Is Trump Ready if Putin Refuses a Ukraine Cease-Fire?
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Vladimir Putin says no to a 90-day ceasefire offer negotiated by Donald Trump and accepted by Ukraine as Russian troops continue to make gains on the battlefield. Meantime, Chuck Schumer faces Democratic anger after he announces he will vote for the Republican funding bill rather than force a government shutdown at midnight tonight.

Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, editorial board member Kate Batchelder-Odell and columnist Kim Strassel.

After the Trump administration brokered a 30-day ceasefire offer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that if Russia refused, quote, we'll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here, unquote. Well, on Thursday, the Kremlin did just that with an advisor to Putin saying that any ceasefire would be, quote, nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian soldiers.

The dialogue is reportedly continuing this morning. Trump on Truth Social saying that they have had very good and productive discussions with President Vladimir Putin, suggesting there's a very good chance that this war can come to an end.

Let's listen also to Marco Rubio. This is him outside the G7 talking to reporters. We're going to work through this thing in a normal, sane fashion. We'll figure out where we are based on what I know at this moment with my conversation with Ambassador Woodcock. He's not here yet. I feel like there's reason for cautious optimism. I think the president shared that today in his true social post. But

There's a lot of work. No, I have never told anybody that this is going to be easy, fast, simple, slam dunk. It'll be hard, but it's important work. We have, we are a better place today, I hope, I believe, we have reason to believe, than we were a week ago, but we still have a long ways to go. It could come together pretty quickly if everyone aligns, but I don't know how aligned we are yet. That's what we're about to find out. So,

So cautious optimism is about the best phraseology I can use at this moment. Based on what we know, we're going to keep working on it. Kate, what's your take on all that has happened this weekend, the latest in these negotiations, to adapt the phrase there from Marco Rubio? Are you more on the cautious side or more on the optimistic side? Well, I think this week has been clarifying. For the past two weeks, you've seen President Trump putting a lot of pressure on the Ukrainians.

We had that now infamous Oval Office meltdown. And now we're going to really find out whether Putin is interested in striking a deal. And what we have so far is that he isn't. And let's go through some of the conditions that he's laying out for a deal to be acceptable to him. First, he had that advisor come out and basically say,

No deal. We need a more lasting deal. He won't do a temporary ceasefire. But also, it seems that he wants Ukraine, first of all, to give up NATO membership. But Trump has basically already taken that off the table.

He has objected to the idea of European peacekeepers being in Ukraine as some kind of deterrent force to further territorial aggression from Russia. Putin has previously been asking for entire provinces in Ukraine that he doesn't even currently occupy more. He wants more territory than the 18% or so that he's already holding. And he also, late this week, is that he wants the Ukrainians to first give up Kursk,

the little toehold of Russia that the Ukrainians went into last summer to try to get some more leverage against Putin at the negotiating table. So I think this is a clarifying moment that Putin really is the obstacle to peace, as we have been suggesting on this podcast for some time. And Trump's

strategy of getting just concessions from Ukraine has been contradicted by events. And so the interesting question for us here is, is he going to continue to be strung along or is he going to pivot and try a different strategy with Putin? The Kursk offensive by Russia, Kim, is an interesting piece of this puzzle, I think, because the reporting is that Russia has been making some

pretty big gains in ejecting Ukrainian forces, retaking the main town that Ukraine had held there. And my understanding is that Ukraine had hoped to hold that Russian territory so that it could be a bargaining chip in these negotiations. And so one interpretation of this rejection of the ceasefire is Putin knows he's making gains on the battlefield. He doesn't want to stop now. He wants to pocket those gains. Maybe he's

stringing President Trump along. The Kremlin is now saying that it wants some sort of direct call between Putin and President Trump. And so it raises the question of which side is really playing 3D chess here. Of course he's stringing Donald Trump along. This is what Vladimir Putin does.

