Transcript - America This Week, Feb 28, 2025: "America Breaks from Europe"

Faced with collapse, the Luftreich - the international elite consensus - fights back. Also, "The Main Death,' by Dashiell Hammett

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how are you doing? You look okay. You look a little tired.

Walter Kirn: A little okay. Well, I recovered from the mystery illness, deep state didn’t manage to get me with their super bug. Then I went on-

Matt Taibbi: You shoot at the king, you best not miss.

Walter Kirn: Damn right. Oh, I’ll come back with Iron Man immunity. And what happened next? I lived in a hotel for two weeks while I tried to finish a long piece for County Highway, which I’ve just about done. Then I got back to my little apartment here in Las Vegas, and I have just sort of recouped my energy and can’t wait for spring, man. Because I’m one of those Leo born August types who need sunshine, sort of like... There’s a Raymond Chandler story where there’s a man who lives among orchids and they give him life. He’s sort of an older fellow.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, yeah. That’s The Big Sleep.

Walter Kirn: The Big Sleep, yeah. And I’m like him. I need sunshine. I must have it. And I’ve not been getting it.

Matt Taibbi: I fully understand this. So when I lived in Russia, I used to live in kind of a famous building called... It’s one of those wedding cake skyscrapers you might’ve seen in pictures. So in winter in Moscow, you might see the sun for a half an hour a day.

Walter Kirn: Ooh, that’s brutal.

Matt Taibbi: And that’s in the rare instances when the clouds are not completely covering the city. It’s very thick there. So by my last year there, my window didn’t face east, so I couldn’t see the sun at all. I would have to go and run to another person’s apartment just to look out the window, just to see the sun for a fraction of the day to keep from losing my mind. So that was one of the main reasons I moved home, actually, is that I couldn’t take it anymore, not seeing the sun.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, my daughter had that problem at Harvard, which is one of the shortest sun cycles on the East Coast out there, high in the north, and also out into the ocean. And it was a real problem for her. At home, I have a lamp that shines on me all day while I read and so on, but I don’t have it down here. So I’ll roll through it, but it doesn’t cause me to feel bleak or anything, it’s just a kind of real low ebb. And spring comes with a just punch. Then I become manic. So if you want to know about all the psychological cycles that run this guy, those are the main ones. But yeah, and living two weeks in a Vegas hotel and seeing the earthy side of human behavior, I guess I would say.

Matt Taibbi: Well, especially in Vegas hotels, which are designed not to let you see sunlight, so yeah.

Walter Kirn: They are, they are. They’re designed not to let you see sunlight. I think that the glass has got... It filters out everything that produces life on earth. And you see the same guys walking with different wives every morning kind of, if that makes sense. And you wonder if we’re a species that really should be dabbling in democracy and things like that.

Matt Taibbi: Well, I think we are, and that’s a good segue to this week. So on Monday when we did the show, we were talking about media stuff and kind of scrambling to find something media to talk about. We sure don’t have that problem this week, as just massive galactic stories taking place this week. And I have to say, the dénouement to this situation in Ukraine is going to come for a lot of people as a major shock. It’s a hugely disillusioning story that will force you to reexamine decades of propaganda that we’ve all been getting, including me. I think there were things that I was not understanding about the nature of America’s relationship to the world that are now becoming clear.

I think basically the American people have been screwed and plundered to prop up the sort of imperial project around the world, and Europeans have been primary beneficiaries. We’ve talked about this before, Walter, about this dichotomy in politics between people who prioritize the needs of empire and those who prioritize the needs of the country. America became essentially a state that ignored almost completely its national concerns in favor of its imperial role. And in doing so, it ended up plundering its own population, not just in terms of the lives, because we sent a lot of young men and women to fight and die for causes that had nothing to do with their own, but also financially.

And this is all coming out now, in what’s now a full-blown trade war with Europe that’s erupted in the last couple of days, Trump is going to slap a 25% tariff on the EU, but that’s only part of the story. So it’s a little convoluted, but let’s just start with the fact that when this comes out, this is going to come out on Friday, it’s probably going to be the same day that Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives in Washington ostensibly to sign an agreement. Now, let’s just look at a quick tape of how BBC was announcing this deal.

Clive Myrie: In the last hour, Ukrainian officials have said a deal has been reached between Kiev and Washington on the joint exploitation of Ukraine’s mineral resources. Now, the country is rich in oil and gas as well as raw materials as this map shows. Full details haven’t yet been made public of the deal, but an agreement could be signed later this week and have consequences for the war with Russia. Donald Trump says president Zelenskyy might travel to the White House this Friday. Well, in a moment, we’ll speak-

Matt Taibbi: So we can stop there. That’s the headline agreement is that Zelenskyy is coming here to sign a deal that is not about peace, but really about money. And the idea is that they’re signing over rights for mineral and petroleum exploration and other things to United States companies. Not to the United States directly, but to US companies, and that’s another separate issue.

No sooner was that deal struck, and it’s reported to be worth $500 million, but that’s really in question how much this stuff is really worth. It’s being sold as that much. The European Union offered its own deal. If we could look at number five, and we don’t have a video on this, it’s just an article. So essentially, the EU came to Zelenskyy after these negotiations, which have been going on for a couple of weeks with Trump, and they’re offering their own deal for a mineral exploration. The larger umbrella issue here is that the United States essentially wants to be paid back for all the weapons that it sent. And in return, it’s offering some loose guarantees of security. Although, as we’ll see, they’re not overt and it has nothing to do with NATO.

