Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Lauren Young: Thank you very much for having me, Greg.
Young: This is a tectonic shift in American foreign policy that we’re seeing enacted in, to use Steve Bannon’s words, with muzzle velocity. This is all happening very quickly, and I can’t help but think about Frederick Douglass in 1867, who made a statement that’s quite prescient. I thought, after what happened in the Oval Office on Friday, [about] he said, “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.” What happened on Friday is a far more complex situation than the thuggery in the Oval Office meeting suggests. I think that while Trump voters might have broadly been in support of no longer funding a war in Ukraine, I don’t really think that the majority of voters necessarily support allying the U.S. with Russia.
Young: Yes. I think what she’s referring to is the misinformation that was implicit in the meeting between Trump and Vance and Zelenskiy, and their tweets, and what this will do to embolden the right wing in other countries. What we’re seeing more specifically in Murkowski’s remarks is the failure here, and perhaps in other countries of the center right, to draw the line in the sand. And maybe this Zelenskiy meeting will be seen as the moment, when in Trump 2.0, the center right totally failed to stand up. I think she’s describing a path that charts the end of what we know of as the Atlantic Alliance—this idea that we have allies in Europe and around the world whose goal it is to promote and protect other Western liberal democracies of which Ukraine is one example.
Young: Well, they see a few things. I think for sure they see the end of 80 years of what we commonly refer to as the Atlantic Charter. This meeting showed a clear contravention of those understandings that have brought peace and prosperity to the growth of democracy in the world.
Young: Well, yes. Musk, in particular, has been using Russian talking points for years, so his position on NATO isn’t really anything new. Vance has done the same thing. Vance did the same thing in his attacks on Zelenskiy in the Oval Office, and he was really interesting in that regard. When Zelenskiy pressed him about having never visited Ukraine, Vance made some comments about how he consults the internet and how that has informed his understanding of what’s going on in Ukraine. I’d say that he absolutely doesn’t understand based on that, and from the reception in the Oval Office made that clear.
Sargent: Trump and Vance are never actually candid about what they want to happen in Russia and Ukraine. They don’t want peace on any terms that require Russia to make real concessions. We never hear them calling on Russia to end its invasion. Now it’s been reported that Britain and France will negotiate with Ukraine to produce some set of terms for a plausible ceasefire and then present this to the U.S. There’s a lot we don’t know about this, but for now, should we at least hope that this process puts a bit more pressure on Trump and Vance to say what they really mean when they say they want peace between Russia and Ukraine?
Sargent: Trump and Vance will take “peace” between Russia and Ukraine, even if it constitutes essentially giving Russia whatever it wants and Ukraine not getting any of its territory back simply because they can then say they stopped the fighting. I think there’s that, but there’s also a genuine ideological inclination on the part of Trump and Vance to want Russia to not have to make concessions. Can you talk about that?
Sargent: Couldn’t agree more. One thing that is really dark about all this is how few Republicans said what Lisa Murkowski said. Lindsey Graham, who’s actually been very pro-Ukraine, claimed Zelenskiy had been disrespectful and said, “I don’t know if we can do business again.” That’s reprehensible. It’s nonsense. But the broader point here, it seems to me, is that any hopes for having a robust center right that might resist the Trump-Vance push to align the U.S. with global far-right forces is mostly gone. What does history tell us about the need for a center right that acts as a bulwark?
Sargent: It certainly is. And there is absolutely no indication that they are going to speak up. Lauren Young, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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