260. Navigating the Trump Maelstrom
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Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Patrick Fisher. Saul is away this week, so standing in for him is podcast friend and stalwart Julius Strauss, who our listeners will know well. The maelstrom whipped up by Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, a.k.a. Leon Scum,

I'll explain that later, means it's very hard to discern any pattern in the avalanche of events. Happenings that would once have fed the news cycle for a week are coming at a rate of two or three a day. Well, our job is to try and make sense of what often apparently seems senseless. So here goes. Yeah, Patrick, I mean, things are really moving at quite a clip, aren't they? And you have to wonder, is this part of some kind of coherent philosophy or is it just disruption? And is

And is there any sort of roadmap behind all this? I mean, personally, I have my suspicions, but I don't want to pass judgment on everything Trump does quite yet. One thing I would say that I've been trying to write about Trump and I find it extremely difficult. And there's a couple of reasons. The first thing is he's incredibly mendacious. He just doesn't, you know, facts seem to mean so little to him.

And that sort of throws out these two twin dangers where one is that you don't take him seriously enough, but you only have to sort of ask, you know, millions of federal workers in the U.S. whether they should have taken him seriously or not. And you realize they were right to or thousands of aid workers in Africa.

But the other is that you take him too seriously. And that way you sort of get into this thing of frustration and probably ultimately madness, to be honest. And, you know, on Ukraine in the last several weeks, he simply said so many things that are obviously and demonstrably false, you know.

But as a journalist, you could spend your whole professional life fact-checking him and finding him wanting. So I think one of the challenges is to find, you know, what is solid and concrete amongst all this sort of heat and light? I mean, what do you think, Patrick? Well, I think you're absolutely right about that because, as you say, if you actually corrected all of his wild...

You would never catch him up, if you like. And I see that journalists are actually, broadcasters particularly, who have very limited time, are beginning to fall behind. They're beginning to just say that he said a lot of things that can't be said or whatever. He's actually getting away with it without being challenged or scrutinized enough.

by the media in a way a conventional politician would, which is clearly something that works to his advantage and something that he's possibly planned. But I think despite all that, there is a kind of direction, I think, to this week's events.

I'd say the reality is beginning to intrude, particularly on the lightning deal that Trump has been pursuing for peace in Ukraine. And that is really running into the quicksands of reality at the moment. And that reality, of course, is being imposed by Russia. So we've seen big pushback on two things that Trump expects.

One is an end to the fighting. He keeps saying over and over again, Russia wants an end to this war. But Sergei Lavrov, you know, the veteran, the old crocodile of the Russian diplomatic scene, he's come down very hard with two ideas.

statements that really kind of dis any sort of optimism, I would say, for an early piece. He said there's going to be no territorial concessions. They're going to hang on to everything they've got and they're going to continue fighting until the deal is done. Well, that doesn't really sit very happily with Trump's

repeated assertions that Putin really wants peace, does it? We'll deal with that one first, then we'll come on to the peacekeepers later. No, I don't think it does. We've seen Putin push for certain things that definitely won't mean an end to the fighting in short order. One of these things is that he's demanding early elections in Ukraine. And this would be laughable if it weren't so serious and such a punishing situation.

You know, Russia's basically said that Zelensky is illegitimate because Ukraine didn't hold elections that were due last year. And they didn't hold elections because they have martial law and they're in the middle of an existential war. It didn't make any sense to hold elections. Now, what the Russians are saying is there can be no ceasefire until those elections have been held.

which is obviously a non-starter. I mean, you can't hold elections when there are millions of people out of the country, there are millions more in occupied territories, and every available soldier's on the front line or supporting a soldier on the front line. But amazingly, this was reiterated by J.D. Vance, who said the same thing. He said, no ceasefire before Ukrainian elections. And you have to wonder sometimes if the new American administration

incompetent when they say things like this or if they're being disingenuous or what they're really trying to do. I mean, one person I don't think we can say is incompetent, although he may not be exactly at the center of power or he may not be our cup of tea, is, as you say, Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister. And we'll

What has Lavrov been saying about all this? Well, he's, you know, virtually everything he says is negative. So, or has in the last couple of days anyway. You know, let's just talk about that peacekeeping force, monitoring force,

a reassurance force, all sorts of names being put forward for it. Well, you know, he's just said a straightforward no to that. He's saying it's actually a ruse, a deceit aimed at allowing Ukraine to rearm. Now, remember, this is something that Europeans have said they'll step forward for. And that idea has been backed by Donald Trump. So, you know, you've got Trump's wishes running headlong into this Russian negativity.

