Peter Baker
speaker
291 appearances
9 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 9 Jan
Peter Baker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Natalie?
Yeah, I just want to add that think about the last great shock that we experienced globally, the pandemic. And we ended up with shortages of goods. We ended up discovering that our supply chains were not very resilient and a lot of confusion, right? It was hard to get stuff on container ships. In the U.S., our railroad system couldn't handle it. We supposedly ran out of truck drivers.
Our warehouses got all messed up. And I think you wrote a whole book about this. I wrote a whole book about it. It's called How the World Ran Out of Everything Inside the Global Supply Chain.
This is a self-inflicted shock. This is a similar set of... of unknowns where we are asking virtually every large company on earth to take a look at where they're buying and selling their stuff and think about moving it around, absorbing very quickly a dramatic change to the terms of trade. And we don't know what's going to happen, but we know that the last time we had a big shock
it was extremely disruptive.
It was traumatic.
That's the gamble that the president is telling us he is making. The president is telling us that if we go through this period of pain, we will come out the other end much stronger with many more jobs. But so much would have to go right for that to pan out. And we know that immediately what we're looking at is enormous chaos and upheaval.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, Michael, I've been covering these meetings at White Houses since 1996, and I've never seen anything like this, never. You had the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, show up for a meeting with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, in the middle of a war. with so much at stake. And so, you know, everybody was looking to this meeting to see how it would come together.
I mean, it was extraordinary. It was excruciating. It was a brutal dressing down of a foreign leader in the Oval Office. Presidents just don't do that. They get frustrated at times, and sometimes there are pointed moments, but nothing like this verbal assault that we've seen even on an adversary, much less on an ally.
And I think in history, we're going to look back on this as a unique singular moment. Right.
Absolutely right. This is a rupture of a relationship now between the United States and Ukraine, 11 years after Russia first invaded, three years after its full-fledged invasion in 2022. And America has been Ukraine's best friend, biggest partner, most important patron.
And if this rupture, this blow up, this meltdown in the Oval Office means that the relationship now is on the rocks, it has great consequence for Ukraine, especially. It has great consequences for Russian aggression in the world, for Europe, and for the United States, I would say.
Right. Well, first of all, it's important to know the history. President Trump has never liked Ukraine in particular. He was convinced way back in his first term that Ukraine had been opposed to his election in 2016. This is a Russian talking point. Right. This is a Russian intelligence fable, but one that Trump bought into. And, of course, Zelensky was the other guy on the phone.
He had the, quote, perfect phone call, not so perfect, that led to his impeachment, in which he tried to bully Zelensky. into launching a fake investigation of Joe Biden.
Very awkward history. And during the last four years, when Trump was out of office, he was never supportive of Ukraine in its war against Russia. He praised Vladimir Putin for being a genius for sending troops to pressure Ukraine into making concessions. And he opposed... aid to Ukraine, basically blocked it by Republicans in the House, forced them to block it for about six months.
And sitting next to him was J.D. Vance, who was famously quoted saying, I don't care what happens in Ukraine. So these are not supporters of Ukraine going into this meeting. And then over the last two weeks, you see the relationship really deteriorate. changed dramatically.
Instead of Joe Biden sending arms and standing with Ukraine saying, we will never, never, never not be with you, you have Donald Trump coming in and calling Zelensky a dictator, saying it was Ukraine, falsely, that started the war.
Adopting Russian talking points about whether Zelensky should have to have elections, never mind that Vladimir Putin is the dictator, that he started the war, and that he has fake elections at home.
He was basically 180 degrees changing American policy towards Russia and Ukraine, making clear that in this new Cold War that we've been talking about now for so long, America was essentially switching sides.
Showing 61–80 of 291 · page 4 of 15
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