Why does the U.S. have to get involved in Ukraine? And why is it a good idea? Ben Shapiro explains why it makes sense to be involved in the Ukraine conflict, and why it's not a bad idea. The Benchmark Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVpn.org/ProtectYourOnline Privacy. Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on the Public Eye and host of the Daily Wire. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Wire and the Weekly Standard, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic, among other publications. His articles have appeared in The Daily Beast, The Hill, and The Weekly Standard. You can also find Ben on social media at and . Ben's new book, is out now: The Dark Side of the White House: A Guide to America s Most Powerful People in the 21st Century, out now. is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. It's also available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover, and Audio Book format. If you prefer to buy a copy of the book, you can get it for only $99.99, including Audible and Audible. The Audible membership trial, which includes a limited edition hardcover edition of The Testaments edition, which sells for 99 copies for $99,99.95.0099.00.00, shipping starts in July. and includes an Audible paperback edition for $49.00 and limited edition print edition for 99 pounds.00 USPs, plus shipping is also available on Audible Prime memberships, and VHS rental, Blu-Auction, and T-Vee Pro, which will be shipping nationwide, and a limited limited edition 3-day shipping, shipping service, starting from $99 and 7-AVRP, starting at $99/month, starting in January 2020. All other options are available for Prime Minister John McCain will be available for purchase starting July 1st, starting on Nov. 21st, with shipping starts, starting September 2019. Learn more about shipping services, shipping plans, shipping services are available nationwide, shipping options, and more than $100,000, shipping only $50,000 in the US, and shipping plans are available worldwide, shipping will be limited to $200,000.
00:00:27.000He spoke before a joint session of Congress last night.
00:00:30.000This is his first trip outside of the country since the beginning of the Ukraine war that Russia launched in February of 2022, a lot earlier this year.
00:00:38.000The war has been going on for at least 10 months at this point.
00:00:42.000It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. One of the big questions that has arisen, particularly on the right, but also on some for some people on the left, is why the United States is involved in this in the first place. And the answer is actually multifaceted because foreign policy is a complicated area.
00:00:57.000So the answer is actually not all that complicated. Russia is a geopolitical foe of the United States.
00:01:03.000Degrading Russia is in the strategic interest of the United States.
00:01:06.000Now, there are some people on the right who are very isolationist in orientation, and they're constantly asking why the United States should basically be involved anywhere in the world, which was a fair question in about 1850.
00:01:18.000When obviously global supply chains have to do with international politics, when global economics have to do with international politics, when the ability to move weaponry and troops and terrorists around the globe is very, very easy.
00:01:31.000What that means is that the waters that once protected the United States from all encroachments abroad, those waters look a lot narrower than they did circa about 1850.
00:01:40.000And what that means is that geopolitically, our foes are either on the move or they are in retreat.
00:01:44.000The United States is either on the move or it is in retreat.
00:01:47.000The world is a safer place when the US has more hegemony.
00:01:50.000The world is a less safe place when the US tends to create a vacuum in foreign policy, which is then filled by geopolitical foes like Russia or like China.
00:01:59.000What this means on a sort of hard-nosed level is that we do have an interest in degrading Russia's military strength to invade surrounding countries.
00:02:08.000We have that interest because Russia, again, is a geopolitical foe of the United States that is not interested in forming an alliance with the United States.
00:02:25.000Russia's goal has been pretty overtly to break NATO.
00:02:27.000particularly in the fall of the Soviet Union, to do that.
00:02:30.000Russia just has not taken advantage of any of that.
00:02:33.000Russia's goal has been pretty overtly to break NATO.
00:02:35.000NATO in the aftermath of the Cold War was reconstituted as a sort of anti-Russian alliance, knowing that Russia had predatory instincts with regard to the Baltic States particularly, but also with regard to Ukraine, with regard to Poland, with regard to a lot of the former satellites of the Soviet Union, NATO continued to be a viable defense mechanism against the Russians.
00:02:54.000That doesn't mean that NATO's policy with Ukraine has made any sense.
00:03:07.000That continues to be NATO's mission is to keep Germany at the center of European politics without allowing them to sort of break out because they've done so twice in the 20th century to the devastation of the world.
00:03:20.000To keep the Americans in because America has an interest in European politics, at least to the extent that we send the money.
00:03:25.000And to keep the Russians out because again, Russia's predatory instincts were communist and now they are more oligarchic.
00:03:31.000So that mission maintains, but that does not mean that NATO wasn't playing games with Ukraine.
