8/15/25: Trump meeting Putin in Alaska, ICE camps expanding

**Dan Koh** (0:07)
Welcome to The David Pakman Show. My name is Dan Koh, filling in for David Pakman. Please send some vibes his way with a new baby to his family, and please subscribe to his channel. Please, if you also like what you hear today, subscribe to The People's Cabinet. I'm a former White House official who does analysis of the news, as well as interviews with leaders shaping America's future. So I want to start with the Ukraine summit today in Alaska. A lot has been made about this, a lot of questions. I think the main question to ask, though, is that what evidence do we have that Trump knows how to outfox Putin? I would say there's not a lot. There's been a lot of admiration that Trump has thrown Putin's way. He has sided with Putin over US intelligence about election interference. He has sent Putin COVID tests in the middle of COVID when Americans were dying. And more importantly, he seems to have this reverence for powerful dictators, that obviously he views Putin in that same breath. There were two questions yesterday in the Oval that were particularly concerning that showed kind of where Trump's mindset. And I just want to read both of them. First, one of the questions, are you prepared to offer Vladimir Putin access to rare earth minimals to incentivize him to win the war? Trump says we're going to see what happens. The second question is, would you support or agree to reducing NATO troops in Europe and countries like Poland in order to get Russia to agree to a peace deal? Trump's response was, that hasn't been put before me. I'll think about that for later. Okay, so first and foremost, as we all know, Putin, unprovoked, invaded Ukraine. So the notion that we are going to try to bribe him and give him rare earth minerals that Putin would want in exchange for not trying to take over a country is puzzling at its face, but shows you Trump's mindset. More importantly, though, NATO is an alliance. And I want to play this clip from Senator Chris Coons for all of you who may not know the details of NATO, that I think summarizes this most effectively.

**Chris Coons** (2:11)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which just celebrated 75 years, is the most successful military alliance or treaty organization in history. And its core is Article 5, which says an attack on one. It's an attack on all. And it's only ever been invoked once, and that was when the United States was attacked on 9-11. And NATO troops served and fought alongside American troops in Afghanistan for 20 years, and took casualties and sacrificed at about the same level as the United States on a per capita basis. They showed up early, they fought bravely, they stood alongside us. They could easily have thrown up their hands and said, This is not our fight. Mainland US was not invaded. It was a simple terrorist attack. But they didn't. They came when called and helped defend the United States and our interests.

**Dan Koh** (3:04)
So NATO stood with us after 9-11. And obviously, we are far away from Ukraine and Russia geographically. Poland is not. And NATO is standing with Poland to help make sure and dissuade any movement from Putin into Poland. That is the big concern internationally. The fact that Trump would even imply that he would question that alliance, reduce troops, put potentially Poland more in harm's way, is a warning bell for the world. And once again, as a reminder that this is not a president who honors the treaties that this country agrees upon. That makes us all unsafe.
And so what is the ideal outcome of what's going to happen at the summit? For that answer, I brought on John Finer. John Finer is the principal deputy national security advisor to President Biden. His job was to oversee the entire national security apparatus for the White House. And he joined us to talk about this summit, best and worst case scenarios and things we need to keep in mind. So without further ado, John Finer. John Finer, former principal deputy national security advisor. Thank you for joining us.

**John Finer** (4:22)
Great to be here.

**Dan Koh** (4:24)
So there's a lot of talk about this summit, about who's calling the shots and what's going to happen in it. I'm not asking you to go through the entire history of Ukraine in one minute, but if you could just give us a quick overview of how we got here.

**John Finer** (4:35)
Yeah, so as I think most people watching and listening know, Russia has been at war with Ukraine, against Ukraine since 2013, 2014