A Surgeon's Son Diagnoses the Health Care Mess in America

June 26, 2017

WRITER

Riaz Patel, television producer and friend of the program, joined Glenn on radio Monday to share a very personal story about health care in America. Patel's father, a surgeon who practiced on three continents and treated an estimated 250,000 patients, recently passed just weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. He described what his father saw at board meetings as the head of a hospital.

"He ran all the decisions of the hospital: who needed what, when they needed it, how long they'd stay. Then eventually there was one MBA, then two MBAs. And then eventually, there were no doctors represented. So everything we're talking about, whether it's two-party system, single-party system, the government, insurance, pre-approvals, none of that has anything to do with you and your doctor," Riaz said.

Most doctors dislike the current medical system which is burdened by red tape and bureaucracy. They just want to treat patients.

"You go through four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, you end up with this enormous amount of debt. And you come out, and you cannot practice medicine freely. You cannot make decisions autonomously between you and your patient that's sitting in front of you bleeding. You have to go consult with people who have nothing to do with that patient dynamic," Patel described.

The experience is infuriating to doctors and patients alike.

"What I'm really angry about these days is the business of the politics of health care. There is enough money out there, Glenn, to cover us all. I saw patients come to my father's house in the 1970s, when we had it out of our garage. To treat patients on a day-to-day basis is not that expensive. Why does it become so prohibitive? Why can the patient not receive the care, the doctor not treat? Where is the money going?" Patel questioned.

Some small town doctors are returning to a cash-only system that Patel's father once practiced as well, cutting out the middle man and lowering costs.

"These doctors would come, roving through these small towns and say, look, I'll do it for this much cash. And I think at a certain point, this is all we're discussing, bringing it bottom-up. We need to bring it back to basics. You and your doctor need to decide what is best for you and how to pay for it. They say one-third is going to policy and bureaucracy. That's insane," Riaz said.

Glenn summed it up.

"What you're asking for," he said, "is a return to common sense and a return to trust in neighbors."

GLENN: A very good friend of the program and one of the more decent men I know, Riaz Patel is joining us now. Riaz has been away for a while and been out of the country, had a new baby, has been spending time with his family, and unfortunately has lost his dear family here recently. Riaz, how are you doing recently?

RIAZ: I'm okay. Hi, Glenn. Nice to hear your voice. Hello.

GLENN: Good to hear you. Good to hear you. I wanted to talk to you today a little bit, Riaz, about -- you know, we had kind of a nice conversation over the last week about our dads.

RIAZ: Yes. Yes.

GLENN: And losing your dad and what that feels like. It's a weird thing that never seems to go away.

RIAZ: It's like a free fall of sadness and emotion. It's so visceral. It's so hard to explain. When we were going back and forth, it was one of those things that I'm like, if you've been through it, you sort of sense it. It's intense.

GLENN: Yeah. And it's strange because it -- at least with me, and I don't -- you know, I don't know about anybody else, but at least with me, the memories of my mother and my father have changed. And they -- they change as I get older. And -- and it's weird. Depending on which part of them you want to focus on, they become either better or worse than they really were.

RIAZ: Fascinating. Because it's so recent. It's, you know, less than two, three weeks. you know, when we were talking, I couldn't imagine that memory adjusting and changing. But, you know, I'm only a couple weeks in, so I imagine life as long it will.

GLENN: Yeah, you really want to write down everything you knew about your dad because it will change and you'll forget some things.

RIAZ: I started yesterday, per your advice. I actually did. I started writing down all the memories, good, bad, all that, to sort of keep it fresh now and notice how it changes overtime.

GLENN: Yeah. So, Riaz, your dad was a doctor. And he was a doctor on three continents.

RIAZ: Correct.

GLENN: With three different systems of medicine. And you and I were also going back and forth on health care. And you are, you know, a lefty or a liberal, if you will. But you're also the guy who went up to Alaska during the -- the Trump campaign, and all of your friends were saying, "How could these people ever vote for Trump?" And as you looked at it, you went up to Alaska, and you saw the suffering of people in the country and said, they're afraid of losing everything. And they don't have -- they don't have the money to be able to survive in this, if continues this way.

RIAZ: Yeah. Yeah. Part of the quest of, what do I not know out there? What do I think I know, but I not know?

And you have to be pretty deaf to not be able to hear that health care is broken. And I don't know anyone -- anyone, if you were to ask people to raise their hands, would raise their hand and say, yep, it's working for me.

