Peter Baker
Appearances
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
However way you look back on it, this is a day of history.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Well, we see in the Capitol, inside the Rotunda, this new power map of Washington. You see the outgoing president of the United States, Joe Biden, the outgoing vice president, Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, seated just a few feet away from the victors, from the new power. It felt like inches from the camera. Very close, probably uncomfortably so for both sides, right?
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And behind the new president, behind Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are family members, as you would expect, members of their incoming cabinet, as you would expect, congressional leaders, and these billionaires. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And suddenly we see the new dynamics of power in Washington. It's a new crowd, and they're all deferring to him. Thank you very much, everybody.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Who could forget that? But in 2017, of course, at his first inauguration, Donald Trump delivers this speech that becomes...
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
you know, iconic, infamous, whatever word you want to use, describing an America that was very dystopian at the time, very grim, very dark, and unlike what most presidents do in their inaugural addresses, so much so that George W. Bush, who was sitting there, turns to Hillary Clinton and says, well, that was some weird shit.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He's describing an America in decline, an America that is weak on the international stage, whose economy is weak at home.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
What was different in this inaugural address compared to eight years ago was how central he makes himself as the solution to all these problems.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He was a central character in this speech in a way we don't often necessarily hear by new presidents.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He talks about, in fact, the assassination attempt against him last summer.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And he says that God saved him to make America great again, which really takes that formulation, which he's played with over the months, even further than before. He is the savior now of the country.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
But you wouldn't have heard it a lot in the rest of the speech, right? He didn't say anything nice about his outgoing predecessor, Joe Biden, even though that's the tradition when a new president comes in to at least thank you for your service. Didn't do that. Didn't talk about bipartisanship.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And he even said that he would reinstate military service members who were discharged for refusing to have a vaccine during the COVID pandemic, even pay them back pay.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
This is my seventh presidential inauguration. And this is not the way inauguration speeches are supposed to go, right? They're supposed to be the lofty speech. They're supposed to be the large theme speech, broad strokes. And here he makes this more like a State of the Union address. And he outlines one idea, one proposal after another, many of them divisive.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
It felt very different than a normal inaugural.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Rather than pulling back, it's about America expanding in a way, not in a new war in the Middle East, not Iraq, Afghanistan kind of way, but in a territorial way, a very 19th century way of looking at the world.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He did talk about the Panama Canal, which is an issue that nobody had been thinking about for 40-some years. And he said it was a mistake to give it away. And we're taking it back. And we're taking it back. Not just we're going to renegotiate this or that. We're taking it back. Right.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Well, that's right. He hasn't ruled it out. And the other one, of course, was saying he had signed or was signing a proclamation.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, which again is a very nationalist thing to do. And you're forgetting something, Peter.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And there in the back row was Elon Musk pumping his fists in the air and giving thumbs up. He loves that, of course, because SpaceX is his company and he was always talking about going to Mars. Right.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
and what it means. Well, it's an aggressive speech, right? And it presages an aggressive term. This is not a president coming into office for the first time having never spent a day in public office with the military. Remember, in 2017, he was the only president. Who is that inexperienced? And he didn't know what he was doing by his own later admission. Right. This time he knows what he's doing.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He's not going to let, you know, mealy-mouthed establishment Republicans or military officers, any of these lawyers or any of these other people tell him no. He's not going to let them tell him, sorry, that's illegal. Sorry, that's unconstitutional. Sorry, that's unwise. No way he's going to listen to that anymore.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
They're all intertwined in there, right? He says, I have been tested over these last eight years and I've learned, right? What he's saying is the country has also been tested and it's learned that it wants him. I think that makes him feel very powerful in this moment, right? That he's got validation of the voters and there's for him this sort of sense of destiny and he is now tied in
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
to the country. His identity is tied in, as he presents it, with the identity of the country. If he was down, the country was down. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And he is succeeding right now. He is succeeding right now. He is the most dominant force in American society today. He drives our conversation. He drives our debate. He even forces the opposition to respond to him on his terms.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
That may not last, but for the moment, he's got a lot of momentum going. Well, Peter, thank you very much. Thank you. Great to see you here in Washington.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
So he invites Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, and Anwar al-Sadat, the president of Egypt, to Camp David in September 1978.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Well, first of all, we should know that Jimmy Carter, it's the American story in the sense of our mythology, how we believe in ourselves. He comes from very humble beginnings in rural Georgia, you know, as a peanut farmer. He wore blue jeans and had dirty fingernails. You know, his childhood home had no running water or electricity. And he was openly religious. He talked about the Bible a lot.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