00:03:36.000They kept making overtures to Ukraine.
00:03:41.000And you see why Putin invaded doesn't mean it was justified, but you see why he did it.
00:03:45.000He also had the bizarre notion that Ukraine was not at this point a polity of its own, that it considered itself part of Russia so you'd be able to walk in just the way that Hitler walked into Austria during the Anschluss and everybody just cheered.
00:03:56.000Putin obviously thought that was going to happen in Ukraine.
00:04:00.000Part of the reason, by the way, it didn't happen is because Russia had invaded the Donetsk-Luhansk region as well as Crimea in 2014 and turned those places into absolute hellholes.
00:04:07.000So if you're a Ukrainian looking to your east and you look at Luhansk-Donetsk or looking to your south at Crimea and you say, I can be living like those people or I could be living not like those people.
00:04:15.000The answer is you don't want to live under Russian rule.
00:04:17.000It turns out that Vladimir Putin's rule has not been good for Russians and it has not been for Ukrainians inside Luhansk-Donetsk or inside Crimea.
00:04:24.000So that miscalculation by Putin has led to an entrenched war in which he has been pretty thoroughly rebutted.
00:04:31.000The surprise of the war is not only that Ukraine was able to stave off Russia, but the Ukraine has been able to inflict extraordinary casualties on Russia.
00:04:39.000Now part of that is because Russia's conventional military is actually incredibly second rate.
00:04:44.000Not just their trained soldiers, but also their weaponry.
00:04:58.000Russia is, as some people have suggested, an oil station with a nuclear arsenal.
00:05:02.000And because of that, Russia's conventional military was defeated by Ukraine, which was armed with NATO weaponry, which actually is significantly upgraded weaponry over whatever the Russians have to offer.
00:05:13.000That is in the interest of the United States.
00:05:14.000It upholds the deterrent power of NATO.
00:05:17.000It degrades Russia's conventional military to the extent that Russia is going to have a very tough time with adventurous ambitions in terms of foreign policy and violating other countries' borders, which is good for the world.
00:05:27.000Violation of borders is generally a bad thing.
00:05:30.000And it deters China as well, because again, the cost that Russia has now borne is so significant that if China is looking at Taiwan and thinking to itself, maybe we'll try that, while looking at what happened to Russia, not wonderful if you're China.
00:05:42.000We'll get some more on this in just one minute.
00:05:44.000First, are you tired of overpaying for your wireless network?
00:05:46.000Get Talk, Text, and Blazing Fast data for just $30 a month.
00:05:49.000PeerTalk gives you the same network, the same towers, the same coverage as the other guys at half the price.
00:05:53.000Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas, everybody.
00:05:56.000PeerTalk's US-based customer service team makes the switch incredibly easy.
00:06:00.000Knowing you're supporting a veteran-owned business.
00:06:01.000When you go to puretalk.com and enter code SHAPIRO, you'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.
00:06:06.000There's no reason to pay Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile over 80 bucks a month for wireless services when you can get the same exact service on the same exact network over at Pure Talk for half the price.
00:06:35.000Just go over to PeerTalk.com, promo code SHAPIRO, get 50% off your very first month, and you'll be saving hundreds of dollars down the road.
00:06:45.000You've been hearing me rave about my Helix Sleep Mattress for literally years, but Helix has now moved outside the bedroom and now they are making you sofas.
00:06:50.000We're talking about the other place that you rest, where you spend a disproportionate amount of your time, where you work, where you sleep, where you watch TV.
00:06:57.000Allform is the company that makes you the best sofas available.
00:07:00.000Allform sofas are American-made, easy to assemble, scratch and stain resistant, stylish and comfortable.
00:07:05.000All-form sofas are modern yet timeless seating pieces that come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and configurations.
00:07:10.000They cost a fraction of what you'd pay in traditional stores.
00:07:12.000All-form sofas are designed to grow with the way you live.
00:07:15.000The All-Form Sofa Collection has got everything from armchairs and loveseats to an eight-seat sectional, so you can find the perfect piece for any space plus.
00:07:21.000Allform sofas are shipped directly to your door, can be assembled in just a few minutes, no tools necessary.
00:07:25.000We love our Allform sofa at The Shapiro Household.
00:07:27.000It's really durable, which is great because my kids beat up all pieces of furniture, and Allform stands the test of time.
00:07:33.000If getting a sofa without trying it in store sounds a little risky, you don't need to worry.
00:07:35.000Get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it.
