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Americanswers… on 5 Live! What’s really going on with Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine?
00:31:21
The US president has urged Zelensky to accept a controversial ceasefire deal
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Asma Khalid
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Sarah
Hello, welcome to another of our Monday editions of America answers. When we answer your questions when we're talking to Matt Charlie on five live. And this week you wanted to know about some of those cozy meetings in the White House where Donald Trump has been greeting Zoran Mandani and the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The he has been posting on social media talking about the behavior of some Democrats, saying it was punishable by death. And he saw the end of Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Marjorie Traitor Greene, as he had called her, the Republican congresswoman who has announced that she is retiring from Congress. And of course, we talk about what's going on with Ukraine because the controversial deal to try and end that war is still being discussed as we were recording this program. So do make sure you stay till the end because a lot of you were asking about Ukraine and we didn't have time to get through all your questions on Five Live. Welcome to America Answers.
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Asma Khalid
AmericaCast AmericaSt from BBC News.
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Anthony
When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir.
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Matt Charlie
Happy to lick your boot, sir.
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Anthony
We are the sickest country in the world. Oh dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests.
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Matt Charlie
What a stupid question.
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Anthony
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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Asma Khalid
Okay, let's get stuck straight in Loads of listeners have been in touch asking about Ukraine. After European leaders criticized the 28 point US plan, saying it was too favorable to Russia, a new plan has now been promised. The negotiations between the U.S. russia and Ukraine are ongoing. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social this morning, something good may just be happening in relation to the talks. And we've had this voice note from Paul in Australia.
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Sarah
G'.
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Matt Charlie
Day.
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Asma Khalid
Does the panel still genuinely believe that Trump is bothered with bloodshed and he.
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Sarah
Wants to see an end to the killing?
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Matt Charlie
I've heard it mentioned a few times.
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Asma Khalid
And on other podcasts as well. But all I see is a man.
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Sarah
That wants to make a deal and wants a legacy and wants to profit.
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Anthony
Thanks, everyone, for the podcast.
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Sarah
Cheers.
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Asma Khalid
So, Sarah, what do you make of Paul's question? And just sort of against the background of Donald Trump and Petey saying he wants to end, well, all wars.
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Sarah
Yes. And of course, famously during his election campaign, claiming that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, which has not happened. And now when he talks about it, he often expresses both surprise and frustration that it's taken this long so far. And of course, we're not guaranteed that we're getting to the end of it now, even though he has been, as you say, posting on social media that something good may be happening. So Paul was saying that he sees a man who wants to make a deal, a legacy and to profit. Now, all of those things, I think, are true. We know how obsessed that Donald Trump is with his legacy and his pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize and how much he wants to be seen as a peacemaker around the world. And of course, because he thinks he's a dealmaker extraordinaire, that he's the person who can do that. The plan that has been put to Ukraine does seem to involve the US profiting actually directly from some of the reconstruction efforts. And then there are many ways in which Donald Trump thinks that bringing Russia back into the international fold would allow for all kinds of, of deal making that would benefit both countries. But I think he does actually want to see an end to the killing as well. Now, maybe it's not his primary motivation, maybe that's not the only reason that he's involved in this. But every time he talks about Ukraine, Donald Trump mentions numbers of soldiers who are being killed. He says he gets shown photographs and updates about what's going on at the front line. And he said he does seem to be genuinely moved or upset by the carnage that he says he is showing images of. And so I think it's part of his motivation to delve into making a deal. But I don't think that Paul is wrong when he suggests that, yeah, that legacy and potentially profit may be slightly higher up his priorities.
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Asma Khalid
Anthony, you've got Trump saying, told reporter Zelenskyy could accept the deal or continue to fight his little heart out. Clearly, he's not been as steadfast alongside Ukraine as, you know, Joe Biden has and European leaders have, is he? And so as a result, people say, well, he's too close to Putin, and the initial plan just looked like a sort of Russia wish list. Is there a sense that he want Russia to pay in any way for, you know, bluntly, they started, they invade, you know, it was Russia invaded Ukraine.
