Tommy Vitor
speaker
4,356 appearances
16 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 7 Jul
Tommy Vitor’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 — 13 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 4.
Appearances
If you're a follow the money kind of guy or gal, crypto.
Get on the blockchain. Well, let's talk about Ukraine first, because Monday was the three-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the full-scale Russian invasion. According to Ukrainian officials, Russia marked the occasion by firing their largest drone volley at Ukraine ever.
But the biggest threat to Ukraine's future sovereignty now seems to be coming from Russia and the United States, which is a welcome addition for everyone. There are a bunch of European leaders who flew to Kiev this week to offer more assistance and moral support. I think the UK offered $5 billion, Spain a billion. The EU is reportedly preparing about a $20 billion aid package.
But obviously, none of that is going to fill the gap that seems to be about to be left by the US. French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to D.C. to personally lobby Trump. on all things Ukraine and pitch an idea for a postwar international peacekeeping force.
Macron said during their joint press conference that a peace deal must, quote, not mean surrender of Ukraine and that it must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty. Macron also pushed back on Trump's claim that all European aid to Ukraine was just a loan and that they were going to get paid back, whereas the U.S. is somehow getting screwed. Here's a clip of that back and forth in The Oval.
Sounded fun.
Yeah, I just slapped him around. So, Ben, this meeting with Macron comes as the U.S. and Ukraine are reportedly close to signing an agreement regarding Ukraine's mineral reserves. Initially, Trump had seemingly demanded half of the profits from Ukraine exploiting its natural resources up to maybe $500 billion, which is All the money we've given Ukraine for the war times two, I believe.
Now it sounds like it's some sort of joint development fund where the U.S. will also have access to this cash that will later be used for reconstruction. It's not clear exactly. It's still all of it is lacking, you know, what the Ukrainians really want, which is a U.S. security guarantee. They're framing this as, well, more economic cooperation between the U.S.
and Ukraine is a de facto security guarantee because the Russians won't invade if we have skin in the game or something. It doesn't make any sense. Trump basically views this as payback for USAID. Payback seems to include a 100% interest rate charge. In an interview with Russian State TV, Putin also suggested that Russia was ready to work with the U.S. on extracting rare earth minerals.
And he suggested that the focus of his conversation with Trump and the talks in Saudi Arabia weren't really on ending the war. And then that he was open to this weird idea that Trump floated the other day about a joint 50% reduction in defense spending. I don't know, man. It's just baffling. Everything is confusing these days. Black is white, up is down.
What did you make of Macron's visit and kind of where they're at on this mineral deal and these floats by Putin about like cooperation on mineral reserve exploitation? Like what are we talking about at this point?
He loves a diplomatic Hail Mary.
Yeah, good work, Emmanuel. Yeah, I mean, just to go back to your point about like, don't forget the big picture. I mean, I was just thinking about the United Nations, which was pretty broken, ineffective, kind of a mess like six months ago. Now that we've just decided to become part of the problem, I mean, I assume what will happen going forward is
Trump will tell Elise Stefanik if she's confirmed. I don't think they've had a hearing for her yet because they still need her vote in the House to just attack the institution, defend Israel everywhere. They're pulling out of the Human Rights Commission. We talked about last week Trump turning away from NATO, which was set up in 1949 to deter Russian aggression against Europe.
I suspect the next thing we'll see is the U.S. just fully Pulling away from the UN or rendering it just useless, even at the Security Council level.
Sorry, I meant at the General Assembly level.
Yeah, the funding effort.
Yeah. One place that reorientation away from the U.S. is happening in real time is Germany. So Germans went to the polls on Sunday. They had an election that saw the largest turnout in the country's history. I think it was about 82% of the population voted. Just incredible. The results were not great, but far from the worst outcome.
So in the not great category, the far-right AFD party doubled its support from the last election to about 20%. The AFD, as we've discussed, is seen by many Germans as the heir to the Nazi party. They are anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-EU and pro-Russia. And prominent AFD members have minimized the Holocaust a number of times. There's also very extreme factions within the AFD.
that are seen as extremist threats by domestic intelligence. The left-leaning Social Democrats, or SPD, Olaf Scholz party, had their worst result since 1887, garnering only 16% of the vote. Democrats feel better. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Voters were not thrilled, to say the least, about the SPD's leadership over the past few years, and they made it known at the voting booth.
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