Marc Andreessen Rises as a MAGA Power Player for 2026 Midterms

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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. With Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck.

He came from humbler beginnings. He grew up on the piney edges of New Lisbon, Wisconsin. It's a small town about two hours from Milwaukee. His childhood home was a split level about the footprint of one of his swimming pools today.

Okay.

He was an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, and as Bloomberg's Austin Carr reports, in many ways, he was, quote, the original hoodie-wearing tech bro. Today, his dominant VC firm manages more than $ 100 billion in assets, and it's gone from Valley Kingmaker to DC Power Broker.

We are talking about Mark Andreessen, the early investor associated with the who's who of today's tech giants, and writing about it and him for Bloomberg Businessweek is Austin Carr. He's Bloomberg Businessweek's senior writer joining us from Boston. Man, you go deep on this one. Good to have you here.

Mark Andreessen, very well known to the Bloomberg audience, very well known to Silicon Valley. But over the last few years, increasingly known to politics, too.

Yeah, I mean, I cannot stress how famous this guy is in the tech world. You might remember him back in the late 90s on the cover of Time magazine as one of the golden geeks leading America into the future when he invented Netscape. And more recently, what people don't realize is after diving deep into the venture capital world, he's now funneling huge amounts of money into D.C., Between him and his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and their partners, they funneled at least $ 116 million leading up to the midterms.

That's more than the Kochs. That's more than George Soros. It's really only behind Elon Musk and his donations to federal politics that Andreessen is behind. And it's just this massive shift from someone who is really known traditionally, synonymous with Silicon Valley startups on the board of Facebook, now Meta, And now he's just become one of the biggest backers of the Trump 2.0 movement.

As you write, he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and said back then that the president's immigration regime, quote, makes me sick to my stomach. I love your story because you really get into something that in the last couple of years has become commonplace. really lore around the narrative of Marc Andreessen's transformation from a Democrat to a Republican.

And it has to do with the meeting with the Biden administration about AI policy. I mean, I have heard so many times people explain a different version of what happened in that meeting and why it led to him supposedly embracing the Trump administration's policies. It really seems like, though, in this piece, Austin, you got to the truth of what happened in that room. Explain the context here and what happened.

Well, when we've talked about the shift of the tech community to the right or to support of Trump since his first term, it's very rare that you could actually pinpoint the day for someone. And with Marc Andreessen, he actually has said it was May 22nd, 2024. And that's when he, his partner, his co-founder, Ben Horowitz, and their government affairs chief went for a West Wing visit when the Biden was still in office to discuss U.S. tech policy with a number of Biden officials. And they met to discuss tech policy. The meeting was quickly forgotten. Fast forward, Trump wins the election. And then in early 2025 or late 24, he starts going on podcasts and describing this sort of insane meeting in which all these Biden officials

apparently threatened to ban all AI startups. They were going to classify the underlying math under AI. They were going to concentrate power into the hands of just two to three tech companies, which the federal government would oversee. and essentially, Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, according to their version of Vince, walked out of the West Wing, and in that very day, in the parking lot, they said, this is crazy. They're going to kill us. We have to vote for Trump. Now, since then, I've spent so long piecing what happened together, and I can tell you that a lot of people disagree, at least in the Biden and Kamala Harris camps, about Mark's version of events. They say nothing of the sort happened.

At no point Did anyone ever threaten to say that they were going to ban all AI startups? And I would just say on the surface, I think it's worth thinking about, you know, they already had a contentious relationship with Marc Andreessen. Why on earth would, at this sudden point, they would reveal this draconian plan out of the blue to an investor they're trying to essentially win over to support him in the coming presidential election? And suddenly they reveal this top secret plan to him, Ben, and their government affairs chief and no one else. And then the other very unusual thing is two days later, we discovered Mark Andreessen goes back to have another meeting with different national security advisors and Biden officials at the White House.

He doesn't bring this up at all. So it just raises a lot of questions to me about whether or not there's no doubt that this was a contentious meeting, but whether or not he was looking for some sort of conversion event or sort of narrative to tell why he's switching over to Trump. I will just say people on the Biden side do not feel that that was an accurate depiction of what happened in that room.

