350. "Make Money Not War": The $2 Trillion Price Tag on Trump's Ukraine "Peace"

Battleground

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Patrick Bishop and Roger Morehouse discuss a familiar feeling of "deja vu" as the latest US peace mission to Moscow—led by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—ends with no substantial progress. They argue that Russian President Putin is deliberately "stringing Trump along" to keep the outside world waiting while Russia continues to make incremental gains on the ground. The hosts also dive into a revealing Wall Street Journal article suggesting a "chilling" motivation behind the American peace efforts: charting a path to bring Russia's $2 trillion economy "in from the cold," positioning American businesses to beat European competitors to the dividends. They also examine the widening corruption scandal in Ukraine and joining them to discuss this is friend of the show Askold Krushelnycky, who helps them look at the negative impact of the scandal on Zelensky's standing at home and abroad, and why Putin cannot afford to stop the war short of a total victory. Finally, the hosts answer a listener's questions including one about Ukraine's "remarkably bold" and "symbolic" drone attacks on Russia's "shadow fleet" of oil tankers. If you have any thoughts or questions, you can send them to - [email protected] Producer: James Hodgson X (Twitter): @PodBattleground Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Roger Moorehouse.
0:18.7	Roger, are you old enough to remember the 1970 Crosby Stills, Nash and Young hit Dejaveau?
0:26.0	I'm afraid not, Patrick.
0:27.1	I was only two at the time.
0:29.1	Oh, my God.
0:31.0	You shouldn't have told me that.
0:32.8	Well, I can remember it very clearly.
0:35.1	And in particular, the chorus, the chorus went, we have all been here before.
0:40.4	We have all been here before.
0:42.9	Sung and it's got a hippie-dippy fashion.
0:45.2	Well, that for some reason has been going round and round in my head in the last few days as I peruse the reports coming out of Moscow after the latest US peace mission
0:56.0	led by Trump Special Envoy Steve Wickoff with Trump special son-in-law Jared Kushner in tow.
1:04.3	It was a bit like deja vu, wasn't it?
1:08.0	Yes, Groundhog Day all over again, I'm afraid, yes, as we keep seeing this.
1:13.0	And so just a quick update on where we are. Basically, five hours of talks ended with nothing
1:18.0	that could possibly be claimed a substantial progress. That didn't stop the Russians, of course,
1:23.3	were saying there had been some progress and talks would continue. Even Trump would only say,
1:30.0	I don't know what the Kremlin is doing. He's normally very voluble when asked for readouts on
1:34.7	these meetings, usually very upbeat. This time, all he could say was, I can tell you that
1:38.9	they had a reasonably good meeting. I think we can take that as a complete flop. But the talking will go on.
1:47.9	There's going to be further negotiations between the Wikov-Kushner tag team and the Russian delegation.
1:54.9	I think even as we speak, that's going to take place later on in Miami. And of course,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goalhanger, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goalhanger and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.