So it was fascinating, as I was sitting in the aftermath of my father's death and talking to his secretaries -- Bernie and Ruth had been with him, you know, 20, 30 years -- about the patients, the patient community. Because he had been there for 40-plus years. So those patients are going to feel the change.

And as we discussed that patient community of Edgewood, Maryland, I realized it's very much a microcosm of what's happened in America. And what's fascinating is the way my dad adapted his practice and the practice of medicine to the changing economic times.

Edgewood, Maryland, is a blue-collar town. And over the past 40 years, it has statistically decreased its income. I mean, jobs went out. I remember factories closing when I was a teenager, but people still got sick. And people still slipped and fell.

And so what happened when they lost their job, they lost their income, they lost their insurance, but they still got sick. And they went to my dad. And my dad created this island -- you know, and it's not that uncommon, for a doctor to just want to practice medicine and say, to hell with the insurance and the preapprovals.

GLENN: Oh, I -- I think -- I think most doctors are like that. Most doctors just hate the system. They want to treat people. And they hate the system.

RIAZ: You go through four years of undergrad. Four years of medical school. You end up with this enormous amount of debt. And you come out, and you cannot practice medicine freely. You cannot make decisions autonomously between you and your patient that's sitting in front of you bleeding. You have to go consult with people who have nothing to do with that patient dynamic. And that's infuriating to doctors. It's infuriating to patients. And so what I'm really angry about these days is the business of the politics of health care. There is enough money out there, Glenn, to cover us all. I saw patients come to my father's house in the 1970s, when we had it out of our garage. To treat patients on a day-to-day basis is not that expensive. Why does it become so prohibitive? Why can the patient not receive the care, the doctor not treat? Where is the money going?

GLENN: So, Riaz, here's part of the problem: If I am spending somebody else's money and I -- let me say this carefully. One of the problems is, with the -- with the employer insurance and you not having to shop around -- when we are responsible for our own money, when somebody says to us, hey, there's -- I can get you in for a CAT scan right here, right now, and it's -- I'm just making numbers up. $1,000. Or you can drive in Dallas, there's a place you can drive from my -- my house, there's one that you can drive just down the street. You'll have to make an appointment. You'll get it by tomorrow. But it's not right here. And it's half the cost.

Same thing, just half the cost.

RIAZ: Which shows the fluctuation of pricing that has nothing to do with the actual administration of medicine.

GLENN: Well, convenience -- one thing is convenience. And also, these companies being able to gouge your eyes out because most people, they don't care about the price because it's not them paying for it.

RIAZ: Uh-huh.

GLENN: And so when you remove the responsibility of, wait a minute. It's my money. I'm going to have to pay for it, then you -- you -- for instance, with home insurance. I could file -- my home was struck by lightning this weekend.

RIAZ: Oh. Oh, I would look into that, Glenn.

GLENN: I know. I know. Wait a minute. What are you saying there?

So it was struck by lightning, and I said to my wife -- she was gone and she worked with her dad who was an insurance agent. And I'm like, "Blew the TV. Blew the system. You know, blew a whole bunch of stuff." And she said, "Well, we have a huge deductible." And I thought, "Oh, crap. We do, don't we? Oh, it's not free anymore."

RIAZ: Yeah.

GLENN: So you start to now care, wait a minute. Who did I call? Let's make sure I'm pricing this the right way. And so there is a difference. And it's the free market system. And Washington is taking it even further. They're just making deals with the insurance companies and with all the people who are getting rich, including them.

RIAZ: So my father was in the 1970s and '80s, was a medical director of a hospital, a small hospital in this area. And I watched as a kid as the board -- he ran all the decisions of the hospital: Who needed what, when they needed it, how long they'd stay. Then eventually there was one MBA, then two MBAs. And then eventually, there were no doctors represented.

So everything we're talking about, whether it's two-party system, single-party system, the government, insurance, preapprovals, none of that has anything to do with you and your doctor.

And to me, what my father brought, having trained in Karachi, Pakistan, in London, England, was a very different perspective, that you treat first your physician and then the billing comes next.

And what he did is said, you're sick, you come in. And then you go to billing. And what happened was, it became so personal that Ruth or Bernie would say to Mr. Johnson, "Okay. Here's what happened." And Mr. Johnson would say, "I don't have my job. I don't have insurance. But I can pay $40." And they would be like, "Okay." Because we know, in health care, that's better than nothing.

