What happens to Ukraine if Trump wins?

I do want to get to another big contrast this week, which was on Ukraine, between the two candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who clashed, and Trump essentially suggested that Ukraine may need to make some major concessions.

DONALD TRUMP (R), Former U.S. President, 2024 Presidential Nominee: Because Ukraine is gone, it's not Ukraine anymore.

You can never replace those cities and towns, and you can never replace the dead people.

Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.

If they made a bad deal, it would have been much better, they would have given up a little bit.

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. Vice President, Democratic Presidential Nominee: These proposals are the same of those of Putin.

And let us be clear, they are not proposals for peace.

Instead, they are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So, a big split screen, big contrast there, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in town.

And Trump was later asked, Peter, if he thinks Ukraine should turn over some of its land to Russia.

And he said, quote, we'll see what happens.

It appears to be pretty clear at this point that if Trump thinks that a way to end the war is for Ukraine to make some major concession.

PETER BAKER: Absolutely.

He says he can end the war in 24 hours.

I don't know anybody who deals with Russia who thinks that's at all possible.

If it were, the only way it would be possible would be to basically say, okay, Putin, you win.

And J.D.

Vance has said this.

He said that the Ukrainians are going to have to accept losing their land and for swearing any NATO membership, you know, swearing to be neutral, in other words, everything Putin wants.

That is, in fact, what that J.D.

Vance stipulation is, that Putin gets to illegally cross borders, use force to take territory that is not his, of a sovereign country, that Russia had pledged previously to respect and that he gets to therefore keep that territory.

So, that's not much of a deal, and I don't think anybody in Ukraine thinks that's a deal that they want to live with.

But they know that Putin -- I'm sorry, they know that Trump, where he's left (ph), is not on their side.

And they know that if he wins, they are going to look at an America that's very different than the one right now, that isn't going to be sending them weapons, isn't necessarily going to be sending them aid.

And therefore, they're going to be under pressure to give up something that they otherwise don't want to give up.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA: Of all the policy positions that Trump puts out, this is the one that you can bet he will stick to.

Because it is the one thing over the arc of his entire public career that he has remained consistent on.

I was looking at the origins, his political origins.

He registered as a Republican a few days before going on his first trip to Moscow in the 80s.

When he came back -- he was escorted, by the way, by Russian colonels on this plane to go and scope out real estate, but when he came back, it was only a few weeks later that he entered politics.

And the way he entered politics was with advertisements in major newspapers taking a position that no one was taking at the time, which was that our allies are ripping us off and that we're paying too much.

This is the position, as you all know, that you can draw -- trace a direct line to today, that he has not changed.

And so there's no reason to believe that once he gets back into office again, that he would do anything that isn't pretty much in the pro-Russian category when it comes to Ukraine.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And even though voters don't tend to make their decisions based on foreign policy, Adam, Harris is trying to take advantage of this essentially, potentially, you know, highlighting her position on, in defense of Ukraine in front of Nikki Haley primary voters.

I mean, is that something that you think is working so far?

ADAM HARRIS: Yes.

I mean, what the vice president is doing right now, right, is projecting this idea of unity, right, this idea that isolation isn't insulation, as she said, right, that protection of democracy elsewhere means protection of democracy at home.

And it's really painting that contrast with the president.

And Republicans, you know, under the leadership of President Trump, have really sort of gone on to this idea that, you know, as Heidi was saying, right, it's not necessarily in our best interest to go into a foreign war, particularly when, you know, they could do a thing, right, whether that's ceding some of their land to Russia in order to end the war.

And even in his meeting with President Zelenskyy, he came out of it and wasn't willing to just say that, oh, well, you know, we support Ukraine.

It was more so we'll try to work together to figure this out.

And it was interesting, you know, where this sort of tizzy kind of started where President Zelenskyy was effectively just arguing that President Trump believes that he can solve this quickly when people think that, they get into it, they really start to study the details, and they see that this is not a simple issue.

But Trump sort of reverted to that sort of strategy that he has of, I was backed into a corner and so I attacked.

And so you've seen that dynamic already play out and they've said they want to have a better relationship going forward, but it's hard to see when they're sort of divided on that policy.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There is a debate coming up.

I don't know if any of you guys know.

Just another one between J.D.

Vance and Tim Walz.

And before we get to the debate, J.D.

Vance is going to be heading to Pennsylvania this weekend.

And I want to bring this up because I think it's pretty striking, this appearance that he's going to be making, Wendy, at a town hall in Pennsylvania that's hosted by the evangelical leader, Lance Wallnau.

Wallnau is hosting these religious political road shows in battleground states across the country where he repeats lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

He, at some of these events, has called January 6th a, quote, election fraud intervention.

And he's also, this Lance Wall now, has accused Harris of witchcraft and has called her a, quote, Jezebel spirit.