00:07:37.000If you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund, but that's not going to happen.
00:07:40.000To find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com slash ben.
00:07:43.000Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners at allform.com slash ben.
00:07:50.000Now China's gotten some side benefits like namely it's been able to turn Russia into its giant oil field.
00:07:54.000Russia's been shipping all of its oil to China instead of China once being a client state of the Soviet Union.
00:07:59.000Now Russia is essentially a client state of China.
00:08:02.000So in some ways it's maximized Chinese powers but in other ways it's actually degraded a very strong strategic ally of the Chinese and made it harder for them to engage in adventurous foreign policy in Taiwan.
00:08:12.000So the United States has achieved a bunch of interests.
00:08:15.000With regard to the Ukraine war and as far as the investment that the United States has made in the Ukraine war, again, we've expended no lives in the Ukraine war.
00:08:22.000We've expended a fair bit of money in the Ukraine war, but the truth is that the amount of money that we have spent in 2022 amounts to approximately 6% of total US defense spending.
00:08:43.000It is a lot of money, but it represents a fraction of the United States' military budget.
00:08:47.000If you could trade Say, 10% of the American military budget.
00:08:52.000Four, the complete degradation of the Russian military.
00:08:55.000That actually is not a bad move, considering that Ukrainian armed forces have already killed or wounded at least 100,000 Russian troops.
00:09:02.000That is half of its original fighting force.
00:09:04.000There have been almost 8,000 confirmed losses of armored vehicles, including thousands of tanks, thousands of APCs, artillery pieces, hundreds of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, numerous naval vessels.
00:09:14.000So basically, you've destroyed half of the Russian military by just giving the weapons to Ukraine.
00:09:21.000I mean, the truth is that on a year-to-year level, the amount of money that we'd be spending in the American military budget in order to counter whatever moves the Russians are making would easily be that amount of money.
00:09:31.000And here you're talking about a one-time expenditure that has taken out an extraordinary percentage of the Russian military.
00:09:37.000So, is it in America's interest to fund this?
00:09:54.000Because the truth is that the United States does have an interest in stability.
00:09:58.000Despite all the talk about how we would love to see regime change in Russia, the truth is we don't know what comes next in Russia.
00:10:03.000And were the Russian regime to fall, what you could end up with, as Henry Kissinger has said, is a complete destruction of any centralized authority in Russia.
00:10:09.000And now you're talking about an extraordinarily large landmass with tribal situations taking over all over this landmass armed with 2,500 nuclear weapons.
00:10:18.000That does not sound like an ideal situation.
00:10:20.000You actually do need a centralized government in Russia as much as you think that Vladimir Putin is a thug and a strong man.
00:10:26.000As much as that is true, the complete collapse of the Russian government into sort of chaos would be a worse solution probably than what we are currently looking at right now.
00:10:35.000And so this means that we actually do have some divergent interests from the Ukrainians.
00:10:39.000The convergent interest is Ukraine pushing back the Russians.
00:11:04.000So the question becomes where the line gets drawn and how we best get to that line.
00:11:08.000And this is why I've been saying for a long time here that we need to pursue a two-fold strategy, the United States.
00:11:13.000One, you have to continue funding Ukraine so they don't actually lose the war.
00:11:17.000You need to allow them to continue to push the Russians pretty hard on the battlefield.
00:11:20.000At the same time, we need to open up backchannel negotiations with Putin, and we have to say to him, what does a solution, what does a goal look like to you?
00:11:26.000What does the end goal look like to you?
00:11:27.000Because at a certain point here, Joe Biden is going to have to be the bad guy.
00:11:30.000At a certain point here, the President of the United States is going to have to say, here is what a solution looks like in Ukraine, and we are going to stop funding military aid that is used this way.
00:11:41.000If the Ukrainians are the ones who actually push back against that possible solution.
00:11:45.000The reason that Biden needs to be the bad guy is because Zelensky at this point cannot go back to his own people and say, I'm going to accept Russian domination of particular territory.
00:12:02.000Absent just the abject surrender of the other side, which again is not going to happen because Putin cannot allow that to happen, which means that Biden is going to have to make the sacrifice of going out there and saying, here is what a negotiated solution looks like.
00:12:16.000Is he actually going to have the stones to do that?
00:12:17.000I have very serious doubts whether he's going to have the stones to do any of that.
00:12:21.000Now, in this whole analysis, it is not necessary to ignore all of the problems inside Ukraine.
00:12:27.000There's been a lot of talk about why are we even supporting Ukraine against the Russians.