For what would become 13 days of pretty remarkable negotiations. It's an insanely complex negotiation over land and politics and religion and history. And throughout these 13 days, it's Carter singularly holding the whole thing together, this crazy enterprise that seems like it's going to break down at any moment.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
I mean, he's almost literally physically throwing himself in the door to prevent this side or that side from throwing up their hands and leaving. At one point, you know, the Egyptians packed their bags and saying, well, they were done with these talks and it's Kara who has to talk them out of leaving.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
At another point, he brings photographs of himself to sign for each of Begin's eight grandchildren. which reminds the two of them at that moment what they're doing this for, for the next generation. Carter, he's appealing to anything he can think of to get these two enemies to come together and make peace.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And later it's immortalized in this photo. It's one of the most famous photos of his presidency, probably, of him standing. between these two leaders, Begin and Sadat, at a ceremony on the lawn of the White House. And the three of them are holding hands together, and they have these big grins on their faces, and it feels like such an invigorating, inspiring moment.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And everybody agrees that had it not been for him, it never would have happened. And here we see Carter's stubbornness paying off. He was single-minded in his pursuit. He was the only one there at Camp David who thought he could pull it off. President Carter. For long days and nights, you devoted your time and energy to the pursuit of peace.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Sadat later called him the unknown soldier of the peacemaking effort. And Begin agreed, he says, that Carter would be, quote, remembered and recorded by generations to come.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And it is, in fact, this singular accomplishment that is probably the one most lasting, enduring, and triumphal moment of the Carter presidency.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Yeah, just as defining, but not at all triumphant. In fact, this really is the moment that leads to the end of Carter's presidency, and that's the Iran hostage crisis.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
In 1979 in Iran, Muslim clerics lead a revolution that overthrows the leader of the secular government there. That's the Shah of Iran, who'd been a close ally of the United States. And after the Shah was overthrown and left the country, he became sick and needed medical care. And as a U.S. ally, wanted to come to the United States for help. There was a ton of pressure on Carter to let him in.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He liked to quote verses from it. By the time he's running for president of the United States, he'd basically been a one-term governor with no connections to Washington. And that meant that he was running a campaign as an outsider.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
But you had people like Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, they're all pushing Carter, let him in, let him in, it's the right thing to do for an ally. But Carter knew how risky this was, and maybe in a way almost nobody else did. He told his aides that he feared it would lead to violence against American diplomats in Iran. And why did he fear that?
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Well, he had seen what had happened in an earlier stage of the uprising that had led to a short-lived siege of the embassy in Tehran. It didn't last long, and there were only a few casualties, but he saw the potential for violence there, and he realized that if the Shah came, the United States would be so offensive to this newly ascendant crowd in Tehran that it would put the embassy in danger.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
But given the pressure on him from the Shah's American allies from within and outside the government, Carter invites him to the U.S. anyway.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Militants in Tehran storm the U.S. embassy and hold scores of U.S. government workers there hostage, demanding that the Shah be returned to Iran to stand trial.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Carter refuses to send the Shah back to Iran, and the militants refuse to release these hostages. And it becomes this incredible standoff, really, of a generation, an enormous story heard around the world.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
It's on round-the-clock TV coverage. Families of the employees are on television pleading for the release. Americans are tying yellow ribbons around trees in front of their houses. It's an all-consuming story for much of America.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Every night you had the anchors saying, day 138 of the hostage crisis, day 420 of the hostage crisis. And it really just consumed the country and it consumed Carter's presidency. How does it consume Carter's presidency? Well, you know, he had a choice of putting this to the side or at least making it one issue of many.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
But instead, he chose to cancel speeches out of town, to cancel campaign events. He made this the number one priority of his presidency. And these same qualities we're talking about, the sort of stubborn, single-minded determination that we saw at Camp David that worked well for him there—
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
really kind of works against him here because he wants to solve this problem and he's going to do nothing but focus on it, no matter what else is happening, basically. And that becomes, in effect, the sine qua non test of his presidency. If he can solve this, then he is successful. If he can't solve it, that means he's not. And he inadvertently creates the metric by which he's going to be judged.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Now, I mean, today that's kind of a cliche, right? A lot of people run for president these days as an outsider, but he really was an outsider in every possible sense of that word. It defined his identity, and it defined his campaign, and ultimately it would define his presidency.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He took it very personally. He felt responsible for these diplomats who, in fact, work for him, right? He's the president of the United States. And they were there in trouble in some ways because of a decision he made to let the Shah in. So he took it very personally. And it's a little like... The malaise speech in the sense that he can't help himself but to communicate that to the public, right?
