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Degree Cool Rush is back, and it smells like victory for all of us. Daniel Hoffman joins us now, former CIA station chief, served in Moscow, Iraq, Pakistan, South Asia, Europe, and a Fox News contributor. Daniel, your thoughts, what should we know about this rare earth deal? We know that it's going to be a partnership, they're going to use a lot of our equipment and our technology, and there's a lot of unknown metals in the ground, but more importantly, we'll be on the ground.
Yeah, so there are reportedly 20 of the 50 critical minerals are there, including titanium, which is used to build missiles and airplanes and ships, and lithium, which we know is used to build batteries. This was a deal that President Zelensky actually first discussed back in 2024, in the summer of 2024, and when he became president, President Trump decided to pursue it. It looks like it's good to go, it just needs to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament, and as you point out rightly, I agree, it's good news for the United States. We've got skin in the game now in Ukraine, this commercial partnership that we have. It's not going to be easy, it's not like dipping your shovel into the ground and digging stuff up, there's going to be a lot of capital expenditure to excavate the rare earth minerals, but that's a great business project on which to work for the United States and Ukraine.
So just to give you an idea, I mean, we have great reporters and they have great access to the White House. So listen to the exchange here as President Trump talked about it, and right next to the Secretary of Treasury cut 33. Is it true that the Ukraine minerals deal is about to be signed in the next 24 hours or so? There's some reports saying that, and if it's true, has the deal changed at all from the last time we've heard about it?
Well, I'll ask Scott to answer the question because he's responsible for it. Yeah, our side is ready to sign. The Ukrainians decided last night to make some last minute changes. We're sure that they will reconsider that, and we are ready to sign this afternoon if they are. Can you talk about this last minute changes, what was removed or put in its place? Nothing's been removed. It's the same agreement that we agreed to on the weekend. No changes on our side. You know, what happened is I guess they wanted some changes on their side.
So in other words, on you know, this is stuff that needs to be mined. We'll get it out. We'll work with them.
They're very they're they're a capitalistic society as imperfect as their democracy is. So I walk I walk away over the last three weeks and hearing about all these meetings with Moscow and Steve Whitcoff. And I think Russia has dug in more ever since Whitcoff got involved. I can't see any change in their behavior except they're more aggressive.
That's right, Brian. And they've never veered away from their strategic objective to overthrow the government of Ukraine. The only thing that will stop them from doing that is when we make it clear that that just isn't possible any longer. And I think they have carried on with these discussions with the special envoy. Look, Special Envoy Whitcoff was sent to Moscow by the president to try to strike a deal to entice Putin to the negotiating table. And Putin has continued to rain down hell on Ukraine's infrastructure and their civilians and absolutely has shown no interest in a ceasefire. His three day ceasefire that he's put into effect is just because he doesn't control his own airspace and is concerned that Ukraine will have the capability and to blow things up and and disparage Putin's Victory Day parade coming up next week. So that's that was the motivation behind that brief ceasefire that he is that he's going to put into effect.
So a couple of things. This is what I've read. You know better. You never walk into a meeting with Vladimir Putin alone, even if you're Henry Kissinger, let alone not at the very least your own interpreter.
We're using the Russian interpreter and we're sending Steve Whitcoff, who obviously has got a lot of talent because he wouldn't have had the success he's had in real estate up until now and confidence. But come on, don't on what planet do we think he's going to walk away with a good deal? Look, his formative experience in life isn't this. It is. It's real estate and good for him.
He is smart. But the idea that you could go to Russia and deal with the KGB guy in the Kremlin without ever having learned Russian yourself or spent years becoming an expert on Russia and the region. I mean, that just that makes it extraordinarily difficult. It would be like Brian, like me jumping into the real estate market away from my own expertise at CIA and trying to do big real estate deals. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't even try.
I certainly wouldn't want to risk my own money doing it. The fact that that Special Envoy Whitcoff isn't bringing with him a Russia expert and I'm not volunteering for this because I like being home with my children, but there's plenty of them out there. People who have served in Russia, diplomats, retired CIA officers, why not, who speak Russian and can interpret what's going on and be a good consigliere. I think that would have been a smart move. And I think the fact that the Special Envoy didn't do that and I know he's had the opportunity to bring people in as special government employees with that sort of expertise. The fact that he hasn't done that or even been accompanied by General Kellogg, who would have been a very good consigliere to him and knows a thing or two about fighting wars.
That leaves him really wide open to not understanding fully what's going on around him. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to him. It's just that it's a complicated issue and one that requires a lot of substantive expertise that I'm sorry that he doesn't have. You don't have to be sorry. I don't. I mean, just like I said, I mean, there's just there's no I'm not giving my opinion.
It's a fact. Never before. I mean, Henry Kissinger with all his knowledge, with Condoleezza Rice, a Sovietologist, she would never do that.
She's been her whole life doing this. Now, Whitcoff wants to come in because he can understand deals and can understand closing. But I don't I don't get it. And I think, you know, a lot of times people get rotated out. Rubio's got to be the one to go in there. And I know he went with Waltz and I know he would go in there fully armed.
But thing is, Dan, let's just forget about all that. What is the situation on the ground right now? Both sides. Look, Ukraine is continuing to defend themselves because Russia is continuing to mount an onslaught military onslaught against Ukraine. You've got now roughly 10,000 North Korean soldiers who are fighting and reportedly over 100 Chinese fighters. I wrote a column about that in today's Washington Times.