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Anthony
Yeah. You know, he doesn't really like to assign blame to Russia. And sometimes, in fact, over the past year, he has said that, or at least implied that Ukrainians are equally to blame for this war, when very clearly this was a war of Russian aggression, that they were the ones who rolled the tanks in. And the justifications that Russia offered for it were fairly flimsy. But, yeah, it is. If you look at the details of this plan, this plan is, by and large what the Russians want. And there are some, what appear to be concessions, things about, oh, Poland gets to have military jets on their own soil that aren't really concessions at all. And so it's the guarantees that he says he's making, the American security guarantees, again, they're very vague, and they're only as good as Donald Trump's word. And they're guarantees and assurances that Russia won't invade again that they made before, they have made multiple times before, and yet they have launched these attacks on Ukraine. So maybe this document is a work in progress, and that's certainly what America's European allies want to characterize it as. This is a starting point, and there are things that can be tweaked and adjusted and improved. But at least at the moment, where this lands down, Donald Trump is not asking Russia to make very much in the way of concessions at all.
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Asma Khalid
There is. I mean, I was gonna say he's a very online president, probably the most online president we've ever had. Marianne. There's a sense of sometimes he puts stuff out there. He sort of just sees how it goes. Does it bang online or not? Does it, you know, does it get the reaction from his base that he's looking for? Is there a sense that he's doing that this time? Where are his cause, a lot of his supporters Liked all the stuff about, you know, no more forever wars and with, you know, America first meant not being the world's policeman.
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Matt Charlie
Yeah. It's worth saying that there's a bunch of particularly maga, so make America great influencers online who are very anti war and particularly anti the idea of American money being spent on protecting, say, Ukraine or other places. So certainly when he kind of has a go at Zelensky, it plays to that base. But then also there are people certainly within the kind of Republican Party more, more broadly and people who also exist online, perhaps less vocally, who are very patriotic but also believe in standing up against, you know, foreign aggression or are not very keen on Russia and Putin in. So Donald Trump kind of treads this fine line, although treading a fine line is perhaps the wrong way of describing it. It's more like he sort of hops between either side of the line all the time with his social media posts, particularly the ones on Truth Social. What I think and what I found interesting in terms of the way this has all played out is like if you track his posts on Truth Social. So, for example, when he was having a go at Zelensky saying, you know, Ukraine leadership has expressed, all in capitals, of course, zero gratitude for our efforts. To some extent, it's hard to work out how strategic Donald Trump is and what he posts. But posts like that are effective in terms of like, you know, the narrative was actually, I'm annoyed at Ukraine now. Suddenly it seems a little bit less fractious today. And it. And it moves on. It's like, it's almost like he puts his most extreme positions out on social media. On social media and then sees how they play out in real life and almost, almost uses that as part of attacks.
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Sarah
Yeah.
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Asma Khalid
And sort of walks it back. Was interesting. And obviously we'll wait and see what happens. It's still very much a live conversation.
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Matt Charlie
Well, exactly. It's only quarter past three. What time are we? 20 past three on a Monday.
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Asma Khalid
Who knows what will happen? There's a lot of time to go yet. Let's move on and get some more questions on. We've got Daniel from the Peak District. Hi, Daniel.
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Sarah
Hello.
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Anthony
Hello, guys.
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Sarah
This thing about Trump saying that he rather.
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Anthony
The six Democrats who dared to say that the soldiers should not carry out.
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Sarah
Orders which violate the law or the.
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Anthony
Constitution, which is actually the legal position.
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Sarah
That is what soldiers are entitled to.
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Anthony
Do and must do, in fact.
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Sarah
And Trump has threatened them with, well, he's called them seditious and they should be punishable by death. So he's associating, opposing him with being killed. My mind is just jaw dropping. And what I wanted to know from.
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Anthony
You guys was how is this going.
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Sarah
Down, not just in the media, but in public opinion?