But what I get from this is that Lavrov is his master's voice. He's just saying what

Putin wants him to say. But I get that Putin has smelled weakness. He can't believe how inept the U.S. negotiating position is. And he'll just keep on pushing, getting more and more and more. So up till now, the U.S. has been very, very willing to placate him. Those examples you've just cited, I mean, they are kind of very, very hard to

to make any sense of, aren't they? Now, when we were sort of looking, when Saul and I were talking about the Putin strategy previously, we did think this is probably how it would go, that he would sense the blood in the water and move in for the kill, grabbing as much as he could. But even though that sounded alarming, we took a little bit of comfort from the thought that

perhaps he might be overplaying his hand and that he might actually go one step too far, which would suddenly change Trump's posture towards him from that of being a sort of slavish friend and admirer into a nasty enemy. Do you think there's any chance of that romance going sour, Julius? You know, I wish. I don't really see it. It's interesting that we think of Trump as falling out with everybody eventually, but he never seems to have fallen out with Putin. And

And, you know, my sense is that he's sort of there's something he sort of likes in Putin. There's a lot he likes in Putin. And, you know, Putin is, you know, it's an old cliche, but it's kind of true. Putin is a tactician, not a strategist. But he prepares immaculately, I think, or meticulously, I should say, for these meetings with Trump. And he knows exactly how to play him. One thing that really sort of pricked up my ears was when

Trump said that, you know, the Russians are on board with this European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. I don't think the Russians are on board at all with it. I don't think they ever were. I don't know if Trump is misunderstanding or if Putin has fed him a line, but...

I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days. And even if Putin was willing to go along with it, can you imagine returning to Moscow to the hardliners as Putin and sitting down with your closest hardline allies and saying, it's OK, guys, we're going to have British troops, you know, 30 or 40 miles from Donetsk, but don't worry about it. They won't be there forever. I think.

I think it's going to be a very hard thing to sell to the Russians, the idea that NATO troops are going to be in Ukraine for any length of time, especially anywhere near the sort of Russian border. I think you're absolutely right about that, Julius. This is something that people are tending to forget, isn't it? That there is pressure on Putin as well. You know, his stated war aims, even if everything stopped now, even if the deal as we discern it was agreed now, it would still be way short term.

of what he went to war for. So, okay, it's an autocracy, but there is still pressures

on him from his circle, from the military, from the hardliners, etc. And so, you know, he has to take account of what he can actually sell to his people as well. And this, as you say, European peacekeepers would definitely not fit with a picture you could portray as victory. Now let's switch to the Ukrainian side. As we speak, Zelensky is in Washington. This is the first proper encounter with

with Trump since the bad blood of the last weeks. How do you think Zelensky is going to play it? Gosh, Patrick, I mean, I think Zelensky is in a real bind. I mean, in some way, he's now the wrong man to be talking to Trump.

You know, he's talking to whether we like Trump or not. He's the most powerful man in the world and he's Ukraine's single biggest benefactor. And there's a significant amount of personal animosity between the two men. And it hasn't just started recently. I mean, I think, you know, overall, Zelensky has done an incredible job in the last three years, although he hasn't done everything right. But he is an emotional individual and.

We saw that from the reporting that was coming out of Kiev when he met Besant. You know, people were saying he was shouting and he was emotional and he was really, really upset. And then, you know, Trump just doesn't like him. That goes back to the time when the Trump administration asked for dirt, basically, on the Bidens, the Biden family, and Kiev refused to cooperate. I don't know if they didn't have it or they didn't want to give it, but they refused to cooperate. And, you know, Trump took that as a huge personal insult.

So in a sense, Zelensky probably is not the best person to be there, but he has to be there because you can't just replace him in the middle of a war or stop and have an election or whatever any other scenario would do. What's he going to do in Washington, D.C.?

he's probably going to have to bend the knee. I mean, let's be honest about this. He cannot afford a full American pullout from the entire Ukrainian war effort. And I think that he will bend the knee and Trump will humiliate him. Will Zelensky be able to take that kind of emotional pressure? Probably. But we don't know exactly. They are two slightly mercurial individuals and something unexpected could come out of it. And then, of course, there's the whole sort of rare earth deal, you know, the sort of subject of the matter.

I mean, what do you think about that, Patrick? Do you think we've paid too much attention to it? Or is this the important sort of nub of the whole thing? Well, I think it's looking like a bit of a red herring, isn't it? Initially, this seemed to be, as you say, at the core of any agreement. But as one of our listeners, Boyd Davis from Kingston, Ontario, pointed out earlier,

last week i think it's the first time anyone had actually said it a bit of a scoop for the podcast he described all this talk about critical minerals which is what they actually are as just drivel he said and other expert listeners uh who you'll be hearing from later on have joined in to agree basically they're not particularly significant we'll go into the detail in the second half but

And they're not particularly attractive to any mining companies who would have to get in to make the whole thing work. The figure of $500 billion that Trump's been banding about is, like a lot of his statistics, not at all to be trusted. And, of course, you know, to create the conditions for

To make this industry viable, you would need peace and security, something that Trump so far is not prepared to put American resources into providing. So I think that there will be some kind of deal, but it certainly won't be absolutely pivotal to how this plays out. I think it will be something that they can present as success, but it's certainly not the key that's going to turn

the lock in the door that opens the way to a proper solution to all this. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, I've been trying to read around this whole mineral thing because it is confusing and I'm certainly no mining expert. And I think, you know, most of us,

and historians. We're not mining experts. And my sort of basic understanding of it is that the original deal that Trump proposed was that he wanted $500 billion and it didn't really matter whether it came from oil or gas or rare earth or minerals or whatever. The Ukrainians were going to have to pay. Now, they have dropped that demand in the latest

version of the deal. What is unclear to me is what the new detail is there. And I think it's unclear because they're not actually saying what it is, and it's going to be argued about at a future point. But as you said, the important thing here is no security guarantees. So basically, Ukraine is going to sign over something. We don't know exactly the value of that something. But in exchange, it's going to get pretty much nothing. It doesn't get

future guarantees on security and it doesn't get future guarantees in terms of weapons supplies or budgetary support or anything like that. You know, it's not a good deal for Ukraine. I think they're just doing what they have to do at this moment. Yeah. I just want to touch on Europe here because there's so many moving parts in all this, aren't there? I mean, it really is seismic as a much overused word in the analysis that we all read and hear. But I think that's the only way you can really describe it. There's been an earthquake recently.

