💥 Diplomacy is failing. What happened to Trump’s diplomatic promises?
In this hard-hitting episode of CrossTalk Bullhorns, we discuss the collapse of diplomacy under Trump’s leadership and the looming dangers of conflict with Iran 🇮🇷. As the Ukraine war drags on, the world is left wondering if any meaningful peace talks will take place. 🌍
🔍 Key points covered:
⚖️ Trump’s so-called diplomacy pitch falling apart
💔 The Ukraine conflict and lack of resolution
⚔️ Military action against Iran seems inevitable
🇩🇪 The collapse of liberal democracy in Germany
🧠 Mark Sleboda and George Szamuely provide expert analysis
📢 This is CrossTalk Bullhorns—where no political topic is off-limits. Watch, share, and comment your thoughts!
#TrumpDiplomacy
#UkraineWar
#IranConflict
#LiberalDemocracy
#CrossTalkBullhorns
#MarkSleboda
#GeorgeSzamuely
#DiplomacyCollapse
#GlobalPolitics
#USForeignPolicy
#Trump2025
#PoliticalAnalysis
#MilitaryAction
#GermanyCrisis
#USIranRelations
#PeaceTalksFail
#ForeignPolicyCrisis
#UkraineConflict
#MiddleEastTensions
#DemocracyInCrisis
In this hard-hitting episode of CrossTalk Bullhorns, we discuss the collapse of diplomacy under Trump’s leadership and the looming dangers of conflict with Iran 🇮🇷. As the Ukraine war drags on, the world is left wondering if any meaningful peace talks will take place. 🌍
🔍 Key points covered:
⚖️ Trump’s so-called diplomacy pitch falling apart
💔 The Ukraine conflict and lack of resolution
⚔️ Military action against Iran seems inevitable
🇩🇪 The collapse of liberal democracy in Germany
🧠 Mark Sleboda and George Szamuely provide expert analysis
📢 This is CrossTalk Bullhorns—where no political topic is off-limits. Watch, share, and comment your thoughts!
#TrumpDiplomacy
#UkraineWar
#IranConflict
#LiberalDemocracy
#CrossTalkBullhorns
#MarkSleboda
#GeorgeSzamuely
#DiplomacyCollapse
#GlobalPolitics
#USForeignPolicy
#Trump2025
#PoliticalAnalysis
#MilitaryAction
#GermanyCrisis
#USIranRelations
#PeaceTalksFail
#ForeignPolicyCrisis
#UkraineConflict
#MiddleEastTensions
#DemocracyInCrisis
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Crosstalk Bullhorns, where all things are considered. I'm Peter Lavelle.
00:19Well, we had high hopes, but to no avail. Trump's so-called diplomacy pitches are in
00:24a state of collapse. He is unwilling to end the conflict in Ukraine and military action
00:29against Iran almost seems inevitable. Meanwhile, we're witnessing the collapse of liberal democracy
00:34in Germany. Discuss these issues and more. I'm joined by my guest, George Samueli in Budapest.
00:40He's a podcaster at The Gaggle, which can be found on YouTube and Locals. And here in Moscow,
00:43we cross to Mark Slobodde. He is an international relations and security analyst. All right,
00:48gentlemen, Crosstalk rules in effect. That means you can jump anytime you want, and I always appreciate
00:51it. All right, let's kick it off with Mark here in Moscow. As I said in my introduction, Mark,
00:57I mean, the diplomacy pitches that Trump has put forward in this first 100 days seem to have
01:06sputtered out, losing a lot of momentum. We have this minerals deal, I think, that's open to
01:11interpretation of what that means for the Ukraine conflict. But we've heard over the last few weeks
01:16that he still may walk away, whatever that means. And of course, with Iran, the latest rounds of talks
01:22have been postponed. We'll see if they've been canceled. So where do we stand on the diplomacy front?
01:28Yeah, in regards to what the Trump administration refers to as, quote unquote, diplomacy, because
01:36I think we need to redefine diplomacy for what the Trump administration has been conducting.
