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COMMENTARY CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR Do Trump’s Tactics Work? Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Do Trump’s Tactics Work? \| Christiane Amanpour Presents Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files May 27, 2025 7.47K subscribers ... 225,708 views ... 5.4K likes Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin Another week, another tense Oval Office meeting between President Trump and a fellow world leader. Christiane and Jamie react to the jaw-dropping scenes from Trump's meeting with South Africa's President, where Cyril Ramaphosa was told he was allowing a genocide of white farmers to carry on unchecked. Christiane compares the encounter to when President Zelensky was ambushed by Trump and Vice President JD Vance back in February, and Jamie reveals what senior Republicans have said to him in private about Trump's foreign policy. Christiane also shares the story of when she very nearly interviewed Nelson Mandela, and she and Jamie reflect on who stands to gain most if the US abandons its allies. For more content, please follow us: Watch us: / @amanpourpod Instagram: / amanpourpod X: https://x.com/AmanpourPod Facebook: / christiane-amanpour-presents BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/amanpourpod.... Contact us at: amanpourpod@global.com #news #christianeamanpour #interview #politics #podcast Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin Transcript 0:00 mandela had said he was only going to give one interview but I found myself away into the bowels and the basement of this UN um establishment i'll bet you did and I was confronted by the most dignified human being that I had ever seen in my whole [Music] life this is Cristiano presents the XFiles with Jamie Rubin and I'm Christian and I'm Jamie Rubin and I'm a longtime correspondent and now anchor for CNN where I have had a show for a long time trying to hold world leaders to account we also happen to be a married couple we were married for 20 years we've been divorced now for seven thus the title The Ex-Files yep and we thought if we can talk together and address some of these incredible problems um from all sorts of different perspectives notably his from government mine from journalism then anybody can and maybe even world leaders because a lot needs to be talked through hashed out and 1:05 sorted so let's get started um it what is it is it the foreign policy of personality is it grievance certainly there's a lot of humiliation to a lot of the foreign leaders who are coming what does it really mean for America and its attempt to make deals um for instance what he said to Europe first it was on again off again this and that he slapped 50% rhetorically anyway tariff the Europeans turned around and said stop making threats just negotiate then Trump said hold on I'm taking off the 50 we're going to we had a good call we're going to talk about it um apparently Macron the French uh president has told him on various calls 'Listen Donald uses his first name you've simply got to stop insulting our country.' Um I think that the real question is not just the personality of Donald Trump but what does this actually mean for American foreign policy so Jamie if we go back to basically Sirill Ramaposa and we're 2:04 going to talk about Putin in a second because that's all gone haywire as well so the humiliation or the attempted humiliation of Sir Ramiposa in the Oval Office and trying to say that under the ANC the black majority in South Africa the whites were being and these are Trump's words executed or it was even worse than apartheid and they're being discriminated against but you do allow them to take land no no no you do allow them to take land nobody can take when they take the land they kill the white farmer and when they kill the white farmer nothing happens to them well look the way I think about this is to distinguish between Trump the dealmaker the politician the individual and American foreign policy that flows from that uh what Trump has realized and in using the powers of the presidency to their maximum extent he's realized he can play the foreign policy game every 3:04 day through a phone call through a meeting through a tweet uh and that is the unique power of the American president where it's not a parliamentary system so that's one thing that's happening number two is they have thrown away the normal system of policym just this past week they basically eliminated half the staff of the White House National Security Council which used to drive policy from below where experts officials would come up with some ideas push it up to the next level then to the cabinet level and ultimately to the president that's the normal way of doing long-term American policy so that these policies have traction that they're thought through and that they're uh in our interest trump has thrown all that away and decided whatever I think today is going to be the foreign policy of the United States and he has that power under our system america and South Africa have had a long-term relationship they have a pretty robust trading uh 4:01 relationship sir Ramaposa's um aim was to reset their relationship after Trump cut aid cut ties and all the rest of it um his foreign minister told me that that's all they wanted to do behind closed doors after all this halaloo in the white house the ambush with the with the powerpoint they just wanted to reset the relationship and they're hoping that that they might have done obviously America is the strongest one but what does it serve America to alienate Africa or if you listen to some of the experts America has been as is Europe pulling out of Africa guess who's going in the UAE are and the Chinese absolutely th those both those countries are going in you're absolutely right this is not good for the United States but it is a a reality that President Trump in his last administration called all these countries a nasty word