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- [00:01]
Tim Miller
Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell, oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy. Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with Ktree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AMPM Too much Good stuff. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back one of our faves, a reporter for the Insider, which is a Russia focused media outlet. He also writes on substack at Foreign Office, co author of a book called Isis and supposedly he has another book coming out about the gru, but I don't know, that's been in works for a while. It's Michael Weiss. You might be too busy podcasting to be book writing.
- [01:03]
Michael Weiss
It's like a Robert Caro esque thing, you know, another five years here, another six years there. Eventually we'll make it though. Volume one.
- [01:11]
Tim Miller
Anyway, I look forward to that very much.
- [01:13]
Michael Weiss
Yep.
- [01:14]
Tim Miller
Are the Birds with us today or what do we think? Is it just going to be you and me?
- [01:17]
Michael Weiss
So I haven't slept very much in the last week for reasons I'm sure we'll get into on the show, but I was about to say the birds have been silenced, but that sounds way more menacing than I meant. I just meant that I closed the door to my daughter's room.
- [01:30]
Tim Miller
All right, well, we get mixed reviews on the Birds, so some people will be sad, others will be joyous. I guess it just depends on how sensitive their audio is. We're going to spend, I think probably the entire podcast on the crazy developments that are continuing every hour in the Russia Ukraine negotiations, if you want to call them that. We had our newsletter that came out this morning from Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger. Our morning shots that I just feel compelled to mention to everybody because we're going into the holiday week and people need a little joy in their life. The subhead says this, the White House is in free fall. How long will it last? And I do think in some ways this relates to our topic of the day on Russia Ukraine, which is Trump has really lost the rope on a lot of things domestically, and there are a handful of things that he still feels like he has control over. I think the ice operations and the CBP operations being one of them. And this self delusion that he is a negotiator, a negotiator extraordinaire with foreign countries is the other. And in some ways I think there is a little bit of relation between the series of Ls that the White House has taken domestically and this rush to some Thanksgiving deal with Ukraine and Russia. So I want to get to the details first, but what do you make about the of Trump's political standing right now?
- [02:49]
Michael Weiss
Yeah, I think he's very weak. He's vulnerable. He's abstracted from a lot of things that you would expect the President to be well across. Not really a details oriented guy to begin with, but even now more kind of checked out. The fact that he lost a fight with his own party for the first time really over the Epstein stuff, I think is interesting because that directly impacts him, I mean, I was going to say, and his credibility. But yeah, he has no credibility. It's something he didn't want to see come out there. Right. Because it's embarrassing and compromising. But he sort of rolled over on it. And I mean, the question I've been asking is you have seen now Republicans kind of come out very nervously and in some cases, such as Mitch McConnell, a little bit aggressively to say, wait a minute, what are we doing here with the Russians? There should not be any kind of dismal peace agreement imposed on Ukraine, no territorial concessions. So it seems like perh. Perhaps for the first time the Republicans have realized if we're going to go to the mattresses with Trump over a dead pedophile sex offender, why wouldn't we pick a similar fight with him or stand our ground over the future? I mean, 40 years, really 80 years of the post war American security architecture in Europe, which is what's being litigated here, right. It's not just about one country, Ukraine, it's about NATO, it's about the European Union and it's about whether or not we have, you know, any commitment to our allies remaining. And that's, that's kind of what's at stake. And I hope Republicans realize that this is a very tall order here. That's, that's kind of asked of them. There is some encouragement too, frankly. I just put out a poll that the Vandenberg coalition did about Trump voters on Ukraine. And you know, every metric, at every question asked us, upwards of 70% are in a traditional Republican orientation. So pro Ukraine, they see Russia as the villain. They want to send tomahawks to Ukraine, they want to Send more weapons and aid. They don't want to lift sanctions and they don't want Ukraine to have to give up land. So that's interesting. You know, this is supposed to be a populist president, but he isn't really channeling the opinions of the people on this or certainly not his own constituency.
- [05:10]
Tim Miller
I lied. You said one thing that piqued my interest. So before we get into the TikTok on dim Philby, etc. Among the things that were revealed in the Epstein emails were the fact that he was positioning himself as a back channel between Russia and both Trump and Israel for both Barack and directly with Ehud Barak he was speaking to. And then for Trump, he was like pitching this to people. What do people in your world make of that? Was that bluster from him? Did he have ins into Russia? Do we not know? Is that. I don't know. What do folks in the insider world think about the Epstein Russia back channel?
- [05:47]
Michael Weiss
We wrote about it. The insider. I mean, you know, Epstein is one of, well, obviously a deeply dark human being in many respects, but somebody who had amassed a level of wealth and connections with the elites of the world that in a way it's not surprising to see him kind of mobbed up with everybody. I mean, those emails read like, you know, the text equivalent of the Star wars cantina scene. You know, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. You know, he's just, he knows everybody. And I think he was briefing, was it the Russian ambassador to the United States on how to understand and how to read Trump. Perhaps it was Lavrov himself. I forget the details, but, you know.
- [06:25]
Tim Miller
It was the ambassador and then he was telling the ambassador to connect him to Lavrov.
- [06:29]
Michael Weiss
That's it. Okay.
- [06:29]
Tim Miller
And then in the Iraq case, I say Iraq was asking him to speak to the Russians about Assad. They're trying to get rid of Assad.
- [06:39]
Michael Weiss
Right. So that's interest too, because there's this perception that, oh, the Israelis really hated Bashar Al Assad. I mean, well, they didn't like him, but they preferred him to the collapse of the regime. And we see that playing out very clearly now. I mean, they have actively tried to sabotage normalizations with the Shah government. They don't like the fact that Shar was in the White House and they certainly don't like the fact that it looks like the US Is going to lift sanctions on Syria. Why? Because Assad is sort of the devil we know. And they could play him. He was weak, he was easily manipulated. In fact, when his regime fel we at New Lines. The other publication I write for, we did a story on documents that were retrieved showing that the Israelis were telling him all the time, listen, you know, if you allow Iran to do X, Y and Z, we're going to come and bomb these places. So he kind of, he would back off occasionally when given these sort of threatening overtures by the Israelis. So yeah, using Epstein as a kind of connector or fixer for these purposes kind of makes sense.