01:45They don't use teams of experts, of officials. They've got Trump's personal envoy, whom is a New
01:54York real estate developer, Steve Witkoff, who flies around to Ukraine, right, to Russia, to Oman,
02:06to speak with Iran, to deal with Netanyahu and Israel. And he doesn't evidently even have a team
02:14of people, right, of experts on particular regions and areas that he goes with. A couple of weeks ago,
02:21he couldn't even name the four regions, the four regions of Ukraine that Russia claims are now part
02:30of Russia, right? Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. He couldn't even name them. And he's
02:35the principal American negotiator. On top of that, we have Trump's mafia-style tactics,
02:42where he comes in with bluff and bluster and threatens military or economic apocalypse and then
02:51walks it all back in the preceding days. I think this is a infantile. I mean, he has the definition
03:00of infant terrible, the terrible infant, when it comes to negotiations. And negotiations are
03:07protracted affairs conducted between two states at a professional level, not deals, you know, art of the deal
03:18with a handshake in a back room. This administration has neither the expertise, the competence, or the patience
03:25to deal with diplomatic work. They have the equivalent of attention deficit disorder driven by the 24-hour
03:36news cycle. They are unable to stay focused on anything long enough for any actual diplomacy to take place.
03:45George, your thoughts? I mean, Mark gave a pretty good illustration of what's going on here.
03:50I mean, I think what compounds the frustration that all of us feel is that, as I said in my introduction,
03:58we wanted to have hope. I mean, we wanted to break this logjam, okay? I mean, Biden, as we all are aware,
04:06he made sure getting out of the conflict in Ukraine would be very, very hard. Well, that's been proven
04:12correct. Even more disappointing is that it seemed, at least initially, the Iranians, they made it very
04:21clear that they're open to negotiations. And again, George, I mean, who do we listen to?
04:28Whitcoff? Marco Rubio? The ex-National Security Advisor, soon to become United Nations Ambassador?
04:37I mean, it's just all over the place. It's hard to calibrate what's going on. George?
04:42You're absolutely right, Peter. And you raised the absolutely important, crucial question,
04:48which is Biden left a horrific mess for his successor. So therefore, it was always going to
04:56be very, very difficult for Trump to get America out of this situation. And again, this takes a long
05:04time. I mean, if we go back to the sort of the Nixon years, it took four years for the United States to
05:13end its involvement in Vietnam. It was a long, long process. And a lot of people said at the time,
05:19well, why didn't Nixon just simply walk away? Just have to pack the bags and go away. Well,
05:24it never happens like that. It is always going to be a very difficult, protracted process.
05:29So what Trump has done, I mean, at the moment, he's sort of juggled different things. He's tried the
05:34ceasefire route. That didn't gel. And he tried the various ceasefires on infrastructure. And then now
05:42he's got this minerals deal. But the minerals deal is a far cry from anything that he had spoken about
05:47before, that we're going to get paid back $350 billion for all that we've invested. That isn't going
05:53to happen. But then the other day, he gave an indication that he is moving in the right direction
06:02when he said, well, look, I've already accomplished a great deal in Ukraine. I prevented Putin from
06:08taking the whole of Ukraine. So that gives him at least a route towards proclaiming that, well,
06:15we've done something, you know, we've done Ukraine. I mean, I'm just saying that that isn't going to be
06:20the final deal. You're absolutely right. Whom do we listen to? Where are we going? But that's what a
06:25peace process is about. It's long, it's difficult, it's protracted, it goes backwards and forwards.
06:31But I wouldn't necessarily immediately dismiss it.
06:36Well, and on top of it, George, Richard Nixon never said, I'm going to do it in a day. I'm
06:40going to do it in the first hundred days. He never, there was never a timeline. And this is one of
06:44the, I think this is part of the problem we have with living in the media world that we do.
06:50Everyone's look, anticipating the next benchmark. You know, Mark, one of the interesting things that
06:55I kind of like what George had to say there, because this whole conflict, the way it's been
07:00delivered to the public is, it's basically been one series of narratives after another,
07:07or Russia's defeated, it's already collapsed, you know, Putin's on the run, and all this stuff
07:12we've heard over the last three years. But Trump, I think, maybe kind of tripped upon it by accident.
07:18Well, after all, Ukraine is still a sovereign nation. I don't know if he can,
07:22if they have the finesse to be able to do that, because this entire conflict has been run on memes.
