In this episode, I discuss the growing feud between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Walt Disney Corporation, and an interview with Matthew Tiermond, a journalist who has been covering the Putin ambitions, Poland s take, and Ukraine s take for quite some time. It s going to really give you an insight into the key decision points that are driving the conflict there now, and that may ultimately lead to a resolution. We all know that media tycoons love war. It juices ratings. It attracts advertising dollars. Just take a look at CNN s numbers before this war. CNN s ratings went from an average of 633,000 viewers in January to 1.75 million average viewers last week. That s a 178% increase. Most businesses would do almost anything for a jump like that. Though I have not been, I have seen what really gets wrapped in the flag at the end of the day. It's our bravest patriots, not the TV generals or pundits. My compassion for Ukraine won t force my hand to hurt my own people. I make no apology for loving my neighbors more than Russia s. I m more concerned with America s borders than Ukraine s. And while Russian oil is indeed stained with blood, so is Venezuela s. Hardworking Americans shouldn t have to pay higher gas prices to support Maduro or Khomeini over Putin, especially since Putin and his military are getting the money either way. and Joe Biden s plan to replace Russian oil with Venezuelan or Iranian oil is needlessly foolish and would make Americans poorer and less safe. I m concerned about the relationships with Venezuela and Iran, and I don t know what they would do with the money they could do with it. And while I know that they could be a good friend to me, but I would love to help Venezuela. . I ll tell you what I would like to do with Venezuela s oil and Venezuela s resources. I ll let you know what I think of the money Venezuela could do to help me get a better grip on the situation. - I ll talk about that And I ll give you my thoughts on what I d like to you know, and how they could help Venezuela do it - and I ll do it, too, I ll help you get a little bit better than that. -- and so much more -- I ll be back in the next episode of the latest episode of The Weekly Standard with my reaction to the brewing feud between the two.
00:00:03.000Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.000He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:00:16.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:00:20.000If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
00:00:54.000We have a jam-packed show for you this week.
00:00:56.000My reaction to the brewing feud between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Walt Disney Corporation.
00:01:03.000Also, I'm going to have an interview with Matthew Tiermond.
00:01:05.000He's a journalist who has been covering the Putin ambitions, Poland's take, Ukraine's take, America's for quite some time.
00:01:14.000It's going to really give you an insight into the key decision points that are driving the conflict there now and that may ultimately lead to a resolution.
00:01:23.000We all know that media tycoons love war.
00:03:36.000And while Russian oil is indeed stained with blood, so is Iran's, so is Venezuela's.
00:03:42.000Hard-working Americans shouldn't have to pay higher gas prices to support Maduro or Khomeini over Putin, especially since Putin and his military are going to get the money either way.
00:03:58.000She testified in the House Armed Services Committee this week that American energy payments to Venezuela would likely result in Venezuela buying arms from, you guessed it, Russia.
00:04:11.000Which Russian capabilities are you most concerned about?
00:04:14.000I'm concerned about the relationships that they have with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
00:04:21.000Capabilities would be the aircraft, the tanks, the air defense systems that they try to help Venezuela maintain in Venezuela that's close to our homeland.
00:04:32.000And so if Russia wanted to marshal all of their South American capabilities to do as much damage to the United States as they possibly could, what would they do?
00:04:41.000I think that they would provide parts to these capabilities that are in Venezuela.
00:04:47.000As we know, the deputy foreign minister probably about three or four weeks ago talked about not taking off the table about increasing infrastructure capacity within the region.
00:04:59.000Right now, the Biden administration is working to potentially purchase oil from Venezuela.
00:05:05.000If Venezuela saw a mass infusion of cash, what do you assess they would do with the money?
00:05:12.000I don't know what Venezuela would do with the money, but...
00:05:17.000If we're making policy choices that could move a lot of resources into Venezuela, if your biggest worry about Venezuela is Russian military cooperation, isn't it possible that if Venezuela all of a sudden ended up with a lot more cash, that they would use it to buy Russian military equipment?
