The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
It appears to be dawning on President Trump that he will not be ending the Russia-Ukraine war in one day as he promised during the campaign. Trump’s frustration at Vladimir Putin is rising to the point where he even accused Putin of throwing “bullshit” at him. Trump even admitted that Putin’s word to him is “meaningless.” All this comes as it’s now being reported that Putin is escalating the war against Ukraine, and that he’s brushing aside Trump’s anger about it. Add it all up and it sure looks like Trump has realized to his shock and horror that Putin is laughing at him. So now what? Is there any reason to believe Trump when he says he is now figured out what Putin’s game is? Will Trump keep arming Ukraine? Will Republicans finally demand that he do the right thing? We’re talking about all this with Mona Charen, policy editor at The Bulwark, who has been castigating Republicans for spinelessly going along with Trump’s pro-Putinism. Mona, thanks for coming on.
Mona Charen: Hi, Greg. Good to be with you.
Sargent: So we’re in this strange situation right now. Last week, the Trump administration paused some armed shipments to Ukraine. Then this week Trump reversed, confirming that armed shipments will continue. But then when asked by reporters who had made the initial decision to pause the shipments, Trump said he didn’t know. And then this exchange happened.
Reporter (audio voiceover): You said you weren’t sure who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine. Have you since been able to figure that out?
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well, I haven’t thought about it because we’re looking at Ukraine right now and munitions. But I have … no, I have not gotten into it.
Reporter (audio voiceover): What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without you knowing?
Trump (audio voicever): I would know. If a decision was made, I will know.
Sargent: So Mona, how is it conceivable that Trump doesn’t know who made this initial decision and how it was made, given how enormously consequential it could have been?
Charen: You’re not serious, right? We live in 2025 America and anything that ordinarily would be considered so outlandish as to be impossible is perfectly possible. Trump apparently does not know what goes on in his own administration. Not shocking. As for the point that you made about, Will Republicans pressure Trump to be more sensible about Russia, absolutely not. Their record on this is perfectly clear. Republicans still have a vestigial anti-Putin view. If you noticed when Lindsey Graham introduced legislation that would impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs on Russia—I guess it’s your favorite word, Mr. President, right? Look at what we proposed to do—it has something like 80 co-sponsors. So you can see that’s where the Republican majority in the Senate really is; obviously, that also includes many Democrats. But if Trump wakes up tomorrow morning and says that Putin has been getting a bad rap, or that he’s very, very impressed because Putin has nominated Trump for Nobel Peace Prize, then they will all fall silent as they always do. So that’s the easy part to answer: The Republicans won’t do anything. They will be happy if Trump gets tougher on Putin, but they will never do anything to move the ball down the field.
Sargent: I want to ask you about that Senate bill in a bit—but first, let’s talk about Trump’s frustration with Putin, which is clearly growing. He said this week that he’s very unhappy with Putin and said, “we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” So Mona, Trump has grown increasingly angry at Putin in recent weeks because Trump’s been surprised to discover that Putin is actually serious about eradicating Ukraine as a country entirely and is willing to keep killing Ukrainians to make that happen. On the other hand, something new does seem to have taken place here in some ways, pushing Trump a bit further. What’s your sense? What do you think happened there?
Charen: I think you’re giving Trump too much credit—believe it or not, I do think that. Because you’re saying that Trump has discovered that Putin really has no intention of abandoning his plan to destroy Ukraine as an independent country, [but] I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s that he has discovered that Putin is unwilling to give Trump a fig leaf—a pretend or a simulacrum of a ceasefire—that Trump can then wave around at the Oslo committee that hands out Nobel Peace Prizes. And that’s the frustration: Putin isn’t even giving him a fig leaf, and so now he’s angry because this is something he wants. As far as you know, the suffering of the Ukrainian people—that is something we know Trump is utterly indifferent to.
I refer you back to that Oval Office scene—the most disreputable Oval Office meeting maybe in history where JD Vance and Trump ganged up on Zelenskiy. There were moments there where Zelenskiy was showing Trump images of Ukrainian prisoners of war emaciated as well as other war crimes that the Russians have committed and Trump’s attitude—you could see it in his body language—is like, Yeah, it’s tough. Too bad. So I don’t think that he ever had any concern about the Ukrainian people. I think this is about his own personal desire for a Peace Prize. He’s resentful that Obama got one and he hasn’t. By the way, at least say this, Alfred Nobel did the world a favor by creating this prize. Because even if in their heart of hearts, world leaders don’t have the right motives, at least the thirst for getting a prize may cause them sometimes to stumble into doing good things.
Sargent: Well, it’s interesting that you talk about Trump and appearances because for Trump, everything is appearances. It’s almost as if he’s shocked to discover that Putin won’t give him what he needs to sustain those appearances. It’s as if Trump is essentially saying, Vlad, don’t you get it? Nothing’s real. That’s what’s so striking about it is Trump really expecting that people who are deeply, deeply ensconced in these crazy ideologies about a greater Russia dating back to the czars.… He seems incapable of processing the thought that someone would actually want something real. And that’s what’s surprising to him.