07:27Mark? I'm a little actually tired of people, of the Trump administration. So this was Biden's
07:36mess. This is Biden's problem. And Trump is trying to clean up. First of all, when it comes to Iran,
07:41that's entirely Trump's mess. It was Trump that ripped up the JCPOA. It was Trump that assassinated
07:48Qasem Soleimani in a third country. It is Trump that is waging war on Yemen with bombing over a thousand
07:57sites and causing hundreds of civilian casualties. It was Trump who brags about first sending
08:04javelins to Ukraine, which he claims prevented Russia from seizing Kiev, which was never what
08:11they were doing in the beginning of the conflict in the first place. But, you know, and Trump certainly
08:18did nothing to force the Kiev regime to the Minsk Accords, which they were signed up at the time
08:27during his first four years in office. And now this is Trump's war. This is no longer Biden's war.
08:36Trump is now selling weapons to the Kiev regime in Ukraine. In the last week, there have been two
08:44weapon packages sold to Ukraine. And now instead of a gift from from the United States, it's being
08:51paid for by the Europeans, essentially, you know, but, you know, Ukraine is paying for it. But of course,
08:56all of their money comes from either the EU or the United States. First, the 50 million dollar package
09:02and then a 300 million dollar package to support and provide parts for the FTS 16. This is Trump's wars.
09:09Now we can just call Trump Brandon Jr. Because he is adopting Biden's foreign policy of doubling down
09:19on military and sanctions escalation against Russia and this new sanctions package threatening anyone who
09:28buys any Iranian oil of of not doing any business with the United States. That is also another attack
09:35on China because China is the primary supply buyer of Iran's oil at this point. So it has become
09:43essentially Trump's war against the BRICS at this point. And thus far, the BRICS are standing in
09:50solidarity. It really isn't. I would say you're going to ask the question. Go ahead, go ahead, react.
09:57No, I disagree. I don't think it's Trump's war. Trump's role in Ukraine was minimal. Yes,
10:03he sold the javelins during his first term. He got impeached for it. The key players in Ukraine
10:12were Obama and the coup of 2014 that created the mess to begin with. And then Biden's massive
10:20escalation. Trump essentially inherited a mess created by Biden. Yeah, but George, but George,
10:27but George, hang on, hang on. But you know what, what Trump could have done, and this is the
10:33contradiction that he's dealing with. He, the United States is a co-bullet, belligerent and a
10:38mediator. Okay. He could, he could, he could just say, look, we're not taking sides anymore. We're not
10:44going to supply any more arms. No, no more intelligence. Okay. He has to step back because
10:49he hasn't been willing to step back. What Mark was referring to was direct commercial sales.
10:53Well, that's just, that's just a runaround of going for another arms deal through Congress. So
11:00it is his war. It's a, it's a commercial sale. It's much more limited than anything that Biden
11:06did. It may go much beyond that. I don't, I don't dispute that, that it may go beyond that,
11:12but it's much more limited. It's a limited commercial sale. And again, I mean, that doesn't
11:17vitiate the idea that he is still trying to end the war. He's still continuing, you know, when,
11:22when you end the war, you don't just simply, oh, well, that's it. As of midnight tonight,
11:26we're out of here. Nobody does that. It's always a process. And he has completely changed
11:33the whole perspective of Biden. I mean, the Biden people, you were using this war, a proxy war
11:39against Russia in order to degrade, defeat, humiliate and destroy Russia. Trump doesn't do
11:45that. Trump's point is, look, we need to get out of this war. This is, has nothing to do
11:50with any American interests. However, he has inherited something and it's very difficult
11:55to get yourself out of something. Okay. But if you inherit something, if you inherit something,
11:59it is yours. Mark, before we go to the break, go ahead. Yeah. Trump made clear his purpose here
12:04is to save Ukraine, i.e. save the U.S. proxy regime in Kiev. That's exactly what he said. And whatever
12:12the intentions were, whether U.S. weapons, you know, are a commercial deal or a gift from Biden
12:19when they kill Russian troops, it doesn't make a figs difference to Russia. All right, gentlemen,
12:26here, I'm going to jump in here. We're going to go to a short break. And after that short break,
12:30we'll continue our discussion on some real news. Stay with RT.
12:33Welcome back to Crosstalk Bullhorns, where all things are considered. I'm Peter Lavelle.
12:42To remind you, we're discussing some real news. All right, George, let's change gears here. The ADF
12:47in Germany is being deemed by the German intelligence community as a terrorist, what's the correct term?