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He's communicating what he thinks and feels in a way that most presidents might not. Most presidents might try to focus on other things so as not to elevate this particular crisis among the many he had to deal with. But that wasn't Carter's way. He always wants to be, you know, transparent with the country about what he's thinking, what he's feeling.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He wears his worry in a very big public way. It's a good way to put it. And therefore, the country worries with him. And instead of being able to sort of judge it among the many different priorities that a president has, it becomes the singular focus of not just the president, but the country as a whole.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And in effect, what he tries is what he did at Camp David, which is that if he simply puts enough determination into it, he feels, he can solve the problem.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He engages on this sort of marathon diplomatic negotiation through intermediaries, other countries, anything he can find to try to, you know, obtain the release of these hostages. That goes nowhere. The Iranians are not willing to budge. They're not willing to make the deal that he wants them to make. And he finds himself frustrated.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
frustrated time after time without any great success to show for it. And so five months into the crisis, he then finally turns to the military and he says, okay, it's your turn. And he sends in a mission meant to rescue the hostages from the embassy in the middle of a big urban city. Big challenge, really hard idea.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
They miscalculate the number of helicopters they need, the number of American military personnel are killed, and instead of this dramatic rescue of Americans from Tehran, you have this enormous embarrassment on the international stage, a failed military rescue operation that leaves Carter in a worse position than he was even before.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
It's a complete political disaster. The secretary of state resigns, says he never thought that was a good idea in the first place. People question his effectiveness as a commander in chief. He looks weak and people begin to lose faith in him. And so, you know, the crisis just continues to go on and on for day after day, week after week, month after month. 1979 drags into 1980.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And while at first voters were kind of supportive of him because they were rallying around their president in a time of crisis, as the ordeal goes on and drags on and on, they lose faith in him. He loses support among the public.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And he was the man that was right for that moment, it felt like, because the country was hungry for an outsider.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Right. He's facing a challenge in the primaries from Ted Kennedy. He beats him back, but then he has to face this charismatic former actor and governor of California, Ronald Reagan. And Reagan is attacking him for failing to end this crisis, basically saying he will be the one to end it himself. if he is elected president. And it just puts Carter on the defensive.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He has a hard time arguing the case of his presidency when he feels so much under siege by the day-to-day diplomacy and this failed military operation. So he runs what is called a Rose Garden campaign, which is to say that he doesn't leave the White House that much.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
to do the traditional stump speeches and, you know, rallies and so forth, because he feels that would be inappropriate with these American diplomats facing life and death in Tehran. And he ends up losing by a wide margin. Reagan ends up winning a pretty substantial landslide and... then, of course, is going to take office in January of 1981.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And I'll never forget that day because on that day, the inauguration, Carter is trying up until the last minute to get these hostages out. And he thinks he finally has a deal. Around 6.30 in the morning, they tell him, yes, we've got a deal. The hostages are going to be released before noon, before you leave office. And he's excited. He calls Reagan to tell him.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
I hope you share it. You know, in 1976, when he was running for president, you know, America had been through these multiple traumas. The war in Vietnam, which killed roughly 50,000 American troops and divided the nation. And the angry and often violent reactions to the civil rights movement. And you had Watergate, the scandal that forced a president to resign for the first time.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
But Reagan is asleep and the aides won't wake up the president-elect to tell him. So he's frustrated by that. And he goes with Reagan later in the morning to the Capitol. And even then, the postures are still on the plane, but the plane hasn't been released yet. It hasn't been allowed to take off. He's watching his watch. He's waiting for the word. Nothing happens.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And there is Reagan taking the oath of office and ending the Carter presidency.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
...did the Iranians finally let the plane take off. One last cruel indignity meant to torture Jimmy Carter that he could not release them on his watch. They were released in the first minutes of the Reagan presidency. The last indignity for a humbled president.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Well, it definitely felt that way at the time. And Carter certainly felt that way, you know, that they were tormenting him in effect, that they were adding insult to injury. Look, it's important to remember there were other factors going on in that election as well. And it's possible Carter would have lost anyway. I mean, there was kind of an exhaustion with him at this point.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And Americans were struggling with inflation and unemployment and economic troubles. Reagan famously said in one of the debates, you know, are you better off than you were four years ago? And a lot of Americans thought the answer was no. And Reagan was this more optimistic figure at a time when the country was looking for it. He was the anti-Malays candidate in a way, right?
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He talked about America as a shining city on a hill. He didn't appear in a cardigan. He believed in the grandeur of the office. And so where Carter wanted to make the presidency smaller, more accessible, more approachable, less pomp and circumstance, Reagan was this Hollywood actor who,
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
turned governor, who wanted to bring back kind of black tie swagger to Washington and convince America that it was this exceptional place in the world, which is what a lot of Americans wanted to hear then.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Yeah, I mean, I think these are attributes that really worked for him in 1976 when there was this Watergate hangover, this Vietnam hangover. They just didn't work for him in 1980 when there was kind of a Carter malaise, if you will, right?