00:12:30.000I just explained on a geopolitical level why we're supporting Ukraine against the Russians.
00:12:33.000Russia presents a geopolitical threat to the United States.
00:12:36.000It backs all of our foes, including Iran, including China.
00:12:39.000It has been an aggressive foreign player in foreign policy, invading other countries and surrounding regions.
00:12:43.000It does not have the economic interests of the West or the United States at heart.
00:12:48.000It is clearly opposed to many of those interests.
00:12:51.000Ukraine is to all extents and purposes for the United States kind of a nothing burger until the Russians invaded.
00:12:58.000So the United States had an interest in Ukraine remaining an independent country apart from Russia, but it's not as though the United States had like heavy investment in Ukraine.
00:13:06.000Ukraine was just another country until Russia invaded it.
00:13:10.000And you don't have to ignore the problems inside.
00:13:13.000Ukraine, you don't have to be a person who flies the Ukrainian flag because you love Ukraine, because you love the governance in Ukraine, in order to oppose the Russian predations upon Ukraine.
00:13:41.000And those corruption allegations do include people like Vladimir Zelensky.
00:13:44.000It was the Associated Press that was reporting all the way back in July, quote, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia, Ukraine's history of rampant corruption and shaky governance.
00:13:59.000This is leading a lot of Americans to say, okay, why are we sending so much money over there without any oversight?
00:14:03.000Which is a proper and correct question.
00:14:06.000Obviously, we need oversight of where that money is going.
00:14:08.000In some ways, it's better for us to just ship the weaponry directly in as opposed to sending them the money to buy the weaponry.
00:14:14.000At least if you just ship them the weaponry, you know they have the weaponry.
00:14:16.000If you ship them the money, it might be going into Zelensky's personal bank account.
00:14:20.000Unless that sounds like some sort of slanderous idea about Zelensky.
00:14:22.000It's been true of literally every Ukrainian prime minister so far as I'm aware for the last several decades.
00:14:29.000As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic, and direct financial support to Ukraine and encourages allies to do the same, the Biden administration, according to NPR, again this is NPR, back in July, is now once again grappling with long-standing worries about Ukraine's suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid.
00:14:45.000Those issues, which date back decades and were not an insignificant part of former President Donald Trump's first impeachment, have been largely pushed to the back burner in the immediate run-up to the Russian invasion.
00:14:53.000But Zelensky fired his top prosecutor, intelligence chief, and other senior officials, resurfacing those concerns.
00:14:59.000This may have given fresh attention to allegations of high-level corruption in Kiev made by one outspoken U.S.
00:15:04.000Now again, it may be that in the years to come, we find out that a lot of the money that we've been sending to Ukraine actually went into the pocket of Vladimir Zelensky's friend.
00:15:11.000Like, that would not be the craziest possible outcome of this, because again, given how politics works in Ukraine, it'd actually be shocking if that wasn't the outcome here.
00:15:21.000With that said, that does not undermine the idea that the United States should be providing aid to Ukraine for all the reasons that we've already mentioned, mainly checking the Russians and deterring the Chinese.
00:15:30.000The same thing holds true with regard to Ukrainian religious treatment.
00:15:33.000Now, there are a few myths that have been purveyed here with regard to Ukraine.
00:15:37.000One is that Ukraine is some sort of secular liberal paradise.
00:15:45.000Ukraine is a very socially conservative country.
00:15:48.000However, is it true that Vladimir Zelensky is cracking down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church?
00:15:53.000The answer is yes, and the reason that he's been doing that is because he believes that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, not without evidence, is linked to Moscow.
00:16:00.000Because as it turns out, they've actually done some raids on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
00:16:04.000And what they found is large amounts of cash, dubious Russian citizens, leaflets calling on people to join the Russian army, etc, etc.
00:16:11.000Now, is that a violation of religious freedom?
00:16:26.000You also don't have to ignore the reality that Battalions like the Azov Battalion have been covered since like 2014 as rooted in neo-Nazi ideology.
00:16:36.000That was reported by virtually every major media outlet.
00:17:51.000It is because I wish to protect America's interests that I believe that a muscular America on the world stage is better.
00:17:57.000It's the reason why it was an idiotic move to pull out of Afghanistan for no apparent reason and hand the country over to the Taliban who promptly welcomed terrorists back in.
00:18:06.000Whenever the United States retracts on the world stage, people who hate us take over.
00:18:11.000This is the rule in American foreign policy, and this is why the United States is involved.