the hole countries is the phrase the president used i'm just repeating what he said um and this time around people were hoping 5:04 that in the second term that uh meeting someone with the dignity and skill of serial Ramaposa we could get back to a more normal way of doing business but it's not going to happen and the problem here is that uh Africa is growing stronger and stronger it's got reasons for feeling their oats and South Africa is considered the leader of Africa either South Africa or Nigeria the two main countries by insulting the South African president he's uh insulting Africans unfortunately this follows from taking away all the incredible work the United States has done over the years to provide medical assistance to uh Africans and saved millions of lives through the Gates Foundation through the program that provided HIV uh support for killing HIV and treating it um and and that's the tragedy here is that we've been winning hearts and minds in Africa for years and years going back to when we opposed the apartheid regime and 6:03 instead of sticking with that line Donald Trump has overturned it president Trump has sided us with the white farmers imagining some grand grievance against the white farmers that actually isn't going on as Ramaposa explained and I was actually quite sad because and actually befuddled and I don't even know some people say it doesn't matter he won with that with that video but that his aids did not know enough to actually put correct stuff on that PowerPoint has been exiled from the ANC's a fringe party member the white crosses it was easily fact checked and debunked it was a protest it wasn't grave markers and and a lot of the stuff that his spokesperson handed to him some of it anyway was said to have been from other countries um this is what happens when you have foreign policy made uh you know on the fly you know American foreign policy matters to the world what we say what we do matters to the world and 7:05 that's why you have a system to in construct thoughtful policies and then construct policym with foreign governments slowly carefully and you don't throw it all away in one meeting normally instead of uh a meeting happening first you work with the lower levels of government you plot up a summit meeting between the two leaders and you make progress uh the way Donald Trump does it is the reverse he wants to run it himself uh frankly without much advice from any particular experts and then you have this amateur-ish moment where they can't get their facts straight and they uh they put out something that isn't true and tragedy is that it harms the United States in the long haul even if we don't want to devote all of our resources to to Africa because we're scaling back according to Trump because of his own reasons we why should we alienate them after having done so much for decades to support Africans in their effort to be free and 8:03 thrive as a as a people free of HIV and free of uh apartheid and free of uh the rule of the iron man which has been happening also in Africa some leaders you know Zalinsky did not do it so well and he got riled up and Trump got riled up and Vance piled in and all the rest of it but Ramiposa and his people were much more composed and actually there was a funny moment going to the sort of the the flattery and the you know giving Trump gifts uh uh bit of of this whole narrative when a journalist got Trump upset about again asking about the 400 what is it million dollar plane from the UAE uh and this is Trump's response but this is what Ramiposa said i'm sorry i don't have a plane to give you i I wish you did i take it i would take it if your country offered the United States Air Force a plane I would take it but coming back to to this issue which I really would like us to talk about and talk about it very calmly so it was 9:06 pretty adept it broke the ice ramaposa told a joke it sort of brought down the temperature for a for a period of time but what's what's amazing I mean I if if it was up to me I would recommend to Donald Trump and his um and his aids and and all his cabinet members to watch the great film Invictus which was about the great Nelson Mandela actually reaching out and embracing and bringing in the white South African rugby team i.e the white South Africa and it was just so beautiful and of course Nelson Mandela for me and for many people is possibly the most respected world leader in in modern times or in any memory and guess what sirill Ramaposa was his chief negotiator in the you know with with with the Mandela and the white government of FW D Clerk and I remember interviewing FW D Clerk and he told me 10:03 what a an incredible distinguished brave and determined man Nelson Mandela was and the two of them won the Nobel Prize together for ending apartheid so it's weird Jamie that Trump is casting himself as sort of the self-appointed protector of white people who have had no none of their rights taken away this is what happens when you instead of relying on a system of government where you get actual facts and you build it up and you decide what to choose and you have thoughtful premeating meetings and then you decide how to proceed in a in a in a live television televised moment between leaders uh you don't have these kind of crazy uh town discussions that are about things that didn't happen and that reflect white grievance and look my last job in the government was running partly the information warfare uh uh account and Russia and China work it really really hard in Africa and one of the things we discovered and we revealed it we downgraded intelligence and were 11:03 able to reveal it that Russia was so infuriated by the reputation of the United States for doing good works in Africa by providing uh uh retroviral medicine by preventing the millions of deaths from AIDS and from other uh diseases russia's Russia hated that and so they came up with conspiracy theories and then they spread them through information warfare where they suggested