Fiona Hill: Putin and the Art of Manipulating Trump

Hey, this is Byard Winthrop, founder of American Giant. Back in 2011, I was fed up, sick of cheap disposable clothes that fell apart after a few washes, and even more sick of the fact that almost nothing good was made here anymore. So I started American Giant to prove something that we could still make the absolute best hoodies, t-shirts, and pants right here in America with American cotton, American factories, and American workers earning real wages. We exist to bring manufacturing home, create good jobs and towns that need them, and build clothes that actually last. No shortcuts, no overseas compromises. Get 20% off your first order when you use promo code giant20 at American-giant.com. That's 20% off when you use code giant20 at American-giant.com. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zippercrooter for free. At zippercrooter.com slash zip. Zippercrooter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience, and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So, while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zippercrooter finds you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercrooter get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercrooter, the smartest way to hire, and right now you can try Zippercrooter for free. That's right. Free at zippercrooter.com slash zip. That zippercrooter.com slash zip zippercrooter.com slash zip. Hello and welcome to the Bollard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller, delighted. Welcome to the show, a former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the US National Security Council during part of Trump's first term. She's also a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the US National Intelligence Council. Currently, a senior fellow informed policy of Brookings or books include her memoir. There's nothing for you here finding opportunity in the 21st century. It's Fiona Hill. How you doing? I'm doing all right. Thanks Tim. I'd like to be with you. I've been kind of a little bit of a Fiona Hill fan girl for like six years now, not fully. So I'm not fully briefed on your whole story. And so I thought in 2018 and 19 in this period in Trump 1.0, these kind of characters emerged into our lives because people had to pay attention to things that normal people didn't pay attention to, like what happened on national security briefing calls between Eastern European countries and presidential advisors. And so for a lot of those people, they kind of like you, they emerged from the ether. How did you find yourself testifying in Donald Trump's first impeachment? I guess, could you give us like a little life story that landed you in that place? Yeah, I certainly asked myself that many times. I'm also glad to say that you came out. We came out the ether rather than the primordial swamp, which everybody else, you know, kind of as sort of accuses all of doing. I mean, look, I mean, I started off life in a rather unexpected place. I mean, some of the people listening to this will know, you know, I started off Northern England, daughter of a coal miner or a nurse while coal miner because all the mines closed down. My dad became a hospital porter. My mother, you know, was a midwife in one of those early bactuses of midwives trained by the National Health Service that kind of called the midwife from the BCC. I make you feel like you're 300 years old to save your mother's a midwife. I just turned 60. So about a minute and actually. I'm back here. Well, thank you very much. When I look back at you know, the little few pictures of my childhood certainly seems like it was in the 19th century, like, 20th, you know, it was like a totally a world away from this. But the whole point was, you know, thanks to expansion of education in the UK, you know, I get the education my parents never did. It's actually a great American story actually for people of my age and America as well. I get, you know, kind of funding to go to school, to university. I decided to study Russian because it's the peak of the coal wall. And like many other people of my generation, you know, I was obsessed with the risks of nuclear armageddon and thought, you know, we'd die in a ditch, learn listening to sirens as, you know, various players have been blown up in an exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. I decided to study Russian. I get a scholarship to study Russian. And then, you know, cut along social, I'm getting a scholarship to the United States and, you know, amazingly to Harvard to study in what was in the Soviet Union program. And as soon as I duly got a Masters in Soviet studies, the Soviet Union went up and left on me, collapsing in multiple parts. And I decided I studied history. Not great news for your career, but good for the world. Okay. You know, so I was in the last few of history. So I thought, well, history. And I got a bit of, you know, retrain quickly, retool. You know, my dad had gone from being a mind hospital polter. I didn't quite make the same transition, but I, you know, study history. I ended up, you know, doing locks and various things around at Harvard. I get a job with Graham Allison, the famous, you know, Kennedy School of government professors still going strong into his AITs and writing all kinds of things. And it's somebody who, you know, many of our listeners are very familiar with. And it's, you know, working with Graham as, you know, one of his many assistants, you know, I end up into the world of public policy. And, you know, I end up, variously getting, you know, what I've graduated with everything and finished working with him, job started washing, do you see? And it's all about timing. Because I, you know, spent all of this time looking at the, you know, what had happened after the cuts of the Soviet Union to all the different constituent parts and why wasn't it moving in the directions that we anticipated. And I start getting, you know, kind of a bit of an obsession back in 2000, as I'd landed at the Brookings Institution as a fellow then, with a colleague Clifford Gaddi, who was, you know, pretty well known expert on Russia and the Russian economy. We started getting a, a bit of a fixation on Vladimir Putin, who's still with us, of course. And this is in 2000. And so for the last 25 years, I've been one way or another, you know, trying to figure out what makes Vladimir Putin tick. And it was because of that. And, you know, various other forays lent being learned out by Brookings to national intelligence council writing a book about Putin to try to figure out who is this guy, you know, why is he still here? Why is it likely to be a, between Fiddity and Beyond that I ended up getting asked to join the Trump administration. It was literally through connections that I'd made being learned out to the government in a much earlier period in the 2000s at the end of Bush and leading into Obama. And from people who'd read the book, that's as fast as I could do it for you there. Okay, that was pretty good. That's pretty fast. I had two follow-ups. One, as you didn't mention the key part of your lore, which is that a boy set fire to your hair when you were a child and you put the fire out with your bare hands. Well, actually, they're the other little boy next to me put his, the fire out with his bare hands as I was going, what's happened? It's my friend fire. So, I mean, it's kind of one of those stories as you need friends looking out for you. That guy who, who did that Stuart Combie was the most recent, a steward on British Airways. He can just, you know, kind of be sure that he'd look out for you in an emergency. Really? You kept touch with him the whole time, the boy that... Well, yeah, I mean, when somebody serves you from, you know, have you literally a whole head on fire? You know, you're done to keep an eye on them. You never know when you might need them. My other question was going into the Trump administration the first time at all. I just was kind of wondering your mindset on that because at some level, I think certain people kind