Does it, does it, your story though, it talks, you spoke to a lot of folks for this story and you, you really, I think successfully expressed to us how people view his psyche. In some one case, somebody said he's prone to hyperbole. There's, you know, a great kicker about grudges at the end of the story. What does it tell, tell you or tell all of us about just the way that, that he thinks about the world perhaps?

Well, I think in sort of reporting the story, and I spent a lot of time, I mean, more than 18 months reporting the story. I went to spend time where he grew up in Wisconsin. I've talked to endless number of people who we worked with in the early days of who we went to college with and worked on the original Mosaic, the precursor to the consumer web browser that later became Netscape. I talked to people who have worked at Andreessen, who have a zillion co-founders who are backed by Andreessen Horowitz. And one of the consistent patterns from the fourth grader who sat behind Mark for much of his childhood in school to an Andreessen-backed founder was that he does have a questionable relationship with the truth.

He is prone to hyperbole, but there's something very specific. The pattern that emerged over this time is He experiences an event, doesn't speak about it, years pass, and then in retrospect, he claims that he was a victim in some sort of circumstance that people involved in that experience are just unfamiliar with. And perhaps the most profound example of that is people who he grew up in Wisconsin, even his family members. And we can talk more about that, but essentially.

At a high level.

Well, what struck you about that and what it tells you about Marc Andreessen?

Well, so just to set the scene, you know, he grew up in rural Wisconsin, Carol, as you mentioned at the top of the segment. And, you know, over the decades, he described this very rough and tumble life, you know, having to chop wood one winter to heat the family home. Sort of, you know, sort of a local community that didn't understand him and didn't seem to offer much in support by way of, you know, computers or, you know, it was a sports sort of. rural community that just prioritized football over what his interests were. And, you know, spending time there, I found quite the opposite. It was, you know, it was actually kind of a very standard middle of class, middle America upbringing. His family was actually

on the more well-off end of the town. In fact, kids told me he was the first kid in class to have a computer. I talked to one good friend of his growing up that remembers seeing the first modem in his life at Mark's house because his dad had one through work back in the mid-1980s. That's such a rare thing. And Mark used to, I mean, it's very touching in a lot of ways. That was the first time he gained access in a way to the internet.

And he went on to pioneer the modern internet browser. And I just think there's such a distortion about what happened during his upbringing. And it's a pattern that repeats itself later on in the Biden years and the Trump years. But What it says about this is this is a guy that is feel aggrieved that I remember speaking to one person he went to college with and who just said, you know, I've always gotten the sense that Mark just feels like the world doesn't appreciate all he's contributed enough.

And a part of me understands that. I mean, he was heralded to be the next Bill Gates. It didn't quite work out that way. But in a lot of ways, he's had more influence behind the scenes through his venture capital firm, his more recent investing in Washington, D.C., and He's really reshaped the planet to his vision, but there is a sense of grudge that it hasn't quite been enough for him.

Well, his role or position in politics, I mean, how much of his and Andreessen's shift is ideological and how much is it because of business interests? I mean, you think about what they're exposed to, crypto, defense, other things that are certainly near and dear to this administration.

Yeah, I mean, the fascinating thing is the only consistent part about Andreessen's political leanings are that they're very inconsistent. You know, if I went back, I studied the last 30 years of his political donations all the way back to when he was eligible to vote. And I'll say during the Gore years, 90 plus percent go to Democrats.

Then he cuts it off for Kerry because Kerry has a policy he disagrees with. Then he 90 percent go toward Democrats during the Obama years. Then the other direction for Romney, then toward Clinton and now back. after the Biden years to Trump. And there has been this seesawing between those political parties. Yes, on the surface, I think it's expedient, but I think at a larger level, what he really wants, you know, just at least in a good example from the modern recent years and the debates about AI, One former Trump official told me he realized that the best AI policy for Marc Andreessen is no AI policy. So I really think what he's advocating for is to keep government out of his business. That's the

fundamental sort of, I guess, moral grounding that he has in D.C.