And my father would just say, the personal responsibility of the physician to treat is the joy of his life. And at a certain point, working at the hospital, it was so bureaucratic with the lawyers and the MBAs and the lobbyists in a small hospital, that he actually left the hospital, built his own surgical center and said, "I cannot practice medicine appropriately in the way it works."

GLENN: So what you're asking for though is a return to common sense and a return to trust in neighbors.

I'm reading this book called Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me. And it talks about the -- why we don't say I'm sorry. And it gets to this one place about doctors. And they track doctors in a study of those who said, "Wow, I made a huge mistake," all the way to a doctor who came out of surgery, the patient dies, and he says, "Look, I -- I don't know what the -- I don't know what the autopsy is going to show. I don't know. There will be an investigation. But your husband died, and I believe it was my fault."

And they were angry. And he said, "Look, I didn't have any reason to suspect this, but I just really feel like I should have caught that. And I just want you to know I take responsibility."

The doctors that say the truth are the least likely to be sued. But because of the system that has been set up by the attorneys and everything else, nobody is having real conversations with each other.

RIAZ: And that is the problem. And so in this tiny patient community of Edgewood, they were able to create this walk-in medical center, nothing fancy, where neighbors walked in, up to three, four generations and were treated.

And to me -- and my father was diagnosed with cancer and died in seven weeks, literally. I would say we spent 80 percent of our time trying to navigate insurance: Was this preapproved? Was this equipment sent?

And my father, who treated a quarter of a million patients over the course of his life, we could not get a bed for him to ease his pain because we could not track down the paperwork. So the last five days of his life, he sat in pain because the four of us --

GLENN: Wow

RIAZ: -- you have -- I'm a producer. My sister is a lawyer. My other sister is a physician with her own practice. My husband manages health care.

The four of us could not navigate the system. And each day, my father sat there in pain. And we said, "I think the bed is arriving today. I called the office. I called the home health. I called the person." All we did was manage it.

And I'm thinking, after he's dead and I'm standing there near the grave, I'm like, "How can this continue? How can a person get sick and go to their doctor and 4,000 people and 10 million letters will go on, that has nothing to do with that dynamic?"

GLENN: I have about two -- I have about two minutes.

Can you talk a little bit about the off-the-grid medicine that you saw in Alaska?

RIAZ: In Alaska, when I was there, I saw in a local paper that they actually were advertising -- doctors were coming and setting up basically bundling your health care, saying people are not going to doctor's offices because they don't have insurance and money. But you cannot avoid your own health.

And so these doctors would come, roving through these small towns and say, "Look, I'll do it for this much cash." And I think at a certain point, this is all we're discussing. Bringing it bottom-up. We need to bring it back to basics. You and your doctor need to decide what is best for you and how to pay for it. They say one-third is going to policy and bureaucracy. That's insane.

GLENN: So Mike -- Mike Lee, the senator -- the most conservative senator, one of them, just wrote an op-ed and said, "Look. I'll sign on. This is not going to fix anything. It's already premiums from Obamacare are up 140 percent. There's nothing in this Trumpcare that's going to make this any better." He said, "I'll sign on, but only if you let states opt out and come up with their own thing." He said, "Because I believe the people of the country will figure it out in their own way, if you just leave them alone." Do you agree with that?

RIAZ: I believe it is so broken right now, I do not know how to fix it. But I know that people will still slip and fall. They will still feel unwell on a Monday morning, and they need to go to their doctor. So I don't know what DC or politicians or insurance are going to do with their multibillion-dollar lobby, but I really encourage people if they're sick, to go to their local physician and say, "Here's what's going on. This is my life."

The insurance companies have removed that ability to talk to your doctor and vice-versa about the fact that, hey, I'm sick, but I don't have money. How can I be treated? And there's money for all of us to be cared for. But the business of politics and health care is absorbing it at all.

GLENN: Riaz, always good to talk to you. And I'm so sorry for the loss of your father.

RIAZ: Thank you. Good to talk to you. Bye, Glenn!

GLENN: God bless you. We'll see you soon. Thank you, Riaz. Buh-bye. Riaz Patel.

I know that in Texas, this is the feeling of many of the doctors of you know what, I'm just pulling out of the system. And I'll just deal with it myself.

I personally think that as we get closer to universal, single-payer system, those doctors are going to be told, you can't do that. But that is the solution. Leave people alone, and they will work it out on the -- on the most basic level.

Now, maybe they won't in the big cities, so the cities do something else. But they will around the rest of the country.

Trump's 3 BIGGEST border victories

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The Southern Border is healing!