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Anthony
Is this something that would play out in the midterms as an attack out? For example, here we've got a president.
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Sarah
Who actually threatens his opponents with killing them.
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Asma Khalid
So interesting. Actually, it is connected to our previous conversation. Cause so Trump posted on Truth Social last week accusing the Democrats of seditious behavior punishable by death, but then went on Fox News and we've got a clip of him denying he was threatening death to Democrats. Take a listen.
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Anthony
I don't know about the modern day things because, you know, modern day is a lot softer, but in the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death. Yeah, but you're not saying you're not threatening them. A lot of people are interpreting there's a threat and their security. I'm not threatening them, but I think they're in serious trou. I would say they're in serious trouble. I'm not threatening death, but I think they're in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death.
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Asma Khalid
I mean, using the word death there quite a lot for someone who's not talking about death. Anthony, just give us the background of this case for listeners who don't know and then why Donald Trump has weighed in so strongly on it.
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Anthony
Sure. This all started with a handful of Democratic members of Congress, ones who had military backgrounds, releasing a video where they said that soldiers didn't have to obey illegal orders. And this was done in the context of Donald Trump ordering strikes, say, on Venezuelan boats in international waters. Donald Trump sending soldiers and National Guard to American cities. So it's pretty clear the context of this, that they were saying if Donald Trump gives an order that they view as illegal, that soldiers don't have to obey it. But then that set off kind of a firestorm on social media that Donald Trump picked up on and amplified and then began echoing not just his own calls for death, but other people on social media who are calling for this. And that's where you get into this kind of muddled mess. Again, it's Donald Trump. He'll say one thing and then he'll say, no, I didn't really mean that. And maybe some conservative commentators or interviewers will say, well, you don't really mean that, do you? And he's like, no, I don't. But kind of I do. It is the way Donald Trump talks And so it's gonna be it'll be interesting to see if this becomes an issue with legs. But it's the kind of one where if you wanted to find a soundbite where Donald Trump, Trump was specifically calling for people to be executed for this, you're not going to find it. You're going to find a little bit that points in multiple different directions.
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Matt Charlie
Matt, I do think it's worth saying as well there you summarized one of the posts that he'd put on Truth Social. There are other posts. This is a common bit of behavior that Donald Trump displays on social media where he'll repost other posts that perhaps go a bit further than he did. So for example, he reposted this one that said hang them. George Washington would. But on the question itself, Daniel, I do think that this kind of rhetoric has become more normalized within American politics. And we've been talking about it in relation to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the killings of various other politicians, including on the left in in the United States. And I think that lots of this language, like about treason and treachery, you know, this idea of traitors, it's what Marjorie Taylor Greene was talking about in terms of it causing threats to her, is language that Donald Trump has not been shy of before. So in some ways this just feels like part of evolution of that language, even though it is shocking to some people that he could go so far.
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Sarah
As to suggest that I'll just put in there. So you had these six Democrats saying you can refuse illegal orders. In fact, it's your constitutional duty to do so. And now they've been unable to come up with what they think are any illegal orders that Donald Trump has issued. One of them, Alyssa Slotkin, was on the TV over the weekend saying no, she wasn't aware of any illegal orders, which slightly undermines their case a little bit. I mean, they wanted us to think, obviously they were talking about National Guard deployments in American cities where it's unusual to have troops on home soil, and also the attacks on boats coming out of Venezuela. But if they can't actually say they think there has been illegal orders issued to the armed forces, then why are they advocating that people disobey orders? I think that muddies the water slightly of who's right and who's wrong here.
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Asma Khalid
Well, it's a great question, Daniel. It's good to shine a light on something which may not have caught the attention of all our listeners. Good to speak to you, Daniel. Thank you for that. Right, let's turn Our attention to an unlikely sort of broman might be a bit strong, but Zora Mamdani, the new Democratic mayor of New York City, went to the White House to see Donald Trump and they got on famously, albeit there's one slightly tricky moment.