For some people who may not know, that's a promiscuous woman.

And it's also a racist stereotype that was used during slavery in Jim Crow eras.

Why?

Like why appear alongside an evangelical leader like this?

WENDY BENJAMINSON: I have no idea.

I will tell you that if there is one person among the four of them, well, maybe Trump too, but if there's one person who needs to make up some ground with female voters, it is J.D.

Vance.

He is the one who started the childless cat ladies thing.

He is the one who said, okay, my wife's not white, but I love her.

She's a great mom, which is I wouldn't appreciate that if they were talking about me.

He has, you know, spoken out against abortion rights and against reproductive rights.

And now he is standing on a stage next to a man who, forget 21st century misogyny, this is like 18th century misogyny, to call her a witch who was -- during the debate he thinks she was using witchcraft to make Trump say things that he didn't mean to say.

I mean, this is not just conservative Christianity.

It's not at all.

It's -- PETER BAKER: That's right after he's agreed to appear on Tucker Carlson, a couple days after Tucker Carlson has on a person who's called a historian who says that World War II is really Churchill's fault and Hitler didn't really want to fight.

And Vance was asked, well, why would you go on Tucker after he just had this person on?

He says, well, I don't get into that game where you have guilt by association just because he has that person on doesn't mean I have to not go on.

So, he's, you know, applying the same rules there, basically.

I'm not going to -- there's nobody that I would feel so ashamed to be next to that I won't be.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA: But this is not necessarily a fringe character, and this is all I say, because, well, Lance Wallnau has live streamed from Mar-a-Lago.

These folks are very much plugged into major figures, and this is an example of that.

WENDY BENJAMINSON: And the Trump campaign seems to be bringing in more and more of these people.

You know, for a while, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita were running the campaign.

They're pretty smart Republican operatives, well known.

And then we start seeing more of Laura Loomer.

We start seeing this Wallnau guy.

We start seeing more and more of those sort of fringe characters surrounding Trump, and perhaps shaping his recent views.

ADAM HARRIS: And it's interesting, right, because if you think about the Trump strategy generally, right, all of these things, whether it is talking about Haitian immigrants, whether it is going to, you know, where the shady Vance meeting with Wallnau and appearing with Wallnau, there's like this implicit strategy that is effectively should try to get the base to think about race.

As Peter said a little bit earlier, right, he had this thing that worked for him in 2016, you know, build the wall.

It was a sort of xenophobic play that sent -- that worked -- PETER BAKER: After years of the Obama birther lie.

ADAM HARRIS: Exactly.

And so the more that -- he believes that the more that he can get his base to think about race, the more that they might be -- even if it's to lie about it, right, they may be more inclined to turn out to vote and presidential elections are often turnout elections.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA: Before the pet-eating fiasco, it was that Congo was releasing prisoners onto the border and that the Venezuelans were releasing prisoners onto the border.

And as Peter says, everything comes back to immigration.

And it's the reason why when there was a bipartisan deal on the table, Trump picked up the phone and said, don't do it.

He wanted to run on immigration, which I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about at the debate.

And with the final time we have left on that debate, Vance is underwater right now.

I mean, his unfavorable rating is about at 45 percent compared to Tim Walz, who's unfavorable is 36 percent.

Peter, what are you looking for at this debate?

Is it going to be far more consequential than any other vice presidential debate that we've seen in modern history?

PETER BAKER: I mean, maybe.

I mean, I think we always look to them to be very consequential, but in the end, people were voting for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Having said that, we've got two characters who will be appearing on this stage who have never been on a national stage before, really, right?

People do not really know J.D.

Vance and Tim Walz that well.

They're only getting introduced to them now.

For Vance in particular, as you say, underwater, this is one big chance to introduce himself or change his introduction, if he wants to, to the country.

Now, they're both, I think, pretty engaging debaters, actually.

I mean, Walz talked his way onto the ticket by being a pretty good basher of Republicans on MSNBC, let's say.

And Vance, of course, is willing to mix it up with reporters more than any of the other candidates.

He gets out there every day, and he doesn't mind tough questions, and he's willing to give back.

So, I think seeing the two of them go at it actually could be quite interesting.

And, of course, with Vance, it's also worth remembering that Donald Trump is 78.

He will be the oldest president if he's elected.

And therefore who this vice president is has more consequence than for a younger president.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA: Since there's not going to be a debate, another debate between Harris and Trump, this is it for primetime, even though it's the V.P.

candidates.

And I think Walz has kind of previewed what he's going to do with attacking Vance, like you're not really an everyday man.

You did Hillbilly Elegy, but you hang out with Silicon Valley billionaires, and he went to Yale.

And, by the way, I'm here to defend the honor of all women who own cats.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Unfortunately on the childless cat lady comment, we have to leave it there for now.

Thank you to our panelists for joining us and sharing your reporting.