I missed something important last year it was half an hour into the big presidential debate in June this is a pivotal moment between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump like a lot of people I was sitting there stunned by how badly Joe Biden was going in the debate that would ultimately end his political career making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the uh with with the co excuse me with um dealing with I really don't know what he said at the
end of that sentence I don't think he knows what he said either but in my silent stune I missed something weird that Donald Trump said it was in part of the debate where he was criticizing Biden's handling of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy they can't stand him and then he said this about Russian president Vladimir Putin we left American citizens behind when Putin saw that he said you know what I think we're going to go in and maybe take my this was his dream I talked
to him about it his dream this was his dream I talked to him about his dream what an interesting thing to say what exactly was this dream this is Vladimir Putin's dream this is a dream come true for him which was the Putin's dream I've got a pretty good idea of what Putin's dream is and this is the best part of it the you're not in a good position you don't have the cards right now a US president humiliating the leader of Ukraine and blaming him for starting the invasion of his own country you should
have never started it you could have made a deal since he took office Donald Trump has done a lot of things that Vladimir Putin would like he has diverted almost all US foreign policy attention to countries in America's immediate vicinity targeting them for tariffs and threatening to claim control of Greenland the Panama Canal in Canada he has abandoned Ukraine and said if allies don't spend enough on defense he will encourage Russia to attack them no I would not protect you in fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want you got to
pay you got to pay your bills these decisions make absolutely no sense if you look at them from the point of view of traditional US foreign policy but that's not what this is this isn't traditional US foreign policy this is Putin's dream so what comes next in the Russian president's fantasy I'm Matt Bon and this is if you're [Music] listening if you watching the TV News Channel Crimea 24 in early February and honestly who wasn't you'd have seen a report about a new artwork it's a paint painting of Donald Trump Vladimir Putin and Chinese president
xiin ping sitting side by side in armchairs it's being displayed in the grounds of the lavaria palace near the Crimean town of Yola and it's reminiscent of another artwork nearby elsewhere in the palace grounds is a sculpture of three world leaders from the past British prime minister Winston Churchill US President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin also seated in chairs is side by side those three men attended the yala conference of 1945 the Trump Putin and she in the new artwork are attending a theoretical future second Yalta Conference the artwork is called Yola 2.0
so let's go back to 1945 for a moment the beautiful Crimean Seaside town of Yalta was the setting for the latest and greatest Conference of The Big Three Yalta 1.0 Stalin invited Churchill Roosevelt and their staff to visit the seaside town and they had an extremely strange time the Summer Palace of Zar Nicholas second is the setting for Russia's welcome the palace was in disrepair most of the toilets were broken the staff had all been flown in from Moscow hotels and when someone mentioned that there were no lemons for cocktails Stalin flew in a whole
lemon tree the conference is to seal Hitler's fate and establish lasting peace at the time Stalin was the bell of the ball into the palace Courtyard sweeps the long black car bearing one of the greatest military leaders of all time Marshal of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin this is a British propaganda movie by the way representatives of the three powers take their places for the beginning of the Crimean conference there was a reason that they were all gassing up Stalin the Soviet Union had done the majority of the actual fighting against the Nazis losing at
least 20 million soldiers and civilians in the process but now that Hitler was almost defeated Roosevelt wanted Stalin to join the war against Japan Stalin would only agree to do so if his demands were met and Roosevelt was inclined to meet them Franklin Roosevelt looked tired and old Stalin wanted control over part of a petitioned and den nified Germany easy peasy check he wanted control over several lightly populated Pacific Islands between Japan and Russia that Roosevelt had probably never heard of check he wanted access to some Chinese infrastructure railroads and ports well we'll have to
ask the Chinese but I'm sure that'll be fine check and he wanted temporary control of Poland well just just until elections were held there Churchill was extremely skeptical that free and fair elections would ever be held in Poland he thought that Stalin would just take control of the country despite this they agreed Roosevelt really wanted Stalin's help with Japan but Roosevelt is near death and is later blamed for making too many territorial concessions to the Soviets the three men agreed the new borders of the world were drawn right there at Yalta Roosevelt was optimistic about