00:05:48.000In the same hearing, Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia gave an ominous preview about how the circumstances in Russia could destabilize food supply and thus governments themselves.
00:06:02.000Twelve months from now, I think we're going to be talking about the issue of hunger and the disruption of democracies in the Western Hemisphere because of the lack of food supply.
00:06:14.000This is a direct result of Russia's incursion into the Ukraine.
00:06:18.000It is going to come from the loss of the ability to put fertilizer on a lot of crops around the world.
00:06:26.000My understanding is that Russians have now said they're going to withhold fertilizer from the rest of the world, including Countries like Brazil, who produce a tremendous amount of food supply.
00:06:36.000Russia and Ukraine are responsible for about 12% of the calorie supply inside the United States, is my understanding.
00:06:43.000If the Ukrainians are not able to plant their crops over the next couple of months, and it certainly does not look like they will be able to, there's going to be a tremendous disruption in the food supply.
00:06:51.000And if the fertilizer is not able to come out of the Black Sea region, and it does not look like it's going to be able to, there's going to be a significant reduction in The global food supply.
00:07:03.000Russia is a revisionist power run by a gangster government which steals from its own people, rapes the environment, and deposits its ill-gotten gains through its oligarchs in Swiss bank accounts and mansions in the Hamptons.
00:07:17.000Russia wants to redraw the map of Europe.
00:07:20.000In these and other dastardly endeavors, it's not alone.
00:07:22.000There are many other gangster governments throughout the world, and many sit atop natural resources we require.
00:07:30.000There are few good guys in Eastern Europe.
00:07:33.000Ukraine is the third most corrupt country in the world, the most corrupt country in Europe.
00:07:38.000Everyone is working for an angle, and none of them are thinking of America first, nor apparently are our own policy leaders.
00:07:47.000Driving Asia's largest energy producer into the arms of Asia's largest energy consumer would create a Russia-China alliance that would endanger Americans far more than Russia's brutal belligerence.
00:08:00.000And Ukraine, we already see more and more that Russia and China are working together to our peril.
00:08:06.000And China is our pacing challenge, not Russia.
00:08:09.000I agree with Director Burns of CIA. We should not have had NATO expansion up to Russia's borders.
00:08:17.000It isn't America first to make promises to foreigners we can't and won't really defend.
00:08:23.000It either creates this weird security welfare state and lures the well-meaning into a false sense of comfort.
00:08:31.000You see, banning Russian energy imports asks poor and middle-class Americans to shoulder the burdens of Washington's policy blunders.
00:08:50.000And these sanctions likely increase the possibility of nuclear war.
00:08:55.000My neighbors will go fight that war just as they would fight any war, just as they always have, and just as they always will.
00:09:04.000But far better solutions are available.
00:09:06.000We can hunt down the assets of Putin and his oligarch cronies, wherever they may be, and sell those assets off and hold the funds in abeyance until such a point as the Russian people actually force their government to behave.
00:09:20.000We can disrupt Russian espionage in the West with the latest technology, tools which the Russians and Chinese are deploying against us to hurt Americans.
00:09:31.000It amazes me that we are more interested in kicking Russia out of Ukraine than, say, our own neighborhood, South America, the Caribbean, where their influence continues to grow and where their actions are malign.
00:09:45.000We can increase American investment in the rare earths that are designed to build the future and ensure that we have the battery capability to not necessarily need so much Russian oil long-term, but we can make the decisions now to enhance those investments.
00:10:01.000Sadly, sanctions, the strategy we're using, they rarely play out as their architects' hope.
00:10:07.000They mostly enrich the elites in bad countries and harm the vulnerable.
00:10:11.000I haven't seen Maduro losing any weight over the sanctions in Venezuela, and if sanctions worked as intended, Cuba would be a Caribbean Garden of Eden.
00:11:26.000Well, you know, I think that both sides can agree without dispute that Russia invaded Ukraine.
00:11:32.000I hope that that's at least, you know, a single point of fact that all can agree on.
00:11:36.000All the reasonings behind that, obviously, there's a lot more that's disputed and a lot of politics that finds its way into this conversation.