Just hours after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border. A little over a month later, the tide of migrants pouring into the United States has been significantly stemmed. Trump is delivering on his major campaign promises: stopping illegal crossings, rolling back Biden-era border policies, and using every available resource to fortify the border against future challenges.

In his recent congressional speech, Trump highlighted these border security successes—achievements often overshadowed by the flood of other news stories this past month. To spotlight this monumental progress, we’ve compiled a list of Trump’s three most significant border victories.

1. Significantly reduced border encounters

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When Trump took office, it was clear—the sheriff was back in town. According to the Department of Homeland Security, daily border encounters have plummeted by 93 percent since his inauguration. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up its efforts: in the past month alone, ICE doubled arrests of criminal aliens and tripled apprehensions of fugitives at large. This dramatic shift stems from reinstating strict border policies, restoring common-sense enforcement, and unleashing the full capabilities of ICE and Border Patrol.

2. Major policy changes

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President Trump has also made sweeping strides in border policy. He reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, requiring immigrants to wait in Mexico during their immigration proceedings instead of being released into the U.S. He also terminated the controversial “catch and release” practice, which had allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country pending court dates. Additionally, Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, mandating detention for all illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes.

Another key victory was designating cartels like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as terrorist organizations. This classification empowers law enforcement and border agencies to tackle these ruthless gangs with the seriousness and resources they demand.

3. Deployed major muscle

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Trump is doubling down on border security—and he’s not holding back. He deployed 1,500 U.S. troops to secure the southern border and restarted construction of the border wall. Among the forces sent is a Stryker Brigade, a rapid-response, high-tech mechanized infantry unit equipped with armored ground and air vehicles. This brigade’s mobility and long-range capabilities make it ideal for patrolling the rugged, remote stretches of the border.

Fort Knox exposed: Is America's gold MISSING?

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President Trump promised that we would get a peek inside Fort Knox, but are we ready for what we might find?

In this new era of radical transparency, the possibility that the Deep State's darkest secrets could be exposed has many desperate for answers to old questions. Recently, Glenn has zeroed in on gold, specifically America's gold reserves, which are supposed to be locked away inside the vaults of Fort Knox. According to the government, there are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored within several small secured rooms that are themselves locked behind a massive 22 ton vault door, but the truth is that no one has officially seen this gold since 1953. An audit is long overdue, and President Trump has already shown interest in the idea.

America's gold reserve has been surrounded by suspicion for the better part of a hundred years. It all started in 1933, when FDR effectively nationalized the United States's private gold stores, forcing Americans to sell their gold to the government. This gold was melted down, forged into bars, and stored in the newly constructed U.S. Bullion Depository building at Fort Knox. By 1941, Fort Knox had held 649.6 million ounces of gold—which, you may have noticed, was 502.3 million ounces more than today. We'll come back to that.

By 1944, World War II was ending, and the Allies began planning how to rebuild Europe. The U.N. held a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the USD was established as the world's reserve currency. This meant that any country (though not U.S. citizens) could exchange the USD for gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Already, you can see where our gold might have gone.

Jump to the 1960s, where Lyndon B. Johnson was busy digging America into a massive debt hole. Between the Vietnam War and Johnson's "Great Society" project, the U.S. was bleeding cash and printing money to keep up. But now Fort Knox no longer held enough physical gold to cover the $35 an ounce rate promised by the Bretton Woods agreement. France took notice of this weakness and began to redeem hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 70s Nixon staunched this gushing wound by halting foreign nations from redeeming dollars for gold, but this had the adverse effect of ending the gold standard.

This brings us to the present, where inflation is through the roof, no one knows how much gold is actually inside Fort Knox, and someone in America has been buying a LOT of gold. Who is buying this gold? Where is it going and for what purpose? Glenn has a few ideas, and one of them is MUCH better than the other:

The path back to gold

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One possibility is that all of this gold that has been flooding into America is in preparation for a shift back to a gold-backed, or partial-gold-backed system. The influx of gold corresponds with a comment recently made by Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who said he was going to:

“Monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.”

Glenn pointed out that per a 1972 law, the gold in Fort Knox is currently set at a fixed value of $42 an ounce. At the time of this writing, gold was valued at $2,912.09 an ounce, which is more than a 6,800 percent increase. If the U.S. stockpile was revalued to reflect current market prices, it could be used to stabilize the dollar. This could even mean a full, or partial return to the gold standard, depending on the amount of gold currently being imported.

Empty coffers—you will own nothing

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Unfortunately, Glenn suspects there is another, darker purpose behind the recent gold hubbub.

