CLAY: Encourage you to go listen to the full interview with President Trump. And I want to say this. All of the attention in the media as they have tried to twist the president’s words around, 45’s words around, as it pertains to Ukraine and Putin. But the biggest story to me remains China, because whatever happens with Ukraine, it is an issue potentially in Eastern Europe. But even today as I’m sitting and looking at the stock market, for instance, the stock market — even in the wake of the invasion — is not really moving that much.

A hundred-point move one way or the other so far today. The general economic fallout from whatever happens in Ukraine for the United States, relatively muted. That seems to be the overall consensus belief. Now, certainly consensus belief has been wrong about a lot over the past several years. But in general, Ukraine is not going to change the overall geopolitical landscape of the United States or other major powers. What could, Buck — and we’ve been talking about this for a while because I think it’s wildly underdiscussed.

What could is we already saw China take Hong Kong without firing a shot, just ended democracy in Hong Kong. Now it seems as if China is using the proxy war going on right now between Ukraine and Russia as a potential prelude to figuring out how the Biden administration might respond should they decide to invade Taiwan. And that is actually, I think, by far the most interesting thing that President Trump said to us because obviously he knows Putin well, he knows Xi well in terms of the relationships between China and Russia. Here is what he said when we asked — and he talked — about Taiwan in the context of Ukraine. Listen to this.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, “You can’t do it. You’re not gonna do it.” But I could see that he wanted it. I used to ask him. We used to talk about it at length. I think nobody probably knows him better in terms of the discussions that we have or that we’re having this morning. So, I knew him very well. I got to know him. I got to know President Xi. By the way, China is gonna be next. You know, China is gonna —

CLAY: You think they’re gonna go after Taiwan?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, absolutely. Not with me, they wouldn’t have.

CLAY: But you think with Biden they’ll try him?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, yeah. They’re waiting ’til after the Olympics. Now the Olympics ended, and look at your stopwatch, right? No, he wants that just like… It’s almost like twin sisters right here because you have one that wants Taiwan, I think, equally badly. Somebody said, “Who wants it more?” I think probably equally badly. But, no, Putin would have never done it, and Xi would have never done it. And also, North Korea has not acted up for four years.

CLAY: Okay, so, Buck, this to me — again, you can not like the president and Trump, and certainly there’s lots of people out there who don’t. But I think what he got very little credit for is, this a guy who’s done deals his whole life. He has to sit across the table and size people up, figure out what they want, what he can give them, what they can give him, and somehow come to a deal, right? The Art of the Deal.

Trump has written entire books about it, and I think he does a pretty good job of sizing people up. If he is correct here, Buck, as big of an issue as Ukraine is, Taiwan is Ukraine on 10, 20, a hundredfold importance when you consider semiconductors, the South China Sea impact, what we would do. Taiwan economically is a far big story than what might happen in Ukraine.

BUCK: And the Chinese Communist Party has always maintained — and just recently said — that Taiwan is a part of China, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That has been their official — and we have the policy of strategic ambiguity. You start to line up some of the similarities here. We promised in the Budapest Memorandum when Ukraine was going to and did give up its nuclear weapons because it inherited them at the fall of the Soviet Union, essentially. We said — and the U.K. did and of course Russia did — that we would protect them. But not a part of NATO. So not the same level of accurate, fully, not the same level of investment in their security.

And with Taiwan, we have the strategic ambiguity of, “Well, maybe we would do something. Maybe we wouldn’t do something.” Right now, what’s happening in response to our actions, it’s already occurring — and let’s just understand this: There’s gonna be a lot of moralizing from Democrats about this, and ever talking how awful Putin is. Yeah, he’s a bad guy. There are a lot of bad people that run countries all over the world.

Putin’s particularly bad because his country is a trillion-dollar plus economy, maybe it’s getting closer to two trillion now and has a lot of nukes and a pretty serious military. So he’s a bigger concern, no question, than some tin pot dictator that has a country with barely an armed forces. I get it. We all understand that. But when you’re adding China into the mix here, you also see how that effects the sanctions regime.

