Trump is once again talking about Vladimir Putin — this time setting up a meeting in Budapest to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. That’s according to Trump himself, who said the two agreed on a phone call to meet, and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. officials would begin prep meetings with their Russian counterparts. No date has been set, but Trump described the call as productive.

He also mentioned they’d loop in Zelensky during his upcoming White House visit, which adds another layer of complexity. Earlier in the week, Trump floated sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine as leverage. Whether that was serious or just bluster is up for debate, but the message was clear — he’s still playing both sides. One thing he did emphasize on Truth Social was how eager Putin seemed to be about post-war trade. According to Trump, that was the real focus — not the war itself, but what comes next.

This is the kind of move that makes sense if you assume Putin is trying to preempt whatever message Zelensky hopes to deliver later this week. It’s also a reminder that Trump sees all of this through the lens of dealmaking, not diplomacy. He’s playing to his base — the voters who see “getting a deal” as a win, regardless of what’s actually in it. But as past attempts have shown, any momentum gained by just talking with Putin tends to evaporate as soon as the bombs keep falling.

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The Shutdown Math

Senate Majority Leader John Thune hinted that the White House might walk back some of its shutdown-related moves if Democrats agree to vote for a continuing resolution. He didn’t lay out specifics, but the implication was that things like furloughs or aggressive reduction-in-force orders could be reconsidered. Thune said passing a full-year appropriations package would make more clawbacks unnecessary — but until then, it’s unclear what Democrats would get in return.

The rumor mill is working overtime — and the story making the rounds is that Democrats will vote for the CR, then hold a vote on Obamacare subsidies separately. Chuck Schumer says that’s not the plan, but let’s be real: it sounds like a deal in the making. Everyone knows the play here. The question is how quickly the Democrats can make it look like they won.

At the end of the day, this is all about messaging. Democrats want to go back to their base and say they got something out of this. And if a CR plus a later vote on subsidies is the path to that — well, they’ll probably take it. Everything else is just noise.

John Bolton Indicted

John Bolton’s been indicted. Eight counts of transmitting and ten counts of retaining national defense information. This case centers around his handling of classified documents tied to his book, which he apparently shared through personal email and notes. The FBI raided his home, and now it’s up to the courts.

The Biden administration says politics aren’t involved, but Bolton’s been a vocal Trump critic, which puts this in awkward territory. It comes on the heels of indictments for James Comey and Letitia James — all of them known Trump opponents. In those cases, the Comey case seems flimsy, while the one against Letitia James has more substance. Meanwhile, the Bolton charges had been floating around since before Trump left office in 2021.

Here’s where I land: this whole mess reflects the same double standard we’ve seen for years. People working with classified material always say the same thing — if they did what these folks are accused of, they’d be in jail. There has to be a better way to handle these documents. Until then, we’ll keep getting stories like this.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:04 - Interview with Tom Joseph

00:22:23 - Russia-Ukraine

00:24:43 - Shutdown

00:26:21 - John Bolton

00:28:26 - Interview with Ryan McBeth

01:13:29 - Wrap-up

We’ve officially entered the phase of the shutdown where things stop being polite and start getting real. Missed paychecks are happening this week for federal employees, and while everyone knows they’ll eventually get paid, it doesn’t matter. Missing a paycheck now still hurts. It gets gritty fast. Both parties are struggling to manage this moment, and honestly, neither of them is very good at what they’re trying to do.

On the Democratic side, they’re bad at being the ones who stop the machine for a righteous cause. You can tell because half of them aren’t even taking credit for the cause they’re supposedly fighting for. The public explanation is that this shutdown is about Obamacare subsidies and funding for regional hospitals, but those subsidies don’t expire until the end of the year. That means this fight is more about symbolism than urgency. The Democrats are also trying to repeal parts of what Trump calls the “one big beautiful bill,” though they won’t say that directly. Instead, they’re focused on a message that doesn’t connect cleanly — and that’s showing.

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Then there’s the filibuster angle. Democrats keep saying Republicans can end the shutdown by devolving the filibuster and voting the government open again. That’s dangerous thinking. Republicans don’t want to touch the filibuster because doing so would force them to start passing a lot more legislation — the kind Democrats could easily overturn later. I get the strategy. Democrats want the filibuster gone so Republicans have to own the bills they pass. Then they can campaign against them. But that’s a high-stakes game to play in the middle of a shutdown.