of rationalize what my book is about, like, rash eyes going in because it's like, hey, we need good people and if I'm working over in, you know, the Treasury Department, it's better to have a good person there than a bad person and, you know, you went in as a Russia expert. And so even at the beginning, you knew that was going to be a hot spot with Trump, given what had happened in the election and going into the election. And so I was just curious what your mindset was on going in the first time. Well, that's definitely a hair on fire moment. Yeah, right. You mean that was a form of a related question. My friends do, you know, it's actually, I mean, there was a number of people that I knew that were still, you know, in the government, professional, you know, analyst experts, some people who'd gone in to the National Security Council as well, none of whom were partisan or political. That sort of when I was, when I was approached, first of all, which was by Katie McFarland and, you know, weirdly general Flynn. And also general Kellogg, I mean, yeah, it's a kind of general Flynn approach to. I work with him in the previous, you know, iterations of general Flynn. Do you keep it touch with him? I do not know. He's doing kind of like a Christian nationalist tour through the country. He has completely transformed from the person that I met when I was in the National Intelligence Council. He was my counterpart at the office of a chairman of a joint use of stuff, which is abnormal mullin at the time. And, you know, we were actually working, you know, in lockstep of the crisis in Georgia when the Russians invaded Georgia, you know, can we even remember all of these things that have happened, you know, back in August of 2008. And he remembered me as being just, you know, straightforward, straight shooter. And I kind of was having a hard time, to be honest, reconciling, you know, the, the, the person that he kind of had appeared to be during the campaign, but with the person that he was. But there was a lot of people I'd worked with then in the chairman's office and people who worked with him that he, that he'd brought on board. And they were all, you know, pretty sensible people. So I look, I will say that I actually thought national security was going to win out. If they'd asked me, you know, then, you know, there was probably a chance that they were going to do something serious to try to deal with Russian interference. And, you know, I shouldn't just sit there, you know, basically lobbying criticisms from the, you know, the sidelines. If I really, you know, meant, you know, to try to have some kind of impact, then at least you should at least should try. And I did get some really good advice from one of my colleagues at Brookings at the time when I met colleagues Martin Indick, you know, who you will, you know, obviously remember as former assistant secretary for the Near East, former ambassador to Israel, who was, you know, my boss for a while at Brookings. And he said to me, look, you know, you can go in and do this as long as you're part of the solution. As soon as you think of being part of the problem, you've got to leave. And you know, that was kind of, you know, pretty good advice. I took in a box, you know, that I didn't have a resignation letter ready, but I took in a box that I could just throw all my stuff in and just, you know, leave if things got pretty crazy. And they got crazy fairly fast. That is good advice with one caveat, which is that there's a human nature element to it, which is that a surprising number of people, I think, went in with that intuition and then didn't leave. You know, I remember talking to Ryan Spreebus about this, who was my boss, who he ended up going to be the chief of staff. And I sent him an email that said, you know, basically, the most important thing you're going to have to do if you go in there is say no. Yeah, exactly. You know, you're going to have to be able to say no a lot. Yeah. And if he crosses the line, you're going to have to be able to give him a final no. And he kind of nodded his head at me and said, yeah, yeah, and obviously he didn't, you know, he ended up getting left on the tarmac by Donald Trump with him insulting him on Twitter, never having stopped anything, right? And so it is, it's tough. You are in there with all these people. You know, you kind of get, you get wrapped up in the team and you get wrapped up in group thing. And I don't know, which, what, why do you think it was, there's so few fionus, I guess, is a question. Well, I would say that I wasn't in that team with those guys, you know, run to people. Some people I thought they never really gave me the time of day. And it was really at that kind of, you know, lower working level, where, as I said, I did know a lot of the people. And some of them I'd work with, you know, in other settings. And look, I also had a lot of reminders from people, you know, who I respected, who, you know, were pretty adamant that I shouldn't do this. And they were pretty angry with me for doing it. You know, and I took that on board. It wasn't that I disregarded and decided not to, because I felt at the time that it was an important thing to do. And I really thought about it. And I talked to a lot of people. And it wasn't that, you know, kind of the people said I should do it out where the others. It's just that, you know, in that particular context of what the Russians had been up to. And, you know, the danger of that moment, you know, why then had I bothered started studying Russian, you know, back in the 1980s, you know, kind of when there was a risk of nuclear armageddon. And I'd learned all this stuff about Vladimir Putin, you know, and I just had to think that perhaps I might be able to note things, you know, kind of away from the precipice, if not in, you know, kind of a better direction. And of course, you know, the idea that I might sit down with Trump and be able to tell him anything was dispelled on day one. You know, because the whole idea that Katie McFarlane and General Kellogg, you know, had actually laid out to me and not really General Flynn, I mean, to be honest, I had like two bunkers of a couple of minutes each with him, you know, in which he just, you know, was, it didn't really impart anything of anything. And then he'd gone before I'd even started. But their idea was that I would be able to sit down with Trump and just have a plan, you know, discussion as an ordinary, you know, kind of, you know, person written a book and did all these different things and just sort of tell him, you know, what Putin was like, but of course, he didn't want to hear. Because his first look at me was like, who are you? You're a rude person. He's still asking something. Well, that'll do you know. And you know, and then he actually literally said, and I've got Rex, who's working on Russian Rex being Rex Tillerson, you know, who, you know, obviously didn't get much of a chance to, you know, advise him and impart any knowledge either, despite having been the CEO of one of the world's greatest in terms of size and, you know, valuation companies. And having done billion dollar deals with Putin, he didn't really want to know what he had to say other. Yeah. That was during the period. It's important to contextualize that a lot of people, I was pretty skeptical, but a lot of people were like, trouble getting in there, and it'll change, right? Like the weight of the office will, will fall on his shoulders and he'll be serious. Now, what to hear from people who know more than him? And that didn't turn out to be, for people who don't remember, I do just want to play a little clip from your testimony in that first impeachment and kind of ask you about how some of that is reverberating still today. So, let's listen to some from your testimony. Based on questions and statements I've heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow, for some reason, you crayon it. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified. The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. It isn't dispute still. Seven years on. So it's quite, yeah, newly in dispute. Yeah, newly in the Sue a current president and his secretary of state who was part of the bipartisan group that said at the time that they had interfered, it seems like the success of that operation was like beyond the Russian's wildest dreams. And I do wonder how you think of that, like kind of reverberates today and looks today and how much that they're still engaging it. Yeah, look, when you think about the Russians and you look at the history of Russian interference and Soviet interference before that and it gave an imperial Russia, they always succeed when things are moving in the direction that they're already traveling in. You know, you have all these expressions about useful idiots, fellow travelers, you know, they've come down in the law of Russian interference and public operations. And they really succeed where somebody else wants to do just exactly what it is that they want them to do. And we have a president in Donald Trump who wants to use propaganda himself who has the same interests as Putin and the Russians do and the Soviets did before about breaking up the Western alliance, about basically taking America off in a different direction and of kind of breaking down. It's a democracy for his own interests. And it has a very similar worldview of Mike makes right and you know, the the strong do, you know, what they, what they must and you know what they can and you know, the weak are always going to suffer. I mean, this is for Putin and for the Russians, this was just an incredibly fertile ground. Yeah. And you know, Donald Trump didn't want to rein in any of the nefarious activity because he wanted to conduct the same nefarious activity himself, but he's doing all of this in parallel. And I think you know, what became very clear to me as well, you know, during that whole series of testimonies leading up to the impeachment and then the impeachment trial itself, there was, you know, this whole parallel universe that was, you know, there alongside the, you know, seeming formalization and formality of state affairs, you asked to Russia and which there was just a whole cast of characters around President Trump and his entourage were just doing something entirely different. And you might remember that I actually did say something along, you know, those lines of, you know, domestic political errands. Yeah. You know, that Gordon Sondland, the former US ambassador to the European Union was engaging in, well, no, it's all domestic political errands. And that parallel, you know, set of people, the operators around Trump, they're the people who are in charge and Marco Rubio is just a fig leaf. He's kind of a, you know, the standing for the state. He's running two jobs at the same time as national security advisor and a security of state. But, you know, everything else is just, is a crony, a close crony of Trump doing, you know, best of either President's bidding. And so, you know, that's kind of even more so playing in Putin's favor because that's the kind of environment that he loves to operate in. So Putin is the operative in the Kremlin and all, all of the United States is operating in a similar way of backdoor deals, you know, business transactions, you know, all kinds of nefarious activities and all on compromising information and hardball tactics. And, you know, this is just a world in which Vladimir Putin flourishes. There is even more, seems even more successful now than he did before when there are actually constraints and restraints within the US system. Yeah. I want to get back to the Rubio and, and with Kof and how they're doing the dealings now, which is just a couple of things in the first round. Is your assessment that like when what Russia started that interference campaign, was it always with the end goal of wanting Trump to win or was it of the goal of trying to divide us and kind of Trump ended up being the right vessel for that? I think it's really the latter, but, you know, the idea that Trump, you know, could win, you know, obviously, I don't think that fully thought that this was going to happen. But, you know, they'd be delighted if that was the outcome as they were popping champagne cocks and all the rest of it. But their ultimate goal, I think, was just to kind of bring us down to size, just to say, okay, as well, you know, they're really succeeded in that. And just to show everybody else that the US was no better than them or any other country. That just the US was just full of hypocrisy and hubris and, you know, the United States need to be brought down to size. And wow, I mean, you know, game over. Yeah, that's it. I'd that's over this success, right? A russia could collapse itself. Look at that, I mean, they're weak in so many other ways, militarily and economically, but getting the American people to just basically accept the Russian frame of America that it is no different than these other countries that are just acts in its own interests, that it's corruptible. I mean, it's just this process beyond their wildest dreams. Really, and again, it's not really their success. They're just taking advantage of, you know, our own failings. And, you know, I remember, I just a couple of meetings with, and I did get into government with the Russian ambassador at the time, Ambassador on Tornow. Well, he just relate back to me when we do these, you know, equivalents of day marshes about all the things that they've done in terms of interference. And he'd say things, well, did we invent that? Did we invent this? Did we do this? Did we do that? There was all about things that Americans had done. And you had to say, well, no, you didn't actually, you can't blame Russia for everything. Yeah, right. They had the long list, the ledger, kind of like Trump has the ledger of all the people that have aggrieved him over the years. All right, you know, here's the thing about New Year's resolutions, nearly 80% fail by February. Now, the good news, though, that's great news for us here in New Orleans, right? Because we don't do New Year's resolutions, because you go immediately into Mardi Gras season, and then you start your post-Mardi resolution. So ours don't fail until like March or April, which is pretty nice. But the reason for that is not the people like Will Powers, because they're not getting any positive feedback, they're not giving any data. And real lasting change happens when you understand what's actually happening with your body. And you can do that with our sponsor function functions, the only health platform that gives you access to over 160 bio markers covering everything from hormones to metabolism to heart health, inflammation, stress markers, and toxins. You can even add MRI and chest CT imaging, and it's all tracked in one secure place over time. It's a kind of comprehensive view of your health that most people never get access to. It's something that I'm looking forward to getting access to, because I'm not sure if I've made the healthiest choices over the last year. I just, I don't know if like working 90 hours a week and then also going out and drinking on the weekends, is the preferred choice for being healthy in middle age, and also eating southern, losing in a food. I don't think that's what Michelle Obama recommended, but I'm not sure. I'm feeling okay, but it'd be nice to see what's happening on the inside. And so I'm excited to turn to our friends at function. And if you're wondering what's happening on the inside, you should as well own your health for 365 bucks a year. That's a dollar a day. Learn more and join using my link. Visit www.functionhealth.com slash the bulwark. Use gift code, the bulwark 25 for a $25 credit towards your membership. What I think I was curious to ask you often that first of us, you're there for that Helsinki meeting. One of the big mysteries for me remains that the private Trump and Putin meeting that happened on the side of Helsinki and the limits of the you know, the translator and other people not being invited. Do you still have any sense of what exactly happened there? A Helsinki, absolutely, because