00:11:47.000They'd already controlled two breakaway regions in the east and Crimea, which was isolated.
00:11:53.000And I believe that's the main motive that Putin made this invasion, especially at this moment, with Western weakness and fecklessness, both out of the EU, the US and DC, obviously, and NATO, because he needs a Crimean land bridge.
00:12:08.000Right now, the destabilization that has occurred post that invasion is he's gone deeper into the country beyond those regions, and he's surrounding cities, blockading them.
00:12:18.000And he's trying to do this to get Pawn concession pieces that he can trade later to secure the territorial gains that are firmly his, and the realpolitik is, they are firmly his.
00:12:31.000There's a good chunk of Ukraine that no matter how this outcome, how this plays out, will be Russian territory, even if Putin gets a bullet to the back of the head in coming weeks for whatever reason.
00:12:41.000There are regions that will be gone from Ukraine and part of Russia.
00:12:45.000So already the Eurasian geopolitical chessboard has changed incontrovertibly.
00:12:51.000Do you think they get that in Brussels?
00:12:53.000Do you think there's an appreciation that for this war to end, there is going to be a redrawing in the map of Europe?
00:13:00.000Or is there an impression that Putin can be put back in his original box?
00:13:05.000I think they do get that because, for all intents and purposes, for the last eight years since 2014, when Putin took these breakaway republics and Donbass and Luhansk, And Crimea.
00:13:16.000There's limited will or fight to re-litigate that.
00:13:20.000There was a referendum held in Crimea after Ukrainians were pushed out and the Russian side won an overwhelming mandate because there were no Ukrainians to vote against it.
00:13:30.000Many of them went to Mariupol, a city between Russia and Crimea that is now under siege because that's an important part of the chessboard for him to connect all of these taken regions.
00:13:40.000But the Luhansk and Donbass, a huge city, Donetsk, They've controlled that with little green men, his mercenaries, his supplied fighting force on the ground there for eight years.
00:13:49.000There haven't been many Ukrainians there.
00:13:51.000There was already a Ukrainian refugee crisis in 14 and 15, where 2 million Ukrainians went to Poland, another million or so scattered to other parts of central Europe.
00:14:00.000Obviously, the current refugee crisis dwarfs that.
00:14:04.000You know, estimates are that's about 4 million, and probably if this persists, there'll be another 4 million.
00:14:09.000And that's the largest migration of people out of one region in Europe into others, especially Poland, but it will have impact across the European Union and the entire continent based on the scale of it.
00:14:20.000And how are leaders in Warsaw thinking about this refugee crisis?
00:14:24.000Well, the first part of the puzzle for them is to manage the people coming across.
00:14:41.000If you look back just a few years to the migrant crisis, economic migrants from the Third World, North Africa, the Middle East, Syria, and a dozen Third World countries that were Fleeing into Europe across the Mediterranean via a destabilized Libya, going to Italy, going to Hungary and trying to get to Germany and France.
00:15:17.000To give you an example, in Warsaw, all these eastern Ukrainians that I was Talking about that, we're pushed out of Donbass in the East.
00:15:23.000They all went to Poland, big cities, became Uber drivers, worked in restaurants.
00:15:27.000And for instance, an Uber, you'd be able to get an Uber driven by Ukrainian for next to nothing.
00:15:32.000Supply went up and price went way down.
00:15:35.000And when I got to Warsaw a couple of weeks ago, you couldn't find a Ukrainian Uber driver.
00:15:39.000And an Uber, instead of taking less than a minute, took 10 to 15 minutes and cost three times the price because the Ukrainians were Who came to Poland five, seven years ago, all went back to Ukraine to defend their homeland, which is kind of interesting.
00:15:52.000So it's women and children coming through.
00:15:54.000A lot of men escort them to the border, and then they go back to the cities and to the regions where there's fighting, and they join the fight.
00:16:04.000Some say we're headed for a six- to eight-month insurgency here after these cities are leveled.
00:16:11.000You think that there could be a resolution quicker?
00:16:14.000Yeah, I think it's going to be quicker.