Every day he knows that he can forestall his side having to agree to lay down arms and have a ceasefire is another day where he's going to throw more effort at encircling those troops in Kursk. The on-the-ground information coming out is a little complicated. We've had varied reports. Obviously, the Russians are suggesting that they've essentially won. The Ukrainians are saying it's not as dire as some people are saying, but there's no

question that they have been put on defense there, having won that area in a surprise offense in August. But I think this gets to Kate's point, which is that we are asking the wrong question if we are saying, does Vladimir Putin want peace or not want peace? That isn't the question. Vladimir Putin would be happy to end this conflict so long as he gets everything he wants.

That's the only question. I'm sure he'd lay down things tomorrow. We know he would lay down tomorrow if he got everything he demanded. And that ought to be the measure of what we are looking at when and if some deal is ultimately announced, not like, ooh, yay, we got

peace, but instead at what extraordinary price. Kate laid out some of his objections or demands that he has. You know, I could add some other ones in there. He's going to want sanctions released on all of the oil that we put forward to the extent we've even done that in a serious way. Unfreezing of assets. There's going to be a long list of things.

And that's going to be the game here in any negotiation with Rubio or Witkoff or Trump is to make that price as high as possible and to ignore the atrocities that Russia continues to put out even to this day that we currently have videos going around that apparently exhibit Russian soldiers executing unarmed Ukrainian soldiers, claiming that they are terrorists and deserve summary execution. This is how he operates.

Kate, if Trump becomes convinced that this is what's happening, that Putin is stringing him along, then I guess the question is whether he's prepared to put some pressure on Russia, the Russian side of the table in this negotiation. It seems like

Like, all of his efforts so far have been directed at Zelensky and Ukraine, trying to drive them to the bargaining table to sign this minerals deal, to agree to this 30-day ceasefire proposal. And if Trump decides that now what's needed is pressure on Putin, pressure on Russia, what would that potentially look like, given how skeptical the president has been about Zelensky

military hardware going to Ukraine, more aid to Ukraine. I think it would be a big political change, I think, for Trump to reverse on those things. So what might be on the table? Well, one thing I will say about Trump is that when he talked about this, when he was campaigning, he made all those promises like, I'm going to end the war in 24 hours.

But often he would include this caveat that if Putin didn't come to the table and negotiate, he'd unleash more arms on Ukraine and pressure Putin. And so I do think that perhaps if he gets strung along, Trump doesn't like to be played. There is reason to hope that he turns and pivots and exerts pressure on Putin. The table stakes of that would be really crushing sanctions on Putin and Russia.

Russia that included oil and gas. And I think you would have bipartisan support for that in Congress. But to your point, this will probably require some continuation of military aid or escalation of military aid because what's going on here is that Putin, like we've been discussing, he still thinks he can achieve what he wants on the battlefield.

And this war is not about NATO setting up on his border, but it's about wiping out the sovereign identity of Ukraine. And so he wants to swallow as much of Ukraine as possible, and he thinks his leverage to do that is increasing. So there will probably require Trump

to increase support for Ukraine in some capacity. Now, Trump restarted the intelligence sharing that we do with them, which is crucial. I think that turning that off even for a short time had unfortunate side effects on the battlefield. That's a start. But he's going to have to start thinking heretical thoughts that if he wants a durable peace, if he wants to be a peacemaker, and he talks about that a lot, and if he wants a lasting peace,

then he's got to be prepared to show Putin that he can't achieve swallowing Ukraine on the battlefield, even if it means that we've got to step up our arms to supply Ukraine. Hang tight. We'll be right back. We have oil and gas. The royalties that we get helps our family, helps our children to go to school. America's oil and natural gas strengthens communities. Learn more at LightsOnEnergy.org. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

Welcome back. Meantime, the Senate is preparing to vote as we tape this on Friday afternoon on the House-passed Republican plan to fund the government through September 30, averting a shutdown scheduled to take place at midnight tonight. And speaking of heretical thoughts, one of those who is saying that he plans to vote for this Republican package is the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. Here he is on MSNBC Thursday night explaining his thinking.