a lot of people have conflated what happened to Helsinki, we what happened in one of the first encounters between Trump and Putin at the G20 meeting in New York, having had time. Remember, we all do, right? And I've seen the sequencing of all this in Hamburg where he took the translator's notes and you know, what you've got to think about is the translator's notes are for themselves in short time because they're doing this consecutive translation fast in real time. So it's just a kind of their own memories. But in that meeting, you had Rex Tillerson, who was taking notes and Rex Tillerson put his notes in his inside pocket, Trump didn't take his notes. And Rex Tillerson related to the rest of us, you know, what happened. Then there's an episode later where Trump goes to dinner in Hamburg and he doesn't take his own translator and Melania is sitting, the first lady is sitting next to Putin, of course, Trump makes his way over. Can't resist, you know, kind of coming to talk to Putin and then it's all on the Russian translator and you know, we only know what happened then from what we could get related to as by Melania's stuff, which is, you know, there, but it wasn't a very big interaction. It was all, you know, there in cameras, you know, all sort of trying to lip read, you know, and a government to see what's going on. But it held Sinky, the translator, you know, because we'd already been for warned is for round, you know, made sure that her notes were not taken away. And you've got to kind of remember that these translators are all pretty highly skilled. And in the case, the translator tells Sinky, who was now retired, she'd had more meetings with Putin and another, you know, US leaders of different levels, you know, across the government than anybody else. I mean, she knew Putin inside out the way he talks and everything. And, you know, she to kind of best, it came out and did a full brief of what had been discussed inside. It's interesting. Those things always create lore because, right, there's this question that kind of hangs over all this, which is like, is it possible that Trump could just be this pliable and this enamored by Putin and this easily flattered like, or is there something else happening? And, right, I do think it's like, those meetings things that cure this is like, is there something, is there another deal happening? We don't know about. And I don't know. That's the code. So it was the DNI, the director of national intelligence and you know, former ambassador to Germany, all kinds of things. I mean, he, that's the way that he put it the whole time. He couldn't believe that Trump could be just so pliable that it had to be something else. You know, because it's just, it seems inconceivable to quote the Princess Bride, inconceivable, you know, that he could possibly be in that easily manipulated frame. But I think he's in that easily manipulated frame. And Putin has been trained for his old career in the KGB, you know, to basically manipulate people. He was a recruiter, he was somebody who ran assets. And, you know, he's always looking for people's vulnerabilities. And Trump is particularly susceptible to flattery. And as we all know, if he gets insulted, he goes nuts. You know, so Putin is always extraordinarily careful, you know, to make sure that in any way that he might mock or make fun of Trump doesn't literally, you know, translate either in his body language or his language, Trump himself. And he frequently insults him, but just in these kind of clever, sneaky kind of words that anyone who's in that frame understands, but it doesn't really kind of translate, you know, kind of across the cultural divide or in a way that Trump would see it. And he's just always, you know, seemingly flattering him, nudging him, egging him on, he's egging him on about Greenland, he's egging him on about this, he's egging him on about that. And he's just extraordinarily good. And I saw him do that in Helsinki at the lunch when he just basically deliberately, the very end, while I thought, God, we got through that lunch without any, you know, major problem there. He starts to introduce, you know, kind of a question about US domestic politics and, and sends Trump off on a rant about Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. And, you know, anybody who looked like they might be a potential challenger for him in, you know, a future presidential election. Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated for Lauren, even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations, because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that's zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip. So this takes us to come to the last thing from the first term that bridges us to the news of the day and of the week, which is some of you've been talking about in other interviews recently, which was in, I think one of those conversations you mentioned with the ambassador to Russia, and then just kind of analyzing other public statements. There was some discussion back then about a kind of Venezuela for Ukraine swap. And I'm wondering how serious you think that was. And if you do think that, you know, there's any element of that at play in what we've seen in Trump's actions over the last month. Well, first of all, it was one of these where they make it clear that, you know, if you bite on this, you know, this could go somewhere, but it was kind of, you know, framed more in very heavy, obvious hints, you know, framing, you know, discussions of Ukraine, the context of Venezuela and the US interests in this, talking about the Monroe doctrine, talking about US interests historically in the Western hemisphere, and then in the same breath, you know, without almost pausing, talking about their own interests in their own sphere. There were articles in, you know, Russian press, you know, often in English, you know, so that they were intended there, you know, for Nordian meetings with, you know, think tankers. I mean, I wouldn't say it was a full on, full court press, but it was, you know, definitely meant to entice. And again, we'd like these recruiting exercises, if you bite, you know, want to know more, you know, kind of then they'll take it further. And so I, you know, was kind of a bit of an infrastructure to go and turn it off because of that particular time, certainly the people who were managing Venezuela. And, you know, this was, remember, in that first instance, there was the coalition provisional government of one Guaido, I mean, it was about him now, poor man, and the whole idea that there would be an effort to try to get Maduro to leave, go to Costa Rica or, you know, God knows where, and, you know, just leave the scene. And, where Russians, you know, initially, you know, were just observing all of this, but then they got wind or they thought they'd got wind of some effort, you know, perhaps to do something like we've just seen, but, you know, anywhere to have an idea of a, of a US invasion that would be peace suspicious, you know, given the necessary propensity in the past, you know, to move in to Cuba and, you know, everywhere else. And so they moved in a group of guys, you know, so that proper duo up. And, you know, that's kind of when, you know, it also, they picked up again on a little bit more of, you know, that's, I was on this is your zone, you know, this could be resolved. And I was supposed to basically go to talk to them with others, of course, it wasn't just on my own to try to disentangle, you know, Venezuela and Ukraine, so they got nothing to do with each other. But now we have Trump himself making all these kinds of connections. And they've got, he's got Greenland in the mix, which did come up the first time around, but not with the Russians at all. Yeah, talk to us about that. How Greenland came up the first time around? Well, Greenland seems to have come up with him in a discussion with wrong lord. Estate law, exactly. For you and Rare Earth, it's an interesting portfolio. Well, I did have a kind of an insane moment. This is something in the moss that's