I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.
Joining me today, once again, is White House correspondent Jeff Mordock.
[GERBO] We’ll start with movements on the Russia-Ukraine war front, specifically Trump and the administration’s efforts to try to lead to an end to that war. We’ve seen some of the diplomacy not yet work out in terms of the Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it appears that the administration may have a creative workaround to try to get Russia to capitulate, or at least to make Russia feel some pain. And that is recent efforts to tax India imports, to raise tariffs on India, which imports a lot of Russian oil, which is one of the lifebloods of Russia’s economy.
[MORDOCK] The Trump administration’s realizing the pressure they’re putting on Russia doesn’t seem to be having an impact. So what they’ve decided to do is go after Russia’s largest trading partners by trying to pressure them. Maybe that can help turn the screws on Russian President Vladimir Putin and get him to agree to sit down with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. So what President Trump has done is he’s ratcheted up tariffs to 50%, which is the highest of all the tariffs, on India goods coming to the United States. India is one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners. That hurts India. The goal of this is to wean India off of Russian oil. India right now is the largest buyer of Russian oil, and that money is being used to fund the war in Ukraine. So the thinking is that by punishing India, you can get India to stop buying Russian oil. They’ll walk away from Russia. That will then put more pressure on Russia to capitulate. Right now, we have not seen it.
Now, the tariffs have only been in effect for a couple of days, so we’re still waiting to see what happens here. But even with the tariffs, the problem that this administration faces is India is buying Russian oil because India is not one of the wealthier countries and Russian oil is extremely cheap right now. The G7 nations, the richest nations, put a cap on Russian oil, lowering its price to less than $60 a barrel. In doing that, it’s made it the cheapest oil on the market. So India, with its incredible population, is very expensive to provide energy for. They did not buy much Russian oil before the war. They’ve started buying Russian oil after the war. So it’ll be interesting to see if this has any impact.
Russia is hurting for oil right now. Ukraine has damaged about 17% of their oil refining capacity. So it needs the money from India to keep refining and keep processing oil.
[GERBO] Let’s stay with the White House, where President Trump is touting $1.5 billion raised through fundraising efforts since the 2024 election. He’s also posited the thought that perhaps there could be some sort of Republican convention in a midterm year next year, in 2026, as he has all this money raised that, in theory, would help candidates. But in some cases, it may go to some of his different political purposes. How realistic is the idea? And the Democratic National Committee has considered doing something similar, a midterm convention to raise support ahead of the midterms, ahead of those elections that will determine control of the House and the Senate.
[MORDOCK] We don’t have a lot of details other than the President threw it out this week and House Speaker Mike Johnson said he’s on board. Beyond that, we have no details. To put together a convention on the level that we see before elections, it takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of planning, it takes a lot of time. The midterm elections are roughly a year away. It’ll be interesting to see if anything happens.
Watch the video to see the full conversation, including the latest on the spending bill and Vice President J.D. Vance’s travels to swing states.