Charen: Yeah. I agree. But I would also say we have to bear in mind, too, that something is happening in the world that is different now. Namely, there is a segment of the right that has become really Putinphilic. You’ve got Tucker Carlson who is a Putin stan. You have a whole series of intellectuals and other influencers who believe the nonsense that Russia represents a Christian renaissance in the world that it represents traditional family values and anti-wokeness. This is, of course, a very carefully cultivated image by Putin himself, that he spent a lot of his time and effort cultivating in the West. It’s false. They’re not religious. They’re not, and so on. But it does have appeal to a certain Trump fan or a certain segment of the right. The thing is, even though Putin has his cheerleaders on the right, for most Republicans Putin still is very unpopular. And to say nothing of the country at large.… So it’s a fringe.
Sargent: Yeah. And I think part of that though that’s essential, and we should point out that Vice President JD Vance is a big Russophil—
Charen: Yes.
Sargent: And he’s really on the vanguard of this pro-Russia right. A big part of it is that Ukraine can’t possibly be defending itself. It wants to join the West, it’s woke, has pretensions to liberal democracy. That kind of society can’t possibly defeat something like the Great Russia, can it?
Charen: I guess that’s JD Vance’s view. It’s really hard to get inside his head since I’m still processing the fact that just in the blink of an eye ago, he was pro-West, pro-democracy, pro–the freedom-loving countries of the world. So maybe he thinks that, but it’s hard to say.
Sargent: Well, he was a very instrumental figure in humiliating Zelenskiy in the Oval Office there.
Charen: He was. He was.
Sargent: And he’s a big convert to Catholicism. He’s part of that kind of right-wing—
Charen: Yeah. Yeah.
Sargent: —Catholic milieu that clearly thinks all these things.
Charen: Can I just say something about Putin’s insouciance here? The fact is.… What is that? There’s that quote, I don’t remember who said it. It’s a famous quote from European history where some world leader said, We will astound the world with our ingratitude. Putin has been about the most ungrateful recipient of Trump’s gifts over the years. Trump has been tireless. He agitated time and again to bring Russia into the G8, even though it had been kicked out for invading Ukraine twice. But he kept trying to bring Russia back into the G8. He sent his envoy Steve Witkoff there to fawn over Putin and say what a fabulous guy he was. One of the first acts of this administration, I think it was back in March, was to instruct Cyber Command to cease all hostile actions against Russian disinformation efforts around the world. He has paused and then restarted aid to Ukraine many times. In meetings, he has said things like, Well, Vladimir and I went through a lot together over that Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. He has just been nothing but a lapdog for Putin, and all he’s asking in return is for a fake deal that he can then sell and Putin is declining to give it to him. It’s almost like Putin isn’t a good guy.
Sargent: It’s almost like that. And by the way, to your point, The New York Times is now reporting that Putin is brushing off Trump’s professed anger at him for continuing to slaughter Ukrainians, which, as you point out, is actually anger at Putin for making Trump look bad and not giving him the fig leaf way to win a Nobel Peace Prize and all that.
Charen: Right.
Sargent: But Putin thinks he’s got an even clearer upper hand against Ukraine. Now, Trump has spent many years insisting that other countries are “laughing at the United States” even when it’s not at all true; it’s a made-up story. But here, it’s really starting to look like Putin really is laughing at Trump. The Times reports that Putin has priced in American opposition to him continuing to kill Ukrainians, including potentially keeping weapons going to Ukraine and potentially sanctions as well. And Putin just doesn’t seem to think American opposition’s a factor. How should we understand the meaning of that?
Charen: The thing is he may be right. We are living in an era [where] Trump is so unpredictable and so mercurial. Right now, today, it’s looking like he’s angry at Putin and maybe he’ll double down on efforts to support Ukraine and send them arms. And maybe he’ll even lift up the phone and figure out what’s going on in his own Department of Defense regarding the shipments of munitions.
Sargent: Who would he call, Mona? Hegseth?
Charen: Yeah, Hegseth. But then again tomorrow, it could all switch again—because we are being governed by the whims of an unstable sociopath. And so it could all switch tomorrow. I don’t know. Putin is.… What is he now? Seventy-one, 72? I don’t know. He’s getting up there, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s his legacy, and he is determined to conquer Ukraine. On the other hand, if I were advising Putin, I would say, Just give Trump what he wants. You’ll get what you want eventually anyway. So I don’t necessarily think Putin is playing this right for his own purposes—because Trump has been nothing if not manipulable in the past, and he could probably easily get Trump to agree to a deal that would defund Ukraine and give Putin the opportunity with a small breathing space for Ukraine. Putin could then double down later and get it all. So he’s probably not playing his cards right either. But as for Trump, who knows? Who knows which way he’s going to? It was nice to hear him say that Putin spews “bullshit.” That was refreshing, but I wouldn’t rely on it. Who knows what he’ll say tomorrow.
Sargent: Right. And what’s so mystifying about the whole situation is that Putin has really been pretty shrewd at playing Trump all along. And Putin almost surely knows that the only thing that could conceivably get Trump to really continue to arm Ukraine is Putin humiliating him, right?
Charen: Yeah.
Sargent: Personally.
Charen: Yeah.