great, you know, for Facebook, just something, you know, not a box or, you know, I'm saying it precious minerals and could use, you know, in cosmetics, you know, I was, I was, you know, kind of flimics. And it was Ambassador Bolton, who's also spoken about it, John Bolton, who, you know, was the person who Trump cornered and basically said he wanted to buy Greenland. You know, how exactly the conversation came up with wrong lord, I honestly couldn't tell you. But there was, you know, discussions at the time that China was expressing interest in mineral rights in pleasant Greenland and Iceland and Svalbard in Norway, which hopefully is not on Trump's agenda. There he seems to have got Greenland and Iceland muddled up several times in, and his speech at Davos, which is worrying for the Icelanders as well. And, you know, they said that Iceland said that he was their daddy. Yeah, I don't think that's right. I don't think so. There are small populations in these places and you just have answers that could have been Vikings. I don't know. I don't think he mentioned that. I don't think he had a common daddy, you know, somewhere way back, you know, at the time of Eric the Red or, you know, you know, kind of remember the Vikings with the first, actually, not just to get to, you know, kind of all kind of other points, you know, of the world, but also to get to North America. You know, we have, you know, all of these Viking for us. And that's, of course, first Europeans because we have the, anyway, to another first peoples, you know, elsewhere, you know, keep getting ignored in all of this. You know, Trump basically at that point just first, formulating the idea that he'd like to have Greenland, which of course, we then went through, you know, in a, in a, in a memo, and I didn't finish it off because I actually left because I could see that I was about to become part of the problem, not the solution, getting back to Martin index warning. You know, I left in the July of 2019 before these other things start to unravel, but when we had a draft of the memo, they just went through, you know, all the, the kind of history of the United States and Greenland, the rights of the United States had under the 1951 security treaty. All of the things that people are reading about now, you know, were kind of prefigured there, but you know, the other point was Greenland wasn't for sale, and the Greenlander people, the Grandec people are not for sale either. But there was that then still that discussion about the possibility of Greenland's independence and, you know, these ideas of free association shared sovereignty, all these kinds of things were all sort of percolating around. So you also came out of this from a security expert POV, and so just almost taking away like the partisan element of this and that stupidity of like, and the hand in the ass of how Trump is going about it, is there anything to the argument about about valuing Greenland for national security purposes? Well, yes, but it's already dealt with with NATO and with a security treaty. I mean, the United States itself drew down its forces there in Greenland, you know, from thousands to a couple of hundred. And more of the reasons that, you know, kind of there was so much interest there was because the United States has really been neglecting it, potential interest, and nearly even the Icelanders and the Greenlanders, you know, also been sickening to the West to be more involved, not like this, but, you know, could they, we would be looking at the world. But what is the worry? I guess I can't even grasp what the concern has. Well, I think that that's the point, because the concern is that maybe somewhere down the line, Russia or China may want to get hold of Greenland, the dents turned off any of these, you know, interests by China in acquiring mineral rights, concessions or licenses, same in Spalbad, the Norwegians did that. Iceland, you know, kind of didn't like the idea of, you know, large numbers of, you know, Chinese appearing to want to build golf courses or invest in ports and things, you know, became a bit overwhelming. And although, you know, there is always Russian activity in the Arctic, I mean, it's their backyard. Russia is an Arctic and sub-Arctic power, of course they're and World War II, we were really concerned about the Green and Iceland UK gap. There's no, there's not been any sign of a Chinese ship in the vicinity of Greenland from all the in a decade. And also Russia, I hear you on Russia being, you know, in the Arctic, but, you know, they invaded Ukraine four years ago now and have made it like 40 miles. You know, there's a lot of steps between there. They're all the other Baltic and Nordic countries. Yeah, and now we've actually probably making security in the Arctic, you know, even less reliable because, you know, this was already covered by NATO. And the United States is supposed to be clear when you talk about the golden dome as well, beyond minerals and, you know, of course, there's a lot of business interests in the minerals, of course, but they're also unminable, you know, for, you know, the kind of the near term, because there's no infrastructure there in the United States, you know, might have concessions or licenses, but they haven't been able to actually turn these into, you know, actual mining activities. There are lots of British and Canadian companies there, but some of them have sold out because of, you know, the difficulties of actually, you know, bringing any mines into fruition. They've got all kinds of rules and regulations, ecological environment for good reason, very fragile, you know, ecosystems that are there. You know, but the whole, you know, kind of point there is also from the anti-bolicitic missile warning defenses. The United States also needs the UK and nowhere there. The UK is actually a massive communication term and has, you know, kind of major radar installations that the United States and the UK operate together, and so does nowhere. So, you know, you kind of alienate everybody else. Trump always says, the US does 100% of NATO, you know, 80% of NATO, 70% of NATO, but there's pretty critical parts of the contributions of other NATO members that are really going to cause problems for the United States, and if they were not there. And I mean, that's kind of part the problem there. The whole security Greenland, you know, has been in a pretty fine balance with all of these other players. And you know, you've got Iceland, the United Kingdom, Norway, you know, Nordic and Scandinavian countries. Now, you just pretty much alienating them all. So, we're taping this Wednesday afternoon. Right, as we're getting on, we have our first, I don't even know if you want to call it good news, because it's so ridiculous. It makes me feel like my job is so stupid sometimes, but Trump has backed down. It's like all of this, you know, conflagration, all this ridiculousness sort of for nothing apparently, but here's his post. Here's this, based on a very productive meeting I've had with Secretary General of NATO, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland. The solution, if consummated, consummated. Yes, we'll be a great one for the United States and all NATO nations. Based on this understanding, I'll not be imposing tariffs. The digital discussions are being held concerning the golden dome. Blah blah blah. Steve Wichoff is going to be involved. Whatever this deal is, I could have just been done without menacing all of these people. And I do think that the way he's going about it is going to create real consequences. But anyway, what's your reaction to that back down? Well, there will be consequences. I mean, I think what people have been trying to do is find him an off-rump, the whole time back off from this, because this was about and still is about, and it could come back again. Trump alone, I mean, he wants Greenland because it's so big. We all talk about the Mercator, Mercarta projections, and with Greenland, I think Trump's thinking is that the United States is the biggest country in the world, Marlene Fuyard in Canada, and