Michael Weiss

Not because he's pro-Ukraine.

He hates Ukraine and he has a visceral dislike for Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

tied to his first term when Zelensky found himself tangled up in his impeachment saga, through no fault of his own, by the way.

And he certainly wants to have a good relationship with Putin.

He likes Putin.

He can't understand why Putin doesn't like him back in the way that he just thinks is natural.

But one thing I think that kind of gets lost in sort of this sort of black and white portrayal of the situation is Donald Trump also likes power.

And he likes to see

traditional or historical adversaries of the United States beaten and battered, right?

Like he can be friends with the worst people in the world, dictators, war criminals, but that doesn't come at the expense of we're number one, right?

So when he sees Russia sort of getting hammered, when he sees a country that was meant to have been written off, Kiev in three days will fall, in two weeks Russia,

Russian soldiers are at the Polish border and they fight back and they fight back hard or they fight like hell, as he's fond of saying, and they humiliate Russia.

He kind of gets – it tickles his tummy, right?

I mean it's like we've discussed before.

The Israelis did what they did in Iran for the space of, what, 10, 12 days.

in order to show him, you know, come on in, the water's fine, this is easy.

You can just drop a couple of bunker busters and then call it a day and you can take credit for this.

He doesn't like war, but he likes acts of war.

He likes the spectacle of basically showing the world who's boss.

So Ukraine has been able to kind of keep him somewhat tethered by demonstrating this time and time again.