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
That they didn't serve him as effectively while he was president and running for reelection as they did the first time he asked voters to put him in office in the first place. And he didn't adjust. He didn't adapt. But when he leaves office, it turns out that it wasn't an act. This was who he was.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Well, what distinguishes it is its utter modesty, right? Most presidents, after leaving office, become rich. They sign multimillion-dollar book deals or, like with President Obama, podcasts and TV deals. They give paid speeches, and they live a life that resembles the splendor of the office that they had held. But Carter didn't do that.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He first literally goes back to Plains, Georgia to the same house, this little ranch house that he and Rosalynn had lived in since 1961. Modest, very unassuming. At one point, the house, in fact, is worth less than the large Secret Service vehicles that are parked outside of it. And the first thing he does is start teaching Sunday school. Wow.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
You know, things that are really sort of tore apart our society in a lot of ways as we struggle with who we were and what we wanted to be. And so Carter shows up at this particular moment is kind of a theoretically at least an antidote to some of that. And he tells the country, I'll never tell a lie.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And when he does finally reappear in the public arena, it's when he opens the Carter Center in 1982, just two years after his defeat in the election. And it's through this nonprofit group that we witness a post-presidency of service and civic-mindedness that's really unlike anything we've seen in the modern political era.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He travels the world promoting human rights and monitoring elections in emerging democracies, countries like Panama and Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He physically shows up during these elections. He stands at the polls and watches people vote, election after election, to assure that the process is free and fair. The worm comes out of a joint, say, in your knee. It swells up and destroys the tissue.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He starts a program to eradicate guinea worm, the very painful and debilitating disease in the developing world that in the 1980s affected millions of people. And of course these kids can't go to school. The pain is too great and they need medical care. And he persuades volunteers in tens of thousands of villages to treat the water where the worms grow.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And the Carter Center hands out millions of specialized drinking straws that filter out these worms. And basically, Guinea worm is almost gone now as a result of some of the things that he did. And now I call upon the Peace Prize Laureate of 2002, Jimmy Carter. All this finally, I think, leads to the Nobel Peace Prize that he didn't win while he was in office.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And during his acceptance speech, Carter demonstrates his humility, a genuine humility.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He praises the tireless efforts of other humanitarian workers.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And he urges others to devote themselves to the small, humble work that had defined the last several decades of his life.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And it's this service and modesty that he demonstrated that finally I think in some ways allows him to redeem himself for the failures of the time when he was in office. In fact, a lot of people say Carter was a better former president than he was president.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
At one point, one of his biographers, Kai Bird, said Carter's the only president ever to use the White House as a stepping stone to doing bigger things. And it earned Carter a lot of respect, even among Republicans who otherwise didn't particularly like him and Democrats who were kind of disappointed in him.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
I will never lie to you at a moment when that really matters. And unlike a lot of politicians, people really thought he may have meant it. He might have actually been telling the truth about telling the truth. He might have actually been telling the truth. Now, it's really hard for a politician to not lie, ever. But he was committed to that.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
But certainly I think the way most Americans remember Carter today is the man from Plains, Georgia, who's trying to use his platform of a former president to achieve things that, in fact, he couldn't do while in office. the modern presidency in some ways requires compromises he wasn't really willing to make and kind of performances that he wasn't maybe capable of.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And every successor, everybody who's come after him has thought about how not to be the kind of president Jimmy Carter was, even as they respect the kind of man that Jimmy Carter was. And that's why, for good or bad, it feels like we're never going to see someone like Jimmy Carter in the presidency again. Peter, thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He beats an incumbent president, Gerald Ford, who was Nixon's former vice president, and in many ways the final shadow of the Watergate era. And pretty much from the get-go... Carr begins redefining the presidency as an institution. You know, he banned the playing of Hail the Chief when he walked in the room. He sold the presidential yacht called the Sequoia.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He carried his own bags onto Air Force One when he traveled. Good evening. Tomorrow will be two weeks since I became president. He gave these fireside chats once, most famously, of course, in a Corrigan sweater, very casual looking from the White House, something we were not used to in a president.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He was really trying to be something different than we had seen in the White House before.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Exactly. And in the process, demystifying, in a way, the presidency. But in some ways, that doesn't go over well. You know, he brings this Georgian style to Washington, but he also brings this small coterie of Georgia advisors to Washington who didn't know the place very well, didn't know Congress, didn't know how it worked, didn't know national politics, and didn't seem to want to adjust to it.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Certainly he didn't. And so even though Carter has this really powerfully strong Democratic majority in Congress, he ends up misplaying his relationship with them from the get-go. How so? Well, one of the very first things he does is he attacks a ritual that lawmakers really love, bipartisan, by the way, local water projects.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
These are pork barrel spending things that allow them to go home to their constituents and say, I built this and I built that. And he basically tried to pull the plug on them. And he just refused to curry favor with lawmakers. He didn't schmooze or dine with them. He wasn't like an LBJ or a FDR. He just didn't, it wasn't his style of governance.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
