The Anchormen Show Ep 63- The Sharp Report on The Warfront w： Pearson Sharp
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Summary
On this episode of the Anchor Podcast, Dan Ball sits down with journalist Pearson Sharp to discuss his recent trip to Russia. Pearson has been on the front lines of the conflict in Syria and Ukraine, and has a unique perspective on the people and culture there.
Transcript
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Now, it's time for the Anchorman Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball.
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I'm Matt Gaetz, host of The Matt Gaetz Show on One American News.
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And one of the things we love to do on this platform is highlight the exceptional journalism
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I spent most of my time in public life as a legislator, a lawmaker, so it's been great
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And one of the investigative reporters we have here at OAN who goes closest to the story,
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deepest into the fight, is my man, Pearson Sharp.
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You have had a trip to Russia that we are going to spend the bulk of this discussion
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on, the people, the culture, where the front lines are, what the sentiment is.
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But just to give a backdrop, you have a way about you where you go and do these types of
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Just maybe give the audience here a little refresher on some of the journalism you've done that's
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been on the ground in places of great conflict and consternation.
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Well, the biggest one outside of Russia would be, of course, Syria.
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And I went to Douma, which was a little suburb outside of Damascus.
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And that was right exactly when the chemical attacks had happened.
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And I got to go into this area that was cordoned off.
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No one else could go in except for the residents and stuff.
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So we were there before some international teams even got to go in.
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And we went down to these places that were making headlines everywhere for the wrong reasons.
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And the narrative at the time was, of course, that President Bashar al-Assad was gassing his
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He was killing his own civilians, killing his own citizens for his mustache-twirling, nefarious
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That kind of description of what's happening just doesn't make sense.
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Because when you have, and it's the same thing with Ukraine, but we'll get to that.
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When you have worldwide international attention on this area, you have international observers
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You have teams of Western media crews in the area.
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Do you think that would be the time that you as a leader would choose to gas your own
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Like right on the brink of having an international treaty where you can end the war and things
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are calming down and you're starting to get along with other Western leaders and President
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Trump is maybe opening a dialogue like, no, this, this is the time that I want to gas my
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And so you, you decide to go there and what's the evidence you're looking for to prove or
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Well, you go there to where they say that it happened and you just start asking questions.
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You talk to the people who were supposedly involved.
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You go to the place that it happened and you look for evidence of what they're saying happened.
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And that's just like a whole like throwback version of journalism.
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You're like Clark Kent and Lois Lane and Jimmy at the Daily Planet going to the story.
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And now journalism has been reduced to tweets and responses and mere commentary on the stories
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It's like the most basic thing you can do is to go there and ask questions.
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And people afterwards are always like, wow, I can't believe you went back there and you
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Well, and so that spirit of really, I think, proactive journalism is what you've displayed
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Start with how does this opportunity present itself where you get the opportunity to go
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But over the years of doing reporting over there or reporting about the Ukrainian conflict,
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And I think in March, one of them reached out to me and said that they were putting together
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a team of journalists, international journalists, to go over there and look at this area and
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See, like, to me, that sounds like hit up a few museums, maybe like a tea house.
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I wanted to go over and see what was actually happening, like, in these areas.
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So people had picked up that you were interested in this story, that you'd been following it.
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Who is helping to coordinate some of these interactions?
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So there was an international team, and there was a team that was working with some state agencies,
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You have to kind of get permission to go into some of these places.
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I mean, the American government knows when a foreign journalist who isn't a citizen of
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the country comes here for the purpose of reporting.
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But I never had any, like, forward-facing interactions with government officials.
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It was never like, you know, Ivanovsky of the state bureau.
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Which, by the way, is something I'm here to deeply criticize Russia over.
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Vladimir Putin, you should have allowed Pearson Sharp to interview you, and you are wrong for
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You're all cowards for not standing before Pearson's questions.
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What are some of the first scenes you're seeing, your first perspective on this place that the
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Western media has been telling you is crippled as a consequence of the war?
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Well, we land in Moscow, and I mean, right away, the picture is different from what we've been
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And I saw this subsequent times throughout my entire trip.
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The idea is reinforced that the sanctions and the impact that they're supposedly having is
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Life over there seems almost idyllic until you get to right where the actual war zone is
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But, you know, the average Russian day, Dmitry Dmitryov over there is having a pretty good
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One of my last days there, I just took a walk through Moscow, and I went through some of
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the bigger areas, some of the smaller areas, just try to get a cross section of it.
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And it was remarkable how normal everything was.