00:18:15.000Now again, one of the things that drives people absolutely up a wall is the fact that everyone in politics speaks about this stuff without any nuance.
00:18:22.000Everybody in the political sphere, the people who should be expressing some sort of nuance with regard to this sort of stuff, they're making clear all of the holdups that they have with Ukraine, making obvious that they do not think that Ukrainian government is free of corruption, that it is a bastion of light and happiness.
00:18:38.000But we are going to support them against the Russians because the Russians are the predatory power in this particular situation and the United States has an actual national interest in staving off Russian victory in this particular arena.
00:18:50.000Instead of politicians actually saying any of that stuff, what you get is the happy talk.
00:18:54.000And the happy talk, I understand it rubs everybody the wrong way.
00:18:57.000Instead, what you have is the Ukrainians are, the Ukrainian government is absolutely scot-free wonderful.
00:19:06.000The Ukrainian flag, I won't fly the American flag, but I will fly the Ukrainian flag.
00:19:10.000I won't shut the American border, but I will ship $45 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
00:19:14.000Now, the criticism there is not about shipping aid to Ukraine.
00:19:17.000The criticism about shutting the border So, whenever you hear people who say, why are we shipping the aid to Ukraine as opposed to shutting the border?
00:19:24.000The real question for Joe Biden should be, why aren't you shutting the border?
00:19:30.000The question is, why aren't you shutting the border?
00:19:32.000The notion that, while I can't believe we're spending $45 billion on Ukraine, while we're spending $1.7 trillion, we don't have, we're borrowing the money to spend it.
00:19:41.000That's a question about American spending.
00:19:42.000Generally speaking, it is not about this specific spending priority.
00:19:47.000I just think it's a non sequitur in many cases.
00:19:49.000The question is whether it is in the interest of the United States to again fund Ukraine to the defeat of Russia.
00:19:54.000And the answer is, truthfully speaking, this is one of the greatest American military investments of all time.
00:19:59.000You have degraded the Russian military by a factor of one half at the cost of less than $100 billion.
00:20:04.000It's a pretty big win, especially when you look at the wars that are going to be prevented in the future because you have basically made it impossible for the Russians to get predatory anywhere else in the world because their military has been degraded so much by this particular war.
00:20:17.000Now again, The big problem is our politicians have no capacity to explain any of this.
00:20:21.000They're not honest with the American people.
00:20:23.000And so instead what you get is the light versus darkness, dark side of the force versus the Jedi kind of description of this conflict.
00:20:33.000And that's a problem because it actually doesn't teach Americans or tell Americans or explain to Americans that foreign policy is a place filled with lots of complexity, lots of nuance and lots of darkness.
00:20:42.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:20:43.000First, it is very important for you to have life insurance.
00:20:48.000Well, one of the worst things that can happen is not just you die, but you have nothing in the bank to give to them and you have no life insurance to help cover them because your funeral is expensive and then so is the rest of their life.
00:20:57.000So you should actually have life insurance.
00:21:05.000Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as you age, now would be the time to buy.
00:21:08.000PolicyGenius gives you a smarter way to find and buy the right coverage for you and your family.
00:21:12.000PolicyGenius was built to modernize the life insurance industry.
00:21:15.000Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and find your lowest price.
00:21:19.000With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $17 per month for $500,000 in coverage.
00:21:24.000PolicyGenius has licensed agents who can help you find options that offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid those unnecessary medical exams.
00:21:30.000Those agents are not incentivized to recommend one insurer over another, so you can trust their guidance.
00:22:36.000Head on over to BlackRifleCoffee.com, use promo code SHAPIRO, get 10% off coffee, coffee gear, apparel, or when you sign up for a new coffee club subscription.
00:22:43.000That's BlackRifleCoffee.com with promo code SHAPIRO for 10% off Black Rifle Coffee, supporting veterans and America's coffee.
00:22:50.000That's BlackRifleCoffee.com, use promo code SHAPIRO, get 10% off today.
00:22:55.000So, for example, Nancy Pelosi yesterday, Zelensky was preparing to come to Washington, D.C., and the outgoing Speaker of the House, she says that Zelensky is a total and complete hero.
00:23:05.000To have a complete, total hero in the Congress of the United States, fighting for democracy, leading people who are fighting for democracy, would bring honor to the Congress of the United States.
00:23:22.000And then Pelosi, of course, did what she always does, and she tried to liken January 6th to what's happening in Ukraine.
