Will President Trump’s Meetings with Leaders Bring Ukraine Closer to Peace?

I have spent hours in the Burger King at uh at Joint Base Andrews which is where Air Force One lives and where Barack Obama liked to Golf hours there without ever glimpsing the president um did you glimpse a burger though you know what I ate my feelings so I think I had three WS that day well here we are another edition of the president’s path another wild week in Washington and it’s not over yet and this week Sumi is in Germany she’s been covering the German elections so I am delighted to introduce our guest host
today Olivier Knox he is the senior National correspondent and the anchor of decision points with us news and report and a longtime Watcher of the White House former president of the White House correspondence Association and a longtime friend of mine as well so great to have you here Olivier nice to see you we’re recording this we’ll just say very late on Thursday eastern time um just to Tim stamp that for everyone that’s tuning in to show where we’re at and we’re a bit late because I was late getting back from the
White House dashing from Pebble Beach after that visit of the British prime minister sir kir starmer Olivia you’ll remember all of those days over the years and things running late and the chaos around the White House you know uh actually with the time stamp you’re doing pretty well because many many many a night of covering the White House from my glamorous ve pen um in the media workspace I wasn’t getting out until I don’t know two three hours later for a president who’s only you know a month
and a week into his administration he’s had quite a lot of world leaders come through he’s got an ambitious agenda and part of that agenda is uh is to meet with all these world leaders now I’d be remiss if I didn’t say some of these world leaders they’re the ones who need the visit uh mcon came here because he wanted wanted to reshape the president’s opinion of Ukraine um the Prime Minister did the same thing and they both used classic tactics for managing Donald Trump um mcon poured on the charm um
starm that was really smart and and handed Trump an invitation from the King and then he played it up as an unprecedented second state visit and you could see Trump you know smile and Nod and just be very pleased that he was going to make some history but what did you think of that moment I mean we kind of anticipated there’d be some element of the royal family or a visit or an invitation but it was really a kind of Master stroke the way sir kir Storer pulled the envelope from his inside pocket almost the first thing he did
when he got into the Oval Office and I I think that that was a smart move and that it kind of set up the the tone of the rest of the day in which you know uh s k kind of went out of his way to to for there not to be at least any public disagreement between the two two men um you know there was a lot of lavish praise being thrown back and forth uh you know when there was questions later on in the press conference that you know in theory for example he was asked about Canada uh and Trump’s you know efforts
to make Canada 51st state supposedly you know he went out of his way to say you’re trying to divide us when there is no division essentially and I think you know giving him that letter at the outset um you know kind of probably put Trump in in quite a good mood um you know and this is very much president that that operates on on mood and Instinct so I think that was very uh kind of astute move to kind of set up the rest of the day with something like that what struck me as well and I saw the similar a similar thing happened
with President maon on Monday whereas that chat before they’d had their substantive bilateral was quite jokey and touchy feely and very lovely and all of that and then they had their bilateral they came out to the press conference and almost the first thing president Trump said was this guy’s a really tough negotiator prime minister starmer you’ve been uh terrific in our discussions you’re a very tough negotiator however I’m not sure I like that but that’s okay very very special person and it was something similar with
macron there was a slight change still very warm and everything but slight change of tone after they’d had those substantive Arrangements obviously we don’t know what goes on inside the Oval Office when we’re all thrown out as much as we would love to but it seems to be that they they’ve been really pushing president Trump in private but striking a slightly different tone in public I thought this afternoon it was almost noticeable that President Trump seemed much more subdued perhaps even tired in
the afternoon than in the morning uh which which perhaps speaks to the the intensity of the things they were discussing and you know behind closed doors but I also think you know in his mind saying that someone’s a tough negotiator as someone who you know even frames foreign policy repeatedly all the time as deals being made I think in his mind there’s probably no higher compliment than being a tough negotiator because that’s also what he says about himself very often Olivier what how did you think President macron worked out
with his visit I know you keep a Keen Eye on French Affairs you the thing about macron is he he agrees with Donald Trump on a lot of really important things the idea that Europe needs to militarize more spend more on defense uh take more responsibility for its own security if macron pitched that to Donald Trump behind the scenes that would have pleased Donald Trump immensely you know he’s he’s called Donald Trump a game Cher in public for Ukraine and for uh European security so there’s a lot of stuff that mcon has