Meanwhile, the Republicans aren’t handling this much better. They’re out of practice at playing defense on a shutdown. Their usual posture is that government is bloated anyway, so maybe turning it off isn’t the worst thing in the world. That might play well in theory, but when paychecks stop going out, people stop laughing. The White House hasn’t done much to apply pressure either. No press events. No imagery. No clear sense that anything’s different. To the average voter, it just feels like business as usual — and that’s not how you win a messaging battle.

So where does that leave us? Probably in this standoff for a while. I’d bet on this dragging past Halloween, maybe into mid-November. The continuing resolution being floated now would keep funding through November 15, which would only buy about a month before we’re right back here again. The pattern is familiar. You stop one shutdown, swear never to do it again, and then do it again anyway.

The most realistic off-ramp is a handful of Democratic senators breaking ranks and agreeing to a handshake deal — reopen the government now, vote on the Obamacare subsidies later. But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, we have Chuck Schumer saying every day of this shutdown is “better for Democrats.” That’s the kind of sound bite that will haunt you when paychecks are still missing and airports start slowing down.

I thought this would be over already. I really did. A week ago, I said Democrats should have sold high — wrapped it up while they still had good poll numbers and claimed a moral victory. But they didn’t. They thought they had more to gain by holding the line. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. Either way, we’re all about to find out together.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:12 - Shutdown

00:10:35 - Interview with Kirk Bado

00:37:30 - Update

00:37:59 - Maine

00:44:40 - Ukraine

00:48:01 - Argentina

00:51:58 - Interview with Kirk Bado, con’t

01:16:41 - Wrap-up

A conversation with friend of the show Will Harris got my wheels turning. He pointed out something he was seeing in the UK press — Trump getting credit for what many are calling Biden’s Gaza peace deal. And yeah, I had missed that particular discourse, but it didn’t take long to see that the split wasn’t just overseas. It’s right here too. Some are arguing that the framework for this agreement was already in place under Biden, but now it’s Trump stepping in and sealing the deal. That’s not an unusual pattern in politics — one team builds, another finishes — but the way the Biden side is reacting is worth exploring.

Let’s be honest: getting a Middle East peace deal done is about the hardest thing you can try to accomplish in diplomacy. Saying you have a plan is one thing — implementing it in a region with as much distrust and complexity as the Middle East is a whole different story. It’s like drafting a diet and fitness routine and assuming the results will match the spreadsheet. Biden’s people floated frameworks, sure, but they couldn’t make the deal happen. I suspect that’s because they thought it would require applying pressure on Israel to end the war — and they didn’t want to be seen doing that. They wanted the outcome without owning the action.

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Then there’s the idea that Biden deserved the credit even if Trump got the win. And this is where I find it all a little rich. Because I remember 2020. The Trump administration rolled out Operation Warp Speed — arguably one of the biggest policy successes of his term — and when Biden took over, they went out of their way to discredit everything Trump did. The narrative was that Biden had to rebuild the whole vaccination effort from scratch, even when it would’ve been politically smart to share credit or even use it to jab Trump from the left on vaccines as that issue started to shift.

Now the roles are reversed. The Biden team worked on the peace framework and now wants credit — even though the Trump administration finished the job. It’s not that I think they deserve nothing. There’s a case to be made that this deal, if it holds, spans both administrations. That the effort to find a resolution to an ugly, years-long war included meaningful contributions from both. But if you live by the sword of discrediting your predecessor at every turn, don’t be shocked when you die by it too.

I don’t think we’re about to see the Trump team break out the thank-you cards — and if a Nobel Peace Prize comes out of this, it’s going to have Trump’s name on it. Still, if they were smart, they’d acknowledge — maybe off the record — that having a working framework didn’t hurt. But the real lesson here is that a plan is just that — a plan. The deal is what matters. And once again, it turns out being the closer counts more than drawing up the play.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

03:13 - Gaza Peace Deal

11:47 - Update

12:04 - NYC Polling

13:58 - Letitia James

18:18 - Texas

21:14 - Interview with Kenneth Vogel

54:28- Wrap-up