On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, President Trump’s negotiating skills and common sense are on display during his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Putin is a ruthless, Stalin-like dictator who rose through blackmail, eliminates opponents, and seeks to reclaim former territories, including NATO nations, while disregarding human losses. Putin’s war is a disaster for him, whose weakened military and finances face a determined Ukraine. Also, Mark goes live to the Trump and Putin news conference after their 3-hour meeting, in which we didn’t learn a whole lot from it. The meeting was productive but there’s no deal yet. There must have been some concessions from Putin if it was a productive meeting? Afterward, Sen Tom Cotton calls in with his take on the Trump/Putin meeting. Cotton notes Trump’s realistic expectations for no major peace deal but potential ceasefire groundwork. He emphasized Trump’s refusal to concede Ukrainian territory without involving Zelensky and Europeans, and plans to arm Ukraine while threatening severe sanctions on Russian oil exports to pressure Putin into negotiations.
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Trump says no agreement on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine as Putin says there was an ‘understanding’
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Rough transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
Hello, America. Mark Levin here. Our number 877-381-3811. 877-381-3811. Well, unless you’re deaf, dumb. And blind. I guess you’re unaware that the president has been meeting with Vladimir Putin. It’ll soon be 3 hours. He’s got two days with him. With and Rubio. And Putin has two aides with him. So something’s going on. Nothing was going on. I think it probably be over by now. And I don’t know what obviously and I don’t like speculating, but I’ll tell you what I do like. You and I, I’m sure, think alike about this. I’ve complete faith in the president being in this, meaning complete faith. It’s not just his skills in negotiating deals. And he always seems to come out on top, doesn’t he? It says common sense. His common sense. Now. It’s very, very important. Whatever comes out of this, the Ukraine retains the ability geographically to defend itself. To defend itself. It’s also important to understand that Putin economically Russia is. In a very severe state. And it’s relying on a lot of help from communist China, from India. For resources for purchasing their oil. 70% of the Russian economy is under Putin’s control. 70%. And he likes to take a big chunk out of it for his own for his own benefit. And what else has happened here? The Russian military has really been brutalized, brutalized by Putin. And Ukraine has done an unbelievable job. Now fighting. Against Russia. You know, there’s a lot of talk about how much money’s going into Ukraine and so forth and so on. I get it. But we put a lot of money into other places, too, like Afghanistan. And we did a lot of the fighting. We sent our troops in there for years and years and years. We don’t have any troops in Ukraine. Those people are fighting themselves. Russia has had to rely on others, including North Korea, even send troops. So the Ukrainian people want to be free. They don’t want to live under. Under the police state of Russia. This is very important to know to. Now, what’s happening as I speak is that Russia is trying to aggressively as possible, take some more territory. Since this war began, Russia has picked up about 1% more territory. Mr. Producer, did you know that? 1%. And it has had over 1 million casualties. A quarter of a million of which. Our deaths. As I explained the other day. That’s five Vietnams. Four and a half Vietnamese. In three and a half years. Three and a half years. And the Ukrainians have have not really had offensive weapons either with which to strike Russia, although they have strike in Russia with drones and things of that sort and weapons that they’ve made and harnessed in a certain way. I don’t think Putin cares how many soldiers he loses. Stalin didn’t care about how many soldiers he lost. He lost millions of his own people. Millions. And it was part of a strategy. In fact, one of the ways he helped the beginning of the defeat of the Nazis. Was he sucked the Nazis in. They came within ten miles of Moscow, and then he surrounded their army. But the result was the death of hundreds of thousands. Of civilians even before war broke out with the Nazis, Stalin slaughtered millions of his own people. Especially the Ukrainians. Especially the Ukrainians. The only dictator in Russia to hold power. More than Vladimir Putin is Stalin. Putin is the longest serving dictator. Except for Stalin in Russia. We talked about some of this. Putin doesn’t have a politburo. Putin makes all the calls. He makes all the decisions. There’s not a Communist Party that has to answer to it doesn’t have to answer