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A (1:40)

From the Bulwark here. A big move from the Trump camp as they tried to get a breakthrough with Vladimir Putin today. And it's so silly. I couldn't wait till tomorrow's podcast with Bill Kristol to talk to you all about it. So we gotta do a little bit right now. I feel like you deserve a dramatic reading of something. I haven't done a dramatic reading in a minute. Trump's third wife, the first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, put out a letter. Melania. Maybe the secret weapon here that Trump needs after he made no apparent progress during the Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin. We are on the eve of Zelensky coming to the United States flanked by a bunch of European leaders. I think is a smart strategic move to ensure that Donald Trump doesn't try to embarrass him again or bully him on the eve of that. We see this. This gambit, I guess let's call it from the first lady, how should we describe it? It's very strange. I would say that it was plagiarized, but it reads like it's much more likely that it was AI slopped and plagiarized. It does not, certainly does not read like she's copying some rhetoric from somebody else. It's cause it's a little too strange for that. There's a little bit of an ESL vibe to it and I guess should say also in this context, Melania. I don't know if I can even get out Melania to her credit because I just, I can't with Melania. But supposedly she's been talking to Trump about how Putin's continued to bomb and attack Ukraine and how there have been civilian deaths and children's deaths. So this desire to make a public statement to Putin seems to come from that. Now, again, if Trump felt confident about his negotiating skills, if he felt like coming off of the summit with Putin, that he had made a lot of progress and that Putin was likely to start to stand down and get ready to come to a deal where maybe he removes his troops from the country that he's been raping and pillaging for the last few years, you wouldn't maybe need a statement like this. But anyway, that's enough for the wind up. I know you guys want me to get right to it. The letter from Melania Trump to Vladimir Putin on the First Lady's letterhead, it begins. Dear President Putin, every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart. Whether born randomly into a nation's rustic countryside or a magnificent city center, they dream of love, possibility and safety from danger. As parents, it is our duty to nurture the next generation's hope. As leaders, the responsibility to sustain our children extends beyond the comfort of a few. Here in my gilded country club in South Florida. Undeniably, we must strive to paint a dignity filled world for all so that every soul may wake to peace and so that the future itself is perfectly guarded. It continues. I wish I could do the Maloney voice. A simple yet profound concept, Mr. Putin, as I'm sure you agree, is that each generation's descendants begin their lives with a purity, an innocence which stands above geography, government and ideology. I'm going to return to that in a second. Yet in today's world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter untouched by the darkness around them. A silent defiance against the forces of that can potentially claim their future. Mr. Putin, you can single handedly restore their melodic laughter. Oh, Mr. Putin, only you can restore their melodic LAUGHTER oh, the children's laughter. We're almost done. I promise in protecting the innocence of these children, you will do more than serve Russia alone. You serve humanity itself. Such a bold idea transcends all human division. And you, Mr. Putin, are fit to implement this vision with a stroke of the pen today. It is time. Melania. Strange that Melania has stolen Donald Trump's signature. Very weird. It's kind of like, I guess, when sorority girls get on the same period. Melania and Trump, now their signatures have merged, have blended into one. Anyway, boy, lot to unpack there, not to unpack there. I want to start with two observations. One, I do love the passive voice about what it about who these children are that she's talking about. There are these children out there that have been forced to carry a quiet laughter. I'm not sure what a quiet laughter is, but they've been forced to carry it because of the darkness around them. And it's like, who has forced them to carry the quiet laughter? Is there somebody that has forced that? What would that person's name be? Who is that? Because I presume we can't know for sure, because the other important observation here is that Melania does not use the word Ukraine anywhere in this letter. So we're forced to presume, I guess she's discussing the Ukrainian children who have not merely been forced to laugh quietly, actually, they've been kidnapped by the Russian aggressor and they've been murdered. But the ones who have survived, who have not been kidnapped and brought to Russia or murdered by their indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, the children that survive in Ukraine, to the extent that they have to carry a quiet lifetime, I don't believe that they do actually see a lot of videos from Ukraine where people are soldiering on with good humor. But the kids that have survived whatever has been thrust upon them, whatever challenges that they've been forced to face, whatever danger they've been exposed to, they've been exposed to because Vladimir Putin decided to invade his neighbor for no reason beyond his own megalomania and desire to reconstitute the. The Soviet Union. So, like, Vladimir Putin is the one that has descended the darkness around them. There is no. It's not as if this is just some. Some situation like that happened. Like, somewhere out there in the world, there are some kids that just caught bad luck and then they ended up in this place where it was dark and they weren't able to laugh. And Vladimir, Mr. Putin comes in and signs his pen. He could save them. And so we have to appeal to his conscience, we have to appeal to his good naturedness and his empathy, because he, as the leader of Russia, has the power to save these children that for some unknown reason, have