So you end the story talking about Andreessen and you mentioned this, I greatly value my grudges. So you've talked to so many different people, friends, founders, investors, you know, those who have fallen out with him. Is that ultimately the key to understanding him and his action? Someone kind of driven by a vision of technological progress or by a desire to really defeat the institutions and people he believes kind of have wronged him?

You know, I wish it was that black and white, unfortunately. I mean, or fortunately. I mean, to be honest, I like writing about this guy because he has had a huge impact on the planet. He did come from a very rural part of the country. What he's achieved is nothing short of spectacular.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

Let's talk about the gap and the swing. CoreWeave was down as much as 9.5% in today's session. It's been up as much as 3.7%. Right now, it's up about 2.8%. So quite a swing, and it's way, way down, more than 50%, probably more than 60% from their all-time high.

I mean, the concern is this credit picture, right? CoreWeave's credit risk climbing to an all-time high. This, as high-yield bonds extend declines, rattled by the AI cloud computing company's plans to ramp up borrowing, this is one of the so-called neoclouds.

Maybe something Jensen Wong said that maybe helped this out.

All right, let's get to it.

Or maybe Elon Musk.

Or Elon Musk, the host of Bloomberg Tech on Bloomberg TV.

He's got to make sense of it all. He is Ed Ludlow. He's out there in San Francisco.

Ed, first of all, CoreWeave, why is this, before we get into what's been going on and what's being said about it, What is so important about this company when it comes to the AI trade, the AI build, and its role in all of that?

Because it is the poster child and sort of first mover in a generation of companies we call neo-clouds. And those are simply companies that have built and operate data centers. And the only thing those data centers do is run AI workloads. And I guess like a point of distinction is there are many data centers all around the world that run AI workloads but do other stuff too. So that's the whole point.

All they do is AI.

And in CoreWeave's case, they run important workloads for the main frontier lab, OpenAI. They are important for Microsoft, important for Meta. And to this point, they only use NVIDIA chips as the underlying compute in those data centers. So they have a connection to basically the whole thing. And that's why people click on the stories about them and take an interest in them.

Is there a difference fundamentally at all, Ed, between what CoreWeave offers and what, let's say, Nebius offers?

Um.

I don't want to get in trouble.

We don't want you to get in trouble.

Yeah.

But I mean, the reason is these two companies are often grouped together because these are both so-called neoclouds.

Yeah.

So CoreWeave, you know, probably has greater scale and it relies on NVIDIA compute in a way that At the time that they were setting up their data centers, their customers only wanted access to NVIDIA's compute. The reason I paused is that a big part of this story is Bloomberg's reporting on how the CEO of CoreWeave has reacted to what are severe moves in both credit markets and equity markets. And as you guys know, based on a memo that Bloomberg saw that the CEO sent to his employees, his response is that the market is behaving irrationally. But he went a step further, which is to sort of distinguish Corweave from being in very different financial health to the rest of the field. And there have been examples of,

in Australia, a ditched IPO of a neocloud. Neoclouds in Europe have used different kinds of, debt instruments different to what Corby's used. So they believe themselves to be in a strong position, but a different position to the rest of the field is the main point.

Are they right to make that distinction?

Yeah, I mean, like... Well, it's so interesting to hear what you guys are saying. So it's weird that the stock is now up because Jensen Wang made some positive comments about CoreWeave. Again, CoreWeave is a great deployer of Nvidia GPU, right? And Jensen Wang made those comments because he was asked. And I always think that's really important to share. Why would Jensen say that? Because somebody asked him.

But this story is not a today's story. Actually, if you've been paying attention, these 2032 notes that are now trading 80 cents or below on the dollar and have yields at 15%, that's been happening for weeks. You know, we went into October with this distressed debt picture. The thing that's changed is that in the last 48 hours, people started talking about it and the equity market got involved as well.