00:16:15.000I don't think Putin's military is up to this.
00:16:17.000They expected to roll over these cities.
00:16:19.000In two or three days, take the regions they wanted with ease, surround Kiev to put pressure on the political class, possibly kill a few leading politicians, and then have all of the upper hand in negotiating their withdrawal.
00:16:38.000I mean, this is, I don't know, for the viewers who've seen Chernobyl, this is the kind of military advice he was getting in a communist system.
00:16:45.000You just tell the autocrat what he wants to hear, otherwise you're going to the gulag.
00:16:48.000Before, now many will go to the gulag for the failure of this operation.
00:16:52.000He's going to see further destabilization.
00:16:54.000When you're recruiting Syrians and Central African Republic citizens to come and fight for you, you're not winning.
00:17:02.000And so he does not have much wherewithal to continue this for that much longer.
00:17:06.000If you see right now, there are two aggressive moves he's going to make.
00:17:09.000There's one he made about two, three days ago when he started Coming from Belarus in the north with his vassal state, Lukashenko, the head of Belarus, he sent troops in and they went after a small city called Lutsk, which is very close to the NATO and Poland peripheral border.
00:17:24.000That is an act of aggression of symbolism, of saying we're getting close to your border.
00:17:28.000But the two big moves he has to make now, one is he's now bringing his navy into play to shell Odessa, which is The third largest city after Kharkiv, Kiev, Kharkiv, and Odessa.
00:17:39.000And in Odessa, it's a very Ukrainian city.
00:17:43.000He won't get it, but it is strategically important because it's right next to Moldova, which would be his hope for a revanchist next move.
00:17:50.000I don't think he'll be able to make that move.
00:17:52.000Originally, I think he thought he could and get up against the Romanian NATO peripheral border, which is a much weaker one than the Polish one, given that the amount of military spend Poland has has put into upgrading their defense and offensive systems last ten years.
00:18:05.000By that theory, then, Odessa becomes the key city to deprive Putin of a Black Sea strategy.
00:18:13.000Because if you look at how he wants to connect these areas of eastern Ukraine that he's recognized as independent republics to Crimea and then down toward Moldova, it would seem that the Odessa front is one of the most critical in the next, you know, 72 hours.
00:18:29.000Yeah, no, it's important if he can get it, it strengthens his position.
00:18:45.000It's halfway between the entry point to the Crimean Peninsula and where the Russian border starts on the Don River, Rostov-on-Don being the city.
00:18:53.000And a lot of the Ukrainian Crimeans fled there when he took over Crimea itself.
00:19:03.000And I think because of the desperation of his weakened military state, at this point, he is going to need to go full Grozny.
00:19:11.000Grozny was the capital of Chechnya that he absolutely leveled 10, 12 years ago when Chechnya was threatening to assert its independence and become a breakaway state within Russia.
00:19:22.000And he violently quelled that, killed tens of thousands.
00:19:28.000He's got his puppet installed there and he uses Chechen mercenaries even in Ukraine.
00:19:33.000They were some of the more savage fighters that he was using to go after the politicians in Kiev.
00:19:38.000The Ukrainian government smoked them, which was kind of interesting to see how quick that happened.
00:19:42.000But Mariupol, he's going to shell it like Grozny is my guess, because this is his whole reason for doing this right now is to create this Crimean land bridge.
00:19:50.000Crimea is a peninsula, but it might as well be an island.
00:19:53.000And he's had to feed it and supply it for eight years by waterway.
00:20:19.000It is why he did this whole exercise and this is why this moment was now the weak West.
00:20:25.000And he went shock and awe, trying to get to Kiev, trying to take over as much of the country as he could to negotiate that firm settlement that he'd maintain, this Crimean land bridge.
00:20:34.000So it's going to get ugly in Maripole.
00:20:35.000Today, they're the first corridor, humanitarian corridor, where they let 20,000 people out.
00:20:42.000We don't know how many people are there, but you've got to figure it's 300,000, 400,000 still.
00:20:46.000So what are the contours of the deal then that you think would bring this to an end?