already said that if he repeated it to Donald Trump it would it would have a fairly big uh a fairly big effect and we heard those similar comments from starmer as well we heard from Sayan I I can’t remember now which of the press confer as it was um that he he said the same thing you know Europe needs to step up more obviously just days before coming here he announced that the UK defense spending was going to go up to two and a half percent which president Trump said oh well I’d like to see that go up to four or five% so there’s always
a pushing ahead of the goal posts I guess um but it’s it’s interesting in terms of this approach that world leaders are taking to how they come to president Trump how they come to the those meetings and what they say and just really careful measuring of the language the number of times that world leaders have talked among themselves before one of them comes to talk to Donald Trump is also really interesting it’s also very public but it’s really interesting you know you’ve got these calls um there were a bunch of calls
before M cron came over there were a bunch of calls before the Prime Minister came over uh I think that’s very I think that’s very interesting um it’s a you know like a like a team effort almost to see well what what how should we approach this problem you know we need him to we we need an American role in the security guarantees supporting this notional peace deal uh between Ukraine and Russia how do we get that you know okay well I’ll make this point to him you know I mean I’m imagining here I’m speculating but they
it seems like they’ve it seems like they’ve divvied up the job and agreed on a tone and a message to use at 1600 pen and I think that’s very I think that’s very interesting yeah it really feels like a pins movement doesn’t it I mean we were told as well there are many calls between zalinsky and maon before the maon meeting um for sure starmer and macron spoke I think starmer said he’d spoken to 13 leaders or something in advance of the visit starmer will most definitely be speaking to zalinski um
before that meeting and then they all regroup back in London on Sunday as to kind of how they take their interactions forward into whatever happens next because I mean we have to say really I mean there is no peace deal between Russia and Ukraine at this point you know all of the talk about a security back stop president zinski wants in a deal before agreeing a deal but president Trump is saying no no you’ve got to get your deal first before I can bring any conversation in around American troops or or peacekeepers or
anything like that so it’s a kind of chicken and egg type situation and it’s going to be really interesting to see I think when all those meetings are over what happens next and who comes to the table I mean we haven’t even mentioned the EU who are really annoyed at what’s going on and how they feel they’ve been left out of it I mean their Chief Diplomat Kaya kalas was in town this week supposed to meet secretary Marco Rubio US Secretary of State that meeting was called off due to scheduling
commitments a few hours before hand I interviewed her on my show this week and you know she was kind of saying the relationship between the EU and the US is really complicated now it’s really challenging to have these conversations you know and the meeting gets cancelled what do you do and she said the talking points from the US is the Russian narrative and maybe that’s some kind of grandmas plan she said on behalf of President Trump but for us if Russia is going to get things that asked for without shifting its position at all
that feels like appeasement so kind of very strong words coming from the EU towards the US and there’s no you know formal negotiations even underway at this point well and Trump’s response was to say that the EU had been created had been designed to screw that’s his word the United States so those relationships that’s a tense relationship and around about the time that secretary Rubio was due to be meeting kayak tell us he was actually in this big cabinet meeting which was the other major event of the
week this first cabinet meeting that Donald Trump held with his team they’re not all confirmed yet but most of them are um and that was again extraordinary like to take questions from the press for I think it was 60 minutes or so before thees 65 minutes 65 minutes you know with all the cabinet secretary so much power essentially in a room and the the president going around all the journalists taking all the questions and the other remarkable thing of course about that was Elon Musk you know not elected not Senate confirmed we don’t
know what kind of security clearance he has and he was there addressing journalists as well and we toad stayed in the room for the duration of that cabinet meeting as well and I thought there was a remarkable moment there in the cabinet meeting when the journalists were asking um you know about tensions that had been reported between some of the cabinet members and Elon Musk over Doge and and some of the cuts that have been made and president Trump kind of turned to the room and said would anyone like to speak kind of inviting people to
you know criticize musk in any regard and it was uh it was crickets there was total silence and I thought that was you know a uh you know kind of a a unique Way That You Don’t See very often in America at least of kind of him you know establishing that he is very much the B Lo in in the room um and I One wonders you know behind closed doors whether some of those discussions didn’t become a little more heated some U you know some of the cabinet members are obviously less enthused with Doge and you know some have instructed employees
not to reply to the emails for now for example um so I just thought that was quite a remarkable moment especially when musk is there as not a member of the cabinet you know and you know noticeably not a member of the cabinet even dressed in a t-shirt that said tech support highlight that actually someone mentioned that to me from the Republican party uh they said you know cabinet meeting is a very formal Affair everyone was there in their suits and then you have this guy at the end in a T-shirt and a baseball cap kind of sipping from
