 American Issues Take One. I'm Tim Apicello, your host. Today's title is Europe's Concern Over Trump's NATO Comments. Once again, Donald Trump bends the knee to Vladimir Putin, not unlike what he did years ago at the Helsinki Conference, where Donald Trump took Vladimir Putin's word over many of our intelligent agencies. And he said, I don't see why he would be lying. So what did Donald Trump do this week? Well, guess what? He definitely is the source of trying to kill the Ukraine funding bill, and Mike Johnson, as he's dutifully falling in line for Donald Trump, has mentioned that even if the Senate passes a bill, it's doubtful he'll let it off for vote on the floor. We'll see. He's created a fake controversy. He's made up a story about, quote unquote, a leader of a very strong country says, what if we don't pay our bill? And his response says, you don't pay your bill. Rush could do whatever the hell it wants. Basically, that's the paraphrase of it. Giving green lights to Russia to do anything it wants, despite NATO, and despite the Article 5, that one for all and all for one, that will defend one another. Donald Trump seemed to discount that in the eyes of the world and certainly the European nations. And last but not least, he's discarded the whole credibility of the United States, whether we're going to be a dependable partner or not, not only to NATO, but now the eastern countries, the Asian-based countries, South Korea and Japan have to wonder, what's our true alliance to them? So this is the topic of the day. And I'm here with my co-host, Jay Fidel, to discuss those things. Good morning, Jay. Morning, Jim. First question is, what has Donald Trump done to our credibility by making these statements that Russia could do whatever the hell it wants, that the United States may not be there for European countries, just because Donald Trump thinks he can walk away from these commitments? Well, I'm going to say, done as a past tense word. And the effect of this is already past tense. The statements he made really undermine NATO, not when he gets into office, not when he makes this examination of how much the members of NATO have paid. By the way, he was lying about that in his remarks. It's not true, they have paid. But he's done the damage now. And in terms of elevating Putin, he's done that now. You know, the remarkable thing is that he acts like it in many ways he is, not only domestically, but globally, the president. He's made himself the president. And when he says something, he speaks as the leader of the, what do you want to call it, the anti-free world. And so I think the damage is already done, it is profound. On a number of levels. You know, NATO has lost ground in terms of the bond between its members. NATO has lost ground in terms of its resilience against autocrats like Putin. NATO has lost ground in terms of Article 5 of the NATO agreement. And so what we have is damage, but it's already done. And in terms of credibility, I mean, I don't want to go too far, we have a lot to discuss today, but in terms of credibility, he's already undermined the credibility of the United States. How could anybody rely on the United States when they read in the paper that Trump is likely to be the candidate, public candidate and likely, you know, to win. And if he wins, this kind of thing is going to happen. How could you believe in us anymore? And you're right, it's not only Europe, it's also Asia, it's everywhere. He has cut, he has cut our legs out from under us already. Our credibility is done. Our post-war credibility is gone. All the effort we put in over these 70 years, you know, in the Marshall plan and supporting these countries and advocating for democracy, it's gone. He's turned it upside down already without being president. You know, did you ever imagine that Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama would be trying to rule the world as previous presidents, as former presidents? But that's exactly what Trump is doing. And what he's doing is so outrageous, there aren't enough words in the English language. Well, you know, his virus is spreading to Congress. Specifically, I'm thinking of two senators that I have in mind. One, Lindsey Graham, who used to be a firm stalwart believer that the United States needs to be a leader in the world stage as far as military strength and protection. Lindsey Graham has voted against any support for the Ukraine Rail, the 95 bill. But most importantly, I want to talk about this senator by the name of, remember, Tommy Tuberville, the one that held up all the promotions for all the military, all the military staff for months and months and months, compromising the military, weakening our military. Well, you know, guess what? Senator Tuberville was just recently on the radio and he says, it's the United States fault that Russia attacked Ukraine. Basically said, United States forced NATO upon the border lines of Russia. Well, first off, Ukraine is not a NATO country. So there's a falsehood. But worse yet, he said, Putin is on top of his game. This is likened to that if Russia brought missiles on the Mexican border to the United States, he is unbashantly supporting Russia here. Not only that, but he said the US media is propaganda to go after Russia every chance it can. I have never heard such things from a United States senator in such support of Russia and Putin specifically. Putin is on top of his game. Now, where do you think this stuff comes from? Do you think it comes from Tommy Tuberville? No. It's a two tin cans with a string to