The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | March 8th, 2025: Trump’s Ultimatum to Hamas & China’s War Warning
Sat, 08 Mar 2025
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: Donald Trump lays down the gauntlet, demanding that Hamas release all remaining hostages or face the full force of Israeli military power. With ceasefire talks stalled, what happens next? Jonathan Schanzer from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins us with his insight. Beijing fires back, warning that it’s ready for “any type of war” with the U.S. after President Trump reinstated tariffs on Chinese goods. How serious is the threat? Gordon Chang, author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, joins us to break it all down. To listen to the show ad-free, become a pr Premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Beam: Visit https://ShopBeam.com/MIKE and use code MIKE for up to 40% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Trump's ultimatum to Hamas about hostages?
Welcome to the PDP Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. We'll start things off with President Trump laying down the gauntlet. I mean, not literally, that would be kind of odd, but demanding that Hamas release all remaining hostages or face the full force of Israeli military power.
This ultimatum comes as ceasefire talks remain stalled. So what happens next? Jonathan Chancer from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins us with his insight. Plus, Beijing is hitting back, warning that it's ready for, quote, any type of war with the U.S. after President Trump reinstated tariffs on Chinese goods. How serious is the threat? Well, that's a good question.
Chapter 2: Is China prepared for war with the U.S. over tariffs?
And we've got Gordon Chang, author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America, here with us on the Situation Report to break it all down. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. President Trump isn't messing around. There's no surprise there. He's telling Hamas that they have two choices. Release all the remaining hostages now or get ready for Israel to bring the hammer down.
This comes as negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire have hit a wall with, frankly, no deal in sight. Trump made his stance clear, posting to Truth Social, quote, Release all the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all the dead bodies or it is over for you." He also blasted Hamas for keeping the remains of those they've killed, calling it sick and twisted.
The ultimatum came just hours after it was revealed that his administration has been talking directly with Hamas. That's an unprecedented move. And reports say Israel wasn't even looped in on those talks. So where does this all go from here? Jonathan Schanzer from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is here with us now to break it all down. Jonathan, thank you very much for joining us today.
Hey, my pleasure. There's a lot to talk about here. Let's start with what appears to be an ultimatum from President Trump to Hamas. What do you make of that?
Well, it's interesting because we've been watching this play out. I think this is the fourth time that the president has issued an ultimatum to Hamas, threatening to unleash hell on them. Look, what he's already done is this. He's given the Israelis everything they need in order to completely destroy Hamas. He's given them those 2,000-pound bombs, those MK-84s.
He's replenished a lot of the other arsenal that they had depleted over a course of time where the Biden administration was refusing to replenish. So the Israelis are made whole militarily. They now have the political backing of the president. The president says he wants to see all the hostages released and he wants Hamas out of the Gaza Strip.
So right now there's very little else that the president could do to tip the scales in Israel's favor. What he has done, though, and we've just learned about this over the last 24 hours, is he has actually dispatched Steve Witkoff and his team. This is the president's envoy to the Middle East. He's negotiating directly with Hamas.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of U.S. negotiations with Hamas?
I don't know what they're talking about behind closed doors, but I think it's fascinating that he's talking to them with one of his staff, and then he's tweeting at them saying, I'm going to destroy you if you don't do what I ask you to do. So this is hardball that we're watching in play. I'll be fascinated to see what happens.
I think Hamas is ready to fight this thing to the finish, but I think that would be disastrous for Gaza. I would welcome a Reagan-esque plan like we saw in Lebanon, where Hamas is put on a boat or a plane. The top leaders are sent out of the Gaza Strip, never to be returned. that would be the ideal outcome.
That way, Israel doesn't have to keep fighting and we can start to think about maybe what happens in Gaza when the fighting finally stops.
Yeah. Well, you would imagine that Qatar would be a logical destination for any of the remaining key leaders of Hamas to end up residing there. But you mentioned the direct negotiations between the US, I believe, with the hostage envoy, Adam Buller, for the US side. supposedly has been talking to Hamas directly about the US hostages.