One time, the Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, shows up at the White House for a breakfast with the congressional leadership, with Carter, and all there are are pastries. And he's mad that there's not a hot breakfast. Small as that is, he feels like he's disrespected. And that's the kind of thing Carter disdains. He disdains that sort of what he thinks is kind of a pomposity of Washington.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Why should I have to serve you a hot breakfast because you're so full of it? And instead of adjusting, right? Another politician would just simply adjust, serve him some breakfast, serve him some eggs, whatever. He stands on principle. And what we learn about Carter here is he's actually very stubborn, really stubborn as a Georgia mule, if you will. And he's very certain of his own rectitude.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
As the guy who's the outsider, he has the mandate, he believes, to shake up Washington. And that's all well and good, but it means he's not playing the game and the game players don't want to help him get his agenda through. And there's a cost to that stubbornness.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And the problems began to mount. And they were the problems of his own creation and the problems that were not of his own creation.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Shortages mean that you can't fill your tank on any given day. Lines stretch out around the block at gas stations. Nightmarish scenes on the evening news.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And Carter responds by giving a series of energy speeches. All of us
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And people are just not hearing it. His approval ratings are tanking. So he knows his presidency isn't going smoothly. And he's talking about giving another energy speech. And everybody says, not another energy speech. Even Rosalind, his wife says, nobody wants to hear you give another energy speech. They just want to know that you're going to fix the problem.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
causes him to think through what's going on here. And his advisor, Pat Cadell says, you need to talk about where the country is. The country is having a crisis of confidence. And Carter takes that to heart. He goes up to Camp David and he basically retreats from the world for about 10 days.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He won't come back out of Camp David while he's thinking through what he wants to do, what he wants to say to the country. And he brings dozens of people in and out of this mountain retreat through the course of more than a week. Jesse Jackson shows up, Bill Clinton shows up. He was the governor of Arkansas at the time to give them their ideas of what they think is going on in the country.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And there's Jimmy Carter in the lodge at Camp Davis, sitting on the floor, taking notes as people are, you know, giving him their ideas. And he's crafting this speech he wants to give to the country. He's crafting this address. He wants to connect to the country and address They're shared issues.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And so he comes down off the mountain at last and he tells his staff, I'm ready to speak to the country. I think it's time. And they arrange with the networks to have him get an address from the Oval Office. He puts on the suit and he sits at the desk, the Resolute desk, in the summer of 1979. Good evening. This is a special night for me.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And for 30 minutes, he tells the country what he thinks is going wrong.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And he delivers this very risky speech, the kind of speech you never hear from a president. It's a president who, in a very bracing and blunt way, is telling the country to get its act together. It is a crisis.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Yeah, it's really interesting, Michael, because, you know, I've spent the last few years writing Jimmy Carter's obituary, and I know that sounds a little weird, but that's something we do at the newspaper, right, to be prepared for these big moments.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He's diagnosing a larger problem with the American public, not just politics.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He talks about the notion that we worship self-indulgence and consumption. This is a very much of a preacher's speech in some ways rather than a president's speech. And these wounds he's talking about are very deep. And he's also talking about himself in a way that presidents generally don't do.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
He quotes some of the people who come through Camp David, telling him how he's getting it wrong, how he's not doing it right. You don't see the people enough anymore.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And it's this remarkable self-critique that I think in some ways really actually resonates at first with the audience, that they've never heard a president open up like this and admit that he isn't leading to his own satisfaction, that he's willing to accept that his presidency is not going the way he wants it to be.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And researching and reflecting on his legacy, I've concluded that it's really hard to imagine anybody like Jimmy Carter ever being elected president again. I mean, he was a very unusual man, and it was a very unusual presidency.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
It is exactly right. He is the truth teller in this instance. In his view, he is being very honest with the American public about how he sees the problems of the country. And it goes over well at first because it is so unusual, because it is so refreshing in its own way. It was sort of celebrated for its candor.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And at first people think he has actually broken through, but then he does something to undermine the whole purpose of it. Which is what? He fires his whole cabinet. He fires his whole cabinet? Yeah. He asks for all of the resignations, all of them. He ends up keeping most of them, but he ends up using it as a way of cleaning out a few of them.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And it sends a statement that he may not have intended to the country. It may have been meant as a cleansing idea, a fresh start, but it actually caused a lot of Americans to doubt his judgment. They don't think he knows what he's doing and
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Even his own vice president, Walter Mondale, was so upset about this that he started contemplating whether he was going to stay on the ticket or maybe even resign as vice president. He thought this was such a hand-handed, badly handled move. It was amateurish in his mind.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Yes. And after all that drama, that self-critical speech that he delivered that so many people originally connected with suddenly looked different through a different lens. People started to see the speech as a sign of weakness. And it becomes known as the malaise speech, even though he never even uses the word malaise in it. But it's a marker at this point for his presidency.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
For years to come, people would remember that speech as an example of somebody who couldn't lead.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Right. He had alienated his own party. And when it came to the domestic side of his presidency, he was being seen as a disappointment. But what was making him unsuccessful at home, his outsider-ness, his stubbornness, his image of himself as this unvarnished truth-teller, all of that helps him make him a success in one particularly intractable problem overseas. We'll be right back.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
So amid all these troubles at home, Carter decides he's going to try to do something that no president had ever done before, which is to resolve one of the biggest conflicts in the Middle East at that time between these two longtime enemies, Israel and Egypt. I mean, people may not remember this now, but Egypt was one of the strongest Arab nations at the time.