00:23:27.000This is just a bad habit for Democrats.
00:23:29.000Pretending that a couple hundred rioters breaking into a building and quickly being ousted is the same thing as a country nearly being stamped out by another country is pretty ridiculous on its face.
00:23:41.000Again, I will say this about Zelensky.
00:23:42.000Zelensky acted heroically in staying in Kiev.
00:24:49.000I mean, that is not remotely the number one priority for most Republicans or most Americans.
00:24:53.000I mean, by polling data, that's just not true.
00:24:55.000I think it's a major foreign policy priority.
00:24:57.000Is it the main priority of the United States to fund Ukraine?
00:25:01.000No, I mean, these mass overstatements, all they do is drive opposition because, again, they're not true.
00:25:06.000It's not true that this is the vast priority of the United States.
00:25:08.000Kevin McCarthy, presumably at some point, the Republicans in the House will make him the Speaker.
00:25:13.000He was actually more accurate about this.
00:25:14.000He was on the floor with Laura Ingraham last night.
00:25:15.000He said, listen, we should be signing checks to Ukraine, but there needs to be oversight and we need to make sure we know what we're doing with the money.
00:25:20.000This seems like a perfectly reasonable response from Kevin McCarthy.
00:25:24.000Germany's already reneged on its own military expenditures, and we're spending 62% of all the costs in Ukraine, but it's supposed to be the big threat to Europe.
00:25:36.000Why are the American people on the hook for this, to the tune of 85 billion more, it looks like?
00:26:04.000They don't think that America's interests are entirely convergent with Ukraine's interests in terms of the end goal.
00:26:09.000So when you hear politicians say, well, we're willing to fight this thing, we're just going to keep it going ad infinitum, the American people are not with that.
00:26:14.000The American people They want to see Russia chastened.
00:26:35.000An equal percentage of Americans say that Russia, 26%, Ukraine, 26%, has the advantage in the current conflict.
00:26:41.000Plurality, 46%, believes neither country has the advantage.
00:26:44.000Solid majorities of Americans continue to support supplying Ukraine with arms, that's 65%, and economic aid, 66%, accepting Ukrainian refugees, 73%, and sanctioning Russia, 75%.
00:26:55.000Only 40% of Americans, however, believe that the United States should maintain its current level of support for Ukraine indefinitely.
00:27:02.000Now, the rest of the public splits in two different ways, right?
00:27:05.0003 in 10 say the United States should intervene militarily to tip the advantage to Ukraine, which of course is silly.
00:27:10.000We're not going to put troops on the ground, nor should we, and end the war as soon as possible, or that the United States should gradually withdraw support for Ukraine at 29%, which means that Again, the American public is pretty split on this.
00:27:21.000They're pretty ambivalent about the spending.
00:27:24.000They don't know what a solution looks like because Joe Biden has not talked about a solution.
00:27:27.000I quoted a Washington Post piece, maybe a month ago, talking about how the Biden administration said, this is not going to end with Russia leaving Ukraine.
00:27:33.000We don't know what it is going to look like, the end solution.
00:28:07.000So again, Americans are pretty split on this issue.
00:28:10.000This notion that it's like a wild right-wing conspiracy to say that we should get to a solution here, that America's interest is in coming to an end point because we've already achieved our interests.
00:28:20.000That is not a wild right-wing position.
00:28:25.000And if you look at the US policy on Ukraine, Russia, and poll statistics on what Americans believe, A majority of Republicans believe in increasing economic and diplomatic sanctions on Russia, sending additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government, providing economic assistance to Ukraine, accepting refugees.
00:28:44.000Only 26% of Republicans believe that the U.S.
00:28:47.000should send troops to the Ukrainian government, but that's accompanied by about 34% of Democrats, right?
00:28:53.000Only one third of Democrats believe in that.
00:28:54.000So Americans are actually Fairly in agreement on all of this.
00:29:01.000The only area in which they are in significant disagreement is when it comes to maintaining the current level of support for Ukraine indefinitely, or whether we should intervene militarily to end the war in favor of Ukraine as quickly as possible.
00:29:12.000Mainly, Republicans think we should gradually withdraw U.S.
00:29:15.000support for Ukraine, and Democrats, by plurality, or by majority, believe that we should maintain the current level of support for Ukraine indefinitely.
00:29:23.000That number is going to shrink over time.
00:29:25.000Again, fewer Americans say the United States should support Ukraine as long as it takes.
00:29:31.000Right now, about 61% of Democrats think that the U.S.