As mentioned before, the last realaudit of Fort Knox was done under President Eisenhower, in 1953. While the audit passed, a report from the Secretary of the Treasury revealed that a mere 13.6 percent was checked. For the better part of a century, we've had no idea how much gold is present under Fort Knox. After the gold hemorrhage in the 60s, many were suspicious of the status of our gold supply. In the 80s, a wealthy businessman named Edward Durell released over a decade's worth of research that led him to conclude that Fort Knox was all but empty. In short, he claimed that the Federal Reserve had siphoned off all the gold and sold it to Europe.

What would it mean if America's coffers are empty? According to a post by X user Matt Smith that Glenn shared, empty coffers combined with an influx of foreign gold could represent the beginning of a new, controlled economy. We couldstill be headed towards a future where you'll ownnothing.

Glenn: The most important warning of your lifetime—AI is coming for you

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Artificial intelligence isn’t coming. It’s here. The future we once speculated about is no longer science fiction—it’s reality. Every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we think, is about to change forever. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re already behind. This isn’t just another technological leap. This is the biggest shift humanity has ever faced.

The last call before the singularity

I've been ringing this bell for 30 years. Thirty years warning you about what’s coming. And now, here we are. This isn’t a drill. This isn’t some distant future. It’s happening now. If you don’t understand what’s at stake, you need to wake up—because we have officially crossed the event horizon of artificial intelligence.

What’s an event horizon? It’s the edge of a black hole—the point where you can’t escape, no matter how hard you try. AI is that black hole. The current is too strong. The waterfall is too close. If you haven’t been paying attention, you need to start right now. Because once we reach Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), there is no turning back.

You’ve heard me talk about this for decades. AI isn’t just a fancy Siri. It isn’t just ChatGPT. We are on the verge of machines that will outthink every human who has ever lived—combined. ASI won’t just process information—it will anticipate, decide, and act faster than any of us can comprehend. It will change everything about our world, about our lives.

And yet, the conversation around AI has been wrong. People think the real dangers are coming later—some distant dystopian nightmare. But we are already in it. We’ve passed the point where AI is just a tool. It’s becoming the master. And the people who don’t learn to use it now—who don’t understand it, who don’t prepare for it—are going to be swallowed whole.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Glenn, you’ve spent years warning us about AI, about how dangerous it is. And now you’re telling us to embrace it?" Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Because if you don’t use this tool—if you don’t learn to master it—then you will be at its mercy.

This is not an option anymore. This is survival.

How you must prepare—today

I need you to take AI seriously—right now. Not next year, not five years from now. This weekend.

Here’s what I want you to do: Open up one of these AI tools—Grok 3, ChatGPT, anything advanced—and start using it. If you’re a CEO, have it analyze your competitors. If you’re an artist, let it critique your work. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, have it optimize your budget. Ask it questions. Push it to its limits. Learn what it can do—because if you don’t, you will be left behind.

Let me be crystal clear: AI is not your friend. It’s not your partner. It’s not something to trust. AI is a shovel—an extremely powerful shovel, but still just a tool. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

We’ve already seen what happens when we surrender to technology without thinking. Social media rewired our brains. Smartphones reshaped our culture. AI will do all that—and more. If you don’t take control now, AI will control you.

Ask yourself: When AI makes decisions for you—when it anticipates your needs before you even know them—at what point do you stop being the one in charge? At what point does AI stop being a tool and start being your master?

And that’s not even the worst of it. The next step—transhumanism—is coming. It will start with good intentions. Elon Musk is already developing implants to help people walk again. And that’s great. But where does it stop? What happens when people start “upgrading” themselves? What happens when people choose to merge with AI?

I know my answer. I won’t cross that line. But you’re going to have to decide for yourself. And if you don’t start preparing now, that decision will be made for you.

The final warning—act now or be left behind

I need you to hear me. This is not optional. This is not something you can ignore. AI is here. And if you don’t act now, you will be lost.

The next 18 months will change everything. People who don’t prepare—who don’t learn to use AI—will be scrambling to catch up. And they won’t catch up. The gap will be too wide. You’ll either be leading, or you’ll be swallowed whole.

So start this weekend. Learn it. Test it. Push it. Master it. Because the people who don’t? They will be the tools.

The decision is yours. But time is running out.

