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Get started now at Bluehost.com. Three-star General H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor under Donald Trump, and he wrote a great best-selling book about those years. He is now an administration with the Hoover Institute Senior Fellow. The name of his book is At War With Ourselves, My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House. General, great to see you.
First off, things at hand. The president is going to talk to Vladimir Putin today. You know President Trump, you know Putin.
What do you think is going to happen? Yeah, well, you know, President Trump, as you see, he tries to separate the, you know, the relationship from the issues at hand. And, you know, and this is how he's getting Putin to the table, trying to get him to the table. Well, you know, the problem, Brian, is Putin is, first of all, like the best liar in the world, you know, and Putin has aspirations to go far beyond anything that's in relation to what, you know, what we can give him, you know, what we can do for him. So I think what's going to happen is Putin is going to try, he's going to try hard to get President Trump to accept something that is unacceptable to the Ukrainians and try to turn the U.S. against Ukraine.
I don't think President Trump's going to fall for it, you know, because what he's been doing is he's been making these kind of statements about Putin and about his responsibility for the war that I think a lot of people are upset about. But what he's trying to do is get that initial conversation. The problem, Brian, is, you know, with Russia, every time you make a concession, it doesn't like warm their heart. And then they negotiate in good faith. They just pocket whatever you give them and then make the next unreasonable demand. So I think that's how it's going to play out, sadly.
But hey, it's worth a shot. The president is, I think, motivated by wanting to end the war. But of course, you know, Russia wants to end the war on terms that are just simply unacceptable to the Ukrainians, the people who they have caused so much suffering and inflicted so many losses and rubbled their cities and kidnapped their children. You know, so, you know, hey, you know, war is not the best way of settling differences, but it's the only way to ensure they're not settled for you. And I think what Putin's hoping for is that President Trump will help him get off the mat. I don't think President Trump's going to do it, but, you know, we'll see what happens, right? It's just the beginning now.
They're posturing themselves as somebody on a roll. They seem to have forced the Ukrainians out of Kursk, and they say they're more on the offensive. Having those couple of days pauses without satellite information and intelligence didn't help Ukraine, but they're back on their feet now getting weapons.
I was struck by something you just said to Bill Hamer on television. 45% of all the casualties that Russia has suffered in the war happened this year. That's right.
That's right. Happened in 2024 and into 2025. And, you know, they were taking unsustainable casualties. Brian, this is what, Putin's trying to act like he's in a position of strength, but he's actually profoundly weak. Not only were they suffering during this period of time, about 30,000 casualties a month, but they couldn't generate more manpower. They're having a hard time doing it. They're emptying, you know, emptying their prisons and their penal colonies. And then also, you know, economically, he's put his country in an impossible position. I mean, they're sitting on piles of cash they can't convert. They're spending the equivalent of about 47% of their gross domestic product on defense.
It's not sustainable. They've got inflation at about 30%, you know, and he's got a labor shortage. I mean, you know, he's got nowhere to go. And so he's in this situation, I think, right now, analogous to what the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran was in in 2015. Barack Obama made the terrible mistake of helping that Ayatollah up off the mat in 2015 with, you know, with that terrible Iran nuclear deal and especially the big payments of cash and sanctions relief that went along with it. So, you know, I don't think President Trump's going to make that same mistake. I think he'll see through this, you know, and what he's trying to do is give Putin enough, as much room as he can initially.
But sadly, Brian, you know, I mean, I hope it works out, but I don't think it's going to because of Putin's intransigence. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million.
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How about this? You know, there's a couple of things that went up. I didn't really read this. The most insightful thought that was Bloomberg had a couple of things that that Russia was going to deal with. They actually the other demands I heard they keep put out that Ukraine will not mobilize soldiers. That's what Russia wants. The Ukraine will not train soldiers.
Ukraine will not receive foreign aid. I mean, come on. Those I mean, you put those demands out. You want you want nothing to do with the cease fire. Yeah, that's it's a surrender document, you know, basically is what they want. And then what they want is they want they're trying to set a trap for President Trump, which he's not going to step into. Remember, you know, Kim Jong Un tried to string along President Trump until the Hanoi summit and then President Trump just got up and walked out.
Right. And so this is what Putin's trying to do is get as much as he can for President Trump, because he wants to turn the United States against Ukraine and then use that as a way to to to separate the United States from Europe and then break apart Europe. It's important to remember not only is this onslaught against against Europe going on in Ukraine, but hey, you know, Putin is waging a shadow war across the continent. He's cut sea cables. He's burned down warehouses. He's you know, he's engaged in all forms of political subversion, you know, from, you know, from Romania to Slovakia, you know, so to Bulgaria. He wants to turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake. So he has aspirations that go far beyond any concession we can make to him. Right.
And that's the mistake that multiple presidents have made, two chancellors of Germany have made, you know, the president of France has made. So he's going to try to use the same playbook, Brian. And, you know, let's all hope it doesn't work on President Trump. I don't think it's going to. And he wants a one on one with President Trump in the White House after. He says ceasefire will work out the next 30 days.
I don't see how it happens. So let's, General, all the way to use some leverage, 300 billion dollars worth of frozen assets. Hey, Russia, you want that? Agree to a ceasefire.
You want that? Just the lines are where they stand. I'm sure they could use that. Real quick, the Houthi rebels, Iran, do you see this linkage? Do you think President Trump's patience is running out on Iran? Do you think Israel's is?
Absolutely. And so now what President Trump is doing is what previous presidents haven't done. I mean, you know, and only President Trump did in this first term, which is act like we know what the return address is for all of this suffering that's going on, not only in Israel, but across the Arab world. I mean, what Iran has done is perpetuated this cycle of sectarian violence in the civil wars there that created so much suffering. I mean, hell, Brian, half the Syrian population is dead, wounded or displaced, largely due to Syria. And the Houthis, not only are they shooting missiles into the Red Sea, they've been starving people to death and children to death. But generally, John McMaster, always great, volatile time. Way to spell it out for us. The Fox Nation Investigates podcast. Evil next door. Listen and follow now with Amazon Music. Must listen to podcasts from Fox News Audio.