Sargent: That’s the only thing that could get Trump to do the right thing. There’s no chance that he does it based on the substance.
Charen: Mm-hmm. And they didn’t quite humiliate him, I don’t think. They said, Well, he uses strong language. His spokesman, I think Dmitry Petrov, said, “He uses strong language. We’re used to that.” That’s not a humiliation. It’s more like, Well, we don’t take this all that much to heart. But I don’t know. You think that’s humiliation?
Sargent: Well, no. I think the humiliation comes in where it’s getting reported, according to sources close to the Kremlin, that Putin is just brushing off Trump as a factor entirely. And as you pointed out, Trump just wanted a fig leaf. And for Putin to give him the middle finger even rather than give him just the fig leaf is a humiliation.
Charen: Yeah. Yeah, perhaps.
Sargent: Trump is acting humiliated, right? He’s really visibly angry and viscerally angry.
Charen: Yes, he is. But at the same time, we’ve seen him be willing to keep going back to the Putin well again and again for reasons that are mysterious.
Sargent: Yeah, that too.
Charen: He admires Putin deeply.
Sargent: He does.
Charen: And when Putin invaded Ukraine the second time, Trump was swanning around Mar-a-Lago saying it was brilliant and it was genius, this invasion of a peaceful neighbor was a work of genius. So, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Sargent: Well, maybe the problem is that all the war planning for invading Canada has distracted Hegseth and the higher ups at the Pentagon to the point where nobody really knows what’s going on with the weapons shipments to Ukraine. Maybe that’s what happened.
Charen: Yeah. But look, honestly, to be really serious about this, this country is now truly just declaring war on domestic enemies and—
Sargent: Yeah.
Charen: —focusing all of its energies on rounding up people who are here, creating camps, creating a secret police through ICE to focus on that. And if you look at the, the deployment of resources within the FBI, within the Defense Department, it’s all oriented around issues of immigration now.
Sargent: It’s amazing.
Charen: Yeah.
Sargent: Mona, I want to ask you about the bill in Congress that would dramatically increase penalization of Russia over the war. Trump is now hinting that he could support it. At this point, I just have no idea how Republicans think about these things. Obviously, as you said, many Republicans would like to vote for the bill, but are they really just going to sit and wait for Trump to give them the green light before they hold any vote on it? They can only do this.… They can really only do this if it doesn’t get Trump angry. That’s just amazing. Do you expect Trump to give them the green light on this bill? And can you talk about what’s in the bill, and what’s going to happen?
Charen: Yeah. The bill, as I understand it, would impose sanctions on Russia, [and] not only that but on anybody who trades with Russia. So there’s the rub. It would be very tough. It would be wonderfully welcomed legislation if it passed, but I just would hesitate to say because Trump has never been willing to pull the trigger. He’s threatened. He blusters most of the time. He TACOs. So we’ll see. On the other hand, again to stress the part of your question that’s easiest to answer: Yes, the Republicans will do whatever he says. They don’t love him, but their constituents do—or at least enough of them. So they are always going to follow his lead.
Sargent: Just to wrap this up, what does that tell us about the Republican Party today? How deep does MAGA actually go with them? As you’ve pointed out several times, Republicans would like to vote for this bill. But on the other hand, there’s a real contingent on the right that’s allied with Trump, that Trump seems to share preoccupations with, that sees Putin as an ideal leader, Christian nationalist, authoritarian against the West, against secular liberal democracy. So where are Republicans actually on these big questions? Are they with Trump on them, or are they not with Trump on them?
Charen: So I would say most Republicans are not with Tucker Carlson or with the Putin-loving minority on the far right. And there are a certain segment of voters who chose Trump in 2024, even though they don’t like Trump and they don’t like MAGA. They’re not MAGA. There’s new research coming out from the organization More in Common with which I’m associated which shows that 20 percent of voters who voted for Trump in 2024 do not consider themselves MAGA and are open to other appeals. So we will see, but it’s a long way until 2026, which could weaken the strength of the MAGA movement if it suffers severe electoral rebukes. And we’re certainly a long way from 2028, so this all remains to be determined. But for now at least, Trump will get. Anything he wants out of the Republicans in Congress.
Sargent: So is there an endgame, a scenario in which Trump for whatever reasons— whether it’s personal humiliation or whatever it is—does continue to arm Ukraine and Ukraine hangs in there? What do you expect to happen?
Charen: I think it’s 50–50 at this moment. That could well happen. That would be the, Well, I couldn’t get anywhere with Putin, so yeah, I’m going to arm Ukraine. And then you would expect him to say, Boy, those brave Ukrainian people. And he’d start talking up Zelenskiy and so forth. But at the same time, we have seen that his main goal here is personal. His main goal is for his own ego gratification. And so the tug of that could be very strong and he could go back for more with Putin. And by the way, if Putin wises up and gives him some fig leaf, then we know where that will go. He’ll rush for it. He’ll swallow it whole.
Sargent: It would be really great if we weren’t hitched to the whims of this madman, but I guess that’s the situation we’re in. Mona Charen, it’s really a great pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Charen: Thank you, Greg. I always enjoy talking with you.