Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. He is a stamp writer at the New Yorker.

Previously was New York Times Cairo Bureau Chief during the

Arab Spring. It was author of Into the Hands of the Soldiers, Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the

Middle East. His new piece in The New Yorker is the number, how much is Trump pocketing off the presidency?

Spoiler, a lot. It's David Kirk Pactor. Welcome to the podcast, man. It's a pleasure to be here.

Good to have you, man. Welcome to the show. I want to spend most of it on the Trump corruption, graft, enrichification of his family, whatever we want to call it. But first, you've covered some high-stakes diplomacy in your years. I'm curious what your impressions were of the multilateral, I guess we'll call it,

visit to the White House yesterday of all the European leaders, giving Zelensky some backup and some

support to ensure that the meeting didn't go as ugly as the one did a few months ago. I guess they

achieved that goal. It was a little bit more affable, but unsure what the progress was beyond that. What did you make

of what we saw yesterday? I thought one of the most striking things was the two photographs the White

House put out, where President Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, surrounded by the European leaders

like pupils before a teacher.

Yeah. At the end of the day, looking at the statements coming out of Moscow and out of Washington

as of this morning, I think ultimately not that much has changed. It seems like the Europeans

showed up with a mind to flatter Trump. Those pictures suggest that

was successful. And they cagely focused on the question of security guarantees, which is the

way to pretty much annull what President Trump and Putin talked about in Alaska. I did enjoy from the pictures

that they put out, the one that you're referencing. J.D. Vance is kind of in the cut couch in the

background there, so he was not able to create as much trouble as he did last time. But I felt

better about the meetings yesterday. The range of outcomes yesterday was on the good side was,

you know, Trump is susceptible to flattery, as you mentioned. You know, Trump is susceptible to kind of

being persuaded by the last person he listened to. And maybe the Europeans in Zelensky could

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