to anybody. He’s an all powerful fascist. He learned a lot when he was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, working with the Stasi in East Germany. And in fact, the way he took over was blackmailing Yeltsin. Yeltsin, who? Who was a drunk, but a good man. Had accused him of a number of crimes. And he told Yeltsin, You step down, you appoint me, then step down and I will not pursue those. I will I will erase the blackboard. And that’s what happened. He’s killed every serious person who’s questioning his authority, whether they be journalists, whether they be generals. Whether it be opposition party. Regardless. That’s what he’s done. He has written or people written for him at length, and he’s discussed at length how virtually all of Europe used to be Russian. The way he puts it. But certainly certainly Ukraine and Georgia. The Baltic States. Poland. Romania. Moldova. Many of these are native countries. In order to expand what he wants to expand. Which is the territorial control. And by the way, Russia in and of itself is a massive country. Just look at the map. They have five or six time zones. It’s a massive country. He would have to go through Ukraine. That’s why Ukraine is so important. It’s important for a lot of reasons, but it’s important to make sure he can’t. Donald Trump is also a student of history. Now listening to the media, you wouldn’t know that. But he is. And as I’ve told you many times, he has the official portrait of Ronald Reagan over his left shoulder in the Oval Office. It’s not that he talks about Reagan that much, but he is a fan of Reagan. And you remember Reagan walked out. On Gorbachev. Why? Gorbachev insisted, insisted, insisted over and over again that he had to get rid of the Strategic Defense Initiative or they couldn’t make a nuclear deal, and they were going to make a massive nuclear deal. At home, Reagan was under enormous pressure. People talk, called it Star Wars. Call it a fiction. Always attack Reagan’s intelligence, even though he was enormously intelligent and read a great deal. You said, no, we’re not going to give that up. Not now. Not ever. And he walked away. It was very famous. He walked down and he walked away. He said he was very disappointed. You could see it on his face. Came so close to a deal. People have written about it, people who were in on that meeting. Marlin Fitzwater has written about it. The late Marlin Fitzwater has have others. It took a lot of courage to do that. Donald Trump is aware of that. He’s well aware of it. Now, we’re going on 3 hours as this meeting has begun. I don’t know if it’s going well. I don’t know if it’s going poorly. I don’t know. Nobody does. But I know Putin is nobody to be trusted, and so does the president. So does Ruby. I’m sure. So does Whitaker. I’m sure. President has already done some very brilliant things in his second term in the seven months he’s been in office. He’s build up naito by forcing Naito to build up itself. It’s incredible. Naito is now bigger and more powerful than it’s ever been. It has more members. Is doing more to defend itself and build its own military as a result of Donald Trump. We now have and will have access to. Rare earth materials in Ukraine, which will help Ukraine and help the United States and will have to factor into any discussion about the security of Ukraine. Because that’s part of the deal. If Ukraine cease to exist, then we don’t get any of those materials which are intended to help pay us back. We’re not paying any more money. The Europeans are the Europeans are going to buy weapons from us. And provide them to the Ukrainians. And our president has made more types of weapons available to the Europeans to purchase for the Ukrainians, including weapons that are more offensive in nature. Not completely, but more so. More so. As for Putin. What do you folks think? His military has never been weaker. His finances, that is, the country’s finances are a disaster. He is not accomplish what he wanted to accomplish in Kiev. I mean, so far it’s been a disaster for him. The problem is he’ll throw more men more and more. At Ukraine. The other problem is Russia has over 140 million people, Ukraine. At the beginning of this fight had a little over 40 million, about 44 million, and many of them have left. I mean, Ukraine is a relatively small country. A very well-educated population. And of course. Putin’s focus is on destroying the population centers, destroying the infrastructure, bringing Ukraine to its knees. But apparently that’s not where Ukraine intends to be. Now, some heads up about the program with two great guests lined up. Dan Hoffman, who was CIA bureau chief in Russia. In our two and Senator Tom Cotton. Who’s the chairman, I believe, of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate in our three that said, heads up to all of our affiliates. If there is a press conference, whether it’s both leaders or just President Trump, we are going to take a live and we are going to break through our commercials. So be prepared. We will take it live and we will break through our commercials. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
