SPEAKER_02

The point is that when you don't get that piece of the chapter, then you miss what's happening right now.

So when you're talking about like these, essentially what Donald Trump was saying, the way he was trying to sell it to Zelensky was like, look, do this rare earth minerals deal with us.

And this is kind of like a security guarantee.

It's not exactly a security guarantee, but if we're in business with you and then Putin's trying to fuck up our business, hey, he's picking a fight with us too.

But the whole point is that that's exactly what caused this whole catastrophe.

Vladimir Putin and the entire Russian elite have been crystal clear about this, that they go, look, we can tolerate a neutral Ukraine.

We could tolerate NATO up to Ukraine.

Ukraine is neutral.

And then there's Russia.

We cannot tolerate Ukraine being a part of America's military alliance.

That's a step too far.

But every time we try to let him be neutral, neutral seems like it's never good enough.

And that never actually works.

So if you're going to come in here and say neutral is not good enough, they're going to be part of the West.

Then we're going to say, actually, we'll take him as part of Russia instead.

Now, he also believes, as he says all the time, which I just think is goofy and ridiculous,

un-American, but he also believes that like, yeah, they're not really a real country and they're kind of historically ours anyway.

And, you know, he's got his own views on that, but that's not what the war was about.

And everybody, you know, and when I was here with, which I was very excited to do, because I'm,

a weird romantic and have a dash of autism or something like that.