Folks can read about it online later this afternoon. Vladimir Putin wants to stay in the fight. And again, until we show him that there's nothing to be gained by doing that, he's going to keep fighting because his objective is to destroy Ukraine as a state. And we've stopped him from doing that. But we never enabled Ukraine to punch back hard enough to stop the war. And look, wars end when somebody loses or both sides are too exhausted to fight or when domestically it becomes untenable, because like it did for us in Vietnam, people rise up and protest against the war they don't support. Well, that's not going to happen in Russia because it's a dictatorship and there's no freedom of speech or assembly of the press. So you've got to stop Putin. And we haven't done, we didn't do that. The Biden team had three years to do that and they failed. And that's where we are, why we are, where we're at right now. But they've lost 800,000 people or 950,000 people.
One of the figures I saw dead or wounded off the battlefield. They've put so much money into this. I mean, every day the Ukrainians are out fighting them, correct?
Yeah. I mean, that's abhorrent to you and me and to the president of the United States of America. Putin doesn't care how much money he spends on this. He doesn't care that he's got an unbalanced wartime economy, that he's on his knees begging China to import his hydrocarbons and begging Iran for drones and North Korea for their soldiers and their artillery. He doesn't care about how many dead soldiers there are on his side. Certainly doesn't care about how many innocent Ukrainian kids he's kidnapped or killed.
None of that matters to him. What matters to him is staying in power in Russia. And he's at war with democracy. Could never allow Ukraine to have the sort of links, commercial ties to Europe that Ukraine wants or to become a functioning democracy. And I'm telling you, Brian, I know people like to criticize President Zelensky or Ukraine.
He's democratically elected. That's a great contrast to Putin. And Ukraine does have a functioning democracy.
It's not perfect, but it's way better than most of the rest of the world. And Putin could never stomach that on his border. And that's why he launched the war. It's got nothing to do with NATO, which he knows is a defensive alliance designed to deter his own aggression. Look at what the Russians did.
The Soviets, they conquered Eastern Europe or Prague Spring, hundreds of thousands of troops to crush democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1968. That's in Putin's bloodstream. That's what he does. And the sooner that our special envoy recognizes that, the better we'll have policy towards Russia. So having said all that, if Vladimir Putin is not he might be he might be evil, but he's not stupid. He sees an opportunity that Trump's put all this political capital on the line. He's taken a lot of political he's taken a lot of criticism already for not being tougher on Russia in these negotiations. We all know about getting rid of no protest in North Street we've done, too, and the sanctions.
He's about to sanction the central bank, I believe. But does Putin understand that he had actually a rare opportunity with this businessman president is willing to give him a fresh start that would actually probably reestablish relations, economic relations that would ultimately boost him, that would that would allow him to get back on the swift financial system. And that Trump was one of the few American leaders ever that would have bucked the rest of NATO, just done his own thing, much maybe to the detriment of his own political fortunes and his party.
Listen, I'm going to say what I used to say when I testified on Capitol Hill, much to the chagrin of our elected leaders sometimes. Vladimir Putin hates us, Brian. We are Russia's main enemy, Glavny Protivnik.
That's what they call us. He doesn't want to do a deal that enhances President Trump's image or stature or gets him a Nobel Peace Prize. He's not interested in that. If he wanted economic relations with Europe, he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine in the first place. He's perfectly fine being allied with his other fellow dictatorships like Iran and North Korea and China and swiveling his economy no matter what price they pay for doing that.
What you're saying is a rational actor model that would apply to a United States elected politician. I'm sorry it doesn't apply to Putin. And the key to diplomacy, and to get back to our special envoy, is the capacity to see the world through Vladimir Putin's twisted KGB eyes.
It just isn't, unfortunately, the way we would like it to be. He's a different kind of leader. He's not going to see the world the way we do. I'm telling you, President Trump cares more about Russian people, Russian future, Russian soldiers than Putin ever will.
And to me that speaks volumes. But it also means we have to have a realistic foreign policy. And maybe the special envoy and others, you know, the administration, go get George Kennan's memoirs, famous diplomat, kind of a Cassandra in the Roosevelt administration on the Soviet Union.
Read them. That's a good description of what we're facing today. So far we understand Russian officials continue to demand full Ukrainian capitulation on the sole basis of which Russia is willing to accept a peace agreement. Having said that, there's nothing to talk about.
But my worry is that we'll walk away. For example, there's a report out there, not denied, that they want to pay for Patriot missiles. And we have them and we haven't given it to them. Why would we not give them defensive missiles that they're paying for?
That's right. That's what we need to be doing. And look, I'm again, sorry to say this. We'd rather the war never have been fought. We'd rather it doesn't, that we could stop. We wish we could stop it today. That's just not realistic. What's done is done from three years ago, three, almost four years ago soon.
We can't change any of that. What we can do is arm Ukraine so that they stay safe and secure and independent, that we don't reward Vladimir Putin's aggression against Ukraine and that we get this good mineral deal off the ground. And we're able to build this economic, profitable economic relationship with Ukraine. And they're right, Brian. If we could sell Patriot missiles to Ukraine, my goodness, that's like a win-win for us.
I would think so. Cut the Russian army down to size, stop Putin's aggression at the point of attack. And we are able to secure our investment in Ukraine. Good for us.
Dan, the thing I'm walking away with, they hate us and stop acting any differently. Daniel Hoffman, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you, Brian. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes.
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