But what I'm seeing here is the Europeans beginning to dig their heels in.

Julius, do you get that same feeling? I mean, you know, Germany, we're going to talk about Germany in the second half. These elections are tremendously significant, I think. But even Keir Starmer, who I think the Brits would probably regard as being quite a sort of cautious fellow, feels that he has no choice, not just as a politician, not just as the Prime Minister of Britain, but also just as a human being to say, look, I'm not going to be insulted. I'm not going to just sit here and be meekly accept

the diktat from Washington. So he's making some contrary noises. And I think that will turn into a chorus in Europe, apart from obviously the usual suspect

in Hungary and Slovakia. But how do you feel Europe's mood to be at the moment? Gosh, I think there's a lot of things going on, Patrick. I mean, they're bewildered by what's happened in the last two weeks. And they're sort of making these small sounds of resistance. But as we know, they are in no position to sort of dump America and set off on a new route. I think one thing that was really stark for me, probably more symbolic,

than anything else with the UN votes. I mean, they're just, they're shocking. You know, we've got used over the years to the US refusing to condemn Israel in the Security Council, but for them to line up with Russia and China and table a motion basically saying there wasn't a Russian aggression in Ukraine, I mean, that sort of confirms all our worst fears about the new American administration. Yeah, and it must be said, lining up with North Korea and Belarus, I mean,

This would be some dystopian nightmare if you wrote about it six months ago, wouldn't it? So, yeah, absolutely astonishing. And then we should tell our listeners about that excellent speech by Władysław Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister in the UN, which laid it all out very clearly.

eloquently, I thought. I thought it was a wonderful, wonderful speech. Yes, Sikorsky basically said, look, guys, three years ago, we all got together here and condemned the Russians. What has changed in the last three years?

Why did we say it was aggression then? And now we're saying it wasn't aggression. And it was good to hear some sort of moral clarity from somebody, something, to be honest, in the fast we would have expected from Washington. But now we're getting it from Poland. Okay. Now let's, I think we can't really finish this half without saying something about Elon Musk, who is like a Robin to Trump's Batman in the current administration. Now,

Kim, who listeners will remember, is your partner and a great photographer and a great companion on our trip to Ukraine. She made a good point about the utterances coming out of the Trump camp and about how

you know, we shouldn't struggle too hard to inject meaning into them. And just to explain that point a bit more, because I think in this sort of attempt to make sense of what's going on, this is a very good point. Yeah, I mean, like a lot of people these days, we spend probably an unhealthy amount of time sitting around trying to figure out

what the hell is going on in the US and what we should take seriously and whatnot. And, you know, one idea that Kim, Kim is from Chicago. She's an American originally, although she's been in Europe for a long time. And one thing she said is, you know, don't look at what Trump says. Look at this sort of intent behind it. And the intent is usually either to get attention or create a certain kind of reaction. And the facts and the words are kind of immaterial. It's missing the point if you look at what he actually says.

Perhaps that helps a little bit in understanding what's going on. I mean, this thing with Musk, I was watching the press conference yesterday in the U.S. Cabinet Met and Trump brought Musk into the room and he sort of, you know, he sort of turned to the cabinet and said, do we like him cabinet? Do we still like Elon Musk?

And not only did they sort of cringingly kind of all nod and generally give sort of, you know, sort of a small dog like body language when there's a big dog around. But eventually they all started laughing and clapping. And it was it wasn't quite Stalinist, but it was like something out of a bad communist movie from the 1960s. It was it really was cringe making, really.

And, yeah, there's a particular relationship there. Perhaps this is, you know, one for another episode because it's so crucial to the modern world and what's going to happen next. But it's fascinating to watch it all unfolding. And, you know, just one more little thing I picked up on. I mean, I've been looking at the new American budget proposals that have come from Trump. And it's basically going to – it's a massive, massive tax cut. There's about $4 trillion worth of tax cuts.

