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Ambassador to NATO, Matt Whedaker. Matt, welcome. Great to talk to you. I know you got a heads up that the president was going to make a big announcement on Monday. How would you characterize it?
Well, Brian, it's good to be with you, first of all. And it's good to see you this morning, Fox and friends as well. I always enjoy chatting about this, and I know this is an issue you follow very closely. You know, I think the president obviously wanted to create the space to bring a peace. He's a peacemaker.
You know, we could go through all of the peace deals, whether it was ending the 12-day war, whether it was, you know, the peace deal in the Congo, whether it's the upcoming peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Everywhere you look, you know, President Trump and his team are trying to negotiate peace, but he's been very frustrated. He's expressed that publicly with Vladimir Putin not being willing to come to the table and actually be serious about resolving this conflict. He hasn't, you know, the Russians have made very little advance in Ukraine on the battlefield while the slaughter continues and Russians are losing their lives in the thousands per week. And at the same time, there's really nothing strategic about hitting a Apartment buildings and children's hospitals, and the kind of things you're seeing happen on the battlefield every day.
Not the battlefield, in the Kyiv and Odessa, and places. It's causing fear and chaos to what end? Just to harass and to bother the Ukrainians and to try to maybe break their will. But they continue to fight on. And I think President Trump acknowledges all of this and he's looking for a way to bring peace.
And I think making Ukraine stronger will maybe bring. Create the leverage ultimately to bring peace in this conflict. But, you know, it's, you know, President Trump, I think, was very firm yesterday with both talking about Europe and our NATO allies buying American weapons and then providing them to The battlefield in Ukraine, but at the same time, these secondary sanctions I think are going to be very powerful too, because India and Russia and China, especially, are funding the war by buying. Russian oil that nobody else will buy. True.
But they're not installed yet. It's going to be fifty days, right?
So fifty days to that point. In the meantime, we're going to be giving seventeen Patriot missile batteries. Do you know anything else specifically that they're going to be getting? Because I know they need artillery. Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously, you know, first of all, I want to make sure that your listeners understand this is all of these weapons that are being sold to our European allies and then provided to Ukraine through kind of mechanisms at NATO are not going to make America and our strategic interests any weaker.
So we are not going to give anything out of our stockpiles that we need. That's the most important thing to understand as well. You know, but it's going to be a whole bunch of things, you know, from artillery shells and munitions to, you know, like you mentioned, Patriot weapon systems and other missiles. I think, you know, right now, you know, the generals that deal with these issues on a daily basis and understand the movement and the logistics of this are moving things already that are available to be sold to our European NATO allies and provided to Ukraine.
So it's happening in real time. And at the same time, I don't think from a tactical standpoint, you know, talking about exactly how many. And where and when is going to help Ukraine in their fight to defend themselves against this Russian assault?
So, the 50 days, we wonder what Russia is going to be doing. Their offensive, their spring, their summer offensive has already started.
So, Senator Lindsey Graham spearheaded the effort in the Senate to give the president the leverage he needs to say to Vladimir Putin: look, these sanctions are bipartisan. They're coming down the pike. All I have to do is sign them. And now, all your trading partners, Brazil, India, and China especially, are going to feel the wrath. Here's Senator Lindsey Graham cut nine.
How does Russia stay in business? China, India and Brazil buy most of their oil and gas now. Russia is weaning themselves off.
So President Trump announced today, if you're buying Russian oil and gas, To keep Putin's war machine running, we're going to put a 100% tariff on all your products coming into America in 50 days. And you know what? It will change this war. It will bring this war to an end. Donald Trump has done something no other American president has been able to do in my lifetime: get Europe to up their game when it comes to our common defense.
So, Matt, you understand Washington, you understand President Trump, and now you have a sense of where NATO stands. How does this all come together? And how do you think Vladimir Putin processes it?
Well, first of all, I just want to emphasize something that the senator said and put a little twist on it. That is, trading with the United States of America is a privilege. You know, having access to the United States markets, the most powerful economy in the world, is a privilege. And if you don't play by the rules, if you aren't for peace, if you continue to support rogue nations like Russia that are kind of fighting a war to take over the entire country of Ukraine, then you don't have access to our markets. And that's why these secondary sanctions are going to be so powerful against China and India and Brazil.
But at the same time, our European allies took advantage of a peace dividend for way too long. And President Trump said that this isn't fair to the American taxpayer. We need to equalize with our European allies. And Europe needs to take over the primary responsibility for the defense of the European continent. And that's what we accomplished at the NATO summit last month.
And President Trump in that room was. Very strong, very powerful. He stayed to talk and listened to every single one of our allies. He heard them loud and clear, especially their comments on this war in Ukraine and how important it is to European security. And he said, okay, you know what?
We make the best weapons in the world. We're going to sell them to our European allies. They can provide them to Ukraine. And so we have, again, taken this burden of providing munitions and defensive armaments to Ukraine off the backs of the American worker. And again, President Trump promised that he would do this, and he's delivered it.
I think it's extraordinary the way he has come up with this really smart approach to this. And at the same time, I think Ukraine is now going to have the proper weapons and equipment to continue to defend themselves. And hopefully, you know, we can, that will create the environment for a peace deal.
So two things. President said, Europe has a lot of spirit for this war. Didn't think so at first, but they do. In Sputnik, which is one of their newspapers over there. Here's a quote I think you'd find intriguing: If Trump folds to neocons on Ukraine, his MAGA base will turn on him like Biden 2.0.