Donald Trump. Your thoughts? It's the same thing with Mike Johnson. We should call him something else. He looks like a 19-year-old just out of college. But in fact, he is a monster. He's satanic what he's doing. He has already indicated he will not take up the Ukraine support bill in the house. He's already said it in so many words. So it's gone. And so here we are in that moment where the waves recede and you know they're coming back and they're coming back big time. And Trump is calling all his markers. He's calling all his GOP followers to make these statements. Tuberville is an idiot, I'm sorry. He was an idiot about the military affair. And he was working for Trump on that just to do that kind of outrage thing and undermine our military, which is another question we should discuss. And Johnson, with all that teenage look on his face, fact is he's working for Trump. And here's the next part. Trump is working for Putin. You and I, Tim, we've been following this since at least five or six years now. And we called it Trump Week at first. You know what? It's still Trump Week because that's what we cover. That's what's going on. American issues. Well, we have to. We have to. He's on the headlines every day. He's saying outrageous things and doing outrageous things every day, unprecedented. He's not even in office. He's nothing. And yet somehow he controls everything and he's trying to control it all the more by doing, you know, a little nepotism with his relative Laura Trump, with his daughter-in-law, as a co-chair of the Republican Party, which is really chair. And throwing out McDaniel. Why? Because she didn't like the idea that he wanted to pay $50 million of his own legal bills out of the funds of the party, which she was right, but he threw her out somehow. Anyway, my point is that he's working for Putin. If we connect the dots, if we went back to our old shows, Tim, we would see that all of this is consistent. It's a straight line of connecting dots. Putin runs him for who knows whether it's the Golden Shower or Compromot or some other thing that Putin has control of Trump. It's not just that Trump sucks up to him as a powerful autocrat and all that, or as a clever person in Trump's view, is that Putin runs him and is running him now. Putin helped him win the 2016 election with social media misinformation and disinformation. That's already shown. It's already shown. And he also tried to do that in the 2020 election, but failed. Is there any question that Putin is going to do that in November? No question at all. He's going to try it every way he can to get Trump to be the president again, one way or the other, or both. So I think we have to see them as joined at the hip. They're in a kind of romance together, kind of a really, really negative romance, but a romance, nevertheless. And whatever Johnson does or Tuberville does or Lindsey Graham does, and there's others too, it's because Trump told him to do it in a midnight call. And whatever Trump does, he's doing it with the advice and counsel of Putin, or possibly the instruction of Putin. They got a thing going. And this is like taking over the world with an axis of evil. We're talking about an axis of evil, Tim. You mentioned following the breadcrumbs, or we've looked at this for years now, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the allegiance that Donald Trump seems to be showing for Vladimir Putin. I'm going to read a quote from President Biden regarding Trump's NATO comments. And he said, it's dumb, it's shameful, it's dangerous, and it's un-American. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO is a sacred commitment, the alliance that protects America and the world. Having heard that particular quote, has Trump's comments about pulling out of NATO or the possibility that he wouldn't have a second thought about doing that? Do Americans remember that in November 2024? Do they have that on their minds that Donald Trump really isn't really interested in protecting the United States or our alliances? Not only in Europe, but potentially elsewhere in the world. Does that resonate in the hearts and minds of Americans before they vote? No. I think Americans don't have a memory that goes beyond a couple of weeks. That's the news cycle. And for that matter, the media doesn't have a memory that goes beyond a few weeks, because it's old news. Old news doesn't count. It doesn't sell. It doesn't create advertising. So the problem is that the breadcrumbs that you and I talk about from 2016 on forward are forgotten. The public, and especially the base who has pushed the other way, not only to forget, but to be misinformed and disinformed, has no memory of that. And even the more rational public is moving on to other bigger, better raw news right now. And they forget, and they don't know. And the media is not helping them. I have to put it on the media. We should see this in an historical context, and we don't. And I say we, I mean every single media. You and I, I mean we, but we connect the breadcrumbs to these other media. Do they connect the breadcrumbs? Do people see and hear and read about connecting the breadcrumbs? No. And so it's all fresh meat, and it's all more outrageous. And it doesn't take into account the fact that he's been in bed with Putin from the beginning. And it's almost like, you know, we start again every day. You know, it's like that movie about February 2nd and Groundhog's Day, you know, you start again over and over and over again, but you never remember what happened before. So yeah. Well, I'd like