And about two trillion dollars worth of savings that they're proposing for the, you know, the federal spending, which basically means you're going to add two or three trillion dollars to the U.S. national debt. And then yesterday, Elon Musk was standing in front of them all telling them what a horrible, terrible thing is the national debt is and how it mustn't be added to it in any way at all. It's absolutely nuts sometimes.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of what is said is just basically nonsense, isn't it? And when you look at what Elon Musk says about European politics, his support for this Romanian weirdo and Kremlin stooge, Kalin Georgescu, who's just been denounced, he's been investigated for links to far-right anti-Semitic organizations and all the rest of it. So he wades in saying this is disgraceful, this is anti-democratic, essentially a point he makes everywhere.

all over the place. He's interfered in the German elections, basically supporting AFD, the far-right AFD, etc., etc. Now, none of this sort of makes much sense. So they're not original. None of these utterances are particularly incisive. They don't add anything. They're just the sort of thing you'd expect from a kind of alt-right extremist. So you're absolutely right about how we shouldn't get too exercised about what Trump or Musk says. And in the case of Musk,

I think we should think of him as two people. I'm going back to what I said at the beginning. Now, we should think of one of them as Elon Musk, and the other is his alter ego, Leon Scum, which is a handy acronym of Elon Musk. So Elon Musk is the tech genius and space explorer whose utterances on those subjects are worth listening to. And Leon Scum, S-K-U-M,

is a loser who sits in a basement bedsit in Baltimore, venting his frustration with the world over the internet through worthless observations and loony conspiracy theories. Now him, we should ignore. So next time Elon comes on with some provocative tweet on X,

We shouldn't rise to the paper just to think, there goes poor old Leon Scum again. What a saddo. Patrick, I think that's an excellent way of looking at it. I can see you're still sitting on the fence about Leon Scum. There is one thing I bring up here, one sort of serious point, which I think that

And again, this is a big subject, and we maybe just very retouch on it very briefly, which is that Trump has two big camps behind him. One is the MAGA camp, and one is the sort of libertarian tech billionaire camp. And for now, they are pulling in the same direction because they both hate Trump.

liberalism, but they're not going to stay together forever. And we've seen this tension between Steve Bannon and Musk. I mean, it's more than tension. It's outright hatred manifest itself. And I think that's where things are going to go eventually. You know, they want MAGA and the tech billionaires want very, very different results out of all this. And Musk is obviously on one particular side of that. We'll see how it plays out with time. But I think that's one to watch.

Okay, that's it for this half. Do join us after the break when we'll be answering your many questions, a lot of really interesting and incisive points. So thanks very much for all your contributions. Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists like Kunle put people at the heart of everything they create. In the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. Here in the Comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home Wi-Fi solution for millions of families like my own.

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Welcome back. OK, the first one comes from Kevin Baum, who's asking us really to stop thinking of Trump in political terms and think of him in purely business terms. And in particular, think of him through the lens of Trump's long career as a property developer. Now, he says that in the property business, of course, you have an overall economy.

developer and then he subcontracts all the actual work, all aspects of the work to lots of subcontracting companies who he inevitably underpays or pays late or whatever using that as a form of leverage. So he says this is not of course how politics works and how diplomacy works but that's how business or particularly the construction business typically works. It's how the construction industry in New York works. So

He says, Kevin says, Trump's actions are consistent with that, in my experience.

Now, I think that's not a bad way of looking at it, is it? You know, everything is a deal. We've seen that right from the beginning with Trump. So that's just a bad thought about morality, about long-term strategy, about values, etc. It's just about getting something which you can take as a win, which brings you financial advantage, brings you more power, whatever. He finishes, I hope this helps frame Trump.

Trump somewhat. He's still unpredictable and, in my opinion, a moron. Well, that's a view we've had from a lot of our listeners. Keep up the good work. What do you think, Julius? Is that a good way of trying to get to the question of who Trump is? Yeah, I think it probably is. I mean, I'm not a business expert either. And it is interesting, though, that people talk a lot about Trump being transactional.

let's not forget he has a lot of bankruptcy behind him. He has a lot of failed businesses behind him. And even more than that, he's left a lot of bad blood behind him. That is not usually what is thought of as being a good transactor or having a good transaction. And I

I think adjective transactional is now coming to the end of its usefulness in terms of Trump. And we're actually getting into something that's more predatory. And it's more like mafia than it is like sort of standard business practice. I mean, for me, what he's done with Ukraine is like asking a poor friend to

to dinner and saying, I'm going to give you a slap up meal to cheer you up and help you out and set you back on your feet. And then sending them a bill a week later for five times the cost of that dinner. It's not transactional. It's just kind of bad, aggressive behavior. So I don't want to go on about Trump too much, but basically the, yes, I think what Kevin is saying is he uses predatory business practices and he's now bringing that into politics. And I would agree with that. Yeah. A lot of the questions we're getting are casting around, uh,

to make some sense, you know, to get some focus on what is driving Trump and his team at the moment. So we've got several along the same lines. I'll take one here from Lynn Sullivan, but Brian Holdsworth says,

from Waragui, was it Waragul in Victoria, Australia, makes pretty much the same point as do others. She points us in the direction of a podcast called The Asset, which goes into some detail about Trump's relationship with Russian, Russian business, Russian money, which she thinks might shed some light on Trump's motivations.

And this points out his reliance down the years on Russian money. You mentioned those bankruptcies, Julius. And the fact is that he was pretty much a financial pariah for periods in his business career. And no one actually, no American bank would actually lend money to him. So he had to cast around for other sources.