So, Matt. This is politics. Russia feels as though, and they might be right, they know our politics so well, they're using language that maybe Steve Bannon or Marjorie Taylor Greene would use.
So they understand what's going on in America to put a statement out like that. Yeah.
Well, a couple of things. First of all, you know, anything that Russian media says, and I get the clips, you know, every day to see what they're saying, is usually it's 180 degrees opposite. You know, there is nobody that has campaigned more than Donald Trump across the United States of America and has a sense of what was referred to as a MAGA base. I have been campaigning for the last really eight years when I haven't been at the Department of Justice or the Department of State for President Trump. And so I've interacted not only with the MAGA base, but also folks that support President Trump because he's right for this moment in time.
And no one is ever going to accuse me, Brian, of being a neocon. I have been pretty consistent with what I believe is the proper place for the military, for diplomacy, and how it all interacts and how it all is put together. And I think what President Trump has come up with here is an America-first foreign policy. It puts the American worker front and center. It delivers jobs to middle Americans.
Because we're going to be making those weapons. We're going to be making those weapons. Exactly. I mean, I've been. And our allies are going to be buying the weapons.
Exactly. And the other thing you're going to have to realize is as Europe takes over the responsibility for the defense of the European continent, they're going to have to. Reindustrialize. They're going to have to create a defense industrial base that, quite frankly, has deteriorated. And so, right now, the best weapons in the world are being made by the United States of America.
Not quick enough. But we have to make war of them, we got to expand that base. Desperately. And that's one of the primary responsibilities post-Hague Summit that I'm doing. That I'm out there, I'm working with American industry on co-production, joint venture, other opportunities to expand production in the United States of America, ways that, again, we can create jobs in middle America for the folks that really have been oftentimes left behind and the people that Donald Trump identified.
As really being kind of ignored by the policymakers in Washington, D.C. I mean, again, Donald Trump is delivering on campaign promises. Real American Freestyle is the first ever unscripted pro wrestling league created by Hulk Hogan, Chad Bronstein, Israel Martinez, and Eric Bischoff to give elite wrestlers a real shot at a professional career. Real American Freestyle is where Olympians, world champions, and NCAA legends come to compete, not in a cage, not in a script, but on the mat in front of fans around the world. This is real wrestling.
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Watch it live at noon Eastern, Monday through Thursday on Foxnews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Get the podcast five days a week at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. I mean, you could have a theory, and this is what you want to do. And then the real life gets in, and then you have to make adjustments in real time.
The president won in. Nobody said that he was going after Vladimir Putin or wanted war, but he saw that Putin was impossible to deal with. And Vladimir Putin lost the one person in the West that was going to give him an off-ramp to a grinding war that's lost over a million people off the battlefield. But listen to what Steve Bannon says. Who's the former advisor to the president?
He says we're about to arm people we have literally no control over. This is not the global war in terror. This is old fashioned grinding war in the bloodlands of Europe, and we're being dragged into it. Ambassador, you know I disagree with that statement, but that's what Marjorie Taylor Greene and people like that are saying.
So, what's your reaction to that? What's your message to that? Yeah, well, I mean, listen, Brian, you and I understand history and we understand sort of how Vietnam happened, how the escalation happened. And obviously, we want to avoid that. You know, this is not about American boots on the ground.
This is a European war. That is going to be funded now by Europe. And again, we will sell our arms to Europe. And at the same time, Ukraine is desperate to join the European Union. They want to look to the West instead of to the East.
And that's what this battle really is, at its heart, is about: Vladimir Putin doesn't want to let go of Ukraine and have it become part of Europe instead of part of the Russian sphere of influence. And again, I trust, I think Donald Trump has earned. Our trust on these matters. I think he knows exactly where to find the balance here and the fact that, again, there's not going to be any American boots on the ground. This is merely a business transaction of selling the best equipment in the world to the Ukrainians through Europe.
Just a prediction. Within fifty days, do you think both sides sincerely come to I know Ukraine's there ready, do you think there will be sincerely at some type of ceasefire talks within those days, unlike the historians that show up for the Russians, for the ceasefire talks instead of the officers? Do you think there's going to be something sincere on the Russian side? Yeah, I think Russia right now is trying to calculate what their next step is and decide how to view this. I think this is a very serious move by Donald Trump on two fronts.
And I think it should provide for a moment to recalculate on the Russian side. And I would expect that this is the moment where they can come to the table and to use the word off-ramp and find an off-ramp to a ceasefire and ultimately a lasting peace deal. But President Trump said it yesterday in the Oval Office: Vladimir Putin ultimately wants Ukraine. And so Ukraine is going to have to be strong and hardened to stay independent. And again, they're going to have to fix a lot of issues too.
I mean, they have an issue with corruption. They need to clean that up. They need to become kind of a first world type country that has rule of law, gets rid of their corruption, and really kind of moves into the modern sort of nation state. But at the same time, I think Donald Trump, again, has. has earned our trust on these and I think he knows exactly how to thread this.
Ambassador, thanks so much. It's a busy time for NATO these days, and we'll see where we go from there. But the president sent certainly a strong message to Russia, and I think they miscalculated Trump. They have not figured him out, even though they think they did. Matt, thank you very much.
Appreciate it. Good to see you, my friend. All right. Ambassador Matt Whitaker, NATO. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gowdy Podcast.
I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcast.com.
