Transcript
Clay Travis (0:01)
Welcome in Clay Travis, Buck Sexton show. Lots of spice. My goodness. In the Oval Office, we have got true fireworks going on right now between zelinsky, Trump and J.D. vance. We played some of the cuts for you as we just finished the hour. We have added in more. This has just happened, so I want you guys to. To be able to understand. Here is now cut 29 more of. Again, this is in the Oval Office. J.D. vance, Donald Trump and Zelinsky talking about whether this mineral rights deal is actually going to happen.
Donald Trump (0:48)
Listen, going to be a very hard thing to do, business like this, I tell you.
Clay Travis (0:52)
Thank you.
Donald Trump (0:53)
I said a lot of times.
Clay Travis (0:57)
That there are disagreements and let's go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight.
J.D. Vance (1:01)
It out in the American media.
Clay Travis (1:03)
When you're wrong, we know that you're wrong.
Donald Trump (1:05)
But you see, I think it's good for the American people to see what's going on here. I think it's very important. That's why I kept this going so long. You have to be thankful you don't have the cars. You're buried there. Your people are dying. You're running low on soldiers. Listen, you're running low on soldiers. It would be a damn good. Then you tell us, I don't want a ceasefire. I don't want a ceasefire. I want to go and I wanted this. Look, if you could get a ceasefire right, right now, I tell you, you take it so the bullets stop flying and you men stop getting killed.
J.D. Vance (1:34)
Of course we want to stop the war.
Donald Trump (1:36)
But you're saying you don't want to see. I want to cease guarantees because you'll get a ceasefire faster than any. Great.
Clay Travis (1:42)
Okay.
J.D. Vance (1:44)
Whoo.
Clay Travis (1:45)
Let's dive in. Buck out. Getting ready for the new baby for the remainder of today's show. He had to duck out. A lot of family. We'll take some of your calls, by the way. 800-282-2882. Here is how I would analyze what we just saw in the Oval Office. Trump is laying out for everyone there to see, not only in the United States and all of us, but everyone around the world. What is, I think, the single most important detail of the situation with Russia and Ukraine right now, and it is this. Ukraine cannot win. Once you know that, you cannot win. The only question is, how does this end? Many of you out there have been sold a bill of goods that Ukraine was gonna win this war, that it was gonna lead to Vladimir Putin getting removed from power, that Russia was going to crumble. None of that is true. Okay. Disabuse. Yourselves of that notion. Ukraine is going to lose. Russia has more men, they have more materials. They have the ability and the willingness, it appears, to deal with casualties for a far longer time than Ukraine and Zelensky do. Once, you know, the number one takeaway here, which is Ukraine can't win. Where Trump has moved is he's moved to, ok, let's end the war. Let's have a cease fire, let's just have a negotiated peace. At this point in time, all we're talking about is where is the boundary line going to be drawn between Ukraine and Russia? That is the number one question. The secondary question I would say, is how do we ensure that Russia doesn't decide to do this again? That's the secondary question. To me, the answer to the first question is the entire purpose of the negotiation. Where's the squiggly line going to be drawn to set the border between Ukraine and Russia? That's all that remains to be decided. Second one is, how do we create a lasting peace in Ukraine such that Russia doesn't decide to invade again? Really, the second part of those questions is the most important one to analyze here. My suggestion, based on everything that I have read, is it appears to be the plan that Europe would commit many different soldiers, many different countries would be sending peacekeepers to Ukraine. The United States would not be doing that. Instead, we would be signing this mineral rights deal, which creates 50%, basically, of the profits for the Ukrainian minerals, for the American taxpayer as a way to pay us back for the hundreds of billions of dollars that we have given to Ukraine. That's really what's at stake here. And what Trump is doing is one of the things that I would say Trump has proven is a successful mechanism for him and his political career. He's not behaving differently in public versus private. He's basically saying to Zelensky in public the same thing that he would say in private. Now, what I don't know, and I think it's hard to analyze from a negotiating perspective, is how does Zelensky handle this slapdown in public, in the Oval Office? Does he pout? Does he take it entirely on a personal level, or does he man up and recognize that? One of the reasons why I think this is necessary is Trump is playing both directions, and he said it directly, and a lot of people are going to overlook it. You can't get a negotiated peace, by and large, when you are telling one side you're evil and the other side you're good, because negotiated peace doesn't work. When you are allowing the framework to be, Ukraine is all good, Russia is all evil, it's really hard to come to a negotiated settlement with good and evil. So what Trump has tried to do is he has tried to move in the direction sometimes of Vladimir Putin, sometimes swing back in the direction of Ukraine. This is how negotiations generally work. Some of you