The idea that we’re gonna have enough economic on Russia to change the calculation is just silly. It’s just not gonna happen. So we’re gonna hear… You know, Biden gave that speech yesterday, Clay, while we’re on air and right after we had spoken to former president Trump. And I also want to point out, Biden… It sounds almost like gibberish when he was reading off a prompter.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: It sounded like he was running late for some other engagement. He was like (mumbling), “Well, I, you know, Russia, Ukraine stuff, blah, blah, sanctions, keep going, keep going…” You know, this is like me when I run through prompter reads and I don’t have time before I actually go on air. That’s what the commander-in-chief sounded like. “You know, here we have China, stuff, Russia, don’t do this, democracy principles, blabbedy blah, you know, stuff! You know…”

That was the way that he gave his speech yesterday, which clearly isn’t gonna do a darn thing about anything, and then you have the turn toward China that’s already occurring by Russia in response. Guess what’s gonna happen? Russia and China are gonna get closer, and there’s gonna be more business down, there’s gonna be more economic activity. That relationship will strengthen, and so the possibility of — and, to your credit, you brought this up and we discussed this on the show many months ago — a one-two punch here.

What does Russia want more than anything in terms of territory at this point? Ukraine. Right? That’s… I read the entire translation of Putin’s speech. It’s a long speech where he lays out the whole, you know, Ukraine was part of Russia, it was the Soviets. It was the Lenin extremists who said that it couldn’t be part of it and they were dealing with nationalism.

It was a long speech that Putin gave invoking his historical and contextual — current contextual — justification for this. By the way, I don’t agree with it. I’m not endorsing. I’m just saying I read it so I could understand it. China feels even more dedicated to taking Taiwan than Russia does to taking Ukraine, I think, and so we are entering a dangerous period here. The sanctions aren’t gonna do anything.

We’re not gonna do anything militarily, I think, and I would also point out: I believe that’s the right move. What would we do, Clay, if China moved on Taiwan? What…? People need to really think about that. Do we want a war in the South China Sea? Do we want a war around Taiwan? Do we want a war off the coast that could expand very rapidly, over an island that, yes, there’s a lot of strategic importance. You point out the semiconductors. You pointed out this is a democracy. Are we gonna be start going to war for other democracies around the world? That’s a question people are gonna be considering, I think, in the months and years ahead.

CLAY: I don’t think there’s any doubt — and what Japan wants, what Korea wants factor in here in a big way, and you mentioned — and this is becoming a big story — the friendship between Russia and China or at least a strategic partnership, if “friendship” is too strong of a word. This is a story that’s out right there. The main editor of the Chinese news agency said that he wants his country to be careful when they cover this Russia-Ukraine incident because, quote — this accidentally got published online for all the journalists to see and the resolute world.

But these were the instructions Chinese journalists were being given this happen this is a translation: “In the future, China will need Russia’s understanding and support when wrestling with America to solve the Taiwan issue once and for all.” He said it, quote, “doesn’t hurt to use moderately pro-Russia language and that he wanted China to back Russia up” this is a quote “with emotional and moral support while refraining from treading on the toes of the United States and the European Union.”

And so they are using all of these Ukraine stories as an opportunity to test the United States and see whether or not now is the time for China to go after Taiwan once and for all. And so Biden’s weakness, whether you voted for him or not, could end up costing all of us because they don’t trust his ability to respond to this in China or in Russia.

BUCK: It’s also the case that if Biden feels like he has very little political capital and the economy, the U.S. economy is in particularly rough shape, do you think that he’s gonna make wise decisions one way or the other if there is a major provocation from China? And also, look at the way Russia is playing this. Russia used the separatist provinces — quote-unquote, “separatist provinces,” whatever you want to call them, of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia back in 2008 into 2009 when there’s a transition from Bush to Obama — as the playbook.

And we are now seeing that playbook now on a much bigger scale in Ukraine very similar. But the way that the media narrative has formed around this, Clay, and the response of Western nations, a lot of tough talk from, “Oh, we’re bolstering NATO. Okay.” Well, Putin’s not invading a NATO country. So, that’s not really going to do very much. I think China watches all of this and gets to see, all right.

“How does the West, how do the democracies, the unified democracies of the world respond to a major military incident like this?” A lot of tough talk, a lot of people going on, you know, media in prime time pounding their chests about how “we need to stand for our principles in Ukraine,” but what does that even mean?

And I think China’s watching this and learning lessons that may well be applied if they decide to go after Taiwan, which a lot of people I know who are China watchers — as we see the intel community, that’s their primary area of responsibility — they think it’s a question of just when, not if.

CLAY: And when is the United States going to have a weaker leader than right now, and when could you put him on a two-fronted war in a more difficult position? I’m not sure the opportunity has ever been more strategically advantageous than right now for China as it pertains to Taiwan, which is what President Trump laid out with us just about 24 hours ago — and it still didn’t get much attention, but to me it should have.