that big pharma was using Africans as test subjects uh in bow warfare and we were able to reveal this Russian effort and kill it before it could spread uh but what it tells you is how much support the United States had for its efforts in Africa how much that infuriated Russia and China because it was basically soft power of the United States and President Trump and his administration unfortunately in six months have wiped out an enormous amount of America's soft power by killing all the programs to provide assistance or 12:01 many of them and by uh coming up with these crazy town stories about uh white farmers and and that's the tragedy here to me as a foreign policy person i think we're going to take a break and when we come back we're going to talk about the stats Jamie that you're just alluding to you may not have even seen them but uh in the FT the democracy perception index has very very bad news for the United States of of America and we'll also talk about JD Vance and we'll talk about Putin and the latest Trump broadside against Putin he also gave Zilinsky another you know slap across the face yeah another shot and we'll talk about that and some of the behind thescenes stories in the next part okay we're back to continue the discussion when we left off we were talking about the democracy perception index the FT has quoted these figures which I'm going to read but it also says that this is becoming a reality TV show like a spectator sport with all these 13:02 different installments and episodes in the Oval Office but listen to these stats because they're worrying i think so 45% Jamie have a positive impression of the United States that is down from 75% last year president Trump is viewed negatively in 82 of 100 nations while President Putin the man who's invaded his neighbor is viewed negatively in only 62 of those nations and Xi is viewed negatively in 44 of those nations so Xi is the most popular in these 100 countries then Putin and then Trump boy this is what this is what I learned in my two years in government we are losing the information warfare to Russia and China we are losing the so-called undeclared information war where Russia and China have decided to spend enormous resources discrediting the United States 14:00 and promoting themselves and now because of the way Trump's policies are being perceived and the president's views are being perceived around the world it's been added on uh to uh negatively affect the United States look on the surface information warfare doesn't always appear to have long-term impact but I can tell you that it does because what it means is our ability to persuade countries to work with us to be a leader in the world you have to have people following you you have to turn around and have people there when you have these kind of figures and this kind of uh rejection of the American uh leadership role uh you can't play a leading role it weakens the United States in our power in the world and that's what's so troubling about it let alone the fact that I've worked in this field for 30 years building up I thought the reputation of the United States for the good things we've done for the important role we've played in preventing war in Europe and Asia uh and unfortunately in the last few years Russia and China have attacked us and 15:00 now President Trump through his views and the policies he's pursuing has undermined us do you think I understand the the the power of the information war but isn't it also soft power because coupled with the information war you've got the administration that has severely restricted if not ended all the good stuff so-called soft power that America does whether it's in health and you know famines and crises and storms and all the rest of it around the world exactly i mean that's where we've uh weakened uh ourselves through these policies that I was describing by killing off assistance killing off the Agency for International Development by stopping the promotion of VA and other news organizations that that people in in certain countries need to know what's going on these are all soft power tools but because of uh them killing them off as a policy matter and President Trump's uh activities and actions inside meetings and what he says every day the combination has been deadly for uh our uh soft power and our 16:05 reputation and our real power because ultimately many of the issues we need in the world we can't do alone we need to have people with us helping us confront China helping us confront Putin and Ukraine and we lose that when when we lose the power and influence uh through this information warfare it seems that America first is almost like America alone and if not America alone then it's America mostly alone and and also getting things by coercion um the latest analysis of I mean it was it was titled Trump's obsession with Panama okay so you want to make sure that China doesn't get a unsemly unsafe dominance in that very vital you know waterway but the latest analysts say that the the the president there has buckled to a lot of Trump's demands you know free traffic through for certain American vessels putting American um 17:07 armed forces in all the different Panamaeanian bases around the canal and and and in other places um and the people are now beginning the Panameanian people are beginning to get angry at their own president because they're saying 'Hey you're not standing up for our sovereignty what was wrong with the situation that you know America gave us back the canal?' If these people rise up and say out you go Mr president what if somebody else comes who's hostile to America exactly and but what's what this is about there's two issues one is substance what do we say what do we our policies the other is the way we pursue those policies and by pursuing them through threat and through misinformation and coming up with crazy town stories like the white farmers story that he did with Sarah Ramaposa or crazy town stories about the Panama Canal and then