12:57Extremist. Extremist. Sorry, extremist organization. All right, let's just keep, let's get our viewers up
13:04to speed here. In the last election, they came in second place, unprecedented for an alternative
13:12party in German history, post-war history. And let me think, George, oh, the last public opinion poll
13:18has them dead even with the Christian Democrats. In one poll even has them ahead. And now it looks like
13:24the German government, through its intelligence community, wants to shut down a very, very popular
13:31party, the most popular party in the eastern part of the country. Marco Rubio is not a person I tend
13:37to quote, but Germany has just given its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not
13:45democracy. That's tyranny in disguise. I hate to quote Marco Rubio, but I just did. George?
13:51Yeah, you're actually right. Marco Rubio made the absolutely appropriate comment there. And then
13:56the German foreign ministry responded to that statement of Rubio's saying, well, we from our
14:04history know that right-wing extremist parties need to be stopped. So they've made clear that the goal
14:11here is that they're going to stop this party, the party that, according to polls, is at least
14:18the equal of the Christian Democrats and maybe even ahead. And this new government, this new
14:24Christian Democrat government is already sinking in the polls. So it's not anything that can be
14:30arrested that they're sinking about. They're very, very unpopular. So this is now the leading
14:36opposition party. And the German government is declaring that it's going to make a move to outlaw it.
14:44And this is really part of a movement throughout Europe. I mean, we have it in France. Marine Le Pen
14:51has been essentially told that she can't run for president in 2027. Then, you know, we had Romania
15:00with Georgescu. Basically, they canceled the election. And now there's an election today in Romania.
15:08Likely that it's going to be some Georgescu light who will prevail there. That's already causing
15:14anxieties throughout Brussels. So you can see in Europe, there are these populist movements,
15:22and the political establishment is using the most coercive means of bringing them to heel.
15:30And I think democracy is in real danger in Europe now.
15:36You know, Mark, it's, you know, the reason that the AFD is being deemed as an organization to worry
15:48about is because, as we've already made reference to there, in German history, this is obviously going
15:53back to the 1930s. But the problem is, it ends up being a rather paradox, because the more they push
16:00this, the more it looks like January 1933, because they're squashing political opposition. So I mean,
16:10no matter what is done, there are, they seem to be repeating their history, which doesn't bode well
16:16for Germany. And it certainly doesn't bode well for Europe. Mark, I think the German intelligence
16:21agency is correct. There is a real and substantial threat to democracy and Germany and across Europe
16:30broadly right now. And that threat, of course, is not some third party AFD or the national rally
16:39party party in France or Gorgiascu in Romania. The threat is the totalitarian and authoritarian
16:49center left, center right, hegemonic extremist center. They are the real and current and substantial
16:59threat to democracy. It is not a coincidence that after how many decades of operation, the alternative
17:07for Germany is now being labeled extremist, when they suddenly become the most popular party in the
17:13country. The ruling elite, right, in Berlin, in Brussels, feels threatened. And they, over the last
17:22few years of exercising the curtailment of civil and political rights, with a scaremongering about their
17:33proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, they feel entitled and empowered to pursue these authoritarian measures
17:42to head off any political and ideological opposition within their own countries, even when it clearly
17:50represents now the plurality of the voting citizens. It's long been a subject of academic political science
18:01literature to talk about a democracy deficit in the EU, in Europe, but never to the extent that we're seeing
18:10right now. They are the threat.
18:14And George, what we're seeing as a trend in the so-called liberal democracies is that everything's an emergency.
18:21Everything is an emergency. That's the excuse to shut down civil liberties. They shut down individual
18:27politicians to try to marginalize and get rid of political parties. It's an emergency. It's COVID. It's Russia.
18:37It's a disrespect for...
18:40Securitization.
18:42Yeah. George.
18:43Yes, that's right. Now, the United States has always blazed the trail here because it was the United States
18:50that started this movement of taking people off the ballot. And this was... They did that with Trump
18:56through a number of ways. And that would have worked had the Supreme Court not stepped in and said,
19:01you can't really do that. But that really started. And of course, then the Europeans just seized on it
19:06with enthusiasm. Yeah, let's do this. And then we had this Thierry Breton, that former European
19:14commissioner, a real authoritarian. I mean, this is a person who sees the role of the European
19:22Commission as precisely to crack down on all forms of speech the European Commission doesn't like.