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This was like a Monday night, I think, and people were out living it up.
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I mean, it was the most normal scene you could picture.
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Safe, clean, people were happy, having a good time.
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As you're watching that, does it feel like the war sits over the culture in any way?
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No, you don't get a sense that there's anything like a war happening.
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No, and when you ask them about, you know, how they feel about it, you know, they're
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They, you know, they don't want to be fighting like anybody would, but the sanctions haven't
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So there's a theory I've seen posited that the sanctions regime actually was a form of
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They had these oligarchs that were spilling money all over the world.
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And when their yachts and townhouses and mansions were seized or under threat of seizure, they
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took the cash that they had and they brought it back to Russia and started developing vertical
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They started making investments in Russian factories and manufacturers.
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And so I'm sitting there thinking, did the sanctions against Russia have like a similar
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Like Trump's tariffs were about giving Americans and American businesses all the incentive in
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And for like a tax structure, not like a seizure structure.
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But by the way, what is seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs if not a tax?
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I guess it's like a war tax that we put on their elite.
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And I remember being in Congress and people bringing us into these strategy meetings and
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saying, so if we put these sanctions on and squeeze these oligarchs, if we fund domestic
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spending by reappropriating the assets of some Russians that had New York penthouses, then
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They've been poor and they'll put pressure on Putin.
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Instead, they brought their money back to Russia and they, from my perspective, are doing some
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That was one of the biggest things I noticed there is it seems like we shot ourselves in
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the foot because before where there would have been American cars, and you still see some
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American cars over there, but it's few and far between, all the cars you see are Chinese.
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These sanctions gave a big boost to the Chinese manufacturing industry because everything they're
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And I was just driving around thinking like, well, America, we lost Taiwan, but at least
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I mean, but it's like they could be driving American cars, but instead they're driving
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If they were the same, because I want to really get into the culture question because
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it's what a lot of the arguments you've been making since you've returned have come back
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But like if your average Russian family for the same price could have a comparable Chinese
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car or a comparable American car, what would they choose?
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I couldn't say it was certainty, but my feeling would be they'd choose American because they
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And like, were they listening to Chinese music?
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I mean, there's a lot of Russian music, but, well, I didn't check the tags, but you
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But like, for example, they used to have Uber over there and people would use Uber.
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Uber got pulled out of the country with all the sanctions and stuff.
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So we swapped one American company for a Russian company.
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And so instead of Starbucks, they now have Stars Coffee with the exact same logo.
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So I'm sure there's tons of examples like that, but that's not hurting them.
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That's helping them because they're becoming independent.
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He said that these sanctions have been the greatest gift to Russia that Trump could have
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given us or that Biden could have given us because now they're producing their own things.
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And I don't think Trump owns that because as you look at how Trump has tried to end this
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My sources tell me that a lot of this discussion in Alaska centered around what the world looks
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like if the United States and Russia are cooperating on things like energy, like the Arctic, like
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global shipping generally, you know, fighting radical Islamic extremism, which still exists
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in some places and has to be dealt with one way or another.
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And, you know, as you went to Russia, as you talked to the people there, would you sense
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Or if we lived in a new world order that was driven by patriots investing in their own
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country, economic nationalism, and then cooperation between Russia and the United States, could
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But you're asking if the Russians that I talked to would want to cooperate with the
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Well, because sometimes like in a war, like I would get it.
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I would get it if the answer was you guys have been giving a bunch of weapons to people that
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are shooting at us, but we're not really eager in that type of an economic cooperation.
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I expected that resistance, but it wasn't there.
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And I don't see any resentment when I was there towards us, which was-
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Are there areas of cooperation I haven't mentioned that you might have picked up on having been
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there that you think, hey, there is an alignment between Russia and the United States or Russian
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culture and American culture, faith, anything more-
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I think we have a lot more in common, especially conservatives in America with Russia, because they have-
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Right now, I think conservatism and traditional values are in a renaissance period in Russia,
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like a real resurgence towards going back to old-fashioned values, especially with regarding faith.
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And a lot of the Russians I talked to were extremely orthodox in their beliefs, very, very traditional,
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And when I talked to Alexander Dugan, he genuinely felt, like, from his core, that this was a battle
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between good and evil, that Russia was fighting for the side of Christ and for the side of Western
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Do they think about us as on the side of, like, good or Satan?
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They don't think about the United States as being part of Satan, but they think that we've been infected.
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You know, there are elements in our society and our culture, which that's hard to argue with
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when you look at what's happening in our country.