Looks like the potential for a press conference of some kind is imminent. So we will not be taking the bottom of the hour break and tell all those affiliates and anybody else to whom that matters, because we want to be right on top of this. And while we’re waiting, you know, when you think about Alaska, it’s really actually quite interesting. Right after the Civil War. It was purchased by us. The secretary of state, William Seward, and then Andrew Johnson, who was president because Lincoln had been assassinated, he pursued this like a priority. Now, what Russia had been trying to do was to expand its trade in its settlements all along the Pacific coast of North America, including what would later become the United States. And you wanted to become a a great power. Now. Even back then, we were aware of this and we were concerned that it could become a grey power in the Asian Pacific region. Now. The Russian czar. They’ve had czars a long time in the 1700s. Even back then, they were looking at exploring the West Coast, but that included Alaska. Which was Russian. Well, think about how big Russia is now. Think about if they had Alaska and think about our situation, if they had Alaska. Sometimes history is really fascinating. Usually. So they wanted to keep Alaska and so forth. It was very rich in natural resources even back then. But our country was expanding westward to. Starting in the early 1800s. And so we were actually competing with Russians, Americans competing with Russians as explorers and traders. The problem for Russia was it lacked the the money to effectively. Still the area, certainly permanently. And so they couldn’t do that. And the Russians in the Crimean War. They lost the name, any money? So they began to lose interest in the whole area. But they were looking for funds. The Tsar was the tsar of that period. So they offered to sell Alaska in 1859 to the United States. But soon thereafter, the Civil War broke out in full. And of course, that wasn’t the focus of the United States. But then after the Civil War, the secretary of State, William Seward, circled back. He was concerned about the influence of Great Britain. The influence of Great Britain. Because Great Britain, as you know, was an empire and it was very interested in the West Coast. And so what happened was there was some negotiation. And the Russians offered the United States the opportunity to buy Alaska for $7.2 million. $7.2 million. It had to be a treaty. We don’t do treaties anymore, of course, and the treaty passed the Senate. And so Andrew Johnson signed the treaty. 1867, May 28, and we purchased it for 7.2 million. And it was formally transferred to the United States a few months later. And Russia was no longer a presence in North America and it ensured as. As Americans continue to move westward. He continued it and ensured that North America would be. American Idol is a big deal. And I was called Seward’s Folly for some 25, 30 years after the purchase, after the secretary of state who negotiated it because people said, what the hell is up in Alaska? You know what happened, Mr. Producer? They found gold. They found gold. So it became a big mining location. This this idea of Seward’s folly. So they found a massive gold deposit, major gold deposit in the Yukon territory of Alaska in 1896. In Alaska. It became the gateway to what they call the Klondike goldfields. And so the strategic importance from a mineral point of view was obvious. But come World War Two. The strategic importance was. Very, very much highlighted. Our ships could have access. Relatively easily. Very important. So important in Alaska become it wasn’t didn’t stay as a territory. We made it a state became a state on January 3rd, 1959. Now, you know, a brief history of Alaska. And I spoke to the president last week about another matter that he wanted to discuss. And I said, you know, Mr. President, the Russians are very envious that we have Alaska. They they still eyeball it in a way they know they can never get it back. He said, yeah, it’s pretty funny. Putin always brings that up to me in a joking way. In a joking way. So there you have Alaska. Now, just so you know, many of you were in your cars. There is. We are told imminently, but we don’t know what that means. A press conference that will be held. We don’t know if it’s Trump and Putin or just Trump. But I can tell you that there are two podiums, so I suspect the two of them will be there. I think you might want to check out my crystal ball. I think I could be dead wrong. I think they’re going to talk about. If I had to guess that some good progress has been made, there’s a lot of differences. But enough progress has been made for a second meeting. Perhaps the second meeting at