- [07:38]
Tim Miller
It's a little confusing. It's a little confusing. What? To me, it makes sense only if he's just like blustering, if he's like actually a, you know, non state, like unofficial back channel actor. I guess that raises a few questions about what, you know, who the Russians were and why and, and who the Israelis were and why.
- [08:01]
Michael Weiss
It may surprise sort of ordinary listeners, but I think this is kind of how the world works. You know, these horrific people, billionaires or multimillionaires, but, you know, they worm their way into the corridors of power. They leverage their contacts and their friendships with people in positions of power to acquire more wealth or to acquire more contacts of other people, including, you know, potentates and dictators abroad. And they sort of connect people. Epstein was almost like his own private intel shop, in addition to being, you know, a Bond villain and a pedophile with an Island.
- [08:40]
Tim Miller
So QAnon was kind of on the right track. It's just their arrow was a little bit miss, a little bit off as far as Michael Weiss is concerned.
- [08:47]
Michael Weiss
Well, it's. No, I wouldn't say Q on.
- [08:49]
Tim Miller
I mean, there's a global group of a global potentate of a child sex trafficker connecting different intelligence agencies. It's not so far afield.
- [08:58]
Michael Weiss
He's also seems pretty chummy with Noam Chomsky and, you know, people. You wouldn't ordinarily expect somebody of this sort of species to. To. Actually, that's not true. I mean, again, he's. He was so kind of promiscuous in his dealings with everybody for the sake of his own ego and his own self gratification. That tracks, you know, I mean, the guy was. I would say he was a sociopath, right? Sort of the classic mold of one of these international meta mystery. Leaving aside even the horrible things that he did. That's just who he is. The Russians deal with people like this all the time. I mean, they're either called oligarchs or siloviki, strongmen in positions of power, usually who come from security services who then go off and do things in private enterprise and they end up acting as liaisons or plenipotentiaries, if you want to use a grandiose term for it. For the Kremlin, dictatorships tend to spawn these kinds of creatures. So unfortunately, the United States prior to becoming more authoritarian under Trump, but certainly it accelerates now. We have creatures like this. I mean, in fact, I wanted to talk to you about exactly that in the form of Jared Kushner and Steve.
- [10:10]
Tim Miller
Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev.
- [10:12]
Michael Weiss
That's a great Dimitriev. Exactly.
- [10:14]
Tim Miller
Good podcasting.
- [10:15]
Michael Weiss
A nice segue there, man. Wow, I didn't even see that one coming. Epstein to Ukraine.
- [10:21]
Tim Miller
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- [12:10]
Michael Weiss
Let'S back up a little bit and sort of provide some context. So Trump had this ignominious summit with Putin in Alaska, which did not go well. There was some sort of rhetorical framework for future discussions, meetings about meetings to take place in the future. But it was very clear, just looking at the optics of that thing, nothing was substantively agreed to. Why? Because Putin left early. Like, there was no lunch, no salmon or moldy tuna fish served.
- [12:39]
Tim Miller
Whatever it was, halibut in Alaska, I think it would have been halibut.
- [12:41]
Michael Weiss
Halibut in Alaska. And some of the reporting I've done since suggests that even en route to Anchorage on Air Force One, Trump was shown by the director of the CIA, Ratcliffe, that look here. I mean, this is the intelligence we have on the war. The Russians are kind of desperate. They're not doing well. They're losing X number of soldiers, let's say 1,000 soldiers per square mile of territory that they take. And this kind of impressed Trump. Why? Not because he's pro Ukraine, he hates Ukraine, and he has a visceral dislike for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tied to his first term, when Zelenskyy was, you know, found himself tangled up in his impeachment saga, through no fault of his own, by the way. And he certainly wants to have a good relationship with Putin. He likes Putin. He can't understand why Putin doesn't like him back in the way that, you know, he just thinks is natural. But one thing I think that that kind of gets lost in sort of this sort of black and white portrayal of the situation is Donald Trump also likes power, and he likes to see traditional or historical adversaries of the United States beaten and battered, Right? Like, he can be friends with the worst people in the world, dictators, war criminals. But that doesn't come at the expense of, we're number one, Right? So when he sees Russia sort of getting hammered, when he sees a country that was meant to have been written off, Kyiv in three days will fall in two weeks, you know, Russian soldiers are at the Polish border, and they fight back, and they fight back hard, or they fight like hell, as he's fond of saying, and they humiliate Russia, he kind of gets, you know, it tickles his tummy, right? I mean, it's like we've discussed before, the Israelis did what they did in Iran for the space of, what, 10, 12 days in order to show him, you know, come on in, the water's fine. This is easy. You can just drop a couple of bunker busters and then call it a day. And you can take credit for this. He doesn't like war, but he likes acts of war war. He likes the spectacle of basically showing the world who's boss. So Ukraine has been able to kind of keep him somewhat tethered by demonstrating this time and time again, it's Operation Spiderweb. Then they launched drones from inside Russian territory, took out Russian strategic bombers on the tarmac, thousands and thousands of miles apart. He got excited. Ukraine hammers the Russian energy economy on a nightly basis, launching drones and cruise missiles at oil export terminals and oil depots and all of that. He likes it, right? Because he keeps talking about, aren't the Europeans weaning themselves off Russian oil? I mean, he did sanctions on Rosnev and Luka. He wants Russia to suffer economically to such a point that they come begging him for some kind of deal, right? All of that to one side. Nothing advanced from Alaska. And then Lavrov, he had this call with Putin and said, oh, let's maybe do round two in Budapest. But before that, now, knowing he didn't want to go into a situation where he would be embarrassed again, he dispatched Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor, to meet with Sergey Lavrov, Russian foreign minister since 1483. I mean, this guy's like, you know, Nosferatu.