pressuring the 18:00 governments very aggressively that's the way the Trump administration is pursuing its policies you alienate the people in in countries that matter whether that yields a a hardliner against you whether it just weakens the the country's support for the United States I don't know the real tragedy is some of the points that President Trump is making I personally agree with i don't like the idea that a Chinese company has control over some aspect of the shipping lanes in in the Western Hemisphere or in the Suez Canal or in the East China Sea and so when President Trump focuses on those things I think that's the correct focus but by doing it this way through insult and pressure um we it may it backfires and we lose the advantages that it it brings us and just a quickie we've we've talked about the leaders that Trump has sort of for what whatever you want to say humiliated you know andated alienated but others he hasn't like for instance Na Boule of of El Salvador treated him to a beautiful as Trump 19:03 might say a big beautiful Oval Office meeting in which he was you know lavish praise on him so it goes both ways and I guess a question is somebody we've just talked about China somebody like Xi Jinping with whom the United States and particularly President Trump has a lot of business you know in terms of unfair trade and and this and that is Xi going to subject himself to an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump under the current circumstances well I think the short answer to that is no and that's why they haven't even spoken on the phone because the way the Chinese system is doing operates is the exact reverse of what Trump does everything has to start below have to be carefully scripted have to be built from the working level ambassadors then ministers then more ministers then the head of state and the meetings themselves I can tell you uh are often you know not that interesting because they're performative with the leaders of of a country like 20:04 China where we know exactly what they're going to say and they know exactly what we're going to say and it's only over time by having multiple such meetings that you develop a relationship that can be useful in a crisis but to make policy with China who's now the most important other country in the world after the United States they're not going to stand for this kind of uh uncertainty about what will happen they're going to you know even with Biden who was very respectful they negotiated every single detail of who would speak first who would get a camera angle uh every single aspect of the itinerary of a meeting and this unscripted shoot from the hip uh crazy town approach uh they're never going to tolerate and that's why we haven't even I think Trump has admitted that he's sort of waiting for a phone call from uh other than congratulatoratory call which I guess he got a real proper phone call and that's not going to happen until they are confident that it's going to be done the at least halfway the way they are normally doing business so this really 21:04 has an impact this performance which Trump loves and he's good at people say you know he's he's really good at it and he seems to you know dominate the space but maybe it's not good for him or for the United States exactly you you put your finger on it look um before we go into the future I think it's worth reflecting south Africa is very important for a number of reasons but most importantly this was the ultimate test of black white relations in the 90s and when um I remember vividly I worked for Maline Albbright under President Clinton it was 1994 I believe and the election was taking place and this was one of the most beautiful moments in modern history when the African people could stand up every single one of them black white and mixed race and vote for whoever they wanted to and we were there as observers but even then there were complications for example I remember we 22:02 were basically held hostage in our hotel room because the Zulus led by a man named Budles were protesting this agreement between the white uh leadership and the Nelson Mandela's ANC party he was feeling left out in the cold and he had his Zulu warriors dressed like Zulu warriors demonstrating all through uh uh Ptoria and the other capital city major cities and we were frozen in our hotel room when we were supposed to be out sort of looking at the election and so the the the history of this country in South Africa I remember being at Nelson Mandela's speech to the Congress you know where tears were in the eyes of members of Congress and everyone who listened to it when he addressed a joint session of Congress I was a Senate aid at the time under President Biden then Senator Biden so these the the reason why this came off so bad and why you were probably so affected by it is because the apartheid the end of apartheid was one of the signs that our world was getting to be a better place it coincided with the fall 23:03 of communism and there was real optimism in the world communism fell apartheid fell these two evil schemes fell um and there was hope that uh you know that democratic revolution would spread around the world obviously it didn't and we're now seeing the backlash but but the reason the Ramadosa meeting was so painful is because it it pricked at a very very important moment in in world history now I think you're absolutely right and that that moment you're talking about the awesome sight of the Zulus doing their thing um again Ramiposa was very very instrumental in talking all all of the sides down the radicals on on on all sides of on black and white and all the rest of it on behalf of Nelson Mandela and you know I I remember going to Robin Island i'm sure many people have made that historical pilgrimage and seeing Mandela's cell and being taken into the 24:01 quarry with with a blinding light where he would have to spend hours and hours and hours with other prisoners you know hacking away at uh at the stone in the