to use your term, and that is inflection point. I think Donald Trump's comments about NATO and what he said was an inflection point. I think once again, he reveals his true heart. Ann Applebaum wrote about this. But before I get to that, remember, the Republicans love to say, oh, you know, Donald Trump, you can't take him seriously. Don't you know better? Or, you know, he's just joking. So that's usually their response when Donald Trump says something completely outrageous. They tried to discount it by saying, he's kidding. You guys just have no sense of humor. You libtards just have no sense of humor. Well, here's what Ann Applebaum feels. She said, the rant of Trump will encourage Russia to stay in the war with Ukraine. We may think it's a joke, or the Republicans may think a joke and try to pass it off as a joke, but Russia does not take this as a joke. They're serious. When they hear words like that from Donald Trump, they take it to heart and it encourages them to continue their land grab of not only Ukraine, but potentially Belarus and other non-NATO countries in that region. A couple of thoughts. They already have Belarus. They already own it. It's the countries around Belarus. It's Poland and all the Baltics, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. And then, of course, you have the Balkans where he's made inroads. And it's not Russia. It's Putin. Putin runs Russia and he has consolidated his power. I look at Navalny. Navalny has been in jail for a long time for nothing. And my guess is that anybody who runs against Putin or speaks against Putin will wind up the same way. The more effective they are, the more likely they're going to be in Siberia. So what I get is that yes, Putin is encouraged by this. This is part of his game plan. It's part of his asymmetrical war against Ukraine and the West. And he's winning the war. The morale of NATO has been damaged. We know that. And we know that if push came to shove, they would not be as effective as they might have been only a year ago. And so Trump has had his effect and will have his effect. Now, the other thing is that how do these countries in Western Europe individually take this? How does the UK feel about it? How does Germany and France feel about it? How does Italy feel about it? Who already has a right wing prime minister? Although she's in full support of the $54 billion package to Ukraine, and she was a signator on that agreement. She agrees with supporting Ukraine in this matter. And where is that money anyway? Have you seen any of that money? Have I? Have we? Have they? You know, here we are running out of ammunition. Ukraine is running out of ammunition. And when they publish stories about how they're running out of ammunition, what it really means is you're going to look at the timeframe. They have run out of ammunition. That's where we are. And that really puts them at disadvantage because whatever Russia is doing and however the sanctions and their recruiting problems have affected their war effort. The fact is, a thing, they do have ammunition. They have it from Iran. They have it from North Korea. They have it. Anyway, what I'm thinking is, you know, even what's her name in Italy, who was, you know, she's a mixed bag. I think every country in NATO is wondering. Every country in NATO is being discouraged. He lies about them. He tells them what he's going to do in the future. That is pull out and dismember them. You know, he has broken their back even with comments out of office like this. And they're all wondering what's going to happen. And they believe, as you and I do, there's a fair chance that Trump will win. So what does that do? That I saw an article recently, the effect that they were having meetings in NATO and the EU about what to do when Trump is elected because they don't really know what to do. And this is, you know, really hard on them in terms of not only the money, the support, but the moral fiber of the United States, the city on the hill. They don't see us that way anymore. They must be really feeling poorly about this. And that means not only that they don't, you know, support NATO and the NATO principles. And article five, it means that they're more likely to make deals with autocrats. They're more likely to let Putin have his way and to give Putin kind of the chamberlain effect to appease him for the lack of other alternatives. This is very, very troubling. You saw, as I did, Heather Cox Richardson's piece today, it was as powerful as anything she's ever written. And Ann Applebaum can speak to this subject with an amazing voice. I mean, she has spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe. She knows how it works there. She knows what Putin has done and will do to KGB and so forth. So we have voices warning us and telling us. Unfortunately, you know, the Congress, a particular house, those people are not educated. They have no memory. They have no understanding of where we are in the group. They have no understanding of the consequences, the implications of Trump's remarks. And they, it's not a joke to them. They really believe it. They will follow him. They will follow him to suicide. It's a cult. It's Jim Jones in Guyanatown, Jonestown. And that's what we have. Well, let's talk about Congress because there is a segment of the mega-Republicans, both in the Senate and in the House, that are pro-Putin. They're pro-Russia. You can tell by their comments and their statements. And Tuberville is one of them, as far as I'm concerned. But let's talk about the 17 brave soul