- [15:49]
Tim Miller
He literally looks the same as he did on the reset button picture with Hillary. He is, like, preserved in amber, but.
- [15:56]
Michael Weiss
In a kind of orc like way, right? Like, not preserved. Well, he's preserved.
- [15:59]
Tim Miller
No. Oh, no. He looked hideous then and he's hideous now, but it's the same, right?
- [16:04]
Michael Weiss
So basically, they were. They were came together to kind of hammer out sort of the framework of going into another summit. And Rubio, he read the room, he's like, the Russians are still. They don't want to stop the war. They have maximalist demands. It's not just about Ukraine. It's about what they refer to as the root causes of the war, which is to say, you know, 40 years of, you know, NATO expansion and Pax Americana, or, as they would put it, American hegemony. They want to end that. They want to, you know, relitigate everything from 1991 on, and we're not prepared to do that. Or at least Marco Rubio isn't prepared to do that because there's still vestiges of the kind of internationalist, traditional Republican in him. So he went back and told Trump, there's no reason to go to Budapest and abase yourself again. Like, this is just going to be the same thing. What Rubio didn't know, what John Ratcliffe didn't know, what the State Department didn't know, what the National Security Council didn't know, and what much of the White House did not know was that whilst this is going on, Kiril Dmitriev, a very opportunistic, very wily figure in the Russian government. He's the head of their sovereign wealth fund. He was educated in the United States, degrees at Harvard and whatnot. So he understands.
- [17:17]
Tim Miller
I googled him this morning. Stanford, Harvard, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs. Being a fascist killer. Stop. Industrialist.
- [17:26]
Michael Weiss
So Dmitriev comes to the United States and he goes on a little propaganda tour. He meets with Representative Luna, gives her a box of chocolates with Putin's face on them and a book of quotations by Putin, and talks about peace. And he's doing the rounds. But he's also meeting with Steve Wykoff, Trump's friend of many years, a strip mall developer from the Bronx. So, you know, outer borough boys stick together, you know, I mean, that's how the Mom Donnie thing went down, by the way. I was just gonna say such a queen's thing. I was like, oh, my God, you know, you're a fascist, you're a Communist. Like, yeah, that's about. At 1am at the bar, you say that. By 3am you got arms around each other. You're like smoking a J on Queens Boulevard. I mean, that's just how it goes. But anyway, so Witkoff is kind of doing the dirty with Dmitriev. Kushner gets involved, naturally, because Kushner has known Dmitriev since 2015, right? He's in the Mueller report as having met Dmitriev back then to try and hammer out some kind of normalization or reboot of US Russian relations in the midst of the whole russiagate counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign's ties to agents of the Kremlin. Anyway, so they sit around in Florida, and the reporting that has come out about this, and I think this is kind of important to emphasize here, Axios broke a story, I think, on the 18th, if I'm not mistaken, saying, oh, there's going to be. There's some deal being put together. Witkoff is involved and Khadil Dmitriev is involved, and Dmitriev is the only person quoted on the record in this story, although there's U.S. officials that are quoted. Right? So Dmitriev is clearly providing some of the details and the kind of background to all of this. And what ends up happening is the deal that gets leaked eventually. These 28 points, they read like Russian fan fiction, right? They are written in a manner that is linguistically very, very Russian. Even Elon Musk's AI Grok algorithm, if you put this thing in, they spit back and say, oh, this was written in Russian and translated to English. Right. What are the points of this 28 point document? NATO will not expand and no Ukrainian membership. So again, not just what Ukraine cannot do, join NATO, which has been a long standing demand of theirs or request, NATO cannot add any other countries. So again, we're getting into the sort of root causes, as they put it, or the 1991, and on history, Ukraine must have a cap on its military. They don't go into specifics of do they mean the standing army or do they mean the standing army? Plus, you know, reservists and National Guard. It's tricky math. They just refer to personnel. They put it at 600,000, not so terrible. But also like, who are they to dictate to Ukraine? You know, what's the size of their military going to be? Particularly when Ukraine wants to deter further Russian aggression. Then there's some stuff in there that looks like it was very, very tailor made for a guy like Donald Trump. The EU will use frozen Russian assets in the hundreds of billions of dollars to both reconstruct Ukraine, but also to provide a 50% kickback to the United States. So basically, right. Oh, and then, by the way, the EU will spend $100 billion of its own money to rebuild cities and towns and villages in Ukraine that were destroyed by the Russians. So, like, this is a deal between not even the Russian government. Kil Dmitriev, who is, it's not quite accurate to call him a freelancer. He's connected, he's married to a woman who is best friends with Putin's daughter. So he's got a seat at sort of at the table. But he doesn't, he doesn't own Putin. He isn't the only influencer, he isn't the only person whispering in Putin's ear, right? A guy, an agent of the Russian government, hammering out a deal with not any sort of professional American diplomat, but Dim Philby, as I call him, Steve Witkoff, and Trump's very corrupt and creepy son in law, Jared Kushner. Right? So two amateurs. And they're putting together this Document which, as Marco Rubio later said to a gaggle of senators, reads like a Russian wish list, which it is. This is exactly what the Russians want, except it's written so poorly and so vaguely as to leave certain loopholes in there that even the Kremlin would not accept. What do I mean by that? There's a provision in there that says both sides will return civilian hostages, including children. Now, hang on a minute. The International Criminal Court indicted one Vladimir Putin for what crime? Kidnapping Ukraine's children. Right. Bringing them to Russia, essentially, then brainwashing them. You're not Ukrainian, you don't have parents in Ukraine, you're Russian. And then basically auctioning them off to Russian parentage. This is the underlying offense for a war crimes indictment against Putin. Put in a document saying, oh, now we cop to it and we promised to return the kids. Right? So Kamil Dmitriev is not so incredibly savvy as he liked to think, because he's actually admitting to Russian war crimes in this thing. And then there's like, weird stuff like Poland will park European jets that belong to Ukraine's air force on their territory. So now we're telling the Poles what they're going to do. The whole thing was just kind of.