this point will include Zelinski. Because obviously we can negotiate with the Russians all we want, but Zelensky is going to have to be there, and that’s important too. There’s been a lot of effort by the isolationists in our country. You know who they are. I’ve talked about them at length to paint Zelensky as the bad guy. And Putin is the good guy. Pretty sick, just to say now, paint Hamas as the good guy and Israel is the bad guy. Iran is the good guy and Israel is the bad guy. I hear some of the skeptics who are very concerned about Donald Trump taking out Iran’s nuclear sites, pretending they never said such things. Talking about. All the peace deals that and ceasefires Donald Trump has already entered into, including six and they count Iran as one of them. And I scratch my head at these fake MAGA isolationists. I think to myself, I was in the middle of a brutal battle with these people. I was the one backing the president of the United States in supporting what I thought would be his effort to do exactly what he did. They were not. It’s funny how they forget these things. Or rewrite them, if you will. Yet again, you’re seeing Donald Trump in action. You’re seeing what he is and what he isn’t. He’s not an isolationist, but he wouldn’t care about any of this. In fact, you might even ask yourselves now that he helped build up Naito and forced Naito to build up itself. Now that Naito is to buy weapons from us, to give to the Ukrainians, now that we have a foothold in there, rare earth minerals in Ukraine, why do we care anymore about what’s going on? It’s Europe’s problem. At some point that may be the case. But look how he’s trying working hard. They’re being press piece. In that region. He’s not an isolationist. He never was. He’s not with these people claiming it. He never was. He wouldn’t use Reagan’s phrase, peace through strength. He would just be a pacifist appeaser. And he’s not because he understands how dangerous that is. He understands what message that would send to communist China, among others. It’s important to remember this. Because he’s not one of them. He’s not one of these phony influencers or podcasters or whatever. Who gin up their numbers. Who make you pretend that they have a tremendous amount of influence. You saw that piece I read to you the other day that they have almost no influence and also that their numbers are overstated. Our numbers here are not overstated. They are what they aren’t. Same rating system we’ve had. God knows how to. Consider that Donald Trump. He didn’t have to in his first term. Attack Syrian sites. When Assad, the dictator, was there because he was gassing children and innocent civilians. So we. We sent cruise missiles here, around 60 of them. And hit some of the Syrian sites that were also Russian sites. He took out Suleimani, the head of the Iranian. The Iranian so-called Republican Guard. He went after ISIS. ISIS really didn’t have a whole lot to do with us directly, did it? He took out Baghdadi. He’s not an isolationist. He’s not an interventionist. That is he’s not looking for little wars to get involved in either. Nor should he. Nor should any president. What he’s been doing is is incredibly balanced. It is America first. But people need to understand what America first means. You’re seeing it this evening. You’re seeing it play out this evening. This is what Donald Trump is about. Now, how do we get to this point? It’s Putin who asked to meet. How did we get to this point where Putin wanted to meet with Trump? Because Donald Trump has done something else. That’s brilliant. It’s a long list. He’s used our economic power. The way Reagan used our economic power. In ways that. There. Most presidents don’t even. Don’t even think about. He sees. That Russia, specifically Putin, that is economy is teetering. He also sees that he’s getting an influx of money, cash from the Indians. As well as the communist Chinese. So what does he do? First of all, Iran is no longer in any position to sell oil. Excuse me. To buy anything from Russia. And because they were hit by the Israelis and then their nuclear sites were hit as they were. They have a whole problem with their infrastructure. They’re even having problems providing water to their citizens. They’re now involved, by the way, the regime there in a massive roundup of innocents and slaughtering them, executing them on the spot. What’s going on internally is horrific. North Korea is having to send in troops. Their father. They send him in and they get mowed down. They’re not trained well. They’re not equipped well. So they’re getting slaughtered on the battlefield and Putin’s pushing them out in front even of his Russian troops. One doesn’t give a damn either. You know, it’s interesting. My book, I explain they don’t care about individuals. They don’t care about the. Citizenry. They just don’t. And so this is what you get, whether they’re Marxist regimes or fascist regimes. This is what