had these horrors thrust upon them. Like, that is how this letter is written. And that is not what has happened. Vladimir Putin is. Is abusing them, torturing them, attacking them, trying to murder them, stealing them from their families. And so he can stop that from this, from the. With the stroke of a pen, because he's the one that is responsible. Like a simple yet profound concept, to borrow a phrase, is that Vladimir Putin is the one who's chosen to torment the children of Ukraine, and the person responsible is also responsible for stopping it. And I don't think that an appeal to his concern about the babes in the woods and their melodic laughter is probably the way to do it, you know, And I think that this would be something that a conservative foreign policy hawk would have mocked relentlessly had it been written by Michelle Obama or Dr. Jill Biden, Dr. Joe Biden. You would have like, oh, oh, Mr. Putin, Mr. Putin, please be kinder, please. When. When they go low, you go high, Mr. Putin. I mean, it's just like, what. And that would be just. A liberal would be eviscerated for putting out something this naive and just frankly, embarrassing. And so we should eviscerate Melania for it as well. I know Melania is being very litigious these days. I'm not going to comment on anything about her or her background unrelated to this specific letter, in case you were wondering. But she has been very litigious when some other people have been making some other claims about her you can maybe see around YouTube. I just. I want to go back to one other part of the letter. Yeah. You know, you hate again to overanalyze something that very possibly might have been written by Grok, but I want to also go back to that simple yet profound concept. Melania says this. Each generation's descendants begin their lives with a purity and innocence which stands above geography, government and ideology. That claim actually is fundamentally at odds with MAGA Republicanism and with Vladimir Putin's view of the world. So it is simultaneously hypocritical and a really dumb appeal to Vladimir Putin, because Vladimir Putin does not actually think that the descendants of Ukrainians are unmarked by their geography and their government and their history. The whole point about this is that Vladimir Putin believes that Mother Russia is the culture and the government that should subsume all of the other surrounding Countries that were once occupied by the USSR on a map. So, like, and in maga, this whole idea of blood and soil nationalism you talk about, I mean, J.D. vance did the Ordo Amoris talk the other day about how you have to care more about people close to you than people far away, and that there is a ranking of love that you have to have and that you rank the children further away lower than the children closer to you because of proximity and because of blood and soil and nationalism, family and all this other nonsense. So, like, yeah, I agree with the simple and profound concept that every generation's children should have equal opportunity to achieve their dreams, no matter their geography or government or ideology, because I'm a globalist bleeding heart chill. Like that claim, that profound concept that Melania put forth is. Is anathema to what her husband and her husband's administration want to put forth. Just as the purpose of this letter, presumably they had a purpose, was to convince Putin to find a heart. Oh, please, Mr. Putin, won't you think of the children? Please, Mr. Putin. This is like a combination of what was Ned Flanders wife, ned Flanders wife, Mrs. Flanders, and, you know, the appeals to the Grinch for his heart to grow three sizes larger. Oh, please, Mr. Grinch, don't you have a heart? You know, it's just like that's the level of argumentation here. If you're gonna make an appeal, I don't understand why you would make an appeal to. From a blood and soil nationalist to a blood and soil nationalist, that he should not care about the geography in which these children are born. He should care about their dignity and human, you know, their human dignity equally. Putin doesn't care about the human dignity equally of people, no matter what their geography is. He does not think, actually, that each generation's descendants begin their lives with an equal purity that stands above geography. He's extremely. He has an extremely acute interest in geography, as a matter of fact, and so does your husband and his fucking white nationalist cadre of goons. So, anyway, it's a silly little letter from Melania Nous. No, no Trump. She's a silly little person, though, so it's not that surprising. She'd write a silly little letter, but I felt it's worth sharing because I don't. You know, it doesn't seem like they hang out that much. I am pretty sure that the Trump team would have oversight over whether something like this would go out. And it betrays a weakness about their status in their negotiations with Putin, betrays that Vladimir Putin is one in a position of strength here as these guys so desperately flap around in hopes that Donald Trump can get a Nobel Peace Prize out of this. I think, well, you call it in poker. It's a tell. I think this is a tell as we go into tomorrow's meeting with Zelensky and the European leaders about the level of desperation you're seeing on the American side of this so called negotiation. So that's what I got for you. Was it worth 15 minutes talking about the Melania Trump letter? I think so. I think so. I don't know who I'm looking at. There's nobody else here. I think so. It's my channel, you know, and I got a kick out of it. So I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think in the in the comments. Subscribe to the feed. We'll be back tomorrow with Bill Kristol with a little more serious talk. And I should mention Bill Kristol talk to Eric Edelman who does our awesome Shield of the Republic podcast. If you're looking for astute foreign policy analysis from people who have expertise and experience shielded a public podcast and Bill Kristol's conversation with Eric Edelman, I would recommend highly. If you're looking for like a little bit of expertise and some hot takes with some laughs, keep it right here with me. We'll see you guys soon. Bye.