- [22:41]
Tim Miller
Well, you have to assume that part of this is all part of the corruption. I mean, Wyckoff has two sons. One of them runs Trump's crypto business, and then the other one runs the Wyckoff family real estate business that has deals with Qatar and other such countries. So, like, who the hell knows what's.
- [22:57]
Michael Weiss
Like, Kushner did, like the largest leverage buyout with the Saudis on the back of the Gaza deal. Right. They were making money hand over fist in the Gulf, so who knows what.
- [23:07]
Tim Miller
And they're also trying to do deals in Serbia. My point is, like, you know, you assume anything that's weird in there, you just assume it's because it's some kind of back channel deal. One other thing. When I was googling and found out that Dmitriev. I do have to ask you, since you're educating me, I want to quiz you on one thing. Old he is Kiril Dmitriev.
- [23:23]
Michael Weiss
I mean, not his exact age. I think he's in his 60s.
- [23:26]
Tim Miller
He's 50.
- [23:27]
Michael Weiss
He's 50.
- [23:28]
Tim Miller
He looks like he could be your father. Well, yeah, this is the Russians. The Russians age differently. It's the vodka and the cold weather. It's important to get down to humidity.
- [23:36]
Michael Weiss
And the trembling fear of in the south.
- [23:41]
Tim Miller
So anyway, yeah, this guy is, when you look at him, it's like, it's hard to imagine that he looks kind of a feat as well. Yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine that this guy has. He seems like the kind of person that might get pushed out of a window, I guess, is all I'm gonna say.
- [23:54]
Michael Weiss
You know, there but for the fact, again, he's married to somebody who is, you know, considered very close to the Putin family. But, yeah, I mean, one of the fun aspects of all of this is, you know, Dmitriev got so ahead of his skis. Dmitriev leaks this thing to Axios, which is a White House friendly news organization, and their sources, I mean, Barack Ravid's one of his biggest sources is Steve Witkoff. And that has been the case. Everyone knows that. Right. And Kushner, too. So he leaks this thing and sort of gives the details and makes it all seem very imminent. Why? He's trying to force it into reality. He wants to make this deal manifest. And then the other optics or the other sort of stuff that's happening in the background is it's not just Witkoff and Kushner. Who else wants this deal? Who else wants a deal? At whatever costs, however much.
- [24:45]
Tim Miller
Let me guess, teacher. Can I guess?
- [24:46]
Michael Weiss
Yes. The guy on my screen. The only person in the classroom, please.
- [24:51]
Tim Miller
Yeah. The Vice President.
- [24:52]
Michael Weiss
The vice president. J.D. vance. So J.D. vance is desperate to ram this thing through. Fuck the Ukrainians. Let's give Trump a big win. He'll get his Nobel Prize, and ooh, ooh, ooh. He will anoint me the successor to Magaland and to be basically the heir apparent for 2028. But hang on, hang on, kids, it gets better. So J.D. vance is in competition, not so subtle competition, with aforementioned Marco Rubio to be the heir apparent for 2028. Right? So you got Rubio, the kind of internationalist Republican, albeit he takes the party line publicly. He says all the right things. You know, Donald Trump is a genius, and no president has solved more international conflicts than this guy, blah, blah, blah. But privately, you know, he's still trying to hold things together. He doesn't believe in forfeiting NATO. He doesn't have any illusions about who and what the Russians are. He's described them as gangsters. He's very hawkish on Russia. This is not a mystery. Vance is an isolationist, you know, very mobbed up with the Silicon Valley tech bros, Peter Thiel, the Koch brothers. And now if you kind of do the Kremlinology of the White House, what happens in order to get the Ukrainians to bully them into submission to agreeing to this framework, this Russian authored framework, at least in principle. They dispatch Dan Driscoll, the Secretary of the army, who has no business doing diplomacy, and he'll be the first to tell you that. So Dan Driscoll was briefed by the CIA on the 13th. Why? Because he was going to Ukraine not to do this. He was going to Ukraine to talk about military innovation and technology. He's a drone guy. Trump calls him the drone guy right now. Why was he going to Ukraine to talk about this? Because the Ukrainians are teaching us how to modernize our own army and arsenal. Right? Because they've invented such cool, like, suicide drones and missile systems, seaborne drones. That's how they're hammering the Russians, both in their own territory and inside Russian territory. And we're like, ooh, this is cool. And we're so far behind that the US Army Twitter account a few weeks ago tweeted, you've never seen a drone drop a grenade before. And the Ukrainians are watching this like, oh, my God, America's fallen. Like, it's just embarrassing. So, I mean, this is the other kind of subtext of this thing. J.D. vance's guy is there to tell Ukrainians, here are the terms of your surrender. And, ooh, by the way, teach us how to fight war because we suck. Right.