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Matt Charlie
Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?
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Sarah
I've spoken about that's okay.
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Anthony
You can just say okay, okay. It's easier. It's easier than explaining it. I don't mind.
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Asma Khalid
But apart from that, they've gone on quite well. Zach has said as an email saying, I was watching the press conference in the Oval Office between Mamdani and Trump and I don't know what to think. Can you offer your thoughts as to what was going on there? Was it Zora Mamdani has the ability to play some sort of charm offensive? Was it the classic theory of horseshoe politics that left wing and right wing populism both meet over very similar issues? Was it that Donald Trump thinks that signing with Mamdani will cause Mamdami political pain by association? Or was it something else? Sarah?
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Sarah
Well, at root, I think Mandani is a winner. He won big in New York and in slightly surprising circumstances. You know, he came up from outside politics. He was written off by a lot of people who didn't think, think that he was going to make it. A lot of similarities with Donald Trump's rise in politics there with that. And he does like to be associated with people who have been electorally successful. It's probably one of the reasons why he seems so keen on Keir Starmer as well, because, you know, he won Bignel election in 2024 and Donald Trump decided he looked like a winner and therefore he was on his side. So, you know, that will get you an in with Donald Trump. But it is true that they are talking about the same kind of issues making life in America more affordable. Now. They have different views of how to do it and we don't know to what extent they got into any kind of detailed politics or policies about this. But they do have similar aims with very, very different views of how to get there. I think it suits Trump to be seen to be getting on with someone he thinks is winning. Mamdani can say, well, look, I'm doing what I have to in order to try and make things better for New Yorkers. People I feel sorry for are the Republicans who have probably already spent millions cutting adverts and working on publicity that was going to say Mamdani is a dangerous communist. This is what the whole of The Democratic Party's like, don't vote for them in the midterm election. And now suddenly Donald Trump has embraced this man and. Yeah. And no longer can he be used as a sort of bogey figure to put people off Democrats.
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Asma Khalid
Well, we'll see how that plays out. And if this is a small romance or. I just sort of wondered whether it was just the two of them. They're both sort of quite similar in their approaches and actually, you know, they both probably get out of it what they wanted. Well, let's turn our attention now to another visitor to the White House. We've had this voice note in from Maria.
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Anthony
Maria, hi. Americast, it's Maria from Derbyshire.
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Matt Charlie
I was disappointed not to hear a.
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Anthony
Mention of the complete meltdown of President.
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Matt Charlie
Trump with the reporter's question about the Saudi Crown Prince and the murder and.
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Sarah
Dismemberment in the embassy.
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Matt Charlie
It was extraordinary.
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Anthony
And it wasn't mentioned on Amerracast.
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Matt Charlie
But anyway, love you anyway. Anyways, great.
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Asma Khalid
Don't worry. We're mentioning it now, Maria, and we're still glad you love us.
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Sarah
So. Yes.
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Asma Khalid
Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman to the White House last week. That's despite a US intelligence assessment in 2021 which determined the Crown Prince had approved an operation to kill the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It was his first US visit since the assassination. And this is the particular moment Maria was talking about.
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Matt Charlie
Your Royal Highness, the US intelligence concluded.
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Sarah
That you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist.
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Anthony
9.
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Sarah
Eleven families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans.
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Anthony
Who are you with?
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Sarah
I'm with ABC News, sir.
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Matt Charlie
You're with who?
