By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Capitulation or obliteration:
The President of the European Commission and the British Prime Minister have just demonstrated to President Vladimir Putin that there are only two options in dealing with the US President, and negotiations aren’t one of them.
Read the verbatim record of what Trump told Putin during his press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday as he and President Ursula von der Leyen have chosen to capitulate themselves. The video record can be viewed here.
The record also reveals that Trump planted a reporter’s question so that he could publicly demand from Starmer his multi-million dollar golf course bribe – a 15-year imprisonment crime in US law:
“Question: Mr. President, can we come to Turnberry, if I may? Have you or will you enlist the prime minister in your effort to bring the open back to Turnberry? And Prime Minister, you described this beautiful course. Do you agree with the president that it’s time to bring the Open back to Turnberry?
Keir Starmer: Well, as you know, that’s not a matter directly for me. That’s for the sporting authorities. But, look, I mean, it is absolute — the first time I’ve been here. It’s absolutely magnificent, both inside and out. And looking at the courses itself and the building, it’s — it’s incredible. But the decision on the Open is not a decision for me, as you’ll understand.”
Trump was pressing because UK officials have been telling the London newspapers the Trump bribe is too expensive for them to pay. The British Open Golf championship had not been held at Turnberry since 2009, five years before Trump bought it, a UK official told a newspaper in February, because the course “needed tens, or hundreds, of millions of pounds of investment to improve its accessibility by public transport and by road as well as improved hotel facilities.” In April, Starmer’s subordinates were still trying. “The government is doing everything it can to get close to Trump. One concrete thing is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been involved in pushing for the Open to return to Trump-owned Turnberry.”
Listen to the new discussion with Nima Alkhorshid in the new podcast on Wednesday afternoon, Moscow time.
Question: Mr. President, follow up on Russia. Earlier, you said that you were going to change the deadline from 50 days.
Donald Trump: Yeah.
Question: What is your new deadline —
Donald Trump: –I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There’s no reason in waiting. There’s no reason in waiting. It’s 50 days. I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made…
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Question: We can all sense your frustration with Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump: Yeah.
Question: Do you think he’s been lying to you about his intentions in Ukraine?
Donald Trump: Well, I don’t want us to use the word lying. All I know is we’d have a good talk and it seemed on — let’s say three occasions it seemed that we were going to have a — a ceasefire and maybe peace. And you’d divide it up and you do whatever you have to do that — obviously to get to the end, and all of a sudden missiles are flying into Kyiv and other places…And I say, “What’s that all about? I spoke to him three, four hours ago, and it looked like we were on our way.” And then I’d say forget it and I’m not going to talk anymore. You know, this has happened on too many occasions. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it.”
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Question: Mr. President, you moved up the deadline. It’s now 10 or 12 days. Is the sanction the same, that you’re going to slap a 100 percent tariff on anybody who does business with Russia? And what’s –
Donald Trump: So, what I’m doing is we’re going to do secondary sanctions unless we make a deal. And we might make a deal. I don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. It’s — we’ve done so many peace deals. This is the one I started out with. And, you know, this is — I know President Putin called me. He wanted to know if I could help him with Iran. I said, no, I don’t need your help with Iran, I need your help with Russia. And so that’s the one deal that continues to linger. And you know, we’re losing 5,000 — they’re losing. I’m not losing, you’re not losing, but 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian kids a week are dying and that’s not mentioning the people that are dying also in towns where you know he’s lobbing missiles into certain towns, like Kyiv. And he’s got to make a deal. It’s — too many people are dying. It’s a really bloody war and the five — they’re really telling me that number is obsolete. It’s like seven.
Keir Starmer: That’s terrible.
Donald Trump: So you have 7,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dying every single week for no reason whatsoever. So you would think based on common sense, you would think he’d want to make a deal. We’ll find out.
Question: [Inaudible] publicly, have you had any other trade conversations with the Russians reiterating this?