- [27:16]
Tim Miller
Simultaneously, just as one of the other subtexts for listeners, I should just say this is. Driscoll is the guy that Bill Crystal was mentioning yesterday. There's also tension inside the Pentagon between him and Hegseth because Hegseth's looking over his shoulder. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:29]
Michael Weiss
He's being groomed to take over. Right. So, you know, Rubio had no idea about this deal until it leaked Trump. According to the Washington Post, basically what Trump did was he said, steve, Jared. Yeah, good, great. Go make peace. Could he name three of the 28 points in this thing? Of course not. He's not across it. I told you, Like, CIA briefed Driscoll, Ratcliffe, from what I understand, had no knowledge of this. Now, it's very unusual if the Americans are doing a deal, especially these two Americans, Witkoff and Kushner are talking to the Russians, that CIA wouldn't be involved, that there wouldn't be some interagency process to keep us from stepping on our own crank as a country and embarrassing our country.
- [28:05]
Tim Miller
I'm surprised that Ratcliffe isn't spying on Witkoff or at this point, hey, man.
- [28:11]
Michael Weiss
Honestly, it's a wild and woolly deep state. What can I tell you? Yeah, no, I mean, there's going to be probably all kinds of incidental collection, as it's called, because we'll be spying on the Russians, hearing what the Americans are telling the Russians. Right? Leave that all to one side. Everybody is written out of this equation. Seb Gorka was like, I can't believe.
- [28:30]
Tim Miller
We'Re doing something crazy like this.
- [28:32]
Michael Weiss
I mean, you know, he's an asshole, but he's not under any illusions about Russia because he comes from Hungary. Right? He knows what's up. Everybody's written out of this except this small cadre of sort of agents of not even, I mean, yes, Donald Trump, but, like, they're in it for themselves, too. They want their side action and they want to give kickbacks to the boss. So America has become. We have devolved into an authoritarian regime in this respect. It's all this sort of, you know, boyars and cronies doing the work of the czar and blah, blah, blah. I mean, we are like Russia in many respects. Anyway, it all goes sideways because it's, you know, the minute it gets leaks, people start reporting and litigating. Rubio tries to sink it. He absolutely made that call to Coons and to King Mike Rounds.
- [29:18]
Tim Miller
Where were they? They were at some.
- [29:19]
Michael Weiss
They were at the Halifax security conference, and they're freaking out and hopping mad. So he gets on the phone with his former Senate colleagues. He's like, listen, this thing is fugazi. It's a Russian wish list. It's not our official policy. I'm going to Geneva to kind of sort this out. And, I mean, I've met Angus King. This is a very smart, savvy guy. He's not going to mishear or misinterpret what Marco Rubio said. Right. The other ones I can't vouch for, but the fact that they're all there saying the same thing, and none of them has disavowed what he told them, even though Marco then tweeted, oh, this is a US Plan and all this. So, you know, he's very carefully trying to blow this thing up. Now, why was the deadline set as Thanksgiving? I mean, again, 40 years of Europe and its security architecture, that's all going to be done and dusted in six days, just before the tryptophan kicks in from your Turkey extravaganza. We're going to decide the future of Europe and NATO. That's because everybody knew the minute this thing stepped into the light, it's going to fall apart, which is exactly what's happened. So at Geneva, I know, I'm going long here, but the details of this are at Geneva. Rubio's there, Driscoll is there, Witkoff is there, Kushner is not, Vance is not. And they're sitting with the Ukrainians and basically the Ukrainian deputy Foreign Minister who used to be their ambassador to the United Nations, a very smart guy. When he got wind of this plan leaking, he basically compared it to a Soviet active measure or a Russian info op. To just to give you a sense of the Ukrainian perspective on it, he is now saying, all of that noise, all of that horrible stuff has been stripped away. 28 points pared down to 19. The clause about NATO and the future of NATO, including Ukraine's possible membership in it, that's been removed. Territorial concessions have been removed. That was the other point I should have made earlier in the first document. It was, Ukraine must give up Donetsk, which it has fought mightily to retain at least the parts that it still has. And Donetsk under Ukrainian control. This is a succession of citadel cities. This is one of the most fortified places in the world.
- [31:21]
Podcast Outro Singer
World.
- [31:22]
Michael Weiss
They must give that up to the Russians, which the Russians cannot take militarily. It would take them 80 years to conquer it all. And de facto recognition of all the stuff that Russia is currently occupying that's been stripped away of the new version. And we don't know. We haven't seen this 19 point document. But the Ukrainians are kind of breathing a sigh of relief. The Poles, who I'm in touch with, were absolutely beside themselves freaking out, especially about, oh, Poland is going to be a parking lot for jets. I mean, nobody told us this. Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, he had tweeted, we'd like to know who authored this thing before we're getting involved. Warsaw is beginning to feel a little bit easier about it, which is reassuring to myself. Anyway, so the Europeans kind of came in. They kind of worked with little Marco and finessed and massaged, basically. It's like the minerals deal. Something completely untenable and ridiculous has been lawyered to a pale shade of its former self. Right? And now if the US and the Ukrainians agree, remember, this is not a negotiation that involves Russia or official Russia just yet. If the US and the Ukrainians and the Europeans agree on something and they go to the Kremlin, my guess is, and Catherine Belton did a very good piece in the Washington Post about this, the Russians are going to say, yet we don't. This, this sucks. We want the original Dmitriev authored plan. And even that one had problems. And Putin by the way, he doesn't care. He's happy to keep fighting. He thinks he's winning the war. You know, he appeared on, on state television dressed in military fatigues the other day. Does that sound like somebody who's interested in peace or sound like Generalissimus? Putin thinks he's gonna take Kyiv eventually.
- [32:54]
Tim Miller
Forgive me if I feel like I'm updating the reference that everybody uses of Groundhog Day to the movie Palm Springs. It was a lesser watched movie, but I really enjoyed it. It is of the same premise of a man that wakes up in the same place every day. Forgive me if I'm feeling a Palm Springs flashback here right now, because have we not done this four times already where Trump or Trump's people get flattered by Putin? We have done four. They start to move towards the Putin point of view. Europe and Marco and a handful of people internally in the administration do rapid response. And they assemble and they flatter Trump and they say, and they present a different perspective. And then Trump comes around to that point of view and then gets a little upset at Putin for a couple days, and then Putin calls Melania and are we not just. Has anything actually changed, I guess is my question.