the United States and Greenland, absolutely, bigger than Russia, etc., etc. But he's thinking all the time about size. I mean, these ridiculous pictures of him with Vance and Rubia, standing behind in planting a flag on Greenland, members of Congress and videos, apparently cutting up cakes with Greenland on. They've been thinking this is all funny, and they can do this without any cost. And because Trump, you know, fam, this is like, you know, basically the ultimate prize. If you get literally, as he said to the Norwegian Prime Minister, if I can't have the Nobel Peace Prize, then I want Greenland. And he says it in his speech in a Davas. I want Greenland. I mean, this is so absurd. It wants it for his own prestige and aggrandizement. Yeah. And yet, the United States already has Greenland in the sense of all the things we've talked about in terms of ensuring US security, having access to mineral resources when, if they are necessary and unavailable, with necessary investment in an infrastructure. And all what he's done here is early and air to everybody. Because it's made Europe feel that not only they under attack from the East and flank from Russia, but they're under attack from the North by their greatest friend and ally. And Denmark, as we all know, has been probably out of all those NATO allies, the most dedicated to its relationship with the United States. Most of the Danish products that Americans buy actually manufactured, creating American jobs in the United States, exactly what Trump has asked for, including as MPIC, all the things that everybody's kind of talking about all the time, they're made in the United States. Denmark has supported the United States and all kinds of operations and military operations. And many of the things that they've done in their own policies, the kinds of things that the United States is always talking about, an immigration and security, etc., etc. And now the dens are so angry with the United States for not constraining what Trump has been saying that I'm not sure how this comes back again. And he's basically frightened the bejesus out of the Greenlanders who are basically saying, where people, we're not for sale here, do you want to win Slavers? I mean, this is creating a pretty nasty set of reverberations for the United States. You know, here they're in everywhere. To the everywhere, I think that's what I wanted to play next. Mark Carney's speech over in Davos was pretty noteworthy because the way he was talking about kind of this decoupling, this rupture with the United States, basically makes it seem like this is something that's going forward on regard. Like this Trump taco on this doesn't really change at the underlining point of Carney's argument about the way that the world is changing now. And so I want to play just about a minute of the Carney speech. I think it's pretty significant. Let's listen to that. An American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Terrifices leverage. Financial infrastructure is coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. That is remarkable. It is remarkable. And you know, that's kind of a speech if they would have dared make it. But a former vassal state of the Soviet Union or neighbors of Russia would make if they want to. And that's coming from Canada, which along with Denmark, the closest possible in the UK as well, of course. The closest possible friend and ally of the United States. And 80% of Canadian trade, the bulk of the population, all intertwined with the United States. And Mark Carney is saying, no, not anymore. And he means it. It's obviously means it. He obviously means it. And it also feels like at some level, it's repairable. You know, that it just, it means like they're going to make this change no matter what. Right? We've demonstrated ourselves weaving the United States to be too unreliable for them to continue in the same framework that they've continued it. And I was listening to your conversation David from, you know, where you're talking about how that's true academically, but also militarily. And how you were you were kind of saying that going forward, you'll see surprising kind of countries start to build up militarily because I feel like they have to. I think you'd mentioned Finland and Turkey and some others. So I kind of you see all of that playing out in the next little bit. Yeah, I know. But I see a real tragedy here for the United States. You know, Trump and others are absolutely right. The NATO basically was too much and depended on the United States. It was being carried by the United States. No question about it. And it was Barack Obama, you know, in 2014 who insisted on the 2% of GDP spending, not Trump, but, you know, nobody did anything really in that interim. And even before that, you know, we go back to Kennedy Johnson, you know, you name it, past presidents going back to the 60s. It was a whole debate about, you know, Europe needing to do more. As Europe recovered from World War II, it needed to step up in terms of its commitments to its own defense. And, you know, they've been wanting in that. But the United States is also a prospered, you know, that so-called arsenal of democracy that was, you know, kind of built up in the Midwest and elsewhere and built up more recently by the North of Grimmons and Lockheed Martins, underills and, you know, all the kind of newer companies, Palantir, you know, you name them by selling products, services as well as, you know, military equipment instead of the awesome, you know, technology to, you've got it over NATO members. And now, over the NATO members are thinking, wow, okay, you know, we also depend on you, they're going to start leveraging this. And, you know, yes, we need, you know, to build a bar of military, but maybe we don't want to be buying America. There's already been a backlash. I was just in the UK, you know, we could go, you know, all the questions about why did we make all these agreements with the United States? I mean, yes, we need, you know, this bridge to, you know, get, you know, more weaponry from United States to build things up, but the user is leverage as Kanye is saying here, you know, they're bullying us, you know, you've got, you know, basically Elon Musk, who wants to sell more styling and all these other, you know, people interfering in UK and other European politics, trying to support, you know, subversive populist, many of whom, frankly, are Taliban lesters and, you know, all kind, obviously, and, you know, they're, you know, kind of rapists, you know, the Ted Brothers, Tommy Robinson, you know, people who are so far off, you know, the right that they're, you know, off the abyss, and they're actively doing this. And you kind of think into yourself, you know, if you're sitting in some of these places, is this what I want? You know, and, and, you know, we want our own, you know, kind of governs and beversively the, now the vassal states of populist white supremacist politics in the United States, we don't think so. So, you're getting a lot of people starting to really say, what is it here that we're dealing with? I mean, I'm channeling here, things that I've been hearing. I mean, I hear a single person say anything positive about what was happening in the United States, in my recent trip to the UK, you know, places normally pretty supportive. And I'm not saying that this is in London. I mean, I mean, they, you know, the areas where, you know, people have fed up themselves. And, but, yeah, I mean, you can have some problems with their own, yeah. But these have such a positive view of the United States, and it's, you know, so sourced now, and this desire to, you know, basically get away from these dependencies. And, you know, what we do have to worry about is nuclear proliferation, because you know, everybody knows that in the past, you know, we've had South Korea, not just South Africa, Turkey, you know, other countries, Japan, you know, all kind of questions Sweden, Sweden. And think about Sweden, who've all thought about, you know, getting nuclear weapons. And as I said, you've got all these