out there listening will have been involved in negotiations before. What I would basically characterize Trump as right now is a mediator. Some of you have probably been involved in mediation. The way mediation works is typically one side sits in one room, the other side sits in the other room. They often have their own lawyers and their own legal team. And then the mediator, who is a default judge physically, usually will walk from one room to another and have a conversation to try to bring the two sides together. I've been involved in a decent number of mediations over the years. Any good mediator understands that in order to solve a conflict, which is what we are doing here, in order to solve an adversarial relationship, it can be a divorce proceeding, it can be a company dispute, it can be a dispute between multiple businesses, individuals. You don't go into the mediating room back and forth and say, you know what? You're right, the other side is evil because the team that you're negotiating with is going to say, yeah, I should get everything. Then they're evil. And you don't go in on the other side and say, hey, you know what? This team, they are a hundred percent good. You have to work both sides of the negotiating table. And I can already tell you how this is going to play in the media. They're going to say, oh, my goodness, how could we allow this to happen? It's so incredibly disrespectful. I don't buy into that because I don't buy into the idea that there should be tremendous difference between what a politician says and does in public and private. Sometimes, yes, some things you don't want to be public. But here I think Trump made the calculated decision, along with J.D. vance, that they needed the American people to understand that the fiction they have been told that Ukraine's going to win this war and they're going to kick Russia's butt and they're going to send Russia back and Vladimir Putin's going to step down and everything's going to fall apart because he invaded Ukraine, that's not going to happen. To the extent that there was ever a possibility that Ukraine could win this war, and I question that it has never in the last Year or so, been an active reality. So if you know Ukraine can't win and you know that hundreds of thousands of men are getting killed and effectively you have created a stalemate, a modern day Maginot line for those of you who are history nerds. And it's only going to be moving at small segments because you effectively have these huge, these huge drawn lines with the no man's land in between. If that's the reality where you have reached yourself, then most rational people would say, okay, let's find a way to get a solution here. What stops the solution from happening? Frankly, a lot of people out there are engaging in the magical fantasy that Ukraine was going to beat Russia. And a lot of Democrats have been told that a lot of them have bought into the idea, oh, Zelinsky is a modern day Winston Churchill, he's a hero. He's going to beat back Vladimir Putin, who's a modern day Nazi, Let me just say this, maybe read a few more history books. If every single historical analogy you draw involves Hitler and the Nazis, maybe realize that world history didn't start 80 years ago, that there are other aspects of history you could point to. Because one of the things that left wingers tried to tell you, which is a hundred percent a lie, is they said once Vladimir Putin takes Ukraine, well then he's gonna take Poland or then he's gonna take some other Eastern European country. No, he's not. He doesn't have the ability to do that. He doesn't even have the ability to take all of Ukraine. Russia is not some incredibly strong military. Ukraine, to their credit, has a lot of brave soldiers that have fought, to a large extent Russia to a draw. But it is now clear they cannot win. And even Russia now is throwing North Korean soldiers into the mix. They've got mercenary soldiers everywhere. And so to me, the only solution here, which is what Trump just said publicly, is for there to be peace. Now, when we go to break, I'm going to go in and see what the absolute latest is. Because my one question about the fire fiery exchange we just heard in the Oval Office is, does Zelensky take it all personally and make a decision that is irrational, rooted in emotion and not in logic? Or does Trump's public pronouncement here hasten what he's calling for, which is an immediate ceasefire? Because if you can't win, all you have to negotiate are the two things I laid out. Where's the squiggly line, most of which no American could actually tell the difference in, in the first place, I question whether the majority of Americans could even point to Ukraine on a map if there were no countries labeled. But certainly the new line of Ukraine. Most people are not gonna, it's not gonna impact any of your lives. And then the second part, and the one that you want to avoid because it could impact our lives, is how do we ensure that there isn't in some way an additional, an additional aspect coming where we have another invasion and we basically create a situation where there are perpetual wars taking place in, in Europe between Ukraine and Russia that could potentially spiral into something bigger. All those questions, very important, very significant. We'll continue to break it down. I will dive in and see what the absolute latest from the Oval Office is. 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