- [33:46]
Michael Weiss
No, I don't think so. I mean, all that's changed is the Russians saw. Well, one thing I forgot to mention, and I'll mention it now because it's important. One of the reasons Dmitriev, Witkov, Kushner and Vance thought that they could railroad the Ukrainians now more easily than before is Ukraine has two crises. One crisis is a corruption scandal that ain't going away. That involves stealing from the energy industry in Ukraine, which is especially insulting to Ukrainians because this is a country suff blackouts all the time. Right. We're approaching winter, it's very cold, and people are stealing from the till to keep the lights on. Right? So how treacherous can you be? Right? And this corruption scandal, if you read the Ukrainian press or talk to Ukrainians, involves two people. Rusta Mumerov, the former defense minister, who's now like the national security advisor to Zelenskyy, who was in Florida with Witkoff and Dmitriev. I'm sorry, not Dmitriev, but Witkoff and Kushner, looking at this plan in its sort of primordial form and apparently offering some kind of revisions or amendments to it. And Umerov's boss, or Krysha, as the Russians would call it, Andrei Yermak, who is Zelensky's chief of staff, a deeply, deeply controversial figure. And Yermak was in Geneva, litigating this whole thing with Rubio and the Americans and the Europeans. So the lead negotiator on Ukrainian side is in hot water. What's happening now?
- [35:13]
Tim Miller
That seems like a real vulnerability. I started just to interject for Zelensky, though.
- [35:17]
Michael Weiss
Yes. And Tucker Carlson is saying, oh, the Wall Street Journal sitting on a big, massive scoop about Yermak being corrupt. Why aren't they releasing it? They're running interference for Yermak. And where do you think Tucker Carlson is getting this?
- [35:30]
Tim Miller
I assume JD Vance, raise your hand.
- [35:32]
Michael Weiss
Before and have the right answer.
- [35:33]
Tim Miller
I assume it's JD Vance again who has Buckley Carlson on his staff.
- [35:37]
Michael Weiss
That's right. And J.D. vance is trying to basically stab the Ukrainians in the back, in the front, in the head, every which way to convince his MAGA base we need to drop this country like a hot potato. Right. So Zelensky knows that he's vulnerable. The other crisis that he has is militarily, the Ukrainians are not doing so great. I mean, they're not on the verge of collapse, but they are losing in parts of Donbas, which, again, that's where Putin is the mainstay of his efforts militarily, in a place called Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk is being squeezed like a pimple. They're trying to cut it off. Now, this isn't the most strategic place in the world for the Ukrainians, but Russia has invested an enormous amount of energy. They've lost thousands and probably tens and tens of thousands of soldiers trying to take this town. And there's a huge propaganda campaign, because if they take it, they'll say, you see, this is an inexorable process. We will eventually march on all of Ukraine. So the timing of this is quite bad. But J.D. vance doesn't realize one thing, and this is kind of the paradox of Ukrainian politics here. Yaroslav Chimov at the Wall Street Journal. Excuse me, did a very good piece saying, ironically, Zelenskyy's weakness is also Ukraine's strength. Because if Zelenskyy were to sign a surrender document now, at minimum, there would be another Maidan revolution. Even in the midst of war. The people would turn out in the streets to denounce him. He would lose all legitimacy as president. At worst, there could be a civilian military crisis. Right. The Russians like to tell you in 2019, Zelenskyy rejected the best offer he could ever get known as the Steinmeier formula, which would basically kind of recognize de facto control of these separatist republics, which they were at the time, or they were couched as at the time, because the far right in Ukraine, the Azov battalion, threatened him with a coup. That's not quite true. There was widespread opposition to the Steinmeier formula, including Poroshenko's party, the other parties and the far right was an element of this, but by no means the driver of the car. Well, Azov now has a corps. It used to be the 3rd Assault Brigade, now it's a corps. So imagine, imagine what the nationalists in Ukraine, armed to the teeth, even more battle hardened than they were in 2019, will do if they feel like Zelenskyy is selling out the country. Right. So in his weakness is a kind of implicit strength. He can't do this deal even if he wanted to.
- [38:07]
Tim Miller
So then explain to me the element that's out this morning from cbs, which is that Ukraine is basically saying they're agreeing to the deal that was ironed out in Geneva and that Zelenskyy is going to come to town. Who knows, maybe as soon as this weekend. Donald Trump doesn't like being with his family, so it gives him something to do on Thanksgiving weekend.
- [38:26]
Michael Weiss
Where's he gonna go, mar a lago? I mean, Trump's schedule doesn't seem to have much wiggle room for a meeting in D.C. maybe he'll fly back for that. But my advice to Zelensky is stay the fuck away from Washington, D.C. you know, what do you think is waiting for you here? J.D. vance is going to suddenly roll over and play nice. He's going to try and do exactly what he did in February in the Oval Office, precipitate a confrontation and get Donald Trump to hulk out on Zelensky. That's the worst possible scenario. I think what needs to happen is, and I argue about this all the time with, with my friends who think that the Europeans are, I mean, behaving like the gimp in Pulp Fiction. Like, why are you going to Trump? Why are you humiliating yourselves? Why are you doing the whole Daddy Finesse routine? The Europeans feel like they have to manage this crisis again, as you say again and again and again, it's Groundhog Day. Because there are certain things the United States still has and still provides that the Europeans cannot make up for or provide on their own. And Ukraine needs, number one, is a certain kind of intelligence, mostly battlefield targeting packages, which I don't know why the Europeans can't source this themselves, but them's the brakes. Number two, and I've discussed this before with you, there are certain weapon systems that only we manufacture that the Europeans cannot or they don't. Patriot missile Systems, right? The GMLers for HIMARS, all of that fun stuff. What is happening now? And this is another point of kind of intrigue for Donald Trump. He makes a big deal of saying we're not giving anything to the Ukrainians for free. The Europeans are buying it. Right? NATO is buying our kit to donate to Ukraine. So the Europeans need to come to town, tell Trump this deal is a pup, or at least it was until we rewrote it. And even if the Ukrainians wanted to do this, they couldn't for the following reasons. We can't do the things that the Russians are demanding of us, and we won't, frankly. And oh, by the way, if this is about a drug deal or you need to be bribed with something, let US announce a $50 billion investment into the pearl system that you have built with NATO. So we'll pay. We will enrich the military industrial complex. And then you want to take bribes from Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, that's your prerogative, man. But we will give you the money that the Russians are offering and then some. And we'll do it kind of in an above board fashion. Right?