you get. There is no opposition. There’s no opposition. So he chose India. Does it just tell them he slaps a 50% tariff on them because they’re selling excuse me, they’re buying oil from Russia. He says, look, you can buy it from us. But from the Middle East, you can’t buy it from them. But India has had a long relationship with Russia. Because Russia and India have had an alliance against what used to be Pakistan in the United States. Now we have a relationship with Pakistan and India. And then the president said, if this continues, we’re going to put a massive tariff on China. We tried it once. It had an enormously negative impact on China. Then he pulled it off because they were negotiating deals. But he said, I’ll do what I have to do. And then thirdly, the president said, I’m going to put secondary sanctions. He already has primary sanctions, secondary sanctions on Russia. So he could collapse the entire economy of Russia the way Reagan almost collapsed the entire economy of Russia because they couldn’t keep up with the Strategic Defense Initiative. Does this sound like an isolationist to you? He’s not an isolationist. But he’s not a guy who’s looking to create wars. And this is why he says over and over and over again. If I had been president, Russia never would have invaded Ukraine. Now, is that true? It’s 100% true. You see, Russia saw a number of things. We’ve all talked about this. Others have to the withdraw from Afghanistan, send a signal around the world, particularly to Putin, that Biden is weak. He’s not going to do a damn thing. Nothing. That was a humiliation like America’s never suffered before. Right there on television. We lost some wonderful men and women. So. Putin saw that as a cowardly act. And it was. What else? He didn’t believe Biden would help provide the kind of arms that Ukraine needed. Obama didn’t. You know who did trump the Javelin missiles which take out these tanks. But Biden didn’t and wouldn’t. What else did he see? What’s what he heard? He’d amassed 150 200,000 troops, tanks and everything else on the border with Ukraine. He was prepared to invade. And Biden effectively said, well, if they take a little bit of land, that’s one thing. But if the you know but if they really take a lot and Biden’s. Comments were outrageous. And they sent a signal. They sent a signal to Putin and he invaded. Trump has sent opposite signals. You know, and when he when we bombed those nuclear sites, we said at the time, the whole world is watching. The whole world is watching and the whole world was watching, including Putin. When he decided that NAITO, which was now muscling up 5% of their GDP, that’s a lot of money. That they were going to buy arms from us and that we were going to suddenly even more powerful weapons. And more offensive capable weapons. He noticed. He saw. That made a difference. When Trump created the Space Force. If he’d been in the Air Force, he broke it out and said, You know what? The communist Chinese have built killer satellites to take out our satellites, our eyes during time of war. The Russians are doing the same thing. I’m creating a Space Force, and we’re going to produce our own types of satellites that we need to protect us in space. That got their attention. When Trump told Panama, You either kick out the communist Chinese, you gave them contracts to run both ends of the Panama Canal. Either do that, we’re taking it by force because we built it. It belongs to us. Well, they capitulated. The Chinese were moved out. The Chinese saw that. Putin saw it. They also. What else? The president has talked about Greenland. Why does he care about Greenland? Why does anybody care about Greenland? Because the Russians and the Communist Chinese. Are building military bases in the Arctic Circle. Greenland makes it possible to create navigable lanes for us not only to the Arctic Circle, but to combat and confront whatever it comes out of the Arctic Circle. What else did he do? In the big, beautiful bill. There are billions of dollars in there to buy these modern, huge icebreakers. For the Coast Guard. Why? So they can be used around the Arctic Circle. But around Greenland. That’s why. In Donald Trump’s first term, he significantly increased military spending because Obama. Had undermined the military and spending for the military. In this budget, he’s significantly increasing spending on the military. Why? Because Biden did the same thing. We now have an all volunteer military. More people volunteering to serve. Then there are positions for them. When he came into office. Other than the Marine Corps, we couldn’t get enough pilots, couldn’t get enough infantry and so forth. Now we are. He’s turned the country around. Our enemies either respect us or they fear us or both. He doesn’t do this fortress America stuff that Ronald Reagan used to condemn. He doesn’t believe in that. When he and Putin met on the tarmac a few hours back and they were walking