quarry and knowing how he really elevated the fellow prisoners and and and kept them on the political path even while in prison um and and and explain how they had to be in order to come out and how they had to be was to be able to go towards reconciliation and I just think that is so incredible and it was Nelson Mandela and FW D Clerk the white um last white South African president who essentially agreed to the truth and reconciliation commission so much has been done um in that country that is so exemplary despite all the you know challenges and all the flaws that remain and the poverty and the imbalances etc but so much has been done jamie I remember I used to because of Ted Turner he used to love to make us cover all the UN side conferences there was the UN social progress conference 25:04 mandela had said he was only going to give one interview and that's to the host country TV Danish TV but I found myself away into the bowels and the basement of this UN um establishment i'll bet you did and I went up to where he was coming out of the Danish TV and I was by hook or by crook i had my my pitch preferred and everything and I said 'Please President Mandela this is CNN and it goes everywhere.' and we were there in your election and here there and everywhere and he came out and I had it all prepared and I was confronted by the most dignified human being that I had ever seen in my whole life and so I thought well I can't jump at him now i'll just wait a little bit and then he kept waiting and he had all these incredible you know people with him his his aids but not like you know you could get I was this close to him maybe this close and I kept following him they didn't they didn't push me away they 26:05 didn't stop you finally I got to the place where he was stood talking to his people i said 'This is it this is where I'm going to ask President Mandela to do me an interview right here in the basement as we're standing up.' Do you know I couldn't I was so in awe and there was something about that magnetic field around even you who can do pretty much say anything to anybody on any given day couldn't break through that let me tell you another South African but hang on hang on it was about him he was such a I'm sorry i'm just going to say a demigod in terms of how he came out of this terrible thing you know he had had his his past you know he'd spent 28 years paying for it both a political uh conviction and and everything else and he came out like this and I couldn't and I never interviewed him another aspect of South Africa that we could talk about you know 27:02 when we took our son to Ror's drift where the Zulus had fought the British one of the most powerful battles in the white black history in South Africa where this group of British hand couple dozen British soldiers held off thousands of Zulus over three days and we had that battle retold to us so in short that this the issue of the you're a British subject I'm an American citizen to have an American president um seemingly come up with crazy town argument about uh to sim you like crazy town you said crazy town a lot well I think it is to because to use these stories that aren't true when you're making foreign policy is is not is crazy it's not a good way to go it's not good for our country so before we go into you know some of the consequences and maybe solutions in the next part of our conversation just want to end with this dramatic moment before Ramiposa and it was Zilinski um array against the white house who by the way are all in there I 28:04 in previous presidencies did they have all their secretaries all their cabinet secretaries not it didn't seem like such a ganging up right no anyway Vance jumped in and delivered his famous you know scolding have you said thank once this entire meeting no in this entire meeting have you said thank you you went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who's trying to save your country you know I wish the United States was going to save Ukraine as as JD Vance suggested i'm very worried about the future of uh our foreign policy with the likes of Donald Trump at the head of the Republican party and his uh vice president JD Vance uh you know basically the second most important Republican and that tells us a little bit about the future of of foreign policy under the Republicans it worries me a lot jamie didn't Vance when he was a senator 29:03 say I don't much care what happens to Ukraine you're exactly right well let's talk about JD Vance and the future of American foreign policy in the next section okay we're back cristiana Mur presents the X-Files with Jamie Rubin who is over there in Washington and I'm over here in London so the big picture Jamie I guess is what are the consequences all all of this and what is the future of foreign policy under President Trump and JD Vance because he's very very influential on the foreign policy side and if he is the the heir to Trump where where will it go so all I can tell you is that I was on the front lines of that battle uh in February at the Munich Security Conference and you know everybody had come together to give speeches and this and that and everybody was waiting to see what the new administration will send trump sent his vice president that was a very senior um member of the delegation and people were in the plenary room all these world leaders and ministers of defense and foreign affairs 30:05 and intelligence experts and and ministers from all over the world and essentially he told them off he essentially told European allies that the whole playing field had changed he said things that were completely 180 degrees different from traditional American foreign policy and certainly from the last few years he this is where it started with uh Zalinski being outed as you know the the the bad guy and Putin maybe being the ally and then he told off the European leaders saying he didn't even think Russia or China were the biggest threats to anybody but domestic European policy by which he