- [40:42]
Tim Miller
You're saying that's what should happen? I'm just sitting here reading my cbs, which says that Umarov on the Ukrainian side is saying that the plan is for Zelenskyy to come to D.C. soon.
- [40:53]
Michael Weiss
Well, don't say I didn't tell you so. I mean, you know, how many times do you Zelensky in the room with Trump? Never really, at best, it's not like.
- [41:02]
Tim Miller
The last time was okay. I think we talked him off the ledge.
- [41:05]
Michael Weiss
No, the last time is when Trump was like dangling tomahawks, only to say, no, they're not getting him. That was kind of a letdown. They came here to be told yes. So that was a humiliation. The time before that was okay. But again, why even risk? Is it gonna be just okay or is it going to be taken to the tool shed? You don't need to go down that route. The things that need to be hammered out don't need a sort of rose garden or Oval Office meeting to be hammered out. It's an email, not a meeting. You know what I mean?
- [41:33]
Tim Miller
I wonder what you make of this. What you hear from folks who are obviously, I think most people you're talking to are sympathetic to Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians on this is, man, humans are only built for so much, right? Zelenskyy has Been in the shit now for like half decade, it feels like. I mean, forever. Like forever. Years upon years. A lot of pressure coming from a lot of different angles. I mean, he's shown just unbelievable. I think nobody could have imagined the strength that he has shown in the face of all this and the resilience. But, like, you know, it's coming at him from all sides now. And you mentioned it, you have the corruption scandal, you have the nationalists inside the country. You have just the weight of all of the death and of your fellow countrymen that you're responsible for. You have Trump and J.D. vance fucking with you. Is there not concern that a crack up is maybe coming?
- [42:29]
Michael Weiss
It's a huge concern. It's absolutely a huge concern. I mean, Zelensky gets more popular when he gets bullied or pushed into a corner by anyone, but especially Trump. So in a way, every time there's a crisis like this, the Ukrainians sort of rally around the flag, but be under no illusions. There are a lot of Ukrainians you talk to. It's like, yeah, he was a great wartime president. He kind of rallied this Western coalition, but domestically, he has mismanaged things horribly and he's protecting people like Yermak, who nobody likes and who has delusions of grandeur himself, political ambitions. And also the commander in chief of the armed forces is somebody who is seen to be very Soviet minded and willing to sacrifice the great and the good of Ukraine into these meat grinder campaigns that are subject to diminishing returns, holding small pockets of territory that a lot of Ukrainians think we should have withdrawn tactically from here because the juice ain't worth the squeeze. So there's a lot of stuff going on inside Ukraine that's not making it into the Western press as regularly as it probably should be. Under no illusions. We don't need to romanticize any country or any government. However, and I emphasize this point, the reason that Ukraine will survive, the reason Ukraine has survived, the reason Ukraine is a struggle worth supporting. It's not about who's in the presidential administration or who's the defense minister or who's running the army. The country has a very vibrant civil society. It has a very strong kind of democratic instinct when they feel like they're being railroaded or deceived or manipulated or stolen from, even in the midst of war, even when Shahid drones are raining down on them or Kinjal missiles are raining down on them and they have rolling blackouts and their kids have to, you know, study math by candlelight, they take to the streets and they tell their government no. You know, this is not like Russia where you know that that kind of happened in the last few years. But you notice we don't see anti war demonstrations in Russia. We don't see people demanding Putin stopped. Russian sentiment of the war alternates between indifference and nationalistic patriotic fervor. Keep going. You know, the Ukrainians don't put up with shit this way. And that's the danger for Putin. I want to just final point, it's not just a territorial conquest. It's not just this imperialist or revanchist campaign to rebuild as much of the Soviet Union as he can. Ukraine and Russia. It's like a Pepsi challenge. If Ukraine can thrive and become a democracy with civil society the way it is, but with transparency, if it can rid itself of corruption, if it can integrate into Europe and become like a full fledged western country and now with by orders of magnitude, the most capable battle tested military in all of Europe, that is terrifying for Putin because he thinks that that might happen here, meaning in Russia. Right?
- [45:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [45:22]
Michael Weiss
Even though I would submit that's probably a remote contingency. But that's one of the things that's motivating him and that's why he ain't going to stop.