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Anthony
ABC News, sir. Fake News. ABC Fake News. One of the worst. One of the worst in the business. But I'll answer your question. I have nothing to do with the family business. I have left. And when I. I've devoted 100% of my energy, what my family does is fine. They do business all over. They've done very little with Saudi Arabia, actually. I'm sure they could do a lot. As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job. You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about, whether you like him or didn't like him. Things happened, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that. Yeah, things happen. That's a very interesting way of talking around that. And the ABC reporter pressed Donald Trump on that and he started criticizing ABC as he often does, and going after the reporter personally. But it is a kind of a dramatic shift to see the American president welcome Mohammed bin Salman there brush over the very real evidence that the United States itself has presented that, that he had knowledge of the killing of Khashoggi. And to say that, well, he had lots of different enemies and he wasn't a well liked guy, just incredibly dismissive. And that has, of course, angered Khashoggi's widow, has angered people who have been critical of the Saudi government and created a bit of a firestorm around it. But Donald Trump doesn't seem interested in that. He seems perfectly happy to sit in the same room and to look towards a future of warmer U. S. Saudi relations, which is something that has been a through line for Donald Trump since the beginning of his first presidential term where his first international trip was to Saudi Arabia. He seems very intent on tapping into Saudi money and increasing cooperation between the United States and Saudi and getting them to sign onto these Abraham Accords which would involve them recognizing the state of Israel and normalizing relations with them.
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Asma Khalid
So that's Donald Trump's relations with Saudi Arabia. Back closer to home relations less good with Marjorie Taylor Greene. There was a great episode of americast last week all about her, so you might want to check that out. So she's an influential Republican congresswoman who says she'll be resigning after a big argument with Donald Trump. So Lundy on the discord asks, are we starting to see which side of the Republican Party will take over after Trump or is it still too early to tell? Is this a sign that we'll see others like Lauren Boebert or primary dad of Congress and replaced with those more aligned to Vance or the traditional roots of the party? Sarah, fill us in what's going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a massive cheerleader for Donald Trump.
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Sarah
Yeah, absolutely fascinating. This is. So she broke with Donald Trump in the last few weeks over several issues. She's been demanding the publication of the Epstein files very vocally all along and actually signed on to a measure in Congress that would force their publication and that annoyed Donald Trump. She's also been speaking out about subsidies for health care. She's worried about the cost of health care going up for her constituents, about other affordability issues and criticizing Donald Trump for spending too much time on foreign affairs. So she would say, and with some justification, actually she was representing what the MAGA base really care about and keep trying to keep Donald Trump true to his America first principles, whereas she thinks he's been distracted by other things in the White House. But it did become quite a spat with Donald Trump calling her a traitor and other things as a result of it. And it looked as though we were seeing the first fight back from Congress, from somebody actually prepared to take on the president and say, you can't just do absolutely everything you want and expect us to acquiesce all the time. But then suddenly, over the weekend, she announced that she is gonna leave Congress. Not even when her term runs out in just under a year's time, but she's gonna leave at the beginning of January. She's had enough of politics since she started this fight with Donald Trump, apparently. So suddenly, it doesn't look as though the fractures in the party endanger him in any way. You know, if she had gotten away with this, if she had been on whilst disagreeing with the president, it would have made him look slightly weaker. But actually, it does appear, for whatever reason, that he has won this particular bout. We've just come off air on Radio 5 live with Matt Charlie, where we've been answering some of your questions, but we had so many in about what's going on about Ukraine, we thought we would try and answer some more of them. I should warn you that this is a pretty dynamic situation going on with these talks. It's half past ten in the morning US time, so half past three in the afternoon in the UK on Monday. Forgive us if by the time you're listening to this, some of the things we're talking about have gone out of date. But as things stand at the moment, we've got a great question in from David, who is asking whether or not we underestimate President Trump. He says he produces a peace plan that he knows Russia will accept and gives it as a take it or leave it plan to Ukraine. I wonder if President Trump knew this would put the cat among the pigeons and hare would fly and that the European leaders would all rush in to support Ukraine. This doesn't strike me so much as Donald Trump looking for something nice to say on Thanksgiving, but an archetype move by Trump to solve a problem. And if this is the case, can we suddenly see why the White House briefed that the media are biased and that they reduce President Trump's motives to narcissism? He says he's not a fan of Donald Trump, but we do need to understand him, not stereotype him. So that's a very interesting way of Looking at this, and David mentions thanksg there because that's the notional deadline Donald Trump has given for Ukraine to agree to this plan, and that is on Thursday of this week. But yeah, so he's suggesting essentially that this is an art of the deal type move, where he was never expecting Ukraine to sign up to the plan that looked so incredibly favorable to Russia, but rather it's just part of the choreography, I guess, in getting to a deal. What do you think, Anthony?
