Trump and Zelensky’s war of words

Americast

BBC

Politics, Government, News

4.2 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Trump administration begins peace talks with Russian officials to end the war in Ukraine, President Trump himself seems to be blaming Ukraine for it beginning at all. We ask, whose side is he on?

Justin, Marianna and Anthony also look at what Zelensky means when he says Trump is “living in a disinformation space”.

HOSTS: • Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter • Marianna Spring, Social Media Investigations Correspondent • Anthony Zurcher, North America Correspondent

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This episode was made by Chris Flynn with Catherine Fusillo and Claire Betzer. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

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Americast is part of the BBC News Podcasts family of podcasts. The team that makes Americast also makes lots of other podcasts, including The Global Story, The Today Podcast, and of course Newscast and Ukrainecast. If you enjoy Americast (and if you're reading this then you hopefully do), then we think that you will enjoy some of our other pods too. See links below.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So we woke up this morning to another press conference from Donald Trump.
0:08.5	In it, he had some things to say about Ukraine.
0:11.4	And I think I have the power to end this war.
0:14.1	And I think it's going very well.
0:16.1	But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited.
0:18.0	Well, you've been there for three years.
0:19.4	You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have
0:24.2	made a deal for Ukraine. And those words, as you can imagine, prompted a response from a less
0:29.8	than happy Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, who said Trump is living in a disinformation space.
0:36.7	And that's when we recorded this podcast. But Trump
0:39.9	wasn't finished and he's gone a step further this time on truth social, his social media
0:43.8	site of choice, calling Zelensky a dictator without elections and saying he better move fast
0:49.3	or he's not going to have a country left. So a war of words between Donald Trump and the president of
0:55.4	Ukraine, which is what we discussed earlier in this episode. Welcome to AmeriCast.
1:03.1	AmeriCast from BBC News. God spared my life for a reason. Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.
1:13.6	A star is born, Elon.
1:15.6	I'm not just Maga. I'm dark Gothic Maga.
1:19.6	This is what happens when the machine comes after you.
1:22.6	I'm terrified for this country and I'm so hurt that America let this happen.
1:26.6	I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the worldwide headquarters of AmeriC.
1:48.3	And it's Anthony, here in Washington, D.C.
1:51.3	And it's Justin, at home in South London.
	...

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