It's not that the CR is good, it's horrible. And all things being equal, we should have opposed it. But the alternative being a shutdown makes things worse. And I believe this much worse. And I believe this. I wouldn't have done this. I knew I'd get criticized. But I felt obligated for the country, for my Democratic caucus, to the people.

to explain how bad a shutdown would be. And if we had if we went into a shutdown and everything bad happened, I had to give people this warning. Kim, a couple of thoughts here. One is some reporting about what Democrats wanted. There's a Washington Post story saying that they wanted a bill that would require Trump to spend all of the money that is allocated in potential ways

to thwart these government efficiency efforts by Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency. And they didn't get that in that bill because House Republicans were able to stick together, vindicating the discussion we had on yesterday's podcast, Kim, about that is the way Republicans can get what they want, some of what they want, at least, in this kind of congressional negotiation. And the other thing that I think is notable is the breadth of the anger

at Chuck Schumer, a new CNN story quoting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fellow New Yorker, talking about Senate Democrats completely rolling over and giving up on protecting the Constitution. Some reporting that there is rumblings about people wanting AOC to primary Chuck Schumer now. What do you make of this Democratic outrage? The Democrats watching this has been almost amusing. I mean, this was not just...

terrible policy that they were advocating. But this somewhere falls in the range of absolute political malpractice when it comes to the Senate Democrats. And here's why. I mean, on the policy front, look, this was a Democratic Party that uniformly in the House voted against a bill that a

did little more than extend existing funding through the rest of the year so that we don't get a shutdown. There was nothing objectionable about this CR. I mean, they wanted additional demands, but guess what? They don't run Congress. They don't run the White House.

And making the argument that a shutdown was justified in the face of the minor step of attempting to keep the government from shutting down was just a terrible policy position. But the politics, this is remarkable, and somebody should be asking Chuck Schumer this question. The minute Republicans passed that House bill, Democrats in the Senate lost all their cards.

And the smart thing to do would have been to come out and say, we have no cards. Therefore, we're going to vote for this. We don't want to, but we have no choice. Instead, they huddled in back rooms and over Senate lunches for most of this week, wouldn't make a decision about how they were going to handle this. And Chuck Schumer allowed his members to go out and suggest that they might have a different strategy and that they were going to fight this and that maybe they'd be able to stop it. Only in the end to admit that they didn't.

and then fold. And so all they did was excite their base to the notion that they were going to have some epic struggle and somehow thwart Donald Trump and then roll over in the end. So yeah, the base is furious. And now we've got all the predictable stories coming out of the New York Times. Oh, is this a generational problem? Look at all these oldies. They don't know how to fight. And why is the base so unhappy? This didn't need

to be this way, especially because if Democrats were smart, A, they would be recalculating what they need to do to recoup a winning message with people. But B, they would be holding their fire for a battle that actually is more relevant and that they have a better chance of playing a role in. This is not one of them.

I take Kim's point that it didn't need to be this way. And some of this is a result of the way that the Democratic leaders have chosen to handle their caucus this week. On the other hand, Kate, part of me thinks this is just the agony of being in the minority.

And it may be political malpractice, but it is political malpractice that we are well used to seeing on the other side of the aisle. This is a classic Republican fight of being in the minority on both sides and going out to the base and selling them on the idea that if only we stick together,

And then when push comes to shove, the choice, just given the math and the way the legislature works, is their only option is to force a government shutdown. That is the only power that the minority party has when they have the number of lawmakers that the Democrats have right now. And so it's just been fascinating to watch the shoe be on the other foot, particularly since

in previous Congresses, my impression at least is Democrats are more disciplined and have not had this same kind of problem in the past. Yeah, it has been admittedly hilarious to watch the Democrats try a futile gesture of their own and