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But the cultural decay and, yeah, Satanism that we have here in America is hard to deny.
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So from that perspective, it's easy to see why they want to resist that.
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And they look at it as a civilizational battle.
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And that's one problem I'm having with my reporting is, coming back from there, you want to be
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And from what I've seen, it's very hard to find any of the cons.
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Cons as far as everybody portraying Russia to be negative or finding the downside to what
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they're doing or finding people who disagreed even with what they're doing.
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I mean, even for someone who was sympathetic to the argument that NATO was encircling, that,
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you know, Biden was kind of blowing through some of these buffers recklessly and without
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I look at the amount of death and I look at the amount of bloodshed and I look at Trump
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Why isn't Putin doing more to forge that peace?
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And by the way, I'm not saying Zelensky is a Boy Scout here.
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I think he's done plenty to sabotage and I think that there have been some consequences
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I wish Putin and Trump could have emerged out of Alaska and said, look, we're meeting again
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in six weeks and, you know, we believe that we will have a ceasefire and then to see bloodshed
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reduce instead, we've seen Putin increase the acuity of some of the attacks against Ukraine
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And I don't know why he doesn't see Trump's presidency as an opportunity to get past the
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Understand that Europe needs a security structure that includes Russia, obviously.
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And does it doesn't isolate a major power and energy provider.
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And that does what our foreign policy has traditionally done for the last half century.
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And that is not ensure a Russian Sino relationship that becomes far more difficult for the for the
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West to combat when making our argument for freedom and democracy.
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I think, and this is very complicated, I think that Putin and Trump came away with a deal
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I think they reached an agreement and I think they have an understanding.
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And I think right now what we're seeing is posturing.
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I think they're both playing a game because what Biden and the deep state and Obama and
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Victoria Nuland and all of them have done since 2014 and even before then is entangle the
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United States and Russia and Europe in this morass of a conflict that you can't just go
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Like when Lavrov, when Lavrov shows up wearing the USSR sweater, it's disrespectful to Trump.
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And that is not like we're not going to reassemble the USSR.
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That gets into a whole other issue, which I found very interesting.
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Um, I don't think he wants to reassemble the USSR.
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And he made a comment about, um, when you remember the past of your own country, it's
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not necessarily that you want to bring it back.
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It's just that you're recognizing that it happened.
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And sure, there must've been a statement that he's making wearing that to that event.
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But I was surprised when I was there about the almost nostalgia that a lot of Russians,
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especially younger Russians have towards the USSR.
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And I don't know if that's just rose colored glasses looking back at the past, but I think-
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Do you believe that, that energy can be channeled into the type of productive economic nationalism
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we've discussed without the, the, you know, border shattering interventionism?
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So what I think that is, is during the USSR, during Soviet period, Russia and the Russians
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Even if that thing was evil, a lot of times they felt like this is our country and this
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And a lot of the Russians I talked to, all of them felt completely betrayed by the West,
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And they felt like they got taken advantage of and abused and thrown to the gutter in so
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And their national identity was just shredded and people were just scrapping their country
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And so the view of the USSR today is kind of looking back to when they stood for something.
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And I think that's what they're calling back for.
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Not necessarily a Stalin-esque period of brutality, but that national identity.
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Because I, I see a lot of places reaching for that and I see the places that, that, that
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achieve it and get, I, I look to my friend in El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, you know, building
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on that nationalism was like central to their success and their security, uh, uh, wins.
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And I wonder if in Russia, they, they look at this war in Ukraine, with Ukraine as, you
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And I really don't know what that something else is.
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What the neocons would tell you is they're taking Moldova.
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Uh, did you get the sense that that's what the next thing is or what is it?
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Um, and I asked Dugan this and he said, there is absolutely no ambition to take any other
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part of Europe, but Ukraine is central to Russia's identity and they have to have that
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Look, when you say have that, are we talking Crimea and the Donbass or are you saying they
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need to be hoisting the Russian flag over Kyiv?
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And do you believe they will stop until they achieve that?
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He's made comments that they're going to take all of Ukraine.
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They're very close, but he doesn't speak for him.
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In his view, 100% Ukraine must be part of Russia.
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And he told me if that does not happen or if they're going to lose, they'll use nuclear
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I think Putin is a very shrewd strategist and I think he's biding his time and he has
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I think over the last few years from the provocations of the West.
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And I try and flip the script and you would probably get this, but I think a lot of people
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If Russia and Mexico and Central America created this anti-United States alliance, they were
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And then, in that alliance, Russia started putting a bunch of military operations right
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And they started carrying out military drills off San Diego's coast.