So is there, look, the thing that people are thinking could be possible right now is maybe this is some sort of canary in some sort of coal mine.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what they're assessing. So this is the simple data. CoreWeave has $ 52 billion of debt on its balance sheet, most of which has been raised this year in different instruments across secured, unsecured, convertibles, etc. And in the latest quarter that it reported its financials for, the obligation it had to pay interest on that debt was greater than its operating income. In other words, it's paying more in interest than it's making in a measure of profit. It has a backlog of $ 104 billion of demand. And what's happened in the last four days is markets, both the credit market and the equity market, have got worried. And they've said, we're repricing what it's going to cost you and the risk that it presents to us on how

you convert that backlog into revenues. Because it is debt that you are using to fund the build out of data centers in a position where you say you have demand, you have a backlog, but the data centers to service that don't exist yet. And so that is the simple story.

Well, because.

If Microsoft or OpenAI or Meta, if they're not getting what they need from CoreWeave and they need it fast, they're going to go elsewhere.

Are they not?

Everyone is in an environment where their demand for compute, for literally data center servers to run AI workloads, is greater than their current ability to supply. And that is why if you're a hyperscaler or a front-end AI lab, you look at diversifying where you get your compute from. Sometimes they build it themselves. Sometimes they rent it. Sometimes somebody else finances it. That's why we've kind of got to this state of the market. They are all in short supply of the thing that they need.

Stay with us.

More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

Corwee's credit risk climbed to an all-time high today as its high-yield bonds extended declines. It was rattled by the AI cloud computing company's plans to ramp up borrowing. The stock has moved today. It had a big decline yesterday. It's bounced around a little bit today. Bloomberg's Robert Schiffman has some research out today. He notes that Corwee's bond and credit default swap sell-off raises the risk that elevated parent funding costs complicate its capital-intensive AI build-out. even with major companies like Microsoft, and then those commitments from Meta and OpenAI.

All right, so let's get to it. He is in the house.

Robert Schiffman is Senior Tech Credit Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He joins us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.

So lay it out. Are you, when you look at the credit, Concerns? Not concerns? You've been very bullish on all this stuff.

Yeah, you know what bothers me a little bit? What? Is it us? What do we do? Every time I'm here, it's always on bad days. It's always when things are selling off. Hey, we just look at your notes, man. And I'm glad I could be a little bit.

I don't think it's always on bad days.

I think we've even addressed just the raise in general. When all of a sudden, these megatech companies went from equity raises to credit raises and debt raises.

That's when it started to feel a little different.

Fair enough, but that's what I'm here to help with. Listen, this morning, if you get up at 5 o'clock in the morning like I do, you'd think the world was ending. Well, look what happened overnight. Yeah, I mean, when you have Elon Musk on the tape with the quote, yikes, it's going to end up raising some eyebrows.

Why isn't it a problem in your view?

Well, listen, everything's a problem in the bond market. We're supposed to be worried. One of the best case scenarios, you get paid back par. It's hard to be overly excited. So when bonds are trading below $ 0. 80 and we start talking about distressed and yields at 15%, of course people are going to get worried. What we were saying this morning was that.

It's not people. It's investors.

Of course.

Right?

Of course.

Yeah.

The market is talking and the market today is always right.

Today.

But they might not be right tomorrow or next month or next year. And that's generally what we're also thinking about. CoreWeave itself has a lot of money to borrow, just like its AA and AAA hyperscaler peers, but they're single B. So their cost of capital is going to be a lot higher. And when we've got a poor CPI print, a poor PPI print, when we've got worries that after the midterms, we could go back to war, and Bloomberg is talking about oil prices being over 200, people are going to be worried about inflation, yields rising. Fixed income investors actually love higher yields. What they don't like is when yields are rising. They want stable high yields. And then they want to pour money into the market. So

when things are, our yields are rising, everyone backs off. It's bad for equities. It's bad for bonds. We're in that little market right now. Who does it hurt the most? It hurts high yield companies that have the biggest, highest cost needs. Coral Weave is probably the poster child of that. You know, one of the largest debt issuers in the junk market with expectations that they're going to need another 20, 30, $ 40 billion of financing next year. And the year after?