It's odd because I can't think of a single time where a Republican shutdown attempt has ended up benefiting to the party. To your point, it's the equivalent of, you know, we're going to get Barack Obama to defund his signature health care achievement. So it is a little entertaining. But I think one of the reasons for the disarray is that I think Senate Democrats were betting on the House not to be able to pass the continuing resolution. And that is a bet

that has paid in the past that Republicans were not going to be able to pass it. So I think they were caught a little off guard in that regard. But they also, you know, they had so many logical problems with the strategy in general because Democrats have been lamenting for months the plight of federal workers who, you know, Elon Musk is firing. And then now they're suggesting they're going to stand up for that by shutting down the government, which is surely not helpful to federal workers. So there were a number of problems with their strategy in general. But it is very odd that

the outrage that the base Democrats are having when Schumer plainly didn't have the cards. I mean, the Democrats who were opposing this full year spending measure were talking about things like getting a vote on a 30 day spending measure. You know, we'll extend the government four more weeks and then we'll fight again and we'll somehow extract our priorities out of this. I mean, there was absolutely no route to success. I mean, to borrow Trump's phrase, just Schumer didn't have the cards.

And to Kim's point, there is a very salient political battle coming in the Republican reconciliation bill and some very hot topics like reforming Medicaid in it. You would think Democrats would understand that the GOP priorities bill is a lot bigger of a political fish for them than funding the government, which most of their party supports anyway. And they had no path to extracting any concessions on. Just last real quick, my favorite of all watching Democrats try to sell

cuts to funding to D.C. in the C.R. as the continuing resolution as one reason not to vote for it, as if that has any cachet with regular voters in most of America. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. We have oil and gas. The royalties that we get helps our family, helps our children to go to school. America's oil and natural gas strengthens communities. Learn more at LightsOnEnergy.org, paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. Kim, do you think the Democrats will learn any lessons from that failure this week? Grant, I do think that there are some generational issues within their base. A lot of younger voters think Chuck Schumer has been there too long. He's too much of a back slapper. On the other hand, if this is the kind of pickle that he lets himself and his caucus get by,

driven into, it is going to be a long two years for House and Senate Democrats alike. This isn't a generational problem. This is an ideological problem. Democrats for more than a decade have been purging their party of any moderate voices. And all you have left now are people that are somewhat progressive or really progressive.

And that entire mindset was rejected by the American public in the last election. Even Democrats who, in the end, couldn't bring themselves to pull the lever for Donald Trump, when you look at polls, they are concerned about the direction of the Democratic Party. They're not on board with Medicare for all and losing their private insurance. They're not on board with Democrats saying you need to stop driving gas-fired engine cars and have no choice.

This is not where they want to see the party go. But they don't have any voices. I mean, the idea that, oh, AOC would run the party better than Chuck Schumer, I mean, that's ludicrous. So they're not going to fix this problem until they actually choose a very different direction. And I don't see that coming from Congress. This is a point at which

You're going to need some governor somewhere that truly is a little bit more moderate and in the center to revive this impulse and the party to not be insane. And nobody's working on that at the moment. So it's going to be a while. Okay. Once Republicans get this continuing resolution and this government funding shutdown deadline off their plates, they're going to turn to the real meat of where they want to accomplish their agenda, which is this reconciliation bill.

And there's starting to be a percolating debate inside the GOP on strategy for advancing that. The journal's editorial today takes this up under the headline, a baseline for tax reform success, unquote. And give us a sense of what that argument is going to be about, a little bit of a preview as we prepare for that big reconciliation bill to come. Well, I apologize in advance for dragging our listeners into the arcane weeds of the budget baseline, but it is in

important because the public cares about what the policy is and what the policy outcomes are, and they may not understand the ways in which Washington's budget process conspires to make good policy a lot harder. And that's basically what this debate is about. It involves how the Republicans are going to score their tax bill. Republicans want to make their tax cuts from 2017 permanent. And so the way that they want to go about doing this is scoring it under budget conventions that are called current

policy. That means that for the purposes of their budget forecasts and how much this tax bill is going to cost, they assume that tax cuts that already exist continue to go on even though they technically expire at the end of the year under current law.