00:29:35.000should support Ukraine as long as it takes, which again, means open-ended spending, which Democrats will not support the minute a Republican takes office, as we all know.
00:29:42.000But only 48% of Americans overall actually agree with that position.
00:29:46.000If you look at independence, independents are split 46-46 on whether the U.S.
00:29:50.000should gradually reduce its aid, They take the position the United States should urge Ukraine to settle for peace as soon as possible, so the costs aren't so great for American households, even if that means Ukraine will lose some territory.
00:30:01.000So the notion that there's sort of like an overwhelming majority for endless aid is not true.
00:30:05.000The American people are beginning to settle on the notion that there has to be some sort of end point which of course is perfectly correct.
00:30:20.000What I blame is the President of the United States for not making clear what exactly America's policies are or doing the things that are necessary to come to a conclusion point here.
00:30:28.000Now what's weird about this is that The Democratic Party and Joe Biden in particular, the president, they're taking a very split rhetorical view of the situation.
00:30:38.000On the one hand, they're saying they want to be careful.
00:30:39.000On the other hand, they're being completely not careful.
00:30:41.000So for example, John Kirby, who's national security spokesperson, he says, we're going to be very careful what we talk about with Vladimir Zelensky.
00:31:07.000And obviously, because he has to get back into country, we're going to be careful in terms of what we talk about.
00:31:15.000Okay, but it's not just they're careful in what they talk about with regard to him coming in, him coming out.
00:31:19.000They say they're gonna be careful as far as what they talk about in terms of weaponry.
00:31:21.000And there's some pretty significant disagreements between the Biden administration and between Ukraine.
00:31:26.000Ukraine would love for them to, they'd love to have Patriot missiles capable of striking into Russian territory, for example.
00:31:32.000Their case is you have to hit the Russians where they live in order so that they stop sending people over the border.
00:31:36.000And the United States is saying, we don't want you to escalate by attacking across the border.
00:31:40.000But the Biden administration is not making that very clear.
00:31:42.000Okay, so finally, Zelensky arrives at the White House yesterday.
00:31:45.000A lot of people aren't making a big deal out of the fact that Zelensky wore essentially his military suit, which is his green sweatshirt and his military pants.
00:31:54.000I mean, it looks like he's wearing fatigues almost.
00:31:56.000Getting out of the car here, here's what it looks like.
00:32:13.000I think the bigger problem is that we have a senile daughter as the president of the United States.
00:32:16.000I care very much less what people wear to greet that, that senile daughter.
00:32:21.000When I hear people from there like, they're not showing proper respect to Joe Biden.
00:32:24.000It's like, guys, pretty sure that the level of respect that Joe Biden is, number one, due, and number two, that we have granted him on the right, are not particularly high.
00:32:34.000Second of all, obviously, this is a photo op.
00:32:37.000If you are doing a photo op near Vladimir Zelensky, leaving your military invaded country for the first time since the beginning of the war, And you're still dressed in sort of your military gear.
00:33:49.000We are discussing sanctions and legal pressure on the terrorists in Russia.
00:33:56.000Russia needs to be held accountable for everything it does against us, against our people, against Europe and the whole free world.
00:34:06.000And it is very important that we have the peace formula and for that we offer very specific steps what America can do to help us to implement them.
00:34:18.000We propose global formula for peace summit.
00:34:25.000So what exactly is that global formula for peace summit?
00:34:29.000And then Joe Biden himself spoke and he just spoke in constantly high praise for Zelensky.
00:34:34.000Now again, Zelensky's war leadership in Ukraine has been incredibly impressive.
00:34:39.000I mean, just on a pure leadership level, him staying in Kiev, him refusing to leave the country, his global appeals, all this has been very, very effective.
00:34:48.000Pretending it's not been effective would be very silly.
00:34:51.000The question is, what is the strategic aim of the President of the United States here?
00:34:55.000If, in fact, he wants to get to some sort of negotiated solution with Putin.
00:35:00.000Now, you don't know what's happening behind closed doors, obviously.
00:35:03.000On the one hand, I'm not going to blame Biden for talking up Zelensky at the same time that he's pushing on the other end for Putin to make some sort of negotiated move.
00:35:10.000The question is what the end of that's going to look like.
00:35:12.000Here was Biden praising Zelensky yesterday.
00:35:15.000We have a famous thing that occurs once a year.
00:35:18.000We pick the man of the year in Time magazine.
00:35:21.000You are the man of the year in the United States of America.