Europe is now trying to step in and offer its own deal, so it’s got its own implicit security guarantee. But as we’ve seen, Ukraine is likely going to reject the EU deal and is going to accept the American deal. And what this tells you, and this is going to almost inevitably be followed by the end of the war, is that this war really had nothing to do with Ukraine. It was between the United States and Russia. We are deciding now that it’s going to be over and we want to be paid back. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because I’m not sure how much Ukraine had agency at the beginning of this whole thing to even enter the war, but whatever.

Walter Kirn: Stop for a second. Why?

Matt Taibbi: Well, I think they were pressured by us to fight rather than negotiate at the start. So it’s a little bit weird to demand recompense, and we’ll see how this was all received later on. Now, this same week, hostilities and the tensions between the United States and the EU just grew and grew and grew, and we saw this really in a number of different settings.

Speaker 1: Mr. President, in Ukraine, would you provide military support for Ukraine in the future under a peace agreement?

Donald Trump: Say it again, louder.

Speaker 1: Would you provide military support for Ukraine in the future as part of a peace agreement?

Donald Trump: You mean like security?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Donald Trump: Well, people are going to do it. I think Europe will largely be responsible for that. European countries will be responsible.

Speaker 1: But Macron asked for US backup.

Donald Trump: Well, we’ll see. I mean, right now we’re just in the process of negotiating. We’ve pretty much negotiated our deal on raw earth and various other things. We’ll be looking at that security, you’re talking about general security for Ukraine, later on. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.

Speaker 1: There are the plans-

Donald Trump: There are a lot of people that want to do it, and I spoke with Russia about it, they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. So I think they understand. They’re not going back in. Once we do this, they’re not going back in.

Speaker 1: Would the US provide, for instance, air defense?

Donald Trump: Well, I just told you. Right now, we’re not providing anything. It’s about Europe too. Europe put in a hundred billion, and we put in $350 billion. It’s not a fair thing.

Matt Taibbi: Okay. So there, in that press conference, he lays out the fact that the United States feels like Europe didn’t pay enough. Now they’re going to provide the security going forward, but we want to be paid now, right? Then there’s a meeting with Macron, and I’m sorry, I’ll give this back to you in a sec, but just...

Walter Kirn: No, no, no. I’m assembling the information.

Matt Taibbi: So it’s worth going through this. There is a tense meeting with Macron, and there’s three moments that are kind of key here. Let’s just start from the beginning.

Speaker 2: Mr. President, do think that Ukraine should give up on part of this territory?

Donald Trump: Well, we’re going to see. It’s a negotiation that’s just starting, and they’ve been fighting, and there’s been a lot of land that’s been taken so we’ll have to see how that works out as part of the negotiation. I will say there was great unity in that room today. We were via Skype or whatever, but it was great. Tremendous unity today in that room with the other countries, I was very impressed by it.

Speaker 2: Ukraine back, can they take it back, what they lost in the past years?

Donald Trump: That’s not an easy thing to do, is it, right? It’s not an easy... He’s asking whether or not you can take back the land that they lost. And I say that, yeah, perhaps some of it. Yeah, I hope so.

Matt Taibbi: Okay, just to pause for a sec now. So he says... The question basically is, can Ukraine take some of that land back? And Trump says, “I don’t know. We’ll see. That’s going to be hard.” Then if we fast-forward just a little bit to about 2:15 here, about a one-minute sequence shows that Macron is going to basically say that Russia is the aggressor in the war, and basically that they have responsibility. Trump declines to go there, and then they have a little fight about something.

Emmanuel Macron: ... love money. And this is the responsibility of Russia, because the aggressor is Russia.

Speaker 3: Should the US be compensated?

Emmanuel Macron: So at the end of the day, this frozen asset should be part of the negotiation. All in all.

Speaker 3: Will grants support the US being compensated?

Emmanuel Macron: I support the idea to have Ukraine first being compensated, because they are the ones to have lost a lot of their fellow citizens, and they’re being destroyed by these attacks. Again, all of those were paid for, could be compensated, but not by Ukraine, by Russia, because they were the one to aggress.

Donald Trump: Again, just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back.

Emmanuel Macron: No. In fact, to be frank, we paid 60% of the total defaults, and it was through... Like the US, loans guarantee grants, and we provided real money, to be clear. We have 230 billion frozen assets in Europe, Russian assets, but this is not as a collateral of a loan, because this is not our belonging.

Matt Taibbi: Okay, we can stop there. So basically Trump says, “Let’s be clear, Europe didn’t give this money to Ukraine, they loaned it,” and Macron disagrees with him. And you can see Trump doesn’t back down. He puts his hand up, he’s like, “Yeah, whatever.” And then, sorry, the last clip I’m going to show, because it’s kind of key. Let, let’s look at number 10. Let’s just roll the whole thing, Emily. It’s the France 24 clip about the problems after the levying of tariffs, or the vow to levy tariffs on Europe.