The Daily
The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter
And like the rest of the region, hadn't even accepted Israel's right to exist since it had been established in 1948. And so they basically been at war for 30 years at this point off and on. And it was the core instability of the region. So he wants to dive on and he believes through this same stubbornness that he is uniquely qualified to bring them together.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Exactly. This deal is supposed to be signed. They're supposed to use this deal to put the relationship on a new foundation going forward. And now with the cameras out of the room, are they going to make apologies or at least smooth it over? And will they still have the lunch? Will they still sign the deal that was the whole point of him coming in the first place?
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Will they have the news conference been set up in the East Room waiting for us any minute now? We don't know. But then suddenly we get the answer. Zelensky's car has just pulled up to the door of the West Wing. And he's leaving.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Well, what we end up learning later is the two teams, the U.S. team and the Ukrainian team, head into separate rooms in the West Wing to collect themselves after this bruising battle in the Oval Office. And Zelensky still wants to salvage this thing. He still wants to sign the deal. smooth it over. But the U.S.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
side, Trump and his team, are meeting in another part of the White House, and they are furious. And the answer to them is no. It's over. Tell them to leave. And two U.S. officials then go to the room where Zelensky and his team are and explain to him, you're out of here. Basically, they're kicking Zelensky out of the White House. Exactly right.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And so the reporters were all rushing out to the driveway, and there's this black Chevy SUV, the Suburban, at the door of the West Wing and out comes Volodymyr Zelensky looking very grim-faced as he climbs in. And then the suburban pulls out of the White House driveway and off the White House grounds and you realize just how much has changed in those few minutes. Wow. So lunch is off.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
The press conference is off. Trump's aides are busy eating the lunch that had actually been prepared for Zelensky, this roasted chicken and creme brulee. And Trump issues a statement on his social media platform. And it says, I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for peace if America is involved. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He can come back when he is ready for peace.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And I think in history, we're going to look back on this as a unique singular moment. Right.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yeah, I was there on the White House driveway when Senator Lindsey Graham came out.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
essentially sent out by the White House to say not only that it was Zelensky's fault.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And that he's proud of Trump for standing up for America, but that if Zelensky wouldn't change, that he should even resign.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And what a remarkable 180 degrees for the Graham wing of the Republican Party, what used to be the Reagan wing of the Republican Party. Graham was one of the most hawkish, pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia voices on the scene, and now he has fallen in line behind Trump. But to Democrats, the only person who had been disrespected in that meeting was Zelensky.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And the Democrats are the ones who are left to defend Ukraine and call for a more skeptical view of Russia and to cast Russia as the enemy.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Absolutely right. This is a rupture of a relationship now between the United States and Ukraine, 11 years after Russia first invaded, three years after its full-fledged invasion in 2022. And America has been Ukraine's best friend, biggest partner, most important patron.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yeah, I mean, look, it is certainly the case that a lot of people believe the United States needs to focus its priorities either at home or perhaps against China because that's the bigger threat. And therefore, we have to recalibrate our relationship with Europe, our commitments in Europe, our hostility toward Russia.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And the strategic thought that you hear from some people behind what happened on Friday is it's time for us to cut bait and be friendlier with Russia because we need them against China. I don't know how much that's part of Trump's own thinking, but certainly some people around him give voice to that analysis.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Even so, of course, to see the very personal and visceral way that Trump was willing to cut loose an ally in furtherance of this strategy was pretty striking. Even if that's what you wanted to do, doing it in this way, I think, was pretty shocking for a lot of people.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And if this rupture, this blow up, this meltdown in the Oval Office means that the relationship now is on the rocks, it has great consequence for Ukraine, especially. It has great consequences for Russian aggression in the world, for Europe, and for the United States, I would say.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
No question that Trump respects strength and power, and he sees the world as a place where big men and big powers like the United States and Putin's Russia divide up their spheres of influence very much like a 19th century or mid-20th century view of things, while the democracies will simply have to eat it if they have to.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
In other words, what matters more is who is powerful, not who has the same kind of governmental system And that leaves the question then, does Ukraine become in effect roadkill on the way to this, you know, real politic goal? And what happens to the U.S. relationship with other democracies in Asia and Europe?
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And do we embolden authoritarian governments like Putin by rewarding them for their aggression?