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I long have believed that we should have offered Russia NATO membership.
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Because really, if NATO was always just going to be about threat constructing Russia, then
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some war between NATO and Russia was always inevitable.
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Whereas if NATO was about a security structure for Europe that allowed peace to flourish, cooperation
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to occur when it was mutually agreed to, then NATO actually had a future possibly as an anti-Sino
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Wouldn't that be better as we look at questions on AI and technology and space to have like
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a full European security structure where we weren't bogged down in some land war in the
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But, you know, the motivation around nuclear weapons, I think, is something President Trump
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He talks about this a lot publicly about his apprehension to even use the word because it
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You know, what you just said is like definitely like the promo clip of the show, right?
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You saying that you went to Russia, you had this meeting, there's someone who is actively
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How do you think the populace in Russia would react to that?
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But the Russians that I talked to, like I said, view this as a do or die situation.
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Can't Ukraine be like, can't Ukraine be a country with a capital in Kiev that looks westward
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and people in Russia go about their lives and their nightclubs on Monday night just like
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They don't view Ukraine as being a country, as being a real country.
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Like a lot of the Russians that I've, well, actually every Russian that I talked to said
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I'm not entirely sure Moldova is a real country.
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I mean, that argument could be made, but no one's talking about that.
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But the domino theory is one the neocons present.
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But no one ever mentioned anything past Ukraine.
00:24:27.060
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Nobody was like, Ukraine and then the rest of it.
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And specifically when I asked Dugan about that, he's like, no, it begins and ends with Ukraine.
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And I think that was part of, it's a viewpoint of national security.
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Because they have been encroached upon so many times.
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And they view Ukraine at this point as kind of a cancer.
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And it's been left open to these anti-Russian leaders who are using it as an excuse to attack Russia.
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And I asked him, well, what if, what if you get a guarantee that there is a neutral leader in Kiev.
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And you can keep the eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
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Yeah, but what business do we have guaranteeing what kind of leader is going to be in Ukraine?
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Because if we leave any part of it left, it will come back and attack us.
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And I guess if that's Russia's perspective, it tells us a lot about where this fight is going.
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It's hard to say exactly because I couldn't see a map of where the front lines were in relation to us.
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You looked like you were with some dudes who were pretty close to it.
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Yeah, we were in some training grounds, some training camps, and our closest point, I think, was probably 10 to 15 kilometers from the front lines.
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But saying that, when we were in Donetsk, and this goes back to another point I wanted to make, you mentioned that Putin and Russia have been escalating the attacks recently.
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And I think that's part of the problem we have is that we get one side of the story over here.
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Because while I was in Donetsk, just a day before, a school had been attacked by a drone.
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These were middle school and I think high school children.
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But the atrocious part about that is if you fly a bomber over a city and you drop bombs on it, you can't guarantee where the bombs are going.
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But if you're flying a drone, you direct it where to go.
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You know exactly what you're hitting when you hit that target.
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So they targeted, the Ukrainians targeted a school.
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And do you think they did so for a military purpose?
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Were the military generals hiding in the school cafeteria?
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Oh, I mean, I didn't check under the desks, but the...
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But was that the allegation around those attacks?
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We don't get that story here in the West that Ukraine is attacking the civilian areas.
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I was there and I saw apartment buildings that were bombed by Ukraine.
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And I talked to people who had been bombed by the Ukrainians.
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So this was not something that you hear over here.
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The other thing was recently, it made the news that Russia flew some jets into, you know, NATO territory and didn't turn their transponders on.
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And why would they do that if they weren't provoking?
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The U.S., NATO flies planes into Russian airspace all the time.
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So it's like, you only get one side of the story.
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I'm not trying to be a Russian apologist, but these are facts you have to look at when you're trying to determine who's right and who's wrong.
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What do you think the status of free speech and journalism are in Russia?
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The last couple of days I was there, we went to this World Youth Festival,
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And I think there were 3,000 or 4,000 people there.
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And there were youths being from, I think, well, mostly college.
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I'd say mostly college-age people who were there, but from everywhere.
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It was a sort of an international cooperation kind of event.
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And I got a chance to talk to a lot of Russians who were there.
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And I asked them specifically how you feel about free speech in Russia and in journalism.
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And most of them, I'd say probably 75%, believed in free speech in Russia and thought that it was an open platform and that you could...
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I don't think we'd hit 75% in the United States.
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Well, it certainly helps when you constrain free speech and execute your political opponents.