what they' done and I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the result results of this conference as the beginnings of a permanent structure of Peace A year later Roosevelt was dead Winston Churchill was now out of office and he gave a speech at Westminster College in the American state of Missouri indeed now that I come to think of it it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education as he began to speak he signaled that the lights in the room were too bright for him to
see his notes and the light were dimmed so it was in a spooky barely lit Auditorium that he described the terrible consequences of what they agreed to at Yola from stetin in the Baltic to triest in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe War so Berlin Prague Vienna Budapest Belgrade Bucharest and sopia all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere the Soviet sphere a quarter of the world's
land mass and a tenth of its population was behind the Iron Curtain and subject to moscow's rule Yalta wasn't meant to start a cold war it was meant to stop the Allies from fighting each other once they ran out of Germans and Japanese shoot at but the Cold War started that day when the big three drew a line between what was in the American sphere and what was in the Soviet sphere right now in Russia the word Yola is everywhere there's that artwork at Laria palace with Trump Putin and shiin ping sitting next to each
other in armed chairs just like the famous images from 1945 there are documentaries and debate shows on Russia's main TV channel titled yalter 2.0 this concept of a second yala with the world carved into three it's not a shocking new idea for Russians the President Vladimir Putin has been talking about trying to returned to the Yalta system for years as the Soviet Union was collapsing 35 years ago ago there were some efforts to preserve the boundaries that were set at Yalta Soviet officials really didn't want states that were formerly part of their empire to become
part of the Western Alliance bringing Europe closer to Russia's borders in an effort to get the Soviet Union to sign a treaty that would allow East and West Germany to reunite us officials floated a guarantee that the Western NATO alliance would not expand closer to Russia of course the Western NATO alliance did expand and now almost a dozen former Soviet sphere countries are firm allies of the United States and European Union Moscow didn't do much more than Grumble very Russ Le about this for 25 years but in 2014 a pro- European revolution in Ukraine was
the final straw for Putin we turn tonight to the tension Rising around the world as Russian President Vladimir Putin casts his shadow across the boundary of Europe and Russia tonight his troops are holding firm in a corner of Ukraine known as Crimea a year after invading Crimea Vladimir Putin laid out his reasons why at the United Nations he said that in 1945 the Yola system was born in his country at the cost of tens of millions of lives and two world wars he said the system had saved the world from large scale upheavals he said
that after the collapse of the Soviet Union Western countries gave the former Soviet States a false choice between joining the west or staying under the influence of Moscow he said that the revolution that overthrew his puppet president in Ukraine was a western backed coup he was basically saying well I had to invade because you crossed the line you you got it into your head that once the Cold War was over America was the only superpower and so we all had to do it your way America created a unipolar world where everything revolves around them Putin
and his friend Chinese president xiin ping think this is terrible they believe in a multipolar world with separate spheres of influence like the one after Yola Putin want a Yola 2.0 divide the world again then just leave us alone to do what we want with our bit of it this was never going to happen under George W bush or Barack Obama but after Donald Trump became president in 2017 a window opened as Putin critic and former World chess champion Gary Kasparov explained at the time I think Putin had a dream of doing an Yalta and
imagine it's how easy to sell the to Donald Trump in Yalta Putin will be like Stalin you'll be like FDR Grand bargain Putin's dream a grand bargain the art of the deal dividing the world who cares about all this Estonia latva bulgarians we're here big guys making big deals we decide the future of the world can you sell it to Trump something tells me you can so is Kasparov right Donald Trump arrived in Helsinki for a summit With No Agenda it was 2018 and Donald Trump had spent a few days in Belgium antagonizing America's friends
these days it's hard to tell who he regards as Friend or Foe I think the European Union is a foe what they do to us in trade now you wouldn't think of the European Union but they're a foe then he flew onwards to meet with America's traditional foe Vladimir Putin the presidential Palace in Helsinki Finland is in much better condition than the one at Yalta in 1945 well at least the toilets work the two men will have time alone with just interpreters before being joined by senior advisers for years afterwards what they talked about in