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yeah, absolutely. So as soon as Zelensky leaves Washington, he heads to London, where he meets with European leaders, including Keir Starmer, the British prime minister. And this was already planned before the blowup in the Oval Office, but it's such a remarkable amount of timing because he is greeted with open arms, right? The Europeans have rallied to his side in this.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
One after the other, across the continent, they said, we stand with Ukraine, we stand with Zelensky. They Say the things that you just quoted the French prime minister is saying.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And Starmer promises more funding, a couple more billion dollars worth of weapons for advanced air defense missiles and talks about a peacekeeping force that the Europeans can put together even without the Americans once there is a peace deal, if there's a peace deal to try to enforce it. But it's a test.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
It's a real test because time and time again, Europeans have said, yeah, we're going to step up and take more of the burden from the United States without actually following through. And they have risen to the occasion with Ukraine over these last three years. They've actually donated more money for Ukraine's defense than the United States has. You may have heard Trump say the opposite.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He's wrong about that. But it's still a question whether they can do everything that Ukraine would need and would lose without American support. And for Europe, it really is a moment of truth.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
That's right. I mean, you know, they don't expect U.S. to put troops on the ground. What they would like would be air support or logistical support or intel support and mainly just political and geopolitical support.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
The idea that the United States is behind them on this and that Russia ought not to try anything because it would not just be aggravating Europe, but aggravating the United States and taking a real chance there. And it's not clear that Trump wants to do that. He said, I don't really care too much about what the security says.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Situation is after I make peace, he trusts Vladimir Putin to keep the deal. Doesn't believe that there really needs to be any security guarantee because he thinks Putin can be trusted. Well, nobody in Ukraine thinks that and very few people in Europe think that.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yeah, I think it's really one of the essential questions out of all this. Look, in the immediate aftermath of this meltdown in the Oval Office, he tried to smooth it over first with social media posts and later with an interview on Fox News and in other comments saying, you know, look, thank you, America. Thank you to the president.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And it was him, I think, trying to smooth it over in his own way. But he is a man of pride, too. He's a man struggling to save his country from an aggressor. And there's only so far he was willing to go. He said on Fox News, he didn't think he had anything to apologize for. He regretted it. He was sorry it happened, but he didn't think he had done anything wrong. And you're right.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Trump, if they put this back together, and it's possible that they do, Trump will want him to come back in a supplicant form. And Vladimir Zelensky is a lot of things, but he doesn't really have the flattery gene that some of these other foreign leaders use to suck up to Trump. It's just not his nature.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And we'll see whether or not he can do that, whether he should do that, whether that would be enough, even if he did. This is the new order right now. And the new order is, you know, if you are not deferential to Trump, he will punish you. So for Zelensky, the choice here basically is how far is he willing to defer? How far is he willing to flatter?
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
How far is he willing to subordinate himself on some level to Trump? And if he did do that, would it even work? Would it even get him what he really thinks he needs?
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Right. Well, first of all, it's important to know the history. President Trump has never liked Ukraine in particular. He was convinced way back in his first term that Ukraine had been opposed to his election in 2016. This is a Russian talking point. Right. This is a Russian intelligence fable, but one that Trump bought into. And, of course, Zelensky was the other guy on the phone.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He had the, quote, perfect phone call, not so perfect, that led to his impeachment, in which he tried to bully Zelensky. into launching a fake investigation of Joe Biden.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Very awkward history. And during the last four years, when Trump was out of office, he was never supportive of Ukraine in its war against Russia. He praised Vladimir Putin for being a genius for sending troops to pressure Ukraine into making concessions. And he opposed... aid to Ukraine, basically blocked it by Republicans in the House, forced them to block it for about six months.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And sitting next to him was J.D. Vance, who was famously quoted saying, I don't care what happens in Ukraine. So these are not supporters of Ukraine going into this meeting. And then over the last two weeks, you see the relationship really deteriorate. changed dramatically.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Instead of Joe Biden sending arms and standing with Ukraine saying, we will never, never, never not be with you, you have Donald Trump coming in and calling Zelensky a dictator, saying it was Ukraine, falsely, that started the war.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Adopting Russian talking points about whether Zelensky should have to have elections, never mind that Vladimir Putin is the dictator, that he started the war, and that he has fake elections at home.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He was basically 180 degrees changing American policy towards Russia and Ukraine, making clear that in this new Cold War that we've been talking about now for so long, America was essentially switching sides.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And for Zelensky, this is existential for him. And he faced this pressure from Trump to sign a rare minerals deal, handing over a lot of Ukraine's natural resources to the United States without any assurance that the United States is going to give them anything back. Trump said, you owe us basically for all the aid that Biden gave you over the last three years. Right.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
So Zelensky unhappily, grudgingly comes to Washington as almost a supplicant to sign this agreement, hoping that that will keep Trump on Ukraine's side in any future peace talks.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yes, that's right. Because he hopes that it will keep the United States on Ukraine's side, give it something at stake in the war, in this case, economic stakes. And he knows how much that matters to Trump. So Zelensky shows up at the White House on Friday morning, and Trump comes out at the door to greet him as he does with foreign leaders.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And they have a polite handshake, but not a lot of warmth, I would say. And Trump makes a comment as Zelensky arrives that later I think becomes kind of telling. He says, I see you came dressed up for the occasion.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Zelensky, of course, is wearing his tactical dark sweater, one of the versions of the combat type clothing he's been wearing for the last three years in solidarity with Ukrainian soldiers. Right. And... They go into the Oval Office. They take their seats. There's a number of top officials there. J.D. Vance is there. Secretary Rubio is there. And the meeting gets off to a relatively fine start.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
