The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | May 26th, 2025: Trump Blasts ‘Crazy’ Putin In Rare Rebuke & U.S.-Iran Talks Inch Forward
26 May 2025
In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: We’ll start things off with a surprising shift from Donald Trump—he’s calling Vladimir Putin “crazy” following a weekend of intense Russian strikes on Ukraine. Later in the show—modest progress is being reported in the fifth round of talks between the U.S. and Iran. We’ll lay out what we know. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
My name is Mike Slater. I have a podcast called Politics by Faith. I was just talking to a friend of mine who said he hasn't been able to follow the news lately. It's been too much. It's too crazy. It's driving him crazy. And he's just checked out. If you feel that way sometimes too, I think you'll really like our podcast, Politics by Faith.
We take the main story of the day and we run it through the Bible. What does the Bible say about this? It's amazing, but it's all there. And then God tells us what to do. We don't even have to figure it out. The answers are right there. He gives us the answers. Politics by faith. Please join us over there. You can listen to it wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. Politics by faith.
It's Monday, the 26th of May. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll start things off with a surprising shift in tone and rhetoric from President Trump. He's now calling Vladimir Putin, quote, crazy following a weekend of intense Russian strikes on Ukraine.
Later in the show, modest progress is being reported in the fifth round of talks between the US and Iran. We'll have those details. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. We'll begin with President Trump issuing a rare rebuke of Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday, calling him, quote, absolutely crazy after Moscow unleashed its largest aerial barrage of the war on Ukrainian cities.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, quote, I've always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely crazy, end quote. Now, the president continued by saying, I've always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia.
Speaking to reporters, Trump doubled down, saying, quote, I've known him a long time, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all, end quote. Trump's remarks came just hours after Ukrainian officials confirmed what they described as the largest aerial onslaught of the three-year war.
As we noted in this morning's PDB, Russian forces launched 367 so-called, quote, air attack vehicles from Saturday into Sunday, including ballistic and cruise missiles, guided bombs, and waves of Iranian-made Shahed drones that left at least 18 civilians dead.
The unusually sharp tone from Trump toward Putin comes as he faces renewed pressure from European leaders and members of his own party to adopt a more aggressive posture toward the Kremlin. Until now, Trump has resisted laying down explicit red lines, opting instead to keep diplomatic channels open.
But on Sunday, he appeared to shift gears, telling reporters he's now, quote, absolutely weighing new sanctions in response to those attacks. That stance, however, does appear to be at odds with his own Secretary of State. Last week, Marco Rubio warned that threatening sanctions now could torpedo fragile negotiations. What negotiations?
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