Friend or foe? Trump turns foreign policy norms on their head

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before his re-election, Donald Trump promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio initiated talks between Russia and the U.S. without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump then took to social media to call Zelensky a dictator who “better move fast.” Is U.S. foreign policy shifting to blending the lines between allies and adversaries?

On American soil, the Department of Justice is facing a massive shakeup. Last week, the DOJ proposed dismissing the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams appeared to change his tune on Trump’s mass immigration crackdowns not long after. As a result, over eight DOJ prosecutors resigned instead of signing off on the dismissal motion. Manhattan U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon accused the DOJ of a quid pro quo deal in exchange for Adams’ cooperation with the Trump administration. Is the deal unlawful, unethical, or both?

When it comes to getting presidents elected, do political rallies matter anymore? They’re extravagant, in-person information events in a world where most people get their news online.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, everybody, welcome to another left, right, and center. I am David Green. Sarah Isker is here on the right. Moa Lathie is here on the left. And our politics do not seem to be slowing down at all, even though we're more than a month into, not more than a month. My God, it's actually only, it's less than a month into Donald Trump's presidency.
0:22.3	I guess around a month.
0:23.2	This just feels, is it going to keep at this pace for four years?
0:26.6	Yes.
0:27.4	Yeah, probably.
0:28.2	That's kind of scary.
0:29.5	Well, I want to talk about some of the latest stuff that we're sort of trying to internalize and talk through.
0:35.6	Donald Trump, the president of the United States, well, his
0:38.4	administration, his advisors have been negotiating with Russia and Vladimir Putin on how best to end
0:46.4	Russia's war against Ukraine. What is happening? Well, the message that Ukraine and their president,
0:53.5	Vladimir Zelensky, are getting,
0:55.4	is that it's none of their business because the initial conversations that took place in
1:00.0	Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, did not include the Ukrainian side, which has been shocking to a lot of people.
1:06.8	Now, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has stressed that these are not formal negotiations yet,
1:13.6	and we should say that the Trump team has signaled that they are going to have conversations with
1:19.3	Ukraine. People from Trump's administration have been in Ukraine, beginning some of those
1:24.8	conversations. But when it comes to President Trump,
1:28.1	he was a lot harsher in his assessment
1:31.1	of why Ukraine was left out of these initial conversations.
1:34.2	I think I have the power to end this war,
1:36.8	and I think it's going very well.
1:38.7	But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited.
	...

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