- [23:34]
Anthony
I mean, we've seen this sort of strategy before, try to shake things up, say something kind of outrageous, whether it's, you know, that Gaza will be turned into a Riviera and redeveloped or that Palestinians will be relocated and that kind of disrupts the state of negotiations and opens it up for people to be more flexible. And certainly when we saw the final deal out of Gaza, it didn't involve resettling Palestinians and didn't involve hotels being built, at least in the short term. So there is some evidence that this could be along those strategies. Although. So as we pointed out earlier, and as you pointed out earlier, Donald Trump has a predisposition for taking the Russian side in this, and he's vacillated a bit back and forth over the course of the year, sometimes criticizing Putin, sometimes criticizing Zelenskyy. But when Bush comes to shove, it always seems like he settles around the idea that it is Ukraine that has to make the big concessions here. And that's what we see saw in this document. So whether it'll move back a little ways away from that, whether we'll actually see Russia have to make more accommodations and Ukraine will have more protections than they have in this plan at the moment. I guess that remains to be seen, but it doesn't seem like the best kind of a starting point in Ukraine's.
- [24:57]
Matt Charlie
Perspective to the point you just made.
- [24:59]
Sarah
Anthony.
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Matt Charlie
I think it's quite interesting trying to distinguish between what things Donald Trump does does that that are stunts like the Gaza Riviera stuff was this AI generated video that was put out and obviously lots of people found very offensive, suggesting they were going to redevelop Gaza into like you say, a holiday resort. Other people found it kind of funny and were resharing it and that kind of seemed obviously like it. Well, at least I think a lot of people presumed it was a joke, offensive or not. Whereas I feel like when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, some of the other slightly more stunty moments, like you think back to that moment between Zelensky and, and Donald Trump and J.D. vance in the Oval Office, that I think people were kind of unsure whether it was a stunt or whether it was how Donald Trump actually felt about Ukraine. And again, with some of the comments he's made about, about Putin, I don't know whether again, and Sarah, you'll have a view on this, whether you can ever determine how much of this is deliberately strategic and how much of it is just kind of like seeing what works and then reacting subsequently.
- [25:59]
Sarah
It's seeing what works. But also I think some of it is just is how Donald Trump feels, feels in the moment. And there is an underlying sense that he thinks that Ukraine have been ungrateful for American and European support over the last almost four years. That has come up again and again when he gets irritated with President Zelenskyy. And as Anthony was saying, at the heart of it all, even though he moved back and forwards a little bit, he does always seem to settle on a much more pro Russian side. So even if the idea was that they would never accept Ukraine to ask something that looked so favorable to Russia as the initial 28 point plan, even if, Anthony, you were saying, you know, it moves back away, that's still going to be a very, very long way from, you know, what Ukraine would have been saying was acceptable maybe a year ago if they were talking to President Biden's administration about this. So probably underneath it all, you scratch the surface with Donald Trump and you can see, you can see a baseline going through of how he really does feel about these things.
- [26:56]
Matt Charlie
Isn't it as well, it's fundamentally not equal in the sense that you've got a country, Ukraine, which is experiencing war much more acutely than Russia. And although Russia has experienced some moments of sort of retaliation and so is spending huge amounts of resource and people essentially, you know, soldiers who are being killed, that the kind of exhaustion of war is probably felt more acutely by the Ukrainians than it is the Russians, then I guess it makes that playing field slightly less level. I mean, it was never level anyways. But I don't know whether that's slightly playing into the right. I'm going to have to accommodate Russia first and then turn to Ukraine approach sort of thing. And I guess he's got other allies who will then help to deal with with Ukraine, like the U.K. for example, or other European allies.