a tiny little teacup or an espresso cup as he as he went through it it was it was quite extraordinary it was I would note that none of the cabinet secretaries who’ve been reported to have tensions with Elon Musk decided to dispel them at this meeting it’s not like none of them none of them rode to his notional rescue in this cabinet setting they all kept studiously quiet the other thing at that cabinet meeting as well was H the discussion of the Trump gold cards um which is something I haven’t heard an American president
talking about before and president Trump actually seeded the floor to his Commerce Secretary harod lotnik to describe these Trump gold cards which um are a gold green card it seems where a person a foreign National can pay $5 million and they get what seems like I mean we’ve no I don’t know if you guys have seen any formal detail on this but based on what harod lutnick was saying it it gets them a green card for life that’s not attached to anything in particular the president referred to it being a solid Pathway to citizenship and
he was talking about if they could sell uh 10 million of these that it would wipe the debt out I I thought that was fascinating I mean just cuz you know I I I cover immigration quite a bit too that this was you know a a pathway to S and very much an immigration policy but the way it was framed in the meeting at least was completely economic that if they sell x amount of these gold cards you know they’ll get I think they said at one point a trillion dollars um you know to pay down the national debt so it’s interesting to hear him speak about
immigration policy but in in economic terms because on the other hand when he speaks about the wider you know immigration policies of the US for example his Mass deportation drive that’s not framed in an economic sense I mean that has an economic impact but he always frames it as kind of a national security and and kind of P sometimes public health issue uh you know it’s different it’s interesting to see the different framing of those two opposite sides of the the immigration coin I’m glad you mentioned uh not seeing a final
proposal that’s always important with the Trump White House any Trump white house because they they portray them one way and then the final proposal doesn’t necessarily comport with the language that you’ve been hearing for a while I thought what I thought what’s interesting is um these seem to be geared to um very very rich people in India and in China um because there are green card limits and this essentially is an end run around the the limits on immigration from from these countries um I I don’t
want to be excessively cynical but it would seem to open the door to folks from Russia coming to the United States if they pay $5 million we just don’t have the kinds of details green cards come with um what I’ll call I guess a criminal limit um if you if you are known to have committed certain crimes you can’t really get a green card didn’t hear that in the gold card um discussion uh but again we haven’t heard much we haven’t seen there’s not like a there’s not there’s no legislation in front of us
where we can say ah this is what this confers on this deep pocketed individual and we’re really going to have to look at that carefully it was interesting he was actually asked specifically about letting in when he when he first mentioned the gold cards in the Oval Office earlier in the week he was specifically mentioned about you know would this apply to Russian oligarchs and he certainly didn’t say no he said well maybe I mean I like some R Russian oligarchs you know they don’t have as much money as they used to but he didn’t
he certainly didn’t say no which I thought was very telling you know given that the the war is still happening and that you know some of these sanctions are still in place um I thought that was kind of an interesting glimpse into his worldview and there was also um burn I know you were keeping in mind this um this kind of notion of a migrant registry was floated this week there was and it was actually it’s actually quite a significant announcement that that they made it was just a bit drowned out by everything else that was happening
but essentially what they asked is that any undocumented migrant in the US register and that’s I mean that’s not something that’s happened since you know 1940 this is something that’s just kind of a very foreign concept I think it’s it’ll be very hard to implement I mean it’s very hard to who’s going to sign up for that when you hear the hard line on deportations and so on exactly but I think you know it’s also reflective of the fact that you know we’re we’re hearing less and less about IM ation
from the administration I think that’s probably because president Trump and and Tom Homan for example has explicitly said he’s not happy with the pace of deportations um and in their view this could help because it it broadens the pool of people that could potentially be deported but to actually make that work to I mean strikes me as fairly impossible I was speaking to a few undocumented people right after this and they said there’s just there’s just no way why would I do that um so I mean there’s a lot of questions left I think
this is again another example of the announcement coming before the details of how how would one compel an undocumented migrant to essentially potentially set themselves up for deportation if you give your address and fingerprints and you’re in the system it just makes the whole process much more straightforward from the government’s and um I think it’s very difficult for that to to happen but it’s it’s shows that you know he had seen immigration as a huge win and now it’s kind of losing
steam a bit for the administration they’re trying to inject some new life into that that and it’s interesting you mentioned that you know that’s something that kind of slipped by a little bit this week given everything else that was going on because you know I mean not to focus on ourselves and the media here but it is quite challenging to keep up with everything that’s going on in the Trump Administration like the pace has just been quite extraordinary in this you know month and a week or so that