But it sounds as if, at least what's coming out of the White House, sounds as if they've broadened that discussion, a direct conversation with Hamas to include perhaps the other hostages, as well as perhaps a peace settlement of some sort. What do you make of that? Because the US policy has always been not to negotiate with terrorist organizations.
Yeah, I mean, let's be real here. We've been negotiating with terrorists for a long time. I mean, we negotiated our own defeat in Afghanistan under Joe Biden, and we continue to negotiate with Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terror. I mean, I think the United States has given up on this. This was a principle first introduced into American foreign policy under Richard Nixon.
It, I think, held for a time, has not held for quite a long time since. I mean, we have indirect negotiations with Hezbollah that are ongoing. I mean, we don't hold ourselves to this. I think it's interesting that the conversations are happening. But the only thing that I would say that it's positive about this is that it does look like, again, that the president's playing hardball.
with his envoys. And I think that's really, if you're going to negotiate with the terrorist group, you should be baring your teeth and threatening to destroy them. That's the kind of negotiation I can endorse.
But is there a danger that, I mean, you pointed out this was not the first ultimatum from the White House. Is there a danger that it's just perceived as hollow by Hamas and certainly by the Iranian regime that backs them?
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Chapter 4: How does the international community view the Gaza conflict?
Yeah, I mean, look, that was part of their play before, right? I mean, the Hamas strategy was, I think, twofold. One was to try to draw in the rest of the Iranian axis, so get Iran and the militias in Syria, the militias in Iraq, Hezbollah, the Houthis, get everybody fighting and, you know... in their mind, destroy Israel. That obviously didn't happen.
We saw a lack of unity, a lack of discipline, a lack of planning. So that failed. So you got a chance that maybe they could try it again with whatever fronts are left, although most of those are weakened proxies of Iran and probably have less of a stomach right now than they did the last time around.
Then you get to the question, as you raise, of trying to wield public opinion, international opinion against Israel. I'm not sure right now that it would work as well. I'm sure you're going to have bleeding hard liberals from Europe just joining the bandwagon of slamming Israel and working with the UN. But the big difference maker right now is the Biden administration was at least
buying some of it, or they weren't rejecting all of it. Trump is not going to have any of it right now. I think he's made it clear that he doesn't place any stock in the UN. He doesn't have a particularly good relationship with the Europeans right now. That's, of course, largely due to what's been going on in Ukraine and Russia. But the idea that
that Trump would care about what any of these actors might say, or that Israel... I mean, Israel's long stopped caring about this. You just get a sense that this war continues in accordance with Israel's plans. And I think that's what I would expect right now.
There are, of course, unintended consequences with any war, and I would say Israel still needs to watch for a combined attack by some of these proxies that we've talked about, maybe even Iran itself. That's a danger. Maybe there are some other surprises that come out here.
But again, I would say that if you look at things on balance, Israel came out stronger at the end of this first phase of the fighting, ending sometime in January. And they have only, I think, gotten stronger since Trump came in. And I think the Iranian axis looks weaker. I can't imagine Hamas is looking on and saying, yeah, we got this.
From your perspective, to what degree is Hamas acting with autonomy, right? And to what degree do you think that they're taking their direction, strategic planning from the Iranian regime?
So, it's an interesting question because the way that Hamas always worked is that you had these sure counsels. where different leaders from different parts of the Middle East were weighing in, and they were kind of almost democratic. I don't want to take that far, right?
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Chapter 5: What is Trump's Gazalago plan for Gaza?
Trademark it immediately. You have my support. Okay. All right. As soon as we're done here, I'm going to go send it in. But yeah, I mean, Gazalago was not a plan. It was a notion, if that, right? Definitely not even a full-baked idea. But here's what it was. The president tore a page out of his own book, The Art of the Deal.