And these links, I mean, if you get onto the internet, you will see quite a lot of stuff about this. This particular one that Lynn points us to is called theassetpodcast.org. The point is that...

links to the Russian establishment, either the legitimate or the illegitimate establishment, if you like, go back decades. So I just quote one expert on one article I was reading, Alan Lapidus, who researched all this in a book, I believe. He said he could not, he i.e. Trump, could not get anybody in the United States under

after three of his casinos and one of his hotels had filed a bankruptcy. No one would lend him anything. All the money was coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he's ever acknowledged.

There's lots of other stuff about connections with individuals from Russia and former Soviet republics, some oligarchs, some close to Putin. And it went right up into the end of the century and beyond. So, yeah, I mean, I'm surprised in a way that more has not been made of this. I'm not saying there's a direct connection here between his current friendliness with Russia and

And those old business connections, I mean, when he started out, the Russians couldn't possibly really have seen him as a future president or anything like that. I suppose what it does do is make him kind of open to the Russian way of doing things and sympathetic generally to Russia because they bailed him out when he's been in a tight spot. Oh, by the way, I got my dates a bit muddled. This question of the compromat.

that has popped up a lot about whether the KGB or the FSB had actually some damaging material on him filmed of Trump allegedly cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. I think I said it was in 2016 that this happened. In fact, it was the allegation is it was in 2013. So just want to put the record straight there. I don't think you need to see Trump as a Russian asset to explain his behavior. And,

You know, my instinct is always to stay away from conspiracy theories. I think there are other reasons why Trump might be very pro-Russian. A lot of it is just he knows how to do business with people like that. You know, Russians break the rules. He likes to break the rules. He obviously has a sympathy with Putin. Now,

This thing about whether and how much money the Russians provided him at key points in his business career, I don't know the answer to that. It's quite possible that there's some really good factual evidence behind that, and that might explain some of what's going on. But there's just this kind of easy relationship between Putin and Trump. You can see they sit there and they just kind of speak the same language. I don't think we have to go down the route of saying, you know, he's a paid up Russian agent or anything like that. But, you know, the archives may prove me wrong one day.

I'm going to read out one here from Paul in Nashville, Tennessee. He says, thank you for your work. I've been relieved hearing other Americans' thoughts and of everyone who writes in the mailbag show of 23rd of February last week. And your show has been a great forum for discussion of the war. We're going to be hearing more from Americans later on in this half. But the question here from Paul is, why would an American president want to encourage Americans

the re-militarization of Europe. Has there not been an implied power by the US in Europe since the end of World War II due to the spread out nature and dispersal of military forces? To clarify, I mean, has it not been to the advantage of the United States as far as having a real say in peacekeeping in Europe? Well, I would go further than that and say, yeah, well, it's actually given America a big bill for sure, but it's also given them...

enormous political, beneficial, positive political power and influence. And just look at what's happening at the moment in Germany. Now, the new likely chancellor is Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats.

whose party came out on top in the recent elections. They will be controlling the coalition that's formed. Now, Merz throughout his career has been hugely pro-America. He's the most pro-US politician in Germany, and Germany essentially has led Europe on this issue since the Second World War. Now, listen to what he said immediately after the election results were declared with him essentially the winner of

He said, I would never have thought that I would have to say something like this in a TV show. But after Donald Trump's remarks last week, it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe.

And he went on to say, my absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that step by step we can really achieve independence from the USA. These words are unimaginable coming out of Merz's mouth only two months ago. Germany is essentially America's biggest ally in Europe.

And I think Germany will now lead the parting of the ways between Europe and the United States. This is a huge moment in history. I agree, Patrick. There's an issue here. And the issue is, from an American point of view, has money spent in Europe protecting Europe been a good deal for America or not? And Atlanticists, and I think most Democrats would say it has been, it

It's worked extremely well for Washington and it hasn't cost them that much. And we've all sort of become pro-American in our lives. We all use iPhones, we use Google, we watch Netflix, we rely on American companies. We think of America generally as a sort of a positive force, even though sometimes they go a bit awry. And, you know, you could almost sort of

to clumsily paraphrase Churchill and say, you know, a US-led world has been the worst form of world except for all the others. And that's something I think that my generation, certainly Western Europeans, most of us would accept. But there are those Americans who say, no, we've just been taken advantage of. We spent too much money. They've given nothing back. And this has all been a one-way deal. And somehow that sort of narrative has come into the mainstream. And I've even noticed Europeans recently saying things

things like that, saying, well, of course, we have taken advantage of the U.S. over the years, and they are right about some of this. I don't really accept that line of argument. I think soft power is a good financial investment for the U.S., but

As you say, one way or the other, it's come to an end. Things are now changing. You know, we're seeing Trump wants Gaza, Trump wants Greenland, Trump wants this, Trump wants that. And Europe is not going to go along with all that kind of thing. So I think the split is inevitable. The question, of course, is what does Europe do next? Yeah, well, I think at one level, we're already seeing a cultural hostility, aren't we, to America from everything. I just want to hear my own private thoughts. You know, you kind of...