The coming AI economy and the collapse of traditional jobs

Think back to past technological revolutions. The industrial revolution put countless blacksmiths, carriage makers, and farmhands out of business. The internet wiped out entire industries, from travel agencies to brick-and-mortar retail. AI is bigger than all of those combined. This isn’t just about job automation—it’s about job obliteration.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers—people who thought their jobs were untouchable—will find themselves replaced by AI. A machine that can diagnose disease with greater accuracy, draft legal documents in seconds, or design infrastructure faster than an entire team of engineers will be cheaper, faster, and better than human labor. If you’re not preparing for that reality, you’re already falling behind.

What does this mean for you? It means constant adaptation. Every three to five years, you will need to redefine your role, retrain, and retool. The only people who survive this AI revolution will be the ones who understand its capabilities and learn to work with it, not against it.

The moral dilemma: When do you stop being human?

The real danger of AI isn’t just economic—it’s existential. When AI merges with humans, we will face an unprecedented question: At what point do we stop being human?

Think about it. If you implant a neural chip that gives you access to the entire internet in your mind, are you still the same person? If your thoughts are intertwined with AI-generated responses, where do you end and AI begins? This is the future we are hurtling toward, and few people are even asking the right questions.

I’m asking them now. And you should be too. Because that line—between human and machine—is coming fast. You need to decide now where you stand. Because once we cross it, there is no going back.

Final thoughts: Be a leader, not a follower

AI isn’t a passing trend. It’s not a gadget or a convenience. It is the most powerful force humanity has ever created. And if you don’t take the time to understand it now, you will be at its mercy.

This is the defining moment of our time. Will you be a master of AI? Or will you be mastered by it? The choice is yours. But if you wait too long, you won’t have a choice at all.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's Zelenskyy deal falls apart: What happened and what's next?

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Trump offered Zelenskyy a deal he couldn’t refuse—but Zelenskyy rejected it outright.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington to sign a historic agreement aimed at ending the brutal war ravaging Ukraine. Joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump met with Zelenskyy and the press before the leaders were set to retreat behind closed doors to finalize the deal. Acting as a gracious host, Trump opened the meeting by praising Zelenskyy and the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed agreement, emphasizing its benefits—such as access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for the U.S.—and publicly pledged continued American aid in exchange.

Zelenskyy, however, didn’t share Trump’s optimism. Throughout the meeting, he interrupted repeatedly and openly criticized both Trump and Vance in front of reporters. Tensions escalated until Vance, visibly frustrated, fired back. The exchange turned the meeting hostile, and by its conclusion, Trump withdrew his offer. Rather than staying in Washington to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy promptly left for Europe to seek support from the European Union.

As Glenn pointed out, Trump had carefully crafted this deal to benefit all parties, including Russia. Zelenskyy’s rejection was a major misstep.

Trump's generous offer to Zelenskyy

I believe Trump is playing 4-D chess with Zelenskyy. pic.twitter.com/L19RtQdCF6
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck)
March 3, 2025

Glenn took to his whiteboard—swapping out his usual chalkboard—to break down Trump’s remarkable deal for Zelenskyy. He explained how it aligned with several of Trump’s goals: cutting spending, advancing technology and AI, and restoring America’s position as the dominant world power without military action. The deal would have also benefited the EU by preventing another war, revitalizing their economy, and restoring Europe’s global relevance. Ukraine and Russia would have gained as well, with the war—already claiming over 250,000 lives—finally coming to an end.

The media has portrayed last week’s fiasco as an ambush orchestrated by Trump to humiliate Zelenskyy, but that’s far from the truth. Zelenskyy was only in Washington because he had already rejected the deal twice—first refusing Vice President Vance and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was Zelenskyy who insisted on traveling to America to sign the deal at the White House. If anyone set an ambush, it was him.

The EU can't help Ukraine

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After clashing with Trump and Vance, Zelenskyy wasted no time leaving D.C. The Ukrainian president should have stayed, apologized to Trump, and signed the deal. Given Trump’s enthusiasm and a later comment on Truth Social—where he wrote, “Zelenskyy can come back when he is ready for peace”—the deal could likely have been revived.

Meanwhile, in London, over a dozen European leaders, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, convened an emergency meeting dubbed the “coalition of the willing” to ensure peace in Ukraine. This coalition emerged as Europe’s response to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. By the meeting’s end, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a four-point plan to secure Ukrainian independence.

Zelenskyy, however, appears less than confident in the coalition’s plan. Recently, he has shifted his stance toward the U.S., apologizing to Trump and Vance and expressing gratitude for the generous military support America has already provided. Zelenskyy now says he wants to sign Trump’s deal and work under his leadership.

This is shaping up to be another Trump victory.

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