Donald Trump: In what?
Question: Reiterating this new pressure and deadline?
Donald Trump: You know, we’re going to have a — yeah. I mean, well, you’re the press, I’m reiterating it to you. Yeah, I’d say 10 to 12 days. I’ll announce it probably tonight or tomorrow, but there’s no reason to wait. If you know what the answer is going to be, why wait? And it would be sanctions and maybe tariffs, secondary tariffs. You know what a secondary tariff is. And look, the Russian economy — I don’t want to do that to Russia. I love the Russian people. They’re great people. I don’t want to do that to Russia. But this thing — they’re losing a lot of Russians. They’ve lost a million Russians and that’s the, you know, sons. That’s the sons and daughters of uh, Russian families. They leave the house, they go, bye, mom, bye, dad and then they get blown away. And Ukrainians too. Look what — look at Ukraine, it’s a disaster what’s happened there, but it continues to go on. As you know, we made a deal where the European Union is essentially involved, but it’s NATO and we’re — we’re supplying weapons to NATO. NATO’s now paying, because the United States, because of Biden’s in for $350 billion, the European nations were in for about $100 billion. Should be the opposite way, by the way, because we have a big ocean in between, should be the opposite way. But I think that eventually something’s going to happen. It should happen fast. So many people are dying. You know, when I settled out with Congo and Rwanda, they lost almost eight million people, and it just made so much sense. And if I didn’t get involved, they wouldn’t have done it. They weren’t even thinking about settling it. It was just going on forever. And nobody could go into those territories because they’d get killed. They’d get killed. And now they have a — I hear it’s a whole different ball game. We settled it. This is one that should be settled, Russia, Ukraine, this is one that really should be settled.
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Question: Mr. President, with the EU deal last night — you talked during the campaign about President Putin respecting you and that helping you to have a relationship with him. Do you still feel that way, that he respects you, considering the conversations you’ve had that have been really nice?
Donald Trump: Yeah, I’ve always gotten along with President Putin. I have had a great relationship with him. And he went through the Russia, Russia, Russia, hoax too. You know, I mean, it was — we used to talk about it. We used to say, you know, it’s too bad we really can’t do anything between our countries, because if we did, they’d say, oh, it’s, you know, some — look, I was tough on Putin because I was the one that closed up Nord Stream and Biden came along and opened it up. I was very tough on Putin in — in one way, but we got along very well. And I never — you know, I never really thought this would happen. I thought we’d be able to negotiate something. And maybe that’ll still happen, but it’s — it’s very late down the process. So, I’m disappointed. And, you know, the funny thing is that their economy isn’t that big. And it’s having a hard time right now, but it’s a relatively small economy. A strong military but strong economy. And it used to be a strong economy, now it’s not. He’s going through a lot economically. It’s not easy. But it’s pretty small, you know, compared to that magnificent size of that land. The land is massive. It’s got, I guess, nine time zones or something. It’s a massive piece of land. Russia could be so rich. It could be so rich. It could be thriving like practically no other country. And they’re holding that back because we can’t — he wants to do trade deals with us. He talks about it all the time. He wanted to. And I envisioned that, a lot of trade with Russia. They have a lot of valuable things. When you talk about rare earth, they have serious rare earth, right? They have just about every form you can have. So, you know, Russia could be such — so rich right now. Instead they spend all their money on war. They spend everything on war and killing people, and it doesn’t make sense to me. I thought he would want to end this thing quickly. I really felt it was going to end. But every time I think it’s going to end, he — he kills people.
Question: Could a meeting help? And are you considering — that’s been proposed, a meeting?
Donald Trump: I don’t know. I’m — I’m not — you know, I’m not so interested in talking anymore. He’s a — he talks. We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations, and then people die the following night in a — with a missile going into a town and hitting — I mean, recently I guess the nursing home, but they hit other things. Whatever they hit people die. So, I don’t — we’ll see what happens.
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