countries now thinking about, well, you know, maybe we should have a European nuclear weapon. And it's not just the, you know, the British system that seems too dependent on the US or the French, that's just for the French. You know, how do we, you know, kind of basically create all kinds of systems so we reduce our dependencies on the United States, which is reduce their ability to leverage us, you know, by access to the US market or just to kind of bully us and try to ruin our economies. That's rational that they're looking into all that. And I, you know, on the economic side, it's like, look, there will be pain in the short term. And I'm just that the economy is not great right now in UK and some of these other places, but the idea that Australia, Canada, you're Western Europe, UK couldn't bound together. And, you know, do what a lot of what we're talking about when we're talking about China, you know, over the past 10 years, like to decouple, right, like do things to get themselves out of being, having to rely upon us. Like that feels rational and it feels rational because as you say, like, I don't think, you know, in the first term, they could look at this and say, this was an outlier, you know, the Americans did something crazy. And that'll happen. But, you know, now you look at Trump, but it's like the person that comes after Trump, is that are they going to be any different? Are they going to be, you know, or using the same tactics? Well, also, if it's, you know, J.D. Vance to be frank, and he's parted by the tech roles. People are really kind of, I mean, that was part of the discussion of Davos, you know, in other settings, do people really, you know, eight billion people on the planet? And there are eight, you know, kind of tech roles, probably that's a bit of a, yeah, I'm just using that as a kind of, you know, reference point here. But, you know, this is, I mean, should everybody be in control to them? Could they only buy their products? And then, you know, have to be, you know, best of human, depilated by them and bullied, you know, kind of and J.D. Vance is supported by them. I've heard that over and over again, you know, kind of what's, you know, with all these, you know, from the same kind of back, but I'm what are they trying to do here? Yeah. And again, like, J.D. Vance won't have the some of the same, like, Megalomania, narcissism issues that Trump has, and like, maybe slightly less erratic, but on a lot of their issues, these countries, he's more extreme. He's more isolationist. He's much more, people have described it exactly right, because they're saying, well, he's the real deal. He's very clever, you know, he's very disciplined, but, you know, he seems to be, you know, very much wanting to kind of make everywhere else in, you know, the US populist, you know, nationalist nativeist image. Look, this is again, I'm saying this not from a political perspective, just telling you what people are saying. Sure. Because it's more complicated in Europe than it appears from the United States. I mean, you might think, I mean, you don't think this, but they might think that all of the problems are the same. But, you know, Europe has got, on European countries, individual, very complicated histories. And, you know, the, the United Kingdom, for example, isn't a nation state, it's a state of nations. And they seem to have missed that there are already, you know, kind of recognized, you know, peoples of the British Isles, Scots, Irish, English, Welsh and travellers, and all kinds of other people, you know, don't have this, you know, singular identity that they're trying to push for, you know, for example. There's one other element. I don't know if you've been following this. And I haven't been following as closely as I should. So it's okay if you're in the same boat, because it's hard, you know, with the Trump, you're still trying to navigate like, is this a real thing that he's doing? Is this a work? Is it a scam? Is it just some post? And I'm feeling that way about this board of peace. You've been following this, the Gaza board of peace cities creating. And it was alarming to me when it was just related to the rebuilding of Gaza. But like over the past week or two, it seems like the remit for this is expanded quite a bit. He said he invited Putin to be on. Lucaschenko has said that he would be on, I'm black and then later, of Kazakhstan, I'll see these other countries that are in the Putin orbit, this is relevant to our previous conversation about what is rational for Canada and Europe and others to do, because it feels like he's trying to put together a counterweight group that the US is also part of with his authoritarian buddies. I don't know, maybe that's overreacting. I don't know. What do you think? Well, also a cash payment scheme. I mean, where's this cash going? I mean, I was reading, you know, something that I mean, I try to read the charter. But then this society, you know, pay what a billion in cash or I mean, is this a joke? And where does it go? Does it get invested in Donald Trump mean kinds or in cryptocurrency? Because I mean, I heard recently from a colleague, you know, who looks into these things at North Korea, you know, has made a mint, you know, from basically cycling off cryptocurrency, you know, so as it going off to North Korea, I was Kim Jong Un, that we investigate in hair products or, you know, all kinds of other kinds of things. Whatever that man does, you know, with his money or, you know, nuclear weapons. I don't even know whether to make jokes about it or, you know, to just lament yet again, you know, again, the destruction of anything that could be sensibly approached as a basis for reinvigorating the international system. This is not either I think what anybody, you know, might have had in mind. It just seems like another Donald Trump enriched myself quickly scheme. Because the Greenland stuff, the Venezuela stuff, that came up in the first term. This is, I don't remember kind of a legion of doom style plot in the first term, but that's... It's becoming more and more like we're in the Marvel universe, you know, it's called Marvel comics. I mean, it's, I don't, but not so many people I'm making fun of this means going around, you know, the internet. I think, you know, the collective wisdom of the internet seems to have got this a little bit more than, you know, foreign policy and other analysts. This is just a bloody joke. Speaking of bloody jokes, I want to close where we started with Ukraine and get back to a present day situation there and then negotiations. You reference how there are these things that come down through Russian history about how they, you know, how they do their operations. One of one such thing is the useful idiot. And we do seem to have a candidate for that in Steve Wittkopf, who's been the point man for the negotiations in Ukraine and Russia. And I'm just wondering how you read like what's been happening there and like what his role is and how they manipulate him and and how, you know, maybe that compares to the kind of dealings you saw in the first administration. I think it seems to compare, you know, quite well with what we saw in the, you know, the previous administration when he had Rudy Giuliani and all kinds of people running off, you know, all of the plays to me, all kinds of things. I mean, they're not wrong in that, you know, there were a lot of limitations to the old style diplomacy. Having a patent breaker in the form of Trump could be pretty useful thinking outside the box. I'm sorry, a pattern breaker. Yes. Okay, so I got confused. I thought you said patent breaker and I was like, I got a pattern breaker, right? So like, so the old style diplomacy with Russia wasn't working, you know, we tried all these kind of scale methods. And kind of, you know, trying to sort of, you know, be inventive about this, not the conventional wisdom, you know, he addressed a lot of the problems that you could see there. But, you know, the way that Russians operate and the Putin operates, I mean, he is very, very good at just being extraordinary