19:28He said, we're going to do to the AFD what we did to Georgescu in Romania. And remember when Ursula von der Leyen
19:38said that we must go beyond debunking, we must go towards pre-bunking. In other words, pre-bunking,
19:45we're going to crack down on speech before it happens. You know, so she gets really into this
19:52authoritarian mindset. And so then we see this. We saw in Moldova an EU candidate member. You have
20:01the governor of Golgazia under arrest. You know, the other day in Romania, we had a journalist,
20:09an RT journalist, which was just simply kicked out of the country for no reason at all. So you've got
20:14these emergencies. You've got the emergency of Russia, which is apparently always growing ever
20:21more powerful and subverting and terrorizing and whatever. And then, of course, we can have these
20:25right-wing extremists. One way or another, they're going to outlaw all of the political
20:32parties that challenge this, as Mark said, the center-left, center-right hegemony.
20:38Yeah. They're the greatest threat to democracy in the Western world, the centrists. Okay.
20:44With the remaining time that we have, we've already passed the 100-day mark, and that's a tradition
20:50in American politics, the first 100 days. So I'm going to ask both of you first, Mark,
20:56grade Trump, 100 days. D. I don't give him a nap because the U.S. is no longer firing ballistic
21:04missiles into Russia. Other than that, everything they've done from Trump's tariff war on the world
21:12to their bluff and bluster against Iran, threatening war to clean up a mess that Trump made
21:20from his first administration to the war on Yemen to greenlighting genocide in Israel to a complete
21:32bumbling mashup of any attempt to improve relations with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. And now
21:43the Trump administration itself, already divided, now appears to be falling apart.
21:49Waltz is out or exiled to something that Trump considers completely purposeless, the U.N.,
21:57and Hegseth looks set to follow. I think the Trump administration is already, you know,
22:03this clown show is already having serious issues.
22:07Okay. And what's your grade, George?
22:10I'd say it's a B. I think it has an ambitious agenda,
22:13a very ambitious domestic agenda, tackling all sorts of issues that previous administrations
22:21had mooted but never had the guts or the strength to do. I mean, he's taking on the universities,
22:28the law firms. These are the most powerful institutions in contemporary American life.
22:33And they, incidentally, fuel the foreign policy of the United States, the humanitarian interventions,
22:39the interventions in other countries through their think tanks, through their foundations,
22:43through their civil society groups, through their international criminal courts.
22:48All of that. It's a kind of a vast infrastructure created by the universities and the law firms.
22:54All very good. He's dismantling the National Endowment for Democracy, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe,
22:59USAID. I didn't think that would happen, but Trump is doing it.
23:04And when it comes to the foreign policy, I think the jury is out.
23:08The Iran thing is still up in the air. There's still very serious negotiations taking place.
23:14There's an article the other day in the Times of Israel going into very details of the negotiations,
23:21and there may yet be a deal. Mike Waltz is out. That may be good news.
23:25It's clear that bombing Iran was the key that got him out, that Trump didn't want to go down the path
23:32that Waltz wanted, which was to bomb Iran. So he's the one who's been sidelined,
23:37and therefore that's a possibility. I'm not saying that that's a done deal,
23:41but at least it's a good sign that Waltz has been sidelined.
23:45But there's a lot of others just like him, unfortunately.
23:48You know, Mark, it's often said, but I don't think it's been said during the first hundred days
23:55of the Trump second administration, but the saying is, it doesn't matter who you vote for,
24:01you get John McCain. Does that apply in your opinion?
24:04Yeah, I don't think you can really claim that Trump is dismantling warmongering institutions
24:08when he invites the warmongers into his own administration,
24:12and then you consider it a good sign when he gets rid of one of them.
24:15I think that's, you know, kind of a joke. No matter what Trump, you know, personally
24:21may have thought 15 minutes ago, he seems to have a very, shall we say, mercurial
24:26personality and focus on the issues. He's surrounded by a majority of neocons and warmongers.
24:34And, you know, whether we're talking as chief of staff, you know, it depends on who he replaces
24:39Mike Waltz with. There is a momentum and an impetus to U.S. hegemony. And, you know,
24:47whether Trump, I don't think he really meant to dismantle them. And I don't think he's
24:52dismantling these institutions now. He's simply reformatting them with people he sees as politically
24:58loyal to himself. He's dismantling them. He's dismantling them.
25:02What do you want him to do? He's all over my job. He's dismantling them.
25:06I'll probably, we'll probably discuss this next week, gentlemen. That's all the time we have.
25:11Want to thank my guests in Budapest and here in Moscow. And of course, I want to thank our
25:14viewers for watching us here at RTC. See you next time. Remember, crosstalk rules.