So the reason why that matters, Kyle, is because when the budget gnomes in Washington calculate spending, that's how they do it. They say, okay, this spending goes out the door. It's probably going to keep going out the door, even if Congress has to reauthorize it, even if Social Security doesn't have the money to pay for it. But when they score tax cuts, they say,

Tax cut ends on the hard day that it expires and it won't exist anymore. And so the reason all this matters is because if Republicans bow to the conventions here and score the tax bill under current law, they have to come up with $4.5 trillion in offsetting spending cuts to pay for something that merely avoids a tax increase.

because all they're doing is extending current tax cuts. So all they're doing is avoiding an increase. And how this would work is basically if they added new provisions outside of the 2017 bill, such as no taxes on tips, which Trump's wants, they would have to, quote, pay

pay for that, but it would not require them to come up with offsetting cuts for things that already exist, that people already rely on. I mean, if you ask Americans, they don't think that they're getting a huge tax increase next year. So it's just scoring tax policy the way that people think about it, which is that Congress is going to keep

popular tax cuts going. Kim, once you read of this, we'll give you the last word. Maybe an analogy would be automatic payments. Some people have their credit card set up so they pay the power bill automatically every month and some people go in manually and do that. And if it's automatic, then that's kind of like

current law. And if you have to do it manually, that's kind of like, you know, you have to pass the new law every month to pay the power bill. But either way, you're going to pay the power bill. And I think the expectation when Republicans passed these tax cuts in 2017 was that they intended to renew them when the time came along. And they thought even if they were not in control of both sides of Congress, that there would be a lot of pressure on

on Democrats, if they held the House or the Senate, let's say, to let these tax increases continue, as, by the way, has been true in the past when there have been previous tax cuts that were set to expire. Yeah, I mean, current policy is obviously the way to go, and it's past due to do that. And I'd put a slight twist on the way

Kate just excellently described that, by the way, because budget baselines are very complicated and only some of us geeks really get into these sort of policy debates. But the twist I would put on it is when Americans are out there, they don't think that they're going to get a tax cut.

simply by maintaining what you have at the moment. And yet, essentially, the way that this budget baseline would work would require Republicans to proceed from the notion that this is somehow costing the federal budget more money than it would if we are continuing as we were.

One other thing I just drill in on Kate's point is because you're going to hear a lot of Democrats kicking about this and saying, oh, it's outrageous. It's, you know, it's terrible. They're using gimmicks or trying to hide what they're doing, etc. First of all, Democrats have

loved this idea in the past, back when Barack Obama was in office and they decided that they were going to extend most of Bush's tax cuts, they made the argument for why it should go under current policy because they didn't want to get accused of having added to the deficit. And the Democratic Party was all in favor of that at the time. But the other thing I'd note is the disparate treatment we have. And I just don't think you can hammer on that enough. We have a system in which

Medicaid spending and Medicare spending and other sort of discretionary welfare programs, the assumption is that they will continue into perpetuity. And moreover, the baseline actually assumes expansions each year as well, too, to the point where if you even just try to slow down that spending, it somehow shows up on the budget known work as cutting the program, even though all you're doing is not letting it grow quite as fast. So that's

And we don't have to, as a country, have an accounting reckoning with the notion of all those programs. But the only place where we do this is to make everybody really feel the pain if we're going to continue allowing federal taxpayers to have a break and not vote.

fork over ever huger amounts of their paychecks to the federal government, that we make look as though it's terrible fiscal policy. And I think that Republicans are more than justified as a result to make this change. Thank you, Kim and Kate. Thank you all for listening. You can email us your own budget baselines at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.

We have oil and gas. The royalties that we get helps our family, helps our children to go to school. America's oil and natural gas strengthens communities. Learn more at LightsOnEnergy.org. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.