They were obviously not ready for this

The lone Fox liberal on the five, Jessica Tarloff made a point that was almost accidentally devastating. And I believe the fact that it happened on Fox News in front of Fox's own audience is really important. Jessica Tarloff said that watching Trump talk about Ukraine and Putin felt like watching the Helsinki press conference over and over again.

I love that. I will often make a commentary on this show and then it is mirrored by Jessica Tarlop. I'm not suggesting she's watching the show and getting it from me. What I like is that the very same ideas I believe to be true, she is putting in front of a Fox News audience and that is so valuable. Remember when Trump and Putin stood next to each other in Helsinki during Trump's first term and Trump said, listen, Putin said they didn't interfere in the 2016 election.

And he said it very strongly. And I believe him. That was a sitting president siding with the former KGB officer, then president of Russia over his own intelligence agencies. Jessica Tarloff explains that this was very similar to that when Donald Trump came out of his meeting with Zelensky and said, I spoke to Putin and this and that and the other thing.

If they're willing to sanction him into oblivion. And there are a lot of members of the Republican Party, more old school Republicans like guy who feel like that's the right approach to that. And that Putin has every time shown a list of demands, pretended that they were different than the time before. And it's exactly the same. He has never changed the goalposts. He wants things that Zelensky cannot agree to. It would be turning over his country to

Russia. And Rosanna points out that Trump didn't get riled up and the weather, it would be turning over his country to Russia, and Rosanna points out that Trump didn't get riled up, and the weather, it looks spectacular, I wish that I was also in warm weather, but he wasn't riled up because Zelensky played this perfectly and has learned

from the terrible Oval Office meeting with JD Vance when everyone freaked out on each other, that he has to just sit there and grin and bear it. And I felt a little bit like I was watching a redux of the Helsinki press conference in 2018 when Trump came out and he said, you know, I talked to Putin about the election interference and he told me he didn't do it and I completely trust him.

You've heard similar sentiments from Steve Whitcock, who's supposed to be getting us a great deal. Putin's a really good guy. He's not going to do anything. The sentence that matters the most is that Trump had the audacity to say Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. Zelensky, a comedian by trade, broke a little bit of a smile at that point because you have never heard anything more ludicrous than the idea that Putin wants Zelensky to succeed.

And you saw this morning on Fox, Fox and Friends, I think, that the deputy national security advisor Victoria Coates saw that footage and said, I think that the deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, saw that footage and said, I think Zelensky can be forgiven after four years of war to not be thinking Russia's intentions for Ukraine are the best.

Yeah. Jessica's point is powerful for two reasons. Number one, it's great to remind the Fox audience that Trump has fallen for this crap before, but it also really cuts through the mythology of Trump as the tough negotiator because Trump doesn't even recognize that he's being played. Trump is not outmaneuvering anybody. Trump believes dictators. I want a president that outmaneuvers dictators. Trump believes the dictators. And if their words flatter Trump, he takes them at their word. And

if they deny something, Trump takes the denial as proof. That's it. Open and shut case. And what made this Fox segment especially valuable is that the reminder was delivered to a Fox audience that rarely sees Trump's record described this plainly and accurately. It's not just Putin that gets away with this. Remember Kim Jong Un.

Trump came back from the first of two North Korean summits glowing talking about beautiful letters. They fell in love, a great relationship. But importantly, Trump gave the list of commitments that Kim Jong Un made. Anybody like people who watch this show, many of you who have studied history, understand, damn, those were the same promises from the Kim family that Kim Jong Un's father and grandfather have been making to the United States for

decades and they never do it. And Trump comes back going, look at what they gave me. Look at the thing. These are major breakthroughs. But Kim said nothing new and they were the exact same promises that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong ill recycled.

It's the exact same script. And because a dictator got along with Trump and fed him this stuff, the outcome is Trump goes, we did it, we got it. There were people at the time who said Trump was playing 40 chess. Turns out that wasn't the case. He fell for the oldest trick in authoritarian diplomacy and he did it proudly

and he bragged about it. And so the through line here is Trump is quick to believe strong men, but he's quick not to believe the leaders of democratic countries, including many of our allies. He relates to the strong men. He admires the strong men. He trusts them more than democratic leaders, more than his own intelligence agencies. In many cases, Putin said he didn't interfere. Trump believes him. Putin says he has the best interests of Ukraine in mind and Trump acknowledges it.

Kim Jong Un says we're going to denuclearize and Trump says, we got it. We got victory from the North Korean people finally. So I love that Jessica Tarlov is exposing the Fox News viewers to this. They're usually told Trump's tough. He's shrewd, great businessman, respected by everybody, negotiator, the guy who always has the upper hand.

And Jessica Tarlow calmly says this was like North Korea. This was like Helsinki. I'm saying it was also like North Korea. And when it's happening on the network that a lot of these people believe is telling them the truth, that is a good thing. One other myth that needs to be done away with about Trump in these situations is that

Trump controls or intimidates authoritarian leaders. That's another one where they go, these authoritarians, they, they see Trump as willing to do anything. They, they're, they tread very carefully and that's what makes Donald Trump most effective. The evidence shows the opposite. The strongmen don't seem to fear Trump. They seem to know exactly how to play him like a violin. They know Trump's. They know how to incentivize Trump, praise him publicly, flatter him personally, give him a prize if you can do it like that.

The Nia who did and that is because Trump doesn't have leverage. Trump is just really predictable. And if you're predictable, you are weak when it comes to foreign policy. And Trump claims that his strength is being unpredictable. He's actually extremely predictable, which is that if you praise him and you give him a prize, you'll have a meeting out of your hand. We've seen it.

We've seen this movie before. We know exactly who Trump is. We know how Trump succumbs to flattery. Helsinki was We know exactly who Trump is. We know how Trump succumbs to flattery. Helsinki was not an anomaly. It was a preview and it happened with North Korea and it is happening again.