00:20:51.000A referendum in Donbass, so the two breakaway republics, Donbass and Luhans, which have no Ukrainians, it's all Russian, so much like Crimea, he'd win that referendum for full ascension into the Russian state.
00:21:03.000The Crimean land bridge, and we'll see what the will of the world is depending on how violent he has to get in destroying the city to take over this territory.
00:21:13.000But that is the number one most imperative for him.
00:21:15.000And then He will also want some guarantee of no NATO ascension for Ukraine, which is a far cry from where it was 20 years ago.
00:21:22.00020 years ago, he was saying if Ukraine wants to join NATO, that's going to be a decision for Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and all those powers that be.
00:21:30.000It doesn't have anything to do with me.
00:21:32.000In 2004, with the start of the color revolutions, that changed.
00:21:35.000And he cannot have Ukraine ascend to the EU. Not that I think that is a realistic Well, we heard that from no less than Zelensky.
00:21:50.000Quite recently, Zelensky came out and said, look, it is not as if we are, you know, in a position to be accepted into NATO right now.
00:21:57.000And we already have seen Germany and the Netherlands object to any EU membership.
00:22:02.000And so I guess the question would be, what is Ukraine giving up other than the obvious territory that you just described?
00:22:08.000But what do they give up geopolitically In a deal like that?
00:22:12.000Well, they certainly, you know, we've already been, and there is a fair argument that the right makes, that we were moving into what Putin declared was his near abroad, and he drew his lines in the sand, and unlike Obama, he stood by them.
00:22:26.000Our movement with NATO. Kamala Harris at the Munich...
00:22:29.000Wait a second, wait a second, Matthew.
00:22:30.000Does that mean that NATO expansion in the Baltics was a bad idea?
00:22:35.000No, I think that they were much more well equipped to join NATO because of their governments, because of their commitments to collective defense.
00:22:44.000Estonia was paying the 2% back when there was only the UK, the US, Poland, Greece and Estonia.
00:22:52.000Now Lithuania and Latvia have been paying into the collective defense.
00:22:55.000They are more into the Scandinavian sphere.
00:22:59.000Ukraine is the ultimate buffer because geography is destiny.
00:23:32.000There'll be no planting of grain this season.
00:23:35.000That's going to throw the regional economics and global food supply into disarray.
00:23:40.000Ukraine is going to be a much weaker state.
00:23:42.000The governance is still very, let's say, early stage democracy.
00:23:48.000The legislature is much more democratically elected, but a lot of the attacks On Zelensky and the people around Zelensky are accurate.
00:23:55.000Ukraine, the governance structure was so corrupt.
00:23:58.000There's a reason why it was ground zero for Hunter Biden's activity, which Schweitzer and I did a lot of work on, and many other globalist left-wing elite laundering money through Ukraine.
00:24:07.000And the ability for that to continue to occur in the weakened post-Ukrainian state is probably going to be a lot less so, which, you know, maybe that's a good thing.
00:24:17.000How these deals come together will obviously be a feature of what happens over the next several days on the ground.
00:24:24.000One of the big, I think, moments of buffoonery for the Biden administration involved Poland and these MiGs.
00:24:30.000From my standpoint, there would have been a willing receiver of those MiGs in Ukraine.
00:24:35.000There would have been a willing provider in Poland.
00:24:38.000But when Jake Sullivan went on the Sunday shows and ran his mouth about it, when we got our, in the South, we'd say we got Our ass up over our elbows a little bit.
00:24:50.000What would be the perspective on how all this played out in Warsaw, do you think?
00:24:55.000Well, their asses are certainly chapped.
00:24:59.000There was a lot of miscommunication, and I personally think that these levels of miscommunication are a feature, not a bug.
00:25:07.000These are supposedly the greatest geopolitical strategists we have, who have advanced fellowships from Johns Hopkins and SAIS and the Atlantic Council.
00:25:15.000So they know that these levels of communication, if you do not hold your word, if you miscommunicate, misdirect, it creates ripple effects that are very adverse.