Republicans in the Senate. By the way, the Senate bill passed 70 to 29 to fund that package for Ukraine. Good for them. And 17 brave souls came out against Donald Trump directly to support that bill. And who thought that would happen? But there we go. We have it. Now it's up to the House Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan basis to try to get this bill on the floor and get it around Mike, you know, Mike Johnson, get it around him, the Speaker of the House. But good for the 17 that voted for that. And I guess one of them was Mike Turner, a Republican from Ohio, who just came back from his third trip from Ukraine. And he said the following, we have to get this done. This is no longer an issue of what do we do? How do we support Ukraine? If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine. So there you have it from one of the Republicans, not a Democrat. You know, you say abandoning and the word doesn't happen. That was Mike Turner said abandoning. Oh, I would say abandoning, too. But I think the word doesn't have the meaning in the language that really captures what is going on here. Abandoning means we turn our backs in history. And when Heather Cox Richardson says it's an inflection point, it's an inflection point in history, the United States will never be the same. We will be stab in the back. We will have no moral suasion going forward. No influence. We will be under Putin's spell. And under the spell of all autocrats, we will never be able to make a deal with anybody because we will have no credibility. So, okay, abandoning is not like, you know, abandoning your wife or your kids. It's like abandoning the world. The abandonment is monumental. And that's what we have here. So, and by the way, you gave the numbers on these votes. They also voted in the House, which is to me a train wreck. The House is a train wreck. You can quote me on that. They voted to impeach Mayorkas, as if to change the subject. And that vote was one off. I think it was 214 to impeach and 213 not to impeach. As I said, it's a train wreck. And they did impeach him. He's probably not going to, you know, get impeached in the Senate, but the stigma of being impeached. And now the GOP and Trump will go out to the world and say, Mayorkas was impeached because he and Biden have done a terrible job at the border. This is why we want to, this is why we insist on, you know, reforming the law about the border, even though they oppose the reformation. So I'm very upset about that. It's not just a few people. It's 214 people in the House that are playing Trump's game. Okay. You know, you had mentioned Mike Turner's, you know, using the word abandoning, and maybe that was not the strongest word to use. And I like how you stated it. Let me just hit another quote from Mr. Turner because this speaks a little bit stronger and maybe gets to your point. He said, the speaker will need to bring this to the floor. You're either for or against authoritarian government. You're either for invading democratic countries or you're not. You're either for or against the killing of innocent civilians. You're either for or against Russia reconstituting the Soviet Union. Pretty black and white terms and good for him for being a Republican and being an old Republican that knows the value of security around the world and putting Russia, North Korea, China in its in its corral, trying to contain them. Your thoughts about where the House goes as far as getting around Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House. They have some maneuvers, I understand. And I'm wondering if you think that will be successful. On that point, they have to override him. They have to find a way to use the rules and procedures of overriding the speaker to get there. They can't, they can't get rid of him. He's there. Republicans wouldn't agree to that. They're happy as punch now, that he's made all these outrageous moves. So they're going to have to override the speaker. I don't know the rules. I frankly doubt they'd be able to find a way to override him on this point and have his heard. And query what happens when they haven't heard. Remember the vote on Mayorkas? It's not clear to me that all the Republican, remember that Trump is making these midnight calls. He's threatening them. He's threatening to primary them. He's threatening to hurt them, to get his base on after them, to swap them. Who knows what. He's a mafia don. And so, you know, even if it gets to a vote query, what's what is going to happen on the vote? And the other thing, the quote you read, I think it raises an interesting question in my mind. And that is Ukraine. Ukraine was all the rage when it happened, even before it happened, with Maiden Square. And Ukraine, you know, people were sending money to Ukraine. Americans were going to fight with Ukrainian army. The press was covering it like a blanket every day, every night with all those stories of violence and atrocity. We were really into it, we meaning the whole country. And the quote you read, you know, really tells me that we've moved on from that. We have simply not paid attention to it. It's not, you know, it's theoretical now. It's not real. We don't include it in our passions. How do you think that happened? How does that happen? Well, we talked about it a little while ago, and that is the forgetfulness of the press, the forgetfulness of the American people, and the constant droning disinformation of the Trump crowd and the Putin crowd in this country. You know, you can direct public attention that way with social