You think, well, I'm going to resist this. And so I think we're going to see some pushback on Americana for everything that America produces, from films to phones. We're going to see people think, well, that's from America. Do I actually like America? Do I want to actually buy that product? People are talking about boycotting Netflix, stuff like this.

boycotts are famously or notoriously feeble tools aren't they people start out with a lot of enthusiasm for the boycott then reality sort of seeps in and they find themselves creeping back to their old to the old product but I think politically

Politically speaking, among the young, certainly among people of my generation, we no longer automatically think of America as our friend. And unfortunately, we lump the whole of America together. We'll be hearing later on. This is a very unfair point of view because there are lots and lots of Americans who are aghast at what is happening at the moment. But unfortunately, that I think is going to be a growing trend.

Yeah, Robert here makes a good point. I think something that we'd all agree with. He just says a quick additional thought. Why should Putin be the only leader in the world who should not be taken literally? Now, this goes back to that whole thing about, you know, his bark is worse than his bite, etc. And Robert says watching Trump apologists like Farage, Nigel Farage, our British leader of the Reform Party, sort of right wing party here, which has been sympathetic, indeed still is sympathetic to Trump and Trumpism.

watching Farage twist and turn to rationalize Trump's latest musings. He finds it strange. He says, meanwhile, both Hitler and Putin wrote down their beliefs and intentions and the West did not take them literally. Well, this is always true, isn't it? I completely agree. It laid it all out in Mein Kampf. It's usually a good rule, I believe, to take autocrats and wannabe autocrats at their word. And then you won't be surprised when they do what they say when they achieve power. Yeah, something that has occurred to me is that, you know,

The European right wing is being extremely craven in the face of what Trump is doing. And I see endless pieces saying, you know, Trump is right and Europe is wrong or J.D. Vance's speech was great actually and we needed it or whatever it happens to be. One thing that puzzles me is that if you are a European conservative or even a European populist and you believe in your patriotic and you believe in your country, you're

Why on earth is Trump a good thing for you? That I really don't get. It seems to me that the way Trump is going, certain European countries and possibly the whole of Europe is going to suffer from this sort of empire like approach. And so why we should be so cheering these things on, I'm not sure. I suppose it's a sort of a hangover from the anti-woke movement where Trump

People are still sort of fighting the battle of the past when, you know, they felt that woke was the biggest problem in the world and therefore we had to side with anybody who attacked it. But we've moved on from there. The world is changing. And yet those alliances still seem to be there. And one of them is this massive apology for Trump's sometimes awful behavior. Just a quick one here from Aaron in Israel saying, is Trump driven by fear of World War III? Well, this is another example, isn't it, of us trying to, uh,

divine what actually goes on in Trump's head. I don't believe that Trump is actually really fears that Ukraine, the Ukraine conflict could actually develop into a global conflagration. I think Trump doesn't really think deeply about anything. He certainly never reads any books. He doesn't know anything about history. And I think another thought that we ought to entertain and that people do come up with is voiced by Keith in Galway.

who asks, you know, goes through some of the scenarios about what may be at the back of all this disruption. Is it trying to prize Russia away from Russia?

China, etc., etc. But then he concludes, or maybe perhaps a 12-year-old could just join up the dots. Trump is an imbecile and we should start treating him as such. Now, I'm not saying this just to be rude to Trump, but it is possible that he is a sort of genius imbecile, someone who has got to where he is with virtually no reflection, no powers of analysis, no

no planning, no intelligence that normal people would regard as being in any way remarkable. So it is a terrifying thought that someone who is essentially stupid can get to be the most powerful man in the world.

Yeah, Patrick, just jumping on that one for a second, because this is something I've been trying to write about myself. You know, there's this notion that what we've really got here is a sort of a genius modern version of Nixon, who, of course, went to China in 1972 in an attempt to prize Beijing away from the Soviet Union. And that Trump is somehow doing this in reverse. And he has this incredible...

incredibly clever scheme to prize Putin away from Beijing. I think this is absolute nonsense. First of all, Putin is completely beholden to Beijing. That relationship shows no sign of fracturing at all. They talk to each other all the time, Putin and Xi. But more than that, much more than that, really,

Everybody else in the world who was a former US ally is now looking for some kind of alliances, whether it's a trade alliance or it's an understanding or it's a diplomatic softening, and they're going to turn towards China. I think if you look at the events of the last two or three weeks,

You know, Russia has probably won the most, but China is in a clear second place. I don't think Trump is hurting China at all. And then, of course, there's the whole Taiwan issue. I mean, what kind of message is this sending to China over Taiwan? So the sort of, you know, the genius hidden behind the sort of, you know, slightly disingenuous exterior theory, I don't go for, I'm afraid.