You're not done.

Maybe in the year after.

And it could be a higher rate environment. So then you begin to, right, the snowball continues.

So how do they do it? One is what we pointed out this morning is they've got really friendly, deep-pocketed relatives, i.e. NVIDIA.

I think a lot.

Of people found out this morning from our note that NVIDIA owns 10% of CoreWeave. So NVIDIA actually came out, Jensen came out today and said, Corby's fine. Their financial profile is much stronger than what people think, and their cost of capital is lower.

But they also exclusively buy NVIDIA chips, don't they?

I think that's what our Ed Ludlow told us earlier. I'm just saying.

They're definitely in bed with each other. But the point he's trying to make is that when you look at unsecured bonds that are trading now, they're actually at 14%. If you go to TACT and see where bonds are trading, we've actually rallied today. Or if you look at CDS, which is over 1,000, I get why there's a concern.

But that's representing unsecured debt. If you look at the secured debt, if you look at the loans, if you look at some of the chip financing or the lease financing you're doing, those costs are much lower. Those are single-digit costs, and they have access to a lot of that capital. Jensen said today, listen, they're fine. They don't need our support. He wants to say that, right, because he doesn't want to necessarily give them any more money.

But they also need CoreWeave the same way that CoreWeave needs NVIDIA This whole circular financing reference, it's all a circular ecosystem.

Which is fine as long as people keep spending money.

And I think they will. Listen, that's been our point.

But isn't that a problem because they are so dependent and need one another that they're going to continue like, I'm going to support you, I'm going to support you, I'm going to buy that, I'm going to buy that.

Not at all. It's actually a setup for... crazy, ridiculous, wonderful growth. That you've got those that are building it, are in need of capital, and there's those that are providing the resources right now, both in terms of the infrastructure supply chain, i.e. the semiconductors that have the capital that are lending. This is no sort of Ponzi scheme that's been created. They're not coming out of the air.

There's real demand, there's real build, and money is being made by one company, There's a timing transfer to others. Those are free cash flow negative today. And by the way, like I said this morning, Microsoft, AAA rated, it's rated higher than the U.S. government, after shareholder returns this year is free cash flow negative because they're spending so much money on infrastructure compute. So it's not just junk companies.

It's a timing issue. They're building it now. It takes time to finish the building, and they're going to collect later. And I think that names like NVIDIA or Broadcom or microns of the world are very comfortable lending out their balance sheet. Rating agencies, I know you've had this conversation where it's like, oh, rating agencies have been wrong before.

Because of that, think how much more scrutiny they're putting on all of these deals and these ratings now and how comfortable that they generally are. And I think that's why the market is generally comfortable. But we're going to have days like this morning where panic sets in, everything's blowing up, it's the apocalypse. And the Terminator world is here.

And it's just not the case. And even in less than 24 hours, less than 12 hours, we've already calmed down. Corey's stock is up a little bit. Bonds are a little bit tighter. And people are realizing nothing actually happened. There was no fundamental change. There was no earnings guidance. There was no bad deal done. It was just a lack of confidence and sentiment. And that changes on the dime.

And I think, again, over an extended period of time, that sentiment and confidence is just going to get higher and higher. You think he's bullish?

I've said he's bullish. He is bullish, but he's not alone. I mean, how many of us come in here?

So what is the thing that changes your mind?

What do we have to say?

Yeah, you know, it's not like I said the world's not sunshine and rainbows, right? No one was more prescient on that than Rocky. But I know there's going to be challenges, and there's a lot of challenges. You know, we talked last week about just building the data center, right? Physically completing a billion dollar, $ 10 billion project is very difficult.

But the thing that I said was really keeping me up at night is this rate issue. Because what scares the market the most is, you know, any analyst who's, you know, done a discounted cash flow knows that the higher yields are, the less present value is today. And I think in a rising rate environment where we don't know what the end game is.

That's what gets me, Robert. We don't know the end game with this.

And how many people still say, we don't know which LLM is going to be dominant.