media. So many people are interested. And finally, the young people get old. The young people are replaced with another generation. The next generation may not have much of a memory. So the whole thing evolves, you know. I think what was happening in 2016 is not going to be top of mind in 2024. Not going to be top of mind. The kids who were there are no longer kids, and maybe they're maybe they don't care anymore. And the ones who replace them as the new generation of voters, they have no memory of what happened back then. They haven't been following this. They've been following the disinformation in social media. So there are many factors. But I think we have moved on from Ukraine. Ukraine is like at best, you know, a theoretical history that you might read in a book maybe later, but it is not something you really care about. You know, if you really think about what's taking place this week, and particularly when the President of the United States calls another politician, and Trump says he's not a politician, but he is, and he uses the term un-American. I mean, if you just think about the past five presidents, you would never hear someone call another American un-American. You just wouldn't hear it. Here we go. The president calling Trump un-American. Do you think the millennials, Gen Z, do you think they they perceive Donald Trump with his comments about NATO as un-American? Or do they even understand the implication of what Donald Trump said as American or not un-American? Well, you know, Trump has done something incredibly outrageous. There aren't words in the language to describe that destructive. I guess the question is, do the younger generations perceive that as seriously as you and I do? No, I'm with you. So when Biden gets up there and has this opportunity to let him have it, you know, we always wait for Joe Biden to let him have it. And more often than not, we're disappointed with the level of response that Biden provides. And although, you know, he said as before, he said the right things at the right time. And he made the right points. It wasn't sufficiently, sufficiently strident for me. And the word un-American is not sufficiently strident for me. In the in the lexicon of American history and political history, it doesn't mean that much. It doesn't mean anything to fan the younger generation. There are much better words to use to describe what Trump did. And even then it's not enough. I think you should have called him out in every which way. And to call him un-American, it really doesn't have any force or power with most of the people who are listening. So it was a bad choice of words. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. I thought, although it was a bold word, but you're right. It's not as as strident as it ought to be. We've used the word before in some other acts and words of Donald Trump as traitorous. You know, that other commentators have used that word. Yeah. Other commentators, and I agree with them, have said that in making these remarks, Trump can committed more, say more treason against the country. You know, what is it, the Logan Act? You can't have a private citizen doing diplomacy with other countries. And yet that's exactly what Trump is doing. He's making statements on foreign policy and he's engaging with foreign leadership. Although, you know, we don't know what he's doing with Putin, but he's doing something with Putin. The bottom line is he shouldn't be doing this. He can't be doing this. And yet he's doing it and it is treason. So I think the term treason fits better. Okay. Well, I agree that I don't think has any business of influencing foreign policy as a private citizen. I don't care if he's on the campaign trail or not. I mean, this is much more serious than Dennis Rodman going to North Korea meeting with Kim Jong-un about a variety of topics. The fan club that had for Rodman, clearly Donald Trump has damaged the credibility of the United States as far as its alliance with NATO. No two ways about it. So spot on. Do you have any last thoughts before we end? Yeah, he's always done this. He did this in Helsinki. You mentioned it earlier. And his whole approach to Putin and to the war has been consistently in Putin's favor and against Ukraine. Why? Because Putin wants to win that war, even though he really shouldn't. It's morally outrageous. It's war crimes. But Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump's policy, if you will, is against United States morality, United States foreign policy, United States ethics. And he speaks by himself, but he's able to get all these people to come along with him because he's a cult leader. And my concern is that we are going to lose our position in the world if we have not already lost it. He damaged it. Mind you, he damaged it profoundly in his first term. On day one of the second term, where he hands Ukraine over to Putin, he's going to put the pennies on the eyes. And that's what we're facing. That's international. Domestically, it's going to be the same thing. Forget democracy. Forget the Constitution. Forget the rule of law. I alone will tell you what to do. We are going to be living in a different world. And here's my final point. We are already living in a different world. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for your thoughts and your powerful comments. All right. Won't you join us next week? I'd like to thank Jay Fidel, my co-host. And we'll have the same show next week, Different Topic. Tim Apachele, your host for American Issues Take One. And until then, aloha.