I was going to read this one out from Charles L. Jewell, because I think it reflects the thoughts of a lot of our American listeners. So he says, I'm writing with an extremely heavy heart, so heavy that I am, for the first time ever, ashamed to be an American. This mainly has to do with the way that my politicians and this despicable president has not only turned their back on President Zelensky and the Ukrainians,

The only good thing is that most Americans know exactly who started the war. My wife and I have ramped up our donations to Ukraine, but since we are by far not rich, we can only give so much. So please do not think that all the Americans are in favor of sending aid to Ukraine. And he says, I have well had four flags sent.

flying outside my house. American Marine Corps, so he's obviously an old Marine Corps vet, P-O-W-M-I-A and the Ukrainian flag. I'm so ashamed that I took down my American flag. Well, it's really good to hear that, isn't it? I mean, we don't assume that all Americans, by any means, last week were pointing out just how limited Trump's actual electoral support is. So we've got to keep that

Message coming. He finishes off, do not be surprised if Trump tries to declare martial law to stop the next president.

presidential elections this country is headed towards an either another revolution or another civil war and it will be bloody and the majority of the military will be with the people not against well thanks very much for for that charles that's a pretty sobering thought but it's one that i share patrick here's one from um peter duggan in molly mook

New South Wales, Australia. And he says, do you think that America under Donald Trump and especially Elon Musk will ever stop sharing intel with Ukraine as a way to stop the war?

I think this raises a very interesting point, actually, which is that we think of American support for Ukraine as being sort of tanks and artillery shells. But there are some other really, really important elements. One, of course, is Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk, which the Ukrainian military uses a lot. And then there's also this intelligence factor. Just how much are the Ukrainians getting from the Americans?

And then, you know, the more sort of armaments front, there's the Patriot missile batteries that are protecting a lot of Ukrainian cities at the moment. So I think as we look at this sort of deal between Zelensky and Trump, we have to ask the question, or

Or perhaps we have to be aware that if Zelensky really has a breakup with Trump and they pull out all these things, what happens to Ukraine then? And that is a very difficult thing to estimate, I would say. And in the case of Elon Musk, we must remember that he's got some previous and this has a vis-a-vis Starlink, which he did. To be fair to him, he did give it to the Ukrainians.

at the beginning of the war, but then restricted its use, I think, before a Kerch Bridge operation, if I remember correctly. Does that ring a bell with you? Yes, it rings a slight bell. I remember restrictions. I don't remember. I think it was about, I think Musk did not want the Ukrainians to go too far in attacking the Russians, as I remember, but I stand to be corrected on that. Yeah, so we've already seen this in action. He finishes off by saying, I'm 65-ish and love reading, but have never read any of your books, i.e.,

mine and Saul's. Well, shame on you. Which ones would you recommend? Who is the better writer? That is a very, very difficult question, which I'm not possibly going to try and answer now. But recommendations, well, my latest, Paris 44, went down pretty well. I think you'll enjoy that. And Saul's Sky Warriors, excellent account of airborne warfare in World War II. So go out, get onto Amazon and order them right away.

Patrick, Saul is not here today, so you might want to take your opportunity on this one. No, it would be the start of a feud that would never end. So I think I'm going to pass on that one. There's a comment here from, I'm not sure if I'm saying this correctly, Ramon Bennett. Ramon says, as a European living in the US for many years, I see that once again, many Europeans are blaming the US for their own ills.

The reason why Trump is in a position to dictate what could be awful terms for the end of the Ukraine war is Europe's failure to provide for its own defense and failure to provide meaningful support to Ukraine since the first Russian invasion in 2014.

The fact is that Europe has been underspending on defense for decades, all the while the European bien-passant critique the US for excessive military spending. I mean, I think there is a good point here. I think I was interviewed by a Republican-leaning radio station earlier this week from Chicago, and they were saying, well, is it all Trump's fault what's going on right now? And of course it's not. It does predate Trump by a long way. And 2014 for me is key. And I think that

You know, Angela Merkel bears some responsibility for the failure to react in 2014, as does President Obama. And there's a large amount of a sort of original sin in the Western response to Russia, which allowed Putin to think that he really could grab Ukraine very quickly and very easily. So much as we have a go at Trump and perhaps he deserves it, the others, the rest of them are not entirely blameless either.

The wake-up call, I think, has sounded and people are stirring quite often in sort of panicky sort of ways. But I feel it's worth saying something here now about what are the prospects of Europe now getting its act together. I'm afraid I'm quite pessimistic about this. I'd be interested to hear what you think, Julius. It seems to me that just the fundamental nature of political power and how it's dispersed in Europe makes it virtually impossible to have a strong political

Defense policy, a strong military, a strong diplomatic stance that everyone is going to get behind. I mean, basically it comes down to the very simple fact you've got all these competing interests, competing views. Mentioned before, Hungary and Slovakia, maybe France will be joining that club if Marine Le Pen gets elected president in a couple of years' time.

So military strategies require strong, unambiguous political leadership if they're going to succeed. And as it stands, I don't think with the best will in the world, even with all the alarm that people are feeling at the moment, that that is going to happen anytime soon. It's actually interesting because, you know, we've been framing it that the West has to help Ukraine win.

defend itself against Russia. Now that the U S is backing out of the picture, even if it's not entirely out of the picture yet in military terms, uh,

Actually, if you look at Europe, then Ukraine has by far the biggest and most capable army in Europe. And maybe we have to sort of change our mindset a little bit here. I mean, I don't know what the Brits could put into the field on any given day, but it's probably in the sort of high tens of thousands, possibly a bit higher. You know, France is going to be a little bit more. The Ukrainian army is getting close to a million men. Obviously, they're not all going to be on the front line all the time. But perhaps...