We don't know.

Exactly how this whole AI spend kind of plays out for different industries.

We just don't know.

Yeah. Well, that's what people come to us for, right? That's why we have Bloomberg Intelligence. So- We put together the best data.

But can you say with certainty in three years, five years, where we're going to be with data center?

Just got about 20 seconds.

Yeah, no, we can't. Listen, we can't say anything in certainty. But I think if you go to Ask B and you do a search on this, it's going to be pretty positive because it's looking at our work, which is backed up by data and by what the market is telling us on a regular basis.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming.

Up after this.

Let's not forget geopolitics. We've got a war in Russia, a war in Ukraine, I should say, Russia and Ukraine. That's now in its fifth year.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think we should note that, I know, one trip to, you know, trip to Europe does not, you know, make an entire narrative. But I had not been in Germany since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And I was in Berlin last week and In Berlin, the Russian embassy is huge as a holdover from the Cold War.

The Aeroflot building is right there. The whole thing is blocked off for security purposes right now. Right across the street, though, the demonstrations for... pro-Ukraine were happening at that very moment.

Were you kind of surprised? Because we talk about it, report about it.

Well, there was also the issue in recent weeks about the drone that reached one of the airports in Germany.

Which is terrifying.

Absolutely terrifying. So it is very close to home when you're in certain parts of Europe right now.

Yeah.

I think the relationships, too. We talk a lot about, obviously, what's going on in the Middle East, Iran, the Houthis. But you do have China, Russia, Iran together, I guess throwing North Korea as well, as these entities that there is cooperation on different levels, right?

Meantime, you have kind of the rest of the Western world in a big way. But increasingly, you have the U.S.

Kind of isolating itself from what was once its normal allies. It has created an upheaval when it comes to geopolitics. And there's a story you just kind of were sharing earlier with the team about the EU preparing a trade deterrence tool that would completely shut off access to the bloc's massive single market if a rival such as China attacks the EU's economy, according to people familiar with the plan.

So we are seeing people think a lot more about war, the impact on them, and then.

How to protect themselves.

All right.

Well, let's talk more about one of the geopolitical events that has been happening there for years. And that, of course, is Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Yeah. And here's something that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in relation to the pause on refinery strikes. This was in an interview with the Financial Times in London. It was published today. He said, the block is out, we're done. And so as a result, he has ordered attacks on Russian oil refineries to resume in a spiraling confrontation with with President Trump over restrictions on U.S. intelligence assistance, because we have seen pushback from the White House when it comes to assists to Ukraine. So let's get to it.

Someone who always has some great insight, especially when it comes to both leaders, Europe, but really also Vladimir Putin. Angela Stent, back with us, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, author of Putin's World, Russia Against the World, and with the rest, we'd like to remind everybody, former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, and she served in the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State, so she understands policy and government. Good to have you here with Tim and myself. Angela, I can't believe, you know, we're in the fifth year.

How do you I don't know.

How do you think about kind of where we are? Do we even talk about an ending? What has to happen for this war to end?

Yeah, well, we seem to be, you know, very far away from an ending at the moment. Ukraine looked as if it was doing much better a few months ago, was taking more territory back from Ukraine. The Russians seem to be, they were losing territory, but now you have these new ballistic missile attacks from the Russians on Ukraine.

And the problem is that the Ukrainians don't have the air defenses that they need because the Patriot batteries, the US-made manufactured air defenses, which are so important for them, they're in short supply because of the Iran war. And the Russians have just been ferociously hitting them And of course, despite the fact that President Trump announced an energy ceasefire, there has not been an energy ceasefire because moments later, the Russians hit energy installations in Ukraine again. So unfortunately, we see no nearer to ending the war. And this could be the most difficult winter for the Ukrainians because the Russians are hitting them so hard, destroying the energy infrastructure, hitting the water. They're trying to make these cities unlivable

for Ukrainians. And in fact, Ukrainians have been leaving cities like Kiev and some of the other major cities because it's become so hard to live there. And the negotiation track seems just to have stalled.