00:25:25.000I think that they were happy to weaken Poland, much like they would be Hungary if Hungary was in a similar position, because just frankly, they don't like this government.
00:25:34.000So if it was a Donald Tusk-led government, the former head of state who was the head of the European Union as well after he was turfed out of Polish politics, then they would have been probably a lot more pliant working hand in hand, hand in glove, and would have gone through and followed through with their word.
00:26:06.000It was just that so much discussion about it publicly created risks that Poland wasn't willing to shoulder in terms of potential retaliation.
00:26:16.000And, you know, I can understand the frustration.
00:26:18.000Poland was not going to be the direct giver for the simple reason that being on the NATO peripheral border and within cannon fire of Russian forces in Ukraine, they did not want to be the sort of escalating tipping point.
00:26:31.000And the US doing it has a lot more optical commitment.
00:26:38.000I think it was escalatory, but it would have been a lot safer a move where Putin would have had to think about what his next move was versus just making Poland the target of his next sort of breach of state.
00:28:01.000I mean, Trump, as you know, we widely saw and I've been hearing the story for a while, is he said, you know, you invade Ukraine on my watch and, you know, Moscow is not going to be around for much longer.
00:28:09.000And as he said, even if it was five percent, 10 percent taken seriously, that, as you call strategic ambiguity, was enough.
00:28:16.000You know, Teddy Roosevelt, speak softly and carry a big stick.
00:28:19.000Well, Trump speak loudly and he might have a really big stick.
00:29:01.000Look forward to your continued updates.
00:29:06.000For quite some time in the state of Florida, if the Walt Disney Corporation opposed a piece of legislation in the state capitol, it was deemed to have a fatal rodent problem and it was unlikely to become law.
00:29:19.000Disney had enormous power in Florida legislative politics, in part because they employed an army of lobbyists to dole out millions of dollars in political donations.
00:29:29.000I'm talking about millions of dollars.
00:29:32.000And in exchange, they expected favorable treatment from lawmakers, maybe a little more than their fair share.
00:29:39.000The lobbyists were there to enforce the implicit deal.
00:29:42.000I mean, look at what Florida did to bend over backwards for Disney over the years.
00:29:46.000Florida created a state agency out of nothing, largely to subsidize Disney's vast marketing budget through an entity called Visit Florida.
00:30:54.000He should know that things don't usually work out for those who grovel at the feet of the Woketopians.
00:31:00.000But apparently, this Disney CEO is taking it personally that Florida passed legislation to keep schooling about schooling.
00:31:09.000They call it the don't say gay bill, but that's a misnomer.
00:31:13.000It's really just legislation that keeps instructors within the guardrails of academic instruction.
00:31:19.000At a time when Americans are falling behind the rest of the world in math and science, you'd think we'd want to focus more on those things.
00:31:26.000Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a supporter of this legislation.
00:31:29.000He replied to Disney with this statement.
00:31:32.000And when you have companies that have made a fortune off being family friendly and catering to families and young kids, they should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kids kindergarten classroom.
00:31:48.000They do not want their first graders to go and be told that they can choose an opposite gender.
00:31:54.000That is not appropriate for those kids.
00:31:56.000And so if you're family friendly, understand The parents who are actually raising families want to have their rights respected.
00:32:04.000And I also think that if you have companies like a Disney that are going to say and criticize parents' rights, they're going to criticize the fact that we don't want transgenderism in kindergarten and first grade classrooms.
00:32:17.000And so in Florida, our policy is going to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of world cooperation.
00:32:45.000Disney doesn't give a damn about human rights, so long as they can make a profit.
00:32:50.000This is the credit slide for the filming of their hit movie, Mulan.
00:32:54.000They literally thanked the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, as well as the Turpan Municipality Public Security Bureau.
00:33:03.000Xinjiang is where Uyghur Muslims are interned in concentration camps, beaten, tortured, forced into labor camps.
00:33:14.000Disney has no problem praising, thanking, and associating with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:33:20.000But their association with Florida leaders like Ron DeSantis who stand up for parents?
00:33:25.000Well, that is just a bridge too far for Disney.