00:35:28.000He's the man of the year in the United States of America.
00:35:42.000Biden said the Ukraine's war is part of something bigger.
00:35:45.000Again, I don't like these sort of big sweeping terminology that Biden uses when he talks about this sort of stuff, mainly because it's wildly inconsistent, right?
00:35:52.000He'll talk about how we're standing up against autocracy on behalf of democracy.
00:35:55.000Well, I mean, we constantly make alliances with autocracies if it's in our national interest.
00:36:00.000What he should say is in the American people's national interest to back Russia, to back Ukraine against Russia in order to prevent the constant crossing of borders, the destabilization of the world, in order to degrade a military power that has been threatening to America's allies.
00:36:15.000And there are a lot of reasons to support Ukraine.
00:36:18.000Chief among those reasons is not the giant battle.
00:36:20.000This is all language that's been adopted from World War II, and it really is not completely applicable.
00:36:26.000Americans of every walk of life, Democrats and Republicans alike, had the resources to rebound in a resounding, united way to provide unequivocal and unbending support for Ukraine.
00:36:41.000Because we understand in our bones that Ukraine's fight is part of something much bigger.
00:36:49.000You know, he then went on to talk about how it was part of a bigger fight against autocracy.
00:36:53.000And there's a guy who literally handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban.
00:36:56.000So I don't buy a lot of this kind of broad spectrum language from the president of the United States.
00:37:14.000Meanwhile, John Kirby, again, the spokesperson for the National Security Wing of the presidency, he says, we're not going to force a conversation on Zelensky.
00:37:40.000And of what happens to Crimea and, you know, territory that Putin has had since 2014?
00:37:46.000I absolutely think that diplomacy will be part and parcel of what's discussed today.
00:37:53.000This won't be about, however, forcing President Zelensky to negotiate or describing or dictating to him what the terms of a negotiation might look like.
00:38:16.000Has the administration made that clear along any lines?
00:38:18.000And the truth is that on a practical level, there are disagreements between the Biden administration and Ukraine.
00:38:21.000I mean, all of this sort of pretend we stand shoulder by shoulder, everything you want, we'll give you is not true.
00:38:26.000As the Washington Post reports, in a tweet labeled My Christmas Wishlist posted earlier this month before this week's announcement of another $1.85 billion worth of U.S.
00:38:33.000security assistance, Zelensky adviser Mikhailo Podolyak's top five items included four the Biden administration has declined to offer or help provide, including advanced battle tanks and long-range missiles.
00:38:42.000The fifth, the Patriot air defense system, was included in the new aid package.
00:38:46.000defense officials said Ukraine already has enough tanks and that the U.S.
00:38:49.000M1 Abrams sought by Kiev are too difficult to maintain and complex to operate, meaning that we'd actually have to put soldiers on the ground in order to operate those things, which we're not willing to do.
00:38:56.000When asked at a joint news conference with Zelensky about the missiles, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike targets inside Russian territory, Biden actually warned such weaponry could shatter NATO unity in support of Ukraine.
00:39:05.000He said of the alliance, we're not looking to go to war with Russia, which of course is correct.
00:39:09.000A little bit more of that, a little bit more balance in terms of the rhetoric might be something nice here.
00:39:13.000Okay, so all of this led up to Zelensky actually speaking in front of a joint session of Congress last night.
00:39:24.000I mean, that's literally his job, is to go into the joint session of Congress to brag about his country's achievements and to get the picture of Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris holding up a Ukrainian flag, which is what he did.
00:39:34.000By the way, I'm aware of no other time in modern American history in which you have the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House holding up the flag of another country no matter what that country is.
00:39:45.000So it's pretty astonishing display on their behalf.
00:39:47.000One I don't think was actually entirely appropriate.
00:42:03.000But does Zelensky come away with what he wants?
00:42:06.000Well, he comes up with a political win for sure.
00:42:09.000Does it provide more cover for Joe Biden to give more aid?
00:42:12.000Sure, that was probably going to happen.
00:42:13.000Anyway, the question again is going to be what a solution looks like here.
00:42:17.000And I keep asking it over and over because the Biden administration has provided no guidance as to this.
00:42:21.000Not only have they provided no guidance, when you actually have in a PR Opportunity like this, where you have a foreign leader coming to the United States in the middle of a war that we are funding, meeting with the President of the United States, what you're showing is shoulder to shoulder.
00:42:36.000So, is it any surprise that Putin is now upping the ante?
00:42:39.000Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.