towards whatever building they were walking towards for their meeting. There was a stealth bomber. And fighter jets. That flew overhead, timed for the purpose of sending a message. Here we are. That’s Donald Trump. Does he deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? Of course. Does it matter? Not really. I think it’s the Netherlands that give the countries there they give it out. But, you know, Barack Obama got it for fun in the men’s room on his first 12 hours in the White House. Something to that effect. So what’s going to come of this? What are they going to tell us? I suspect it’s something relatively positive, but obviously, I don’t know and there’s no point speculating. But it’s also true that everything can’t be resolved in one sit down and certainly nothing’s going to be totally resolved without. That Zelinski in Ukraine present. So I suspect that’s the next part of this. Even where they met in Alaska, the president said, no, we’re not going to Sweden. We’re not going to any of these other. We’re going to meet in the United States. He wants to meet. We’re going to meet in the United States. Alaska’s kind of halfway you know, the flight from Washington to Alaska thinks about 6 hours. The flight from Moscow to Alaska is about 6 hours. And there you go. I like that because, you know, you guys used to have this, but we own it now because we bought it for pennies on the dollar. Nothing like that will ever happen again. That’s for sure. Now, here’s one thing I just want to make abundantly clear, at least from my perspective, Putin is a killer. Putin cannot be trusted. Putin has violated every every deal he’s ever made. In fact, he’s violated deals that have been made by Gorbachev. We have to be very careful that Putin doesn’t. Doesn’t try and create a scenario where. The current administration, strong, led by a great president, agrees to something that a subsequent administration that will not be as strong. Well need to have as great a president. Either will not or cannot uphold or will not enforce. If Putin should be alive back then. Take steps. I mean, Ukraine is going to have to be able to defend itself. In 1994, it gave up all of its nukes. It was one third of the Soviet empire’s nukes, gave it up, came to Russia, 1994. In exchange, they had an agreement. So the Brussels agreement. At the United States, Russia and Great Britain would actually defend. Ukraine’s borders. We see how how that went. Now. Well, and Bill Clinton made a big deal out of it, gave a big speech. They just felt there were too many of these these now free, formerly captive states. That’s what they were called with nuclear weapons. But the bulk of Russia’s nuclear weapons were in Ukraine, as well as its launchers, its missile sites, its trucks, its mobile trucks and so forth and so on. So they gave them that is the missiles and the mobile launchers to the Russians in exchange for agreement, which, of course, Putin is broken. And lest we forget. Putin invaded Georgia. Another formerly captive state. It took 25 to 30% of that country. Putin invaded Crimea, which was clearly Ukrainian on the Black Sea. And he took 100% of that. Putin sent. Individuals in the eastern Ukraine. The start, a sort of under the radar war there, which is what he did. Took about 19 20% of Ukraine. And since the invasion in 2022 February, he’s he’s only taken about 1% more because the Ukrainians are hell of fighters. Now, I see that this press conference is about to get underway. As I said, as soon as it starts, we are going to. We’re going to go directly to it. Mr. Producer. Correct. We’re going to blow out everything. But I see a lot of activity there, including some of the people who may have been in the meeting. With the president and with Putin. We shall see. What interests me also in this is what everybody has been saying before the meeting. Yeah, no, I see in the audience our secretary of defense. I see Labrada the long time hatchet man foreign policy. They’re effectively they’re secretary of State for Russia. So. So it’s just a matter of time here. But what I was going to say, it’s interesting to hear what some people have to say. You know, during the course of the meeting or before the meeting and so forth. If you’ll notice, I’ve been very sober and cautious about my comments, speculation a little bit based on what we know historically, based on what we know about the personalities. But it’s not news for people to speculate and just comment on what they think is going to happen. Which is what they’re still doing. This meeting went on for three and a half hours. Very interesting. Three and a half hours. So something happened. But not everything. Let’s see here. Ukraine. Breaking news. Ukraine has to make decisions about ceding territory. Not exactly sure what that means, but we’re about to find out. Just need to be very careful about that ceding territory. Ukraine is the victim. Ladies and gentlemen, here we go.