I don't know where he's getting this stuff or, or these, these figures from, but he's just riffing, right? Then he said, and this is completely extraordinary coming from an American president, he said Iran can have ballistic missiles because Saudi Arabia has them Okay, he is already treating Iran as the best friend the United States just hasn't made yet, right? He's bringing them in from the cold.

He wants to normalize relations with them.

And then he says, "The money that we're releasing to Iran doesn't belong to us.

That's not true

Yeah.

But, but here we are.

So one of the operational objectives was, uh, Iran must end its patronage, financing, arming of terrorist proxies, including Lebanese Hezbollah.

This agreement or this MOU basically upends that operational objective by certifying that Iran continues to control Lebanese Hezbollah by interlinking the war in Lebanon with the war in Iran, right? And you had Donald Trump today at the G7 get up and say he's quite tired of seeing how the Israelis go to war with Hezbollah.

They level entire apartment blocks.

I think he made a comment like, "We'd rather see the Syrians, Ahmed al-Sharaa, would be better fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon than the Israelis." So this is a complete reversal of one of the core objectives of this war, right? Number three, J.D.

Vance and, and Kushner are kind of going around saying, "Oh, there's no money up front.

Do you have a sense for, for what's happening, you know, with regards to Cuba?

So if this deal is signed, I mean, how different is this from the situation before the United Sta- States struck Iran in late February? And what, if anything, has Trump actually gained from the war?

So the, the one concession Iran w- would make here, and again, this is just kind of the sketches of what could or could not be a deal, um, based on, I think Axios reported it.

That's what you're citing.

A- and I should, should also add that Mehr News Agency, which is Iranian regime-controlled media, has put out its own version of this, which is far [laughs] more favorable to the Islamic Republic and includes $300 billion in, uh, reconstruction money, um, I think immediate e- an immediate cash infusion of about $24 billion, half of which is to be sent before the negotiations into the substance of the nuclear program commence, um, and other goodies for the Iranians, including, by the way, no discussion of the missile program and the terrorist proxies that they finance.

And those were two of the objectives of this war, get rid of the missiles, uh, and the launchers, and also stop Iran from arming and funding groups like Hezbollah.

Um, so again, take that with a pinch of salt 'cause that's Iranian state media.

But let's assume that it is the Axios version or that's, that those are the broad strokes.

... and that there's no final decision being made, and yet here we are with these major inconsistencies yet again.

It's almost like a parody, yeah

... totally.

Um, Trump says, "No, we mustn't do that." Uh, there's some discussion about possible sanctions relief down the line, but the most important thing for the Iranians is the nuclear issue is not to be determined immediately, right? I think the, the, the, the top line here is that this is es- essentially an extension of the ceasefire.

Maybe the United States starts to diminish some of its naval blockade.

Maybe there is freedom of, of navigation.

But the Iranians will use that opportunity, and if they do in fact charge levies, what are they gonna use the money for? Reconstituting their missile program, which by the way according to the US intelligence assessment they might retain as much as 70% of e- in spite of Donald Trump's claim that he completely destroyed this thing.

That was one of the main operational objectives of this war.

So extending the conflict as Europe has long feared.

And so whatever draws him to Vladimir Putin, whatever drew him to Putin in his 70s, it seems to be even more exaggerated now as he turns 80.

Yeah, we can dig into my piece as the morning goes on, but one thing that really struck me is that there was so much conversation about Joe Biden aging, in part because Joe Biden's so visibly changed.

He, he, he got quieter.

He got sort of smaller.

Seemed like he was frailer.

And while Donald Trump, you know, he still physically sort of looks the same.

Yes, there are the bruises on his hands, and yes, he falls asleep, uh, frequently now in the Oval Office, but he's always, he's a big person.

... where over this last year or so, a little bit, a little bit less reliant on the United States.

Are Russians waking up to the fact that, you know, this is costing them a lot of money, that they don't like what's happening and they don't like losing people in a war that they don't particularly support?

Yeah, I think so.

And I, I mean, a lot of these, uh, wounds are self-inflicted by Putin and, and the Russian elites, you know? O- one of the things that's had a, a, a major impact on the battlefield, uh, the canceling of Telegram, you know, the social media app that Russians relied on for targeting packages and communicating.

Telegram is also widely used within Russia itself, and so restrictions on internet openness are really starting to hit hard a- amongst the, the population there.

And then, you know, the economy is, is cratering.

I mean, even the sugar rush of sanctions relief, which we provided the Russians because of our war in Iran, uh, somewhat blunted, not entirely blunted by Ukraine's deep strikes on oil refineries and terminals and so on.

Um, it, it, it's not, it, it's not trickling down to the people, right? And, you know, the, the history of Russia is they can tolerate quite a lot.

Mm-hmm.

How are they gonna respond to this?

Yeah, so, I mean, the, the Washington Post story was kind of extraordinary.

I mean, 75% of their missile program's still intact.

What they've been doing is taking stuff out of, uh, storage, basically, pulling m- m- uh, old launchers that, that we thought maybe had been destroyed or disabled.

Uh, they still have about 70% of their missiles.

I spoke to a, a western diplomat in Israel yesterday about this story, and he said most of these missiles are probably short-range missiles, which means that the Israelis will consider this a partial victory, right? They don't have as many medium-range missiles to rain terror down on Tel Aviv.

But guess who's not gonna take this as, as, you know, great comfort? The GCC countries, right? The Gulf Arab states, including the Emiratis, who just got pounded yesterday during a supposed ceasefire.

Mm.

It looks like a- again, and, and I, I do not, uh, care to quote Iranian officials, but there is no political, there is no military solution right now it seems to this political crisis, that this administration is going to have to figure out how to change regimes, which doesn't look like it's going to happen, or they're gonna have to sit down and make a deal to keep the strait open.

Yeah, and then there are the unforeseen events.

I mean, you, you just mentioned these IRGC fast boats.

This has been the, the real thorn in the side of a US blockade.

These boats can attach limpet bombs.

They can open fire with automatic weapons and so on.

What if these boats really do something bad like sink an American warship, right? The, the chance of escalation then increases dramatically, Joe.

Yeah

Talk about that and then I- just give us a bigger picture take on the result.

Yeah.

I mean, it was nothing short of breathtaking.

You know, um, Orbán has spent sixteen years doing everything he can to foreclose on exactly this contingency, which is to say gerrymandering up the wazoo.

I think today, what, two days after the election was the first interview that the new incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar has done with a public broadcast in Hungary.

So state media had basically blacked out, had, had banned all opposition.

So this was a guy who just traveled the country, went to six, seven, eight different towns and villages in a day, shook hands with everybody, had to go door-knocking to, to make his presence known and to make his policies understandable to Hungarian voters.

Wow.