You throw an idea at the other side that is just preposterous, that they can't accept, that you know they're not going to accept, and they get outraged. And then finally, when they're done being outraged, they come back to you with something that's maybe a little bit more in line with reasonable, whereas before maybe they weren't even ready to talk at all.
And so what's just happened is we started actually the real conversation. The real conversation is that the Arabs came back and made a suggestion of a five-year process in Gaza, $53 billion fronted by the Arabs. Here's the thing that's not realistic. All this so far is workable, but what they won't do is decide on the fate of Hamas.
No Arab country right now wants to go as far as to say Hamas needs to go. They can't come back. We have to kick them out and never let them return.
But why is that? Why are none of the Arab nations willing to come out and say that?
none of them are profiles in courage. Let me just put it that way first. Very few of these countries are going to come out independently and promote ideas that we would consider to be bold, courageous, brave. Look, there are a couple of countries that have stepped out of line.
The UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, I think they took bold and courageous steps back in 2000 when they signed the Abraham Accords with Israel. In the past, Jordan had its moment, Egypt had its moment, but most of these countries are weak.
They're run by strongmen who don't want to risk angering their populations, nor do they want to risk getting into a spat with the Iranian regime if the regime there decides to start turning its sights on these somewhat weaker Arab regimes. So yeah, you're not going to see a lot of
bravery from these folks these are not profiles in courage but again I think that this has started a conversation I think it's important that Trump and Israel and everybody else fire back and say hey thanks for starting the conversation that's not good enough here's why come back to us when you're serious about dealing with Hamas because that's a serious problem that needs to get dealt with
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Chapter 6: How are Arab nations responding to the Gaza reconstruction proposals?
But at the same time, here's the thing, the Sinai Peninsula, which is the area that abuts the Gaza Strip, not very densely populated, certainly could be a place that could house Palestinians, especially if other countries like the UAE or Saudi Arabia or even the US helped to foot the bill, kept them there, didn't let them integrate into mainland Egypt.
And treated them like welcome guests and allowed them to stay there until such a time that the Gaza Strip was ready to be repopulated. I could imagine that being okay. What we're hearing though from the Egyptians is absolutely no way, no way this happens, no circumstance whatsoever.
And a lot of that is just, this is sclerotic Arab world thinking dating back to the 1950s, where every Arab state basically said, we are not taking in Palestinians. We want them to stay where they are, even if it means that they stay there in misery, to make them living symbols of the Arab world's opposition to Israel.
This is some seriously demented thinking that has brought us inexorably to where we are today. In other words, it kept the entire region on a war footing because they insisted on keeping this misery at a high level. This has to end, and I actually think that Egypt should play a role here. I think you mentioned before that Qataris should take in some of these refugees.
I think the Turks, who are also sponsors of Hamas, they should take in refugees. The Iranians should. The Malaysians should. Every one of these patrons of Hamas should be forced to take in, I don't know, a half million, a quarter million, whatever it is, to pay penance for the war that they helped to create.
But from a practical standpoint, do you see that happening or do you see a plan developing more along the lines of what the Arab nations are talking about, which is keep the Palestinians in place? Obviously, they're still focused on this two-state solution. Do you think that's where this is headed?
I think that's where the Arabs wanted to head. I think the Israelis have another idea. I think Trump doesn't really care which one prevails as long as a deal gets done. And so let's see. Let's see what kinds of creativity gets kind of injected into the equation here. And I do think creativity is going to be what's important. The Arabs are not terribly creative here.
I think Trump is more than happy to be creative. The Israelis just don't want to be saddled with this burden alone. They don't want to pay for this. And they certainly don't want to allow for Hamas to stay. I think they'd be fine with letting all these other people stay as long as they're not culpable. that they're not responsible for what happens to them.
And as long as things get rebuilt in such a way that keeps Israel safe for whatever happens next. And I think that's, you got to understand that's Israel's big motivator here. This isn't, it's never been about collective punishment. It's never been about anything other than getting Hamas out of there so that Israel knows that it can live
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