- [27:40]
Anthony
So what we see in this plan is that Ukraine is being asked to give up territory that it currently controls. Russia is allowed to take the territory it controls, not give anything up. Maybe a little bit on the edges, but not something that is spelled out explicitly in this plan. And that is going to be a really bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow. And the guarantees, as I mentioned before, the guarantees that Russia is going to that they will respect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty, that they're not going to invade again, those are guarantees that Russia has made in the past and ones that they have broken in the past. And there's another provision in this that would limit the size of Ukrainians armed forces and the kind of weapons they could have. Again, that's got to leave Ukraine feeling very vulnerable with only this kind of vague assurances that NATO and the United States would respond in a forceful way if Russia breaks its promises. I can't imagine that Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians feel very happy with where this would end up if this is the deal they get.
- [28:47]
Sarah
Precisely. Also, Anthony, on that point, because the security guarantees for Ukraine aren't very strong and don't seem to be being enshrined the way, for instance, the NATO commitments to protect fellow members are. It's almost as though it's Donald Trump's whim whether or not he would protect Ukraine certainly for the rem remainder of the time that he's in office. And he has been so inconsistent on what he says about this, so unpredictable from what he says about Ukraine. Why, if you were sitting in Kyiv, would you trust that he would necessarily have your back if Russia were to renege on any of this?
- [29:20]
Matt Charlie
Sarah, you've mentioned before as well how Donald Trump is motivated by that desire to be seen as the kind of president of peace, that legacy, I mean, even maybe to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Do you think that that that's behind some of what's going on here? You mentioned before how you kind of think he also is not keen on the war more generally and does care about the consequences. But if we're going down that kind of art of the deal route, how much of it is just sort of driven by political ambition as opposed to authentic care?
- [29:50]
Sarah
I think it's about money as much as it's about political ambition. With humanitarian concerns, about the killings and casualties in the war a distant third behind that. Yes. And then the idea of protecting sovereign democracies from invasion even further down the list than that. But it's pretty clear that Donald Trump has a long term vision about bringing Russia back into the fold, back into the international world order. He said he wants them to rejoin the G8, for instance, because he thinks that there is huge potential in the Russian economy being brought into global trade, massive potential for American firms to make huge profits in Russia, whose economy is never really been assimilated properly into the global system. But to do that, he needs to end this war before Russia can even contemplate inviting Russia back into some of these international groupings and be able to do business after lifting all of the sanctions. That's what it's really about. He can see the potential for America making some profit in Ukraine as well, partly around the building of Ukraine and also possibly around rare earth and critical mass, because there's a lot of them in Ukraine, although mostly actually cited in the bits of Ukraine that this plan would cede to Russia. But, yeah, it's the potential for American investment and returns, I think that's at the top of this list, with political ambition and legacy coming behind that.
- [31:20]
Matt Charlie
Right, that is it for today's episode. Thank you so much for all of your questions. Do keep sending them our way and we'll keep trying to answer as many as we can. But for now, see y' all later.
- [31:30]
Anthony
Bye bye.
- [31:31]
Sarah
Bye, bye.
- [31:34]
Asma Khalid
Ameracast Ameracast from BBC News. Well, look, thanks for listening all the way to the end of today's AmericasT. You are now officially an AmericasT. It is, of course, a ride, a wild ride, navigating the US News, particularly in the era of Trump. But you have made it. If you have a comment, a question about the things we've talked about or anything at all, actually, get in touch with us. The email is americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 033-01-239480. We answer your questions every single week, actually on the podcast, so keep them coming. You can join the online community as well on Discord. The link is in the podcast description on your app. We will be back with another podcast very soon. So until then, see you later. Bye.
- [32:35]
Matt Charlie
America is changing and so is the world.
- [32:39]
Asma Khalid
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC.
- [32:49]
Anthony
I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this.
- [32:52]
Sarah
Is the Global story.
- [32:53]
Matt Charlie
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [32:59]
Asma Khalid
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.