Trump is trying to chuck the post-WWII order and firmly pivot American foreign policy away from Europe and toward Putin—the poor guy who got dragged into totally-not-a-hoax Russia Russia Russia. And Lil' Marco and Lindsey rushed to defend Trump and JD against Zelensky, who dared to question in the Oval Office whether Putin could be trusted in any ceasefire deal. At the same time, DOGE is putting the lives of malnourished children and pregnant women at risk in the name of cost-cutting while Trump is planning to use taxpayer money to prop up crypto, so he and his cronies can personally profit off it even more. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Sam joins Bill for the most recent "Bulwark on Sunday" More on the USAID memo laying out Rubio's failure to provide life-saving foreign aid
Chapter 1: What are the latest updates on Trump's foreign policy shift?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Congrats to Anora. A great film on a win last night. Lots of wins at the Oscars and happy Lundy-Graw. Much has happened since we last taped. Had it not been my husband's 40th birthday and Mardi Gras weekend, I might have come back on to do an emergency pod. But, you know, sometimes you guys just got to wait for the good stuff.
And so I got Bill Kristol back here and it's Monday. How you doing, Bill? I'm doing fine.
Sam and I did a pod yesterday. You'll be glad to know, which covers some of this, but we can get into much more depth here. Sam, you know, you kind of skate across the surface. With Tim Miller, you're talking about the deep dives, you know?
That is great to know. No, I was nursing a hangover yesterday, so I did not tune in for you and Sam, but people can get our little Sunday bonus conversations on Substack. So, you know, go to the Bulwark, sign up for Bulwark Plus. You don't have to wait for me until Monday afternoon that way. All right. Where should we start? I think we got to start with the sneer heard around the world from J.D.
Vance. I'm going to play a series of clips from the White House summit, so to speak, between Vladimir Zelensky, Putin. That was unintentional. Between Vladimir Zelensky, Trump, and Vance. Things were going okay. I mean, you know, okay for Trump on the Trump scale until J.D., decided to interject into a question from the press about whether Trump had been too nice to Putin. Let's listen.
One more question.
I will respond to this. So look, for four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin. And then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy.
We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States' words mattered more than the president of the United States' actions.
I signed with him, Macron and Merkel, we signed ceasefire. Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go. We signed him with gas contract. Gas contract. Yes, but after that, he broken this ceasefire. He killed our people and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn't do it. What kind of diplomacy, J.D., you are speaking about?
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Chapter 2: How did the meeting between Zelensky and Trump unfold?
At some level, there's a deep resentment of Zelensky for actually being courageous and manly and in his slightly understated way, you might say. I think the not wearing the suit is a comical MAGA complaint too, which normally they like informality, authenticity, right? But in this case, Trump's the guy who wears the suit and Vance in this case.
So they have to turn it against Zelensky, like Churchill when he came to the White House in 1941, 42, 43, wore his kind of battle, you might say, battle out, battle fatigues, in effect.
The fallout from this, the minerals deal is not signed. What happens is after the temper tantrum that is thrown by the president and vice president, they retreat to their separate quarters. Trump and his team stays in the Oval Office. Zelensky and his goes to, I forget what other room they went to hold in. And then rather than go talk to Zelensky himself, Trump sends Walsh and Rubio in,
We saw the continued shrinkening of little Marco Rubio, who had to go and tell Zelensky to leave. Later that day, high-level administration sources said that military aid is now in question, and the quotas are fortunate it is not off already. So that's kind of where things stand on the deal. And then yesterday, on Sunday, European leaders met without us.
It was in London, it was France, Germany, Canada, UK. They met. They're saying that they're doubling down on supporting Ukraine and maybe boosting military aid. But obviously, there's a lot of frustration and hard feelings at the White House. So what say you about the current state of play?
No, it's a big moment. It's the continuation of what we saw already two weeks ago, obviously, with the Trump-Putin phone call, the Hegseth and J.D. Vance speeches, the Rubio visit to Riyadh. This is kind of the culmination of it, I would say, the betrayal of Ukraine. There was no fresh military aid coming from Trump anyway.
The idea that he's cutting it off because Zelensky was disrespectful is, in a way, I think, ridiculous. Maybe he'll stop some of the aid that's already in the pipeline, I suppose. The degree to which the Europeans saw right away what was happening is striking. A friend sent me some Headlines from German newspapers on Saturday. And they saw this was not just about Ukraine.
It was about fundamental pivot of American foreign policy. Forget about NATO. Forget about Europe. Forget about defending democracy. He's with Putin. He'll be cutting deals with Putin to... in accord with what he sees to be their interests.
German foreign minister had a terrific speech where she said how terrifying and terrible it was that America joined the side of the perpetrators, not the victims of aggression and of crimes. And so Europe understood right away, Russia understood. There's a good article in the Washington Post this morning quoting
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