But Zelensky's trying to make sure Trump understands that Ukraine is the victim, not the villain in this war.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And he shows him pictures. of Ukrainian men and women who have been released from Russian prisons and how amazing they are, how terribly abused they had been in Russian captivity, tries to get Trump to see that the Russians are the bad guys here.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
That's tough stuff. And the first 20 minutes, 25 minutes are perfectly normal, perfectly fine, but you begin to hear a little bit of an edge. You begin to hear a little bit of the tension that's there.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And they just don't see the war in the same way.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
You've been the president, but he... Zelensky does not want Trump to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia with no conditions, and Ukraine gets nothing out of it. He doesn't think Putin can be trusted.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He doesn't think that a ceasefire would hold. So he says, I need security guarantees. And that's what he's there to ask the United States for. And Trump does not want to have anything to do with it.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
But then in the midst of this back and forth, suddenly you hear a new voice.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
It's the vice president, J.D. Vance, who hasn't really been talking in the meeting. And he pipes up and he says, I want to interject here. And he offers a pointed defense of Trump's approach to the conflict. Trump is the one, he says, who's going to bring peace. He's going to be engaging in diplomacy.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And Zelensky, who's been listening to all this, really feels like he has to respond here.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And Zelensky basically proceeds to pick apart this idea that diplomacy is necessarily going to work. He points out there's a long history here. The war didn't just start three years ago. It started in 2014 when Putin first sent forces into Ukraine, seized Crimea, began seizing parts of eastern Ukraine.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And he points out that this war had been going on ever since, including during Trump's presidency. Yes.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And that seems to get under Trump and Vance's skin.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
I noted it. Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, on one level you can say he's trying to be friendly with him. Sometimes foreign leaders do refer to each other by their first names, but Vance takes offense and then jumps back in.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And this is when things go from bad to very bad.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
You start hearing Vance say, you should be grateful to us and really putting Zelensky on the defensive there. And Zelensky, of course, has thanked America for three years quite prolifically. But, you know, what's actually, I think, striking about that demand by Vance, you should be thanking us, is he is demanding that somebody thank two leaders who haven't supported him. Ukraine.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Trump and Vance don't support Ukraine, and yet he is saying, you have to thank us. Right. And as Vance and Zelensky are really kind of going at it.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Vance is pushing Zelensky on problems the Ukrainian military is having with manpower and so forth. And Zelensky says, yeah, of course, we have problems. You'll have problems too, though.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
His point is that Russia poses a threat to the United States, not just Ukraine. A lot of times Trump talks about this. He says, this is really a problem for Europe. It's not for us. In fact, Trump has said we have this big ocean between us. So what do we care what happens in Ukraine? And Zelensky is pushing back on that. He says, listen, yes, you have this nice ocean and you don't feel it now.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
A lot of distance between you and Russia. That doesn't mean that Russia isn't also a threat to the United States. It doesn't mean the United States doesn't have A stake in this has an interest in who wins this war and whether Russia comes out of it feeling rewarded for its aggression.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Yeah, Michael, I've been covering these meetings at White Houses since 1996, and I've never seen anything like this, never. You had the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, show up for a meeting with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, in the middle of a war. with so much at stake. And so, you know, everybody was looking to this meeting to see how it would come together.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
This is the moment that Trump now jumps in.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And he begins to really kind of berate Zelensky in this very aggressive way.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Right now, you're playing cards.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
You're running low on soldiers.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
What he's saying is, you have to accept whatever deal I make with Putin. You don't have any power. You're not able to influence things. And that's a really extraordinary thing to say to the leader of a country at war. He's saying, you don't get to choose here. I'm the one who's going to choose here.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
What an extraordinary moment, right? Right. These two leaders really going at it over who and what happens in this conflict in the heart of Europe.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
They do. This is where clearly a lot of weeks, if not months of tension have come to the surface and they're just exploding in this meeting. And they're saying what they have been thinking or feeling for quite a while. And it just escalates rather than de-escalates. And you finally get to the point where Trump is relitigating the whole Russia investigation.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
He says, Vladimir Putin and I went through this whole Russia hoax.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
What an amazing thing to say, right? The person he clearly feels a bond with is Putin, not with Volodymyr Zelensky, who runs a democratic country that has been allied with the United States and is under fire.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Finally, Trump lays down his cards and he says, but you're either going to make a deal or we're out.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
Basically, either you're with us, either you go along with what I'm going to do or we're out. We'll abandon you. We'll abandon you. It's a very stark threat.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
I mean, it was extraordinary. It was excruciating. It was a brutal dressing down of a foreign leader in the Oval Office. Presidents just don't do that. They get frustrated at times, and sometimes there are pointed moments, but nothing like this verbal assault that we've seen even on an adversary, much less on an ally.
The Daily
The Fallout From Zelensky and Trump’s Oval Office Meltdown
And then the reporters are escorted out of the room.