There is a sort of a shift in the center of gravity here. And Ukraine ends up as being part of a sort of a European security structure. I'm not sure. But I totally take your point, Patrick, that, you know, unified command is essential. And that's simply impossible to imagine in this day and age in Europe.

Now, we had a lot of compliments for Robert Fox, our old friend who was on last week, talking very eloquently, sparking as always, like a sort of Roman candle with ideas and observations. And one thing that caught listeners' attention was this whole idea of how do we make, clearly we're going to have to need more soldiers. How do we tell the young generation that this is a good thing to do and make a military career attractive?

So, there have been several suggestions, one from Paul B. in Brooklyn. He says, what about getting a sort of international cooperative effort so that teenagers from across the world basically come together to do combined military training? That's a good thought. Sam Aston makes another point of saying,

We shouldn't be so down on Gen Z and saying that, you know, they're all a bunch of snowflakes infected with wokery who are never going to take up arms. He says this is a very alarmingly negative narrative.

Could it not be through our very diversity that we could regain our status, i.e., this is in Britain, as the best small army in the world, a drive towards an inclusive, multicultural, multi-faith army, despite its inevitable complexities, would ultimately lead to a more effective fighting force and better represent the society it defends?

Well, I think that's a really good point. And I think it's a very positive point, Sam. And I think that's exactly the way to go. You know, we've got to sort of define a new patriotism that takes account of all these things. And he asks at the end, can you think of any historical examples of such armies? Well, I can think of one.

straight away, which is the Austro-Hungarian army, uh, which was made up of, you know, enormous number of, uh, different ethnicities, indeed of religions. You know a bit about that being a long time resident of Budapest and being half Hungarian yourself, don't you? Uh, yes, I mean, I did feel my sort of, uh, my sort of Hungarian side bridling a little bit when you, when you sort of put us in the pot with all the various Slavic peoples. Um,

You know, we do think of ourselves as the superior forces within the Austro-Hungarian. But no, absolutely. It was definitely a multi-ethnic effort. There's one more question here from Will in New Zealand. And he says, good day. I have now worked both as a public servant in Russia and also as a humanitarian NGO worker in Ukraine.

Your podcast has been my favorite take on the current situation. Good, good. Often I would pull up my slouchy work desk or tuck into my sleeping bag in the basement and put on the feed. Please keep up the good work. My main question for you is when should Ukraine hold a representative democratic election? Well, there's a very simple answer to this. In the Ukrainian constitution,

You cannot hold an election under martial law, so you have to wait for a ceasefire and the end of martial law. And the Ukrainian political parties have agreed that six months after that, they will hold a democratic election. I think if they manage to do it in six months, that'll be incredible because it's going to be extremely difficult. But that is, in theory, what is going to happen.

Just finally on rare earths, again, we've got some expert contributions, Sean from Perth, who makes the, or rather reinforces the point that Boyd made about the complexity of actually

mining successfully and economically these strategic minerals. And a lot of interesting points there for which thank you very much. But I think it really just does reinforce our view, doesn't it, that this is turning out to be a bit of a red herring and a typical example of the kind of smoke and mirrors that we're getting from Washington at the moment. So thanks very much for that, Sean.

Okay, that's it for this week. Do join us on Wednesday for another episode of Battleground 45. And again on Friday, when there are bound to be more fireworks. Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co-host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goldhanger. And I'm James Holland, best-selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war.

This time, we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the West, the Battle of the Bulge. And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way around, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality. Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the

ages. From their generals at the top to the GIs on the front line, full of gumption and grit, the Bold should be remembered as a great victory for the USA. And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search We Have Ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.

Yeah. Anyway, so who is Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper? But I see his jaunty hat and I just think... And his SS skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than the handsome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway.

Be that as may, he's 29 years old and he's got a very interesting career, really, because he comes from a pretty right-wing family, let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early stage. He's very international socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah. He took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with the 1st Waffen-SS Panzer Division. Yep.

Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant. Then went off and commanded troops in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, there's not many people that age. Or an Obersturmbannfuhrer, which is sort of colonel. Yes, you see, what must it have been like if you're in...

If Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think, well, he only got that job because of his connections? For Piper, it must have been always, he's always having to prove himself, surely, because he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen-SS. He's dolloped in, having come from head office, as it were.

It must be a peculiar position to be in, right? He's got lots to prove, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, and he's from a sort of middle-class background as well. Yeah. But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never really recovers and actually has died of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horne.

He's also joined the SS and Totenkopfverbande and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous. You know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire the destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans.

Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, Second Class, First Class, Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk. Briefly in Northern Italy, actually. Then in Ukraine. Then in Normandy, he suffers a nervous breakdown. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August. And he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutich. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd. I mean... But isn't that interesting, though? Because if you're a Lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized. You don't get time off.

How you could interpret this is this is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? He's him as adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know. And because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized if he has a nervous breakdown. He isn't told like an ordinary German soldier, there's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate.

go back to work. Yes, and it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue. Well, yes, of course. But, you know, what's the difference? One SS soldier said of him, Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done. Yeah. You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly mischievous

Manic energy. Yeah. Kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a driver. You know, all those things. He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued with... He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of... He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he? As an SS officer. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.