Yeah.

Well, Dr.

Sten, I wanted you to weigh in on the back and forth that we've seen in recent days between the White House and President Zelensky. He accused President Zelensky, that is, President Trump and Elon Musk of restraining Kiev's military access to SpaceX's satellite technology. He went on, Here's Morgan's show yesterday.

The White House said the Pentagon and the Pentagon didn't respond to separate requests for comment. Elon Musk said any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the president of the United States. Here's what Zelensky said. It's a pity we are losing. We are losing such a strong partner. So this is my opinion.

It's painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side. Do you think that President Trump has not chosen the Ukrainian side?

So, I mean, officially, I think the United States under President Trump is neutral in this conflict. But if you look at what the president's been doing, particularly recently, it really doesn't appear so. He called for Zelensky to go, that he has to go. Elon Musk, by the way, has called for the same thing. They weren't supplying Ukraine with the intelligence it needs, the Starlink contacts it needs to combat, what the Russians are doing to them, and then the Star Shield, which is the military aspect. They denied that they had done that, but it obviously had happened.

And now it.

Looks almost as if President Trump is going to blame Volodymyr Zelensky if the Republicans don't do well in the midterms this year, because he's trying to blame Ukraine for the fact that diesel prices are are so high here because of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. So at the moment, it really doesn't look as if the US is supporting Ukraine at all. I think maybe some of the intelligence products have been, sharing have been restored now to Ukraine, but it's still a very perilous situation for Zelensky and for his country.

Why are we still here talking about this war? Is it because of... President Trump and maybe not as much support.

From the U.S.

Going to Ukraine, although there is a fair amount of support. Why are we still here?

I think we're still here because President Putin still believes he can win this war. And the only way that he would rethink that is if there was real pressure put on Russia. Now, you know, ironically, just a few weeks ago, President Trump signed the Lindsey Graham sanctions bill that would have imposed sanctions high tariffs on countries that were purchasing Russian oil and gas and other goods from Russia.

The bill also applies to Iran, by the way. And that would have been much more economic pressure on Russia had it been properly implemented. But it hasn't been implemented. And the other way of putting pressure on Russia is to supply Ukraine with the air defenses it needs so that it can continue countering all of these Russian attacks ballistic missile and other attacks on Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't have those air defenses now. And even though Europe is very strongly supporting Ukraine, the Europeans don't have those weapons to supply the Ukrainians. They're certainly not purchasing Russian oil and gas, and they're dismayed by this latest diesel deal because it's going to fuel Putin's coffers. So I think

the way The reason that we are where we are is just because not enough pressure has been put on Russia to come to the negotiating table seriously and talk about a ceasefire. That's the first thing we need is a ceasefire in place at the current line of contact. And then there could be further negotiations or at least an energy ceasefire. before we have a general ceasefire.

Dr.

Stead, what about pressure from inside Russia and the Russian people who are, in some cases, men being drafted to go and fight this war after so many people have died in the last four plus years?

So, unfortunately, it's very hard to put any pressure on the Russian government because the repression is such that anyone who questions this war publicly, openly, can be immediately arrested. The Russians are feeling the pinch. They have gasoline shortages. They have diesel shortages, too, by the way, inside Russia.

They have inflation. Food prices have gone up. And there isn't a general mobilization at the moment, but certainly more soldiers are being mobilized. But often the soldiers that sign contracts, that are sent to war are given substantial financial bonuses. And many of these people come from benighted areas of the Russian Federation where their job prospects really aren't very good.

So unfortunately, it would take a lot more to put any pressure on the Kremlin than it would feel from the Russian population, even though public opinion data shows that the majority of Russians would by now want a ceasefire to happen, negotiations to begin, but with a caveat that Russia doesn't have to give up any territory. Dr.

Stent, and I need you to be quick, 30 seconds here. Why isn't there more pressure coming from European officials? Why isn't that enough to make this war stop?

And just quickly, if you could.

Because the Europeans don't have the weapons to give to Ukraine that could put pressure on Russia.

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