- [45:28]
Tim Miller
Just for what it's worth, I could pass the Pepsi Challenge just by a sniff. Pepsi is garbage. I wouldn't even have to put it into my mouth. I could just smell the cup and tell you if it's Pepsi or not. I want to just circle back to what I said at the top and kind of end with it through the context of Vance. He did a tweet yesterday that I think kind of encapsulates where he's trying to position himself with the problem that the administration is in on this. I'm going to read it. It's a little long. He writes the long Bill Ackman style tweets now, which really annoying. I try to stick to the 280 myself. Classic Coca Cola classic over here. After four years of house prices doubling, many young people feel priced out of the American dream of homeownership. A welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota reveals that large numbers of new arrivals aren't assimilating and funneling tax dollars to terrorist groups. An innocent woman was set on fire in Chicago. The Obamacare insurance system is buckling under its own weight and the country is 38 trillion in debt. Our administration is working hard on addressing all these problems, but you know, it really fires up the beltway gop. Not any of the above. Instead, the political class is really angry at the Trump administration may finally bring a four year conflict in Eastern Europe to a close. This is J.D. vance's attempt to kind of reframe everything in what he sees as the MAGA populist nationalist sense where he is the true heir. The problem with that is that the administration is doing basically nothing to solve any of those problems besides sending troops into the streets and doesn't really know how to solve the housing problem or the debt problem. And simultaneously his colleagues, including his boss, I think, are actually kind of more interested in solving the international wars so that he can win a Nobel Peace Prize. I think it leaves him in a position that might feel strong in the Twitter debates, but feels very weak in the political and geopolitical sense.
- [47:16]
Michael Weiss
Vance was absolutely detested by his colleagues in the Senate, like they loathed him. Rubio is different. Like, Rubio had friends, he had colleagues. He worked very hard in center for Foreign Relations. Vance, strangely enough, had more influence in the House among the MAGA caucus there, like people like Matt Gaetz, who are now sort of dwindling than he ever did in his own Congress. I read that tweet as American carnage. You know, screw Ukraine, right? I also read that tweet as I tried to do the dirty and make an enron around everybody and I got caught and now I'm losing. And we're going back into the same cycle of the Russians saying no, and Trump gets angry and embarrassed and oh, who's holding the bag? This time it'll be JD Because Rubio told Trump, don't do this again. The Russians aren't ready. You're going to waste your time. You're going to look stupid. And the one who made him waste his time and look stupid is the rival to Rubio.
- [48:13]
Tim Miller
Well, J.D. and his son in law and Wyckoff. But the one thing JD has working in his disfavor on that is he's the only one in that little troika who is not doing business with the Trump family. So that hurts.
- [48:24]
Michael Weiss
Yeah, man. Look, this is as awful and malevolent and vicious. You have to also appreciate the level of dysfunction and incompetence. Right? Like the one thing, and I debate this all the time, a lot of people say, oh, Trump has got this master plan. He's Machiavellian, he's a strategist. The fix is in from day one. I said master plan. The guy thinks he brought peace between Azerbaijan and Albania. He looks like. He looks like your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving and sounds like it too.
- [48:58]
Tim Miller
I don't know. His scarf photo. Now he's starting to look like a Upper west side.
- [49:02]
Michael Weiss
My favorite tweet. Yeah, he looks like a gay on the Upper west side who owns a gallery as a like, beautiful. That's exactly it.
- [49:07]
Tim Miller
God bless the person that sent that tweet.
- [49:10]
Michael Weiss
And what's that about? He fell in love with Mamdani. You know, the radical jihadist communist is now like his best friend. Maybe Mandani should be appointed Ukrainian foreign minister for like a couple of weeks and he can do business with Trump because it's all about personalities, right?
- [49:26]
Tim Miller
Well, Mark Kelly, if you're listening, I wouldn't be shaking in your boots about this investigation after we've seen what happened to Comey and tis James, I don't know.
- [49:33]
Michael Weiss
You wasted. You're wasting taxpayer dollars even to attempt any kind of process like this. Like the Comey prosecution. Totally frivolous and vengeful, but okay, we all paid for it.
- [49:45]
Tim Miller
Well, Michael, that's just how things are these days. If the worst thing that they can do is waste taxpayer dollars, that's pretty low on my concern list at this point. I mean, I'd rather them. Not fair. Yeah, it's my money, but, you know, we've got bigger fish to fry at this point. Michael Weiss. What are you doing for Thanksgiving, brother?
- [50:03]
Michael Weiss
I'm just staying here. We're going. My daughter's best friend's parents invited us to their house, so it's a very low key Thanksgiving.
- [50:10]
Tim Miller
Sounds nice. Are there going to be. Is there any covert missions? Any international men of mystery going to be there the Thanksgiving?
- [50:18]
Michael Weiss
No international men of mystery, as far as I know. No. Unless you count like a giant assortment of labubus. Because my daughter's best friend's father is like hawking labubus to the entire school. It's like this weird, like.
- [50:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah, that's creepy.
- [50:36]
Michael Weiss
I don't know. I know more about these, like, stuffed animals than I ever cared to or wanted to. Including how to determine which ones are fake. My daughter's like, you know, CSI New York on the boohoos and lefufus. Don't ask me, man. You get a 10 year old kid in your house and this is the way your life shakes out?
- [50:55]
Tim Miller
I think we're gonna leave it there. Michael Weiss, we'll be talking to you soon. Everybody else, I got one more podcast before Thanksgiving with another fave. We're playing the hits this week, so we'll see you all tomorrow.
- [51:05]
Podcast Outro Singer
Peace. This is nothing like it was in my room in my vast clothes Trying to think of you this is nothing like it was in my room in my best flow. The English are waiting and I don't know what to do in my best flow this is what I need you the English are waiting and I don't know what to do in my best blow I'm the new blue blood I'm the great white hope I'm living in blue blood I won't focus over I'm listing November I'm listing November I won't fuck it sober Won't fuck it sober I'm listing November I missed the November I won't focus over. I wish that I believed in faith I wish I didn't sleep so late I used to be carried in the arms of the cheerleader and I used to be carried in the arms of the cheerleader.
- [52:46]
Tim Miller
I used to be carried.
- [52:48]
Podcast Outro Singer
In the arms of the cheerleader I'm the new blue blood I'm the great white h I'm the new blue blood I won't. For it's over won't force over I miss the November I miss the November I won't.
- [53:18]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.