meant them trying to make sure that extremists didn't win whether they're extreme right or extreme uh extreme left jd Vance is an important figure not only is he vice president but remember he represents the potential future of the Republican party after 31:06 George W bush's administration responded to 9/11 with the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan uh the Bush version of foreign policy became discredited both on the right and the left and in the Republican party and it was always going to be a question mark of what was going to come next donald Trump was then elected and he had this semiisolationist semi-American first but then people wondered what would come after that and I think JD Vance uh because look this is a very smart guy um he wrote a very well-received book he uh about his growing up in in in Hillbilly country Hillbilly Elegy um and then he went through the Iraq war and now he's turned himself as an elected official into Trump's number one booster Trump's number one supporter and what I'm worried about as an American who cares about our foreign policy is that look I 32:00 don't believe Donald Trump will have a third term i know people worry about it i I'm not worried about that so there's been some hope in some circles that Trump's second term will be just another blip and that we can get back to normal American foreign policy but what I'm worried about is that it won't be just such a blip that JD Vance may turn out to be the leader of the Republican party he may win the election and he's now started to identify what I consider a pretty scary version of American foreign policy where he's berating the victim of Russia's aggression Zalinski remember this is a man whose country was invaded uh and then he says uh uh that we're going to save them when we're not saving them we've been taking aid away we're not providing them military assistance and he tells Europeans 'The biggest threat to the world is Europeans squash squatchching the AfD the right-wing party.' One of the biggest threats to the our world to me and I say this probably in every broadcast but I can't say it enough is we have sorry broadcast podcast um is is a Russia that's 33:04 militarized its entire country supported in full by a billion plus Chinese uh on the communist party of China fully supporting Russia militarily economically diplomatically and fighting the with them an information war we face these two behemoth countries with extreme powerful capabilities and we need to gather together the the good guys the Europeans the Asians and the other Middle Eastern countries who want to work with us on a a world where you don't invade your neighbor and where you the bullies don't succeed and with JD Vance running the show uh I'm we're going to lose that conflict to Russia and China I fear okay couple of questions the the thing is the everyday changing nature of the policy is is concerning to me because I don't understand it so we've just described how JD Vanch laid down JD Vance you know a marker at the Munich Security 34:02 Conference in in February then just about a month ago he went to the same organization to their headquarters in Washington and told a different story that Europe and the United States will always be together that's the basic you know uh precy of what he said what is the real JD Vance what is the real policy well I don't know uh people are going to start looking into this and asking him the hard questions i think the JD Vance that is fully supportive of Donald Trump for the next three and a half years is the JD Vance that's going to be seen publicly there's not going to be any breaks with Trump he's Trump's number one booster trump has been his ticket to leadership of the Republican party and he whatever Trump says he's going to be the biggest supporter of it so I don't think that's going to tell us too much but what does tell us something and this is what I've seen and this is why it's so worrying look JD Vance is not a senior official in the Republican party you know he only was placed on the ticket by Donald Trump the senior 35:03 Republicans that I know and have worked with and I'm not going to mention their names because they won't like what I'm about to say senior leaders of the Republican party who I've met with privately when I was in the State Department who where I've talked about the threats from China I've talked about the threats from Russia most of them say perfectly rational thoughtful responses and agree that these are real threats that America needs to lead an alliance of democratic countries and countries who believe in the world of rules and rights and that to do that we need to confront Russia and we need to confront China and we need to help Ukraine succeed that's what they tell you when you're having dinner with them when you're having lunch with them when you're in a private meeting with them and then somehow Trump Donald Trump has so intimidated these supposedly strong willed you know Republican senators and congressmen that when they speak publicly they speak a completely different tune that was my one lesson from two years in Washington at the State Department is the Republicans that I went to brief told me one thing in 36:03 private and another thing in public and the thing they said in public was driven by their fear of Donald Trump and that's a shame because a a a real debate about these policies would benefit the United States and if I would make one last point critical of my own party is I don't think we did a good enough job over these last decades in explaining to the American people why America should lead in the world why it is worth our while to defend South Korea why it is worth our while to defend the small Baltic states why America in a leadership role where we're paying a large for a large defense budget is in our interest we didn't explain that very well and so when President Trump came in and threw all these ideas out that are completely different many young people sort of agree