Michael Weiss

He's like, the Russians are still – they don't want to stop the war.

They have maximalist demands.

It's not just about Ukraine.

It's about what they refer to as the root causes of the war, which is to say 40 years of NATO expansion and Pax Americana or as they would put it, American hegemony.

They want to end that.

They want to relitigate everything from 1991 on.

And we're not prepared to do that.

Or at least Marco Rubio isn't prepared to do that because there's still vestiges of the kind of internationalist traditional Republican in him.

So he went back and told Trump, there's no reason to go to Budapest and abase yourself again.

Like this is just going to be the same thing.

What Rubio didn't know.

What John Ratcliffe didn't know, what the State Department didn't know, what the National Security Council didn't know, and what much of the White House did not know was that whilst this is going on, Kirill Dmitriev, a very opportunistic, very wily figure in the Russian government, he's the head of their sovereign wealth fund.

He was educated in the United States, degrees at Harvard and whatnot.

So he understands- I Googled him this

So, Dmitriev comes to the United States, and he goes on a little propaganda tour.

He meets with...

Representative Luna gives her a box of chocolates with Putin's face on them and a book of quotations by Putin and talks about peace.

And he's doing the rounds.

But he's also meeting with Steve Witkoff, Trump's friend of many years, a strip mall developer from the Bronx.

So outer borough boys stick together.