their 2-hour private meeting was a massive mystery while Trump never talked to anyone about what happened during that meeting the translator briefed Trump's AIDS who then all wrote books about it once he was out of office and according to those books Vladimir Putin started talking and then basically didn't shut up for 2 hours speaking for 90% of the time that the two men were together he was going on about history and Ukraine and NATO expansion and all the stuff that he loves going on about I personally wouldn't have been able to stand it a few
years ago Putin wrote an article basically outlining all the reasons that he does what he does and I forced myself to read all 7,000 words and a it's so long and boring and wrong but Trump listened remember a few episodes ago we talked about how Trump groups people into people he respects and people he doesn't respect do you respect Putin I do respect him do why well I respect a lot of people most of the people Trump respects are either billionaires or nuclear armed world leaders especially nuclear armed authoritarian world leaders in 2020 he told
journalist Bob Woodward it's funny that the relationships I have the tougher and meaner they are the better I get along with them you'll explain that to me someday okay but maybe it's not a bad thing the easy ones are the ones that maybe don't like as much or don't get along with as much Putin and Trump have spoken fairly frequently since that discussion in Helsinki Bob Woodward reported that they had potentially had as many as seven phone calls during Joe Biden's time in the White House and it seems like during those conversations Putin has convinced
Trump that a new Yar is the right move a big part of the problem was Russia for many many years long before Putin said you could never have NATO uh involved with Ukraine now they've said that that's been like written in stone Putin could not have said it better himself for what it's worth it wasn't written in stone it was a deal floated with the Soviet Union which no longer exists somewhere along the line Biden said no they should be able to join NATO well then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep and I could
understand their feeling about that he also seems to understand Russia's feeling that it was Ukraine's fault that the war started you should have never started it you could have made a deal I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land everything almost all of the land and no people would have been killed and no City would have been demolished and not one dor would have been knocked down I'm pretty sure the deal that he's talking about is one where Ukraine is left open to Russian interference in
their politics and Russian invasion if that interference doesn't produce outcomes satisfactory to Russia basically like what they had before their revolution in 2014 that's fair enough in Trump's eyes because Ukraine will be in Russia's sphere following a nice chat with Putin possibly at a palace in y alter with a working preferably gold toilet meanwhile countries near America will be left open to American interference in their politics and crushing American tariffs if that interference doesn't produce outcomes satisfactory to America it sounds a bit insane but also it's exactly what Trump has been talking about ever since
he won the election he is obsessed with controlling nearby countries I think Canada is going to be a very serious Contender to be our 51st state we need Greenland for National Security and even International Security we didn't give it to China we gave it to Panama and we're taking it back in fact Putin's dream kind of explains most decisions that Trump has made since coming into office his decision to directly negotiate with Russia over the war in Ukraine without inviting the ukrainians I'm finding it more difficult frankly to deal with Ukraine and they don't have
the cards his decision to Ambush and humiliate the Ukrainian president your country is in big trouble I know you're not winning you're not winning this I you have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of us Mr President his decision to cut off us financial aid to developing countries which he claims aren't America's problem in the African nation of luto which nobody has ever heard of and his decision to implement tariffs aimed at making the United States self-sufficient even if it makes the United States poorer in this new multi-polar world order Trump is
doubling down on his patch and leaving Putin to his Trump and Putin aren't building an alliance Roosevelt and Stalin didn't build an alliance at Yola they're changing the world order of the last 35 years the US is giving up its role as the world's only true Global superpower Trump is focusing on America's neighborhood and he seem seems to be handing Putin and xiin ping a knife and telling them to cut the rest of the cake however they like what does this mean for countries like Ukraine or Taiwan who staked their democracies on this unipolar world
order and the American protection it offered and uh what about us whose sphere do we fall in in Australia and Yalta the first one the last time that we had a multi-polar world it led to a nuclear arms r what would a shift like this mean for Global Security I'm sure Trump's thought of all this though and has a good plan for dealing with [Music] it now I think it's time I poured a glass of vodka and got myself yed