patient and figuring out all kinds of angles, the manipulation of people. You know, they needed to have some insight into this. I mean, you should not go into a meeting with Vladimir Putin without someone taking notes, without then taking note of what he's doing, what he's saying, am I he's saying it without your own interpreter, without any kind of preparation. I mean, even if you want to have a fresh set of ideas and a fresh thinking about this, because you're just laying yourself up and to be manipulated. So they just have a Russian interpreter? Yeah, a lot of these meetings, he was just going in, you know, with the Russians interpreter and God knows what he thought he was hearing. And I think, you know, from what I've heard, the Russians were pretty frustrated by this as well. Why? It feels like they're getting everything they've got. Yes, but they didn't get any follow-up. I mean, you might get everything you want in the moment of, you know, somebody, you know, buying your whole stick, basically. But then what happens when he comes home and then can't remember exactly what they've said or gets it all confused, which seems to be, you know, the pattern in some cases. And then nothing happens because these things are not implementable. I need to got this kind of, you know, ridiculous, you know, you go to talk to Putin here and then you talk to somebody else here and then you go over, not to talk to Zernenski here and then everybody else over there, there's not a coordination of, there's no there there in the process. And people were complaining about that the first time around. People like Erdogan, for example, I remember this is, you know, the President of Turkey. He would talk to Trump about his bad advises because his guys would have discussions with the advises, try to take things back to Trump and Trump would just ignore it. Or Trump, he would ambush Trump with a phone call, you know, while he was on the Gulf course, because Trump's got no one with him. But Erdogan's got a whole phalanx of people all around him taking careful note and wanting to follow up. And as I mentioned, you'd have the ambassador of Russia would come in with this long sheet of things that he wanted to follow up on. I'd say, well, I don't know. I mean, was this discussed, you know, with President Trump? Because Trump doesn't tell anybody, you know, kind of about his conversations. I feel like we're in Groundhog Day with the Ukraine and Russia situation, right? Where he just, we just going to go through the same cycle over and over again, if Trump playing footsie with Putin and then getting mad and getting pulled back, rain back again, and then doing it again. Do you see any offering up? And it's such a tragic situation we're in right now. And the Russian casualties are off the charts. Ukraine, it's our worst winter of the war. Regular Ukrainians are freezing or dying and like living in tents. Like, what would you, if Zelensky called you, like, what would you even say at this point, could be a possible off ramp for this situation or is there just not one? I'm incredibly sorry, you know, and this is shameful about, you know, the US position here. But, you know, many people have been saying to the Ukrainians all along that you've got to really, you know, work with the Europeans at this point. I mean, the problem is, of course, as everybody's going to immediately identify, is it, you know, the US military equipment is still necessary, you know, for Ukraine. Europeans are purchasing that now, but, you know, the US has still got kind of leverage there. And in terms of arm-sale. And the Ukrainians have been incredibly innovative and, you know, have really been pulling out all the stops themselves. You know, but ultimately, the United States has really let them down. You know, if the war is lost, I think that's on the US. It's certainly not on, and also on Europeans, you know, kind of not acting quick enough and, you know, not for, you know, building up because it's not been for the one to the Ukrainians, you know, fighting back to, you know, really defend themselves. I mean, it's, again, it's remarkable, you know, where we are in this conflict. You know, you yourself have said that, you know, despite the fact it seems that the, you know, the Russians have made huge progress, you know, they really haven't in the larger scheme of things. It's supposed to be a small, a special military operation, a small enduration. And it's now gone on longer than the Soviet Union was fighting that's who Germany were more to, with colossal casualties, as you said, on the Russian side, not just on the Ukrainian side. You'd be like if we invaded Mexico four years ago and had gotten to Cancun, you know, it's like, not that great. You think we could do better? Well, that's actually reasonably far, because you know, I don't know, it depends on what we started. It's just it's, I mean, the problem here is that this could have gone in a different direction of there being a unified approach to this. But, you know, Trump has been desperately trying to get rid of it all the time. He wanted to have his own separate relationship with Putin. He's never had wanted anything, you know, to do with this. You know, he's wanted to sit down with Putin to do arms control agreements, all kinds of things, and the tragedy of all of this is he's probably made the world even more insecure than it was before. It rests respect. Real politics should he have just done the drug deal. Should Zolinsky have just given him a shed on Hunter Biden? Now that we know what we are. He didn't really have any. I mean, that was the whole thing. That was also a fabrication. But that's kind of what Trump blames him for. You know, he blames him for the phone call that it was Trump's phone call, you know, basically, personally, I mean, I'd never thought they should have had that phone call. And I left recommending there was no phone call scheduled. I had no idea that that was how it was going to go. But I didn't think it was going to be a good phone call anyway, because Trump was so antagonistic towards Zolinsky and the Ukrainians. And he remains antagonistic towards them. Huh. What a, what a rough world we're in. She on a hill. Well, but I do think though, just to be very clear here and you aren't called the bull wall. At least we are the more there is the ability to do things. Let's do it. Leave us what we had. Sarah McBride left us with an uplift at the end. Why don't you give us a little speech too? We could use it. I think Mark Carnie's laid it out there. I mean, he's basically telling everybody time to rally, time to get real, you know, time to do something. And you know, he has a ways forward. You know, there's all kinds of ways in which people are stepping up right now to just say, look, you know, we need to do something different. We do need members of Congress to get the right together and on the Republican side, absolutely. You know, it can't just be, you know, people on the streets of Minnesota or, you know, anybody else, you know, trying to just say this is, this is wrong. I mean, we have to, you know, use every platform as Mark Carnie has just done, you know, that we possibly can have in Davos, but we have to actually take some action. And I think, you know, at the state level, mayors, governors, you know, anybody who can and has a platform and an ability to act, they've got to do that because I personally think about it because better than this, you know, came here in 1989 as the, I mean, literally, you know, my first month in the United States, the building wall came down my first couple of months. And I still think that that, you know, ability to do things better is there. And it's certainly here in America, but it's not there if we all were in Thrall to one guy who has clearly lost the plot. Amen to that. Fiona Hill, thank you so much for the time today. I really appreciate you very much. And let's stay in touch, right? Yeah, thanks a lot. Thank you. Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. See y'all then peace. The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.