with him on instinct why should we defend South Korea they say you know average 20 and 30 year olds and that was our fault partly by not putting these policies out there the Ukraine war 37:00 it seemed to me could have been a great issue to run a re-election campaign on do you want to give up on Ukraine and let Russia take it over or do you want to support the victim in a in a war and we didn't do that in the campaign in uh 2024 and and I believe that's one of the reasons why uh Trump was able to win so Bridget Brink who's a career foreign service official she was ambassador to Ukraine in fact Donald Trump in his first term had had appointed her ambassador to Slovakia as is apparently usual protocol when a new administration comes in ambassadors pro- former offer their resignation so she did that this time now in Kev donald Trump didn't accept it he wanted her to remain ambassador in uh in Ukraine but she was so upset about what Vance had said and so upset about sort of conflating enemy and aggress and victim that she decided that she would resign so she's an active serving ambassador who's now resigned um a few weeks ago and she basically is saying that you know peace at any cost 38:03 actually is appeasement and she can't be part of that um actually you know some of these Republicans I also met whose I won't name but I met them in uh in Munich different different ones that I than you met you've seen that phenomenon too right well they said to me number one if we don't do X Y and Z if we don't approve X Y and Z we will be and this is a quote MAGA swarmed that means all the bots all the loyalists all the you know so they're afraid and they're afraid of being MAGA swarmed totally plus one of them told me then I thought to myself even if I I have X million constituents and I need to have a seat at the table i need to do as much as I can for my constituent that's why they will give in to Trump and then the other one who came out publicly Lisa Macowski of Alaska Republican senator said it she said 'Look we are all anxious retribution is real.' So that's a little 39:00 bit of a digression back from the Ukraine thing because again this is Vance Trump sort of changing the dynamic about what about Putin with Trump's latest which we started so angry it was a massive it was the biggest overnight biggest one-day attack since the beginning of the war that happened uh overnight um several people were killed and Trump is pissed but then he says you know on social media media you know Putin has gone absolutely crazy and I hate what Zilinski says as well so out of that where is the policy so it's interesting look I I think in the first uh podcast I was predicting that Trump would tire of the Ukraine war he would see that it's not so easy to resolve uh maybe this is the second podcast um and so where I think we're going to end up is that uh President Trump is going to see that his friend Vladimir Putin is not his friend and is not going to do what he asks 40:01 because he asks him to is going to continue the war he's going to double down on the war he thinks he's winning and Trump unfortunately the administration is not going to provide the kind of support for Ukraine that the previous administration did the 60 billion uh dollars that we got through in the last year and they will continue intelligence support maybe they'll spend out what's left in the in the cupboard of uh weapons hope uh sent to Ukraine and then at least I'm hoping I'll repeat the idea Trump should use the leverage he has with the Europeans to get them to buy American weapons the patriots they need to defend themselves against these missile attacks and these drone attacks and the other anti- missile and anti- drone defenses that United States uh uh companies have that the Ukrainians are good at using and have learned learned how to use at least uh encourage pressure the Europeans to buy those American weapons so that Ukraine can survive uh uh this onslaught because 41:00 it's not going to go away and until Vladimir Putin realizes that he's not going to just get what he wants by continuing the war I don't think he's going to negotiate seriously and President Trump seems to be stepping back from it he's angry with Putin but he's not pressuring Putin to give up and he's not offering weaponry to the Ukrainians he's just simply saying 'Well I guess this war is going to go on and it's not Trump's whore,' he said because he's trying to avoid responsibility for the war continuing after claiming that he would end it in 24 hours well look I think it's endlessly endlessly important and interesting and it really is you know sort of business and personalitydriven foreign policy and um we're going to have to wait and keep keep watching um it's interesting that we do this at the end of a holiday weekend both on my side of the Atlantic it's what they call a bank holiday it's called I believe it's Witson it's the Witson uh don't ask me what that means there's a long way back in history to know what Witson is and over with you 42:01 it's the end of the Memorial Day weekend where we so we celebrate our soldiers who died in battle um and uh you know nobody wants to see another war uh but in understanding what soldiers were fighting for let me bring you back to one of my favorite quotes from the Clinton era uh the speech writer his name was Don Bear and President Clinton went to uh uh Normandy for one of the major anniversaries and he described himself and America uh after explaining what the greatest generation did at D-Day to risk their lives to save Europe as uh uh current Americans are we are the children of your sacrifice i always thought was a very powerful phrase that President Clinton used to describe what happened on D-Day and how the world they saved and that's the world I want to see survive and it won't survive if we keep going uh in the direction we're going we can't trash that sacrifice that's for sure okay ex Jamie great goodbye X bye

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