he’s been in office but there was a huge development this week in terms of media relations between the White House and the journalists who covered the White House the White House Correspondents Association uh Olivia you’re obviously a past president of that do do you want to talk through a little bit about just what was announced this week by the press secretary Caroline levit sure so the White House correspon Association exists essentially to represent the interests of the White House Press Corps uh try and regularly fail to forge a
consensus you know for Collective action uh by the press in relations to to the White House um you know Advanced First Amendment principles and the like but the day-to-day job is that negotiation for you know how many reporters can we get into this event to observe the president firsthand do his job moving forward the White House Press pool will be determined by the White House Press team what they said this week was that they would take control over who was in this pool and They seized that control from the whca from this journalist
organization which had controlled it for decades for basically as long as it as it that existed it’s a really significant blow to press freedoms in the United States one of our principles is that uh a president doesn’t get to pick who covers them you know uh he’s trampled on that now um this is after uh booting just the Associated Press um which is probably one of the most which is one of the most important uh press outlets in the United States booting them out of the day-to-day work of the pool because he doesn’t like that they
are still using Gulf of Mexico instead of using his Gulf of America and I suppose we should say Olivier when we’re talking about the White House correspondence Association if you’re to listen to how um the Trump Administration describe it you might think that it’s all sort of people who are anti-president Trump or the news organizations as some in the US do have an agenda that’s against Trump as others have a prot trump organiz agenda but the whca is for everyone no matter your agenda right that’s right and um there’s
no ideological Criterion for joining the whca there’s no ideological Criterion for joining the pool um as far as I know no news organization was ever turned away if they applied for the pool um was ever turned away because of ideology um it’s this is just a red herring here um the whca controlled access to the pool because we were the representatives of the entire press Corps um um and there are plenty of outlets Fox News Daily Mail uh the blaze a few others who who do regularly do pool Duty so this is not
an ideological issue at all I thought it was really notable this weekend that some of the those conservative news outlets that you just mentioned uh both about the AP and then about the whca they were they were quite vocal in their reservations about what happened because I think you the concern among some of those conservative news outlets is that now a precedent has been set so in a future Democratic White House now that this has been done I mean in theory there’s really nothing to stop a a Democrat run White House from doing the
same and you know kind of booting off Outlets that it doesn’t feel are ideologically aligned with what the White House is saying and inviting ones that that are so I think it’s it’s kind of set a a precedent that um you know many reporters on both you know on both sides of the political Spectrum think is quite dangerous and for the future I mean once once this has been done that’s not hypothetical the the Obama White House tried to designate Fox News not a real news outlet and exclude them from
from some coverage which is one of the reasons that one of the most vocal Outlets when it comes to this is Fox News and kudos to them by the way for returning the favor because it was the Press Corp and the whca that blocked the Obama Administration effort to kick them out of White House coverage altogether so B we’ve spoken before in the podcast when you’ve been pooling um for president Trump and all the Wild and wonderful and interesting things you’ve been doing but since this was announced by the press secretary has it had an
impact in the workings in the Press briefing room and how information is is coming out today was frankly very chaotic and that most of the day at least when I got there in the morning there was a lot of discussion but how does this work am I still on pool Duty who’s going to send the the reports um I mean is the the list serve still working and then plus you know logistical questions about like in the future for example how do some of these these New Media Outlets that the Trump Administration is you know there’s
there’s a cost associated with going on Air Force One and there’s logistical challenges associated with coming to get bringing a pool for kind of a supplemental Duty like a vice presidential uh event or or you know that sort of thing it’s a huge logistical task that you know people today at least weren’t sure that the White House had really thought through some of those day-to-day questions um so I mean it really there was a huge sense of uncertainty when I walked in the room it was the only thing anyone was talking
about down in my little area of the basement down there well speaking of freedom of the press it’s time to free the Press free both of you from this podcast um we’re all at a time for today for this edition of the president’s path it’s sure been a busy walk yet again um Olivier great great to have you with us for your maiden voyage here hopefully we’ll have you back again and burn great as always to chat to you and uh see you both soon and you can catch up with all of the episodes of the president’s path on
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