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So, to that point, that's what the people there said.
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I had one guy who vehemently denied that there was free journalism in Russia, and he thought that it was absolutely being constrained.
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And I asked him on a whim where he gets his news if he thinks that Russian news is untrustworthy.
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The translator I had with me said that we consider him a liberal in Russia.
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So, apparently, there is the same distinction between liberals and conservatives.
00:30:35.660
He was there, and he was able to criticize Putin and the regime, as he called it, on air freely, without worry about being arrested.
00:30:43.200
Interestingly, I think that he was actually the person who then reported me to the authorities there at the festival for agitating people and causing problems and asking inappropriate questions at a youth festival.
00:30:57.780
You got reported at a youth festival for being an agitator?
00:31:01.520
And then I had police following me around, interrupting different interviews that I tried to do.
00:31:06.820
And the police were like, Look, we don't have a problem with you.
00:31:09.480
We think you're fine, but you keep getting reported.
00:31:12.180
So, the first time they came up and talked to me, and they had my picture.
00:31:17.960
And so, they stopped me and were like, Okay, yeah, you can't be doing this.
00:31:21.440
They had to get a translator to tell me what they were saying because they didn't speak English.
00:31:29.320
But they said, Look, you know, we appreciate what you're doing, but you can't do that here.
00:31:32.880
So, please just go off and do it somewhere else.
00:31:35.140
And so, I was talking with the girl, and she spoke English very well, and she was Russian.
00:31:39.460
So, I was like, Well, would you care to be interviewed?
00:31:41.680
So, we went someplace where no one else would see, like, the corner of this conference hall.
00:31:49.480
And so, I started interviewing her, and the police came over about five minutes later and was like,
00:31:55.120
You've been, you know, asking these questions about the war and Ukraine and everything else,
00:32:03.160
Well, but doesn't that, doesn't that create sort of an uncomfortable dynamic for a journalist?
00:32:08.360
You're a well-known American journalist, but if you were an upstart Russian journalist,
00:32:11.660
the police are saying your questions upset people.
00:32:14.020
That doesn't really sound like freedom of the press to me.
00:32:20.480
I'm pretty sure it was that one guy, and he was reporting me.
00:32:24.580
Well, he was one of the organizers of the event, it turns out.
00:32:32.460
You have mentioned on My Daily Show and a little bit here, this intersection of faith as a real building block for cultural cooperation.
00:32:51.280
What role does the church play in Russian life?
00:32:53.280
I would say it's central to Russian life, as far as what I saw.
00:32:58.700
Everyone that I talked to, I was very surprised by this.
00:33:01.300
Everyone from the people in the villages to especially the soldiers, which maybe is not that surprising, were very orthodox.
00:33:12.700
And that seems to be one of the core tenets of why they're involved in this conflict to begin with, is that they, like I said, they feel that this is part of their civilization, and they're defending their faith against Western decay.
00:33:28.920
Yeah, I mean, I've never really heard this described from the Russian standpoint as a holy war.
00:33:34.580
But you think that energy is somewhere down in there.
00:33:37.660
That seems to be one of the, at least one of the aspects of this war for them.
00:33:43.220
Because they believe their faith and Christianity is under assault from the West.
00:33:48.700
And I mean, you look at what's happening to Christians in America, you look at the media, you look at everything that we're putting out, it's very anti-Christian.
00:33:56.940
It just seems like killing people in eastern Ukraine is a weird way to work that out.
00:34:02.280
They feel like they're being forced to defend themselves.
00:34:07.220
And again, I'm not apologizing or justifying it.
00:34:13.260
I have to make that clear because, I mean, I sent you the article today.
00:34:18.340
Yes, well, that's what I want to talk about next.
00:34:22.540
You've had this access and exposure to life in Russia that's going to be really valuable to our viewers here on One American News.
00:34:29.680
And the Kiev Independent puts out a hit piece on you and says you have been used by Russia.
00:34:39.580
Well, that must have been how Vladimir Putin got a bunch of people in Wisconsin to vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
00:34:45.620
So what is it like to be used by the Russian government in this way?
00:34:55.960
If I'm going to be a pawn, I'd like to get paid for it.
00:34:57.880
But it's just, it's part of the war of propaganda.
00:35:05.000
But to be clear, we just have to do some threshold stuff.
00:35:10.160
Other than when you were at an event where the organizer moved you around a little bit, did you have any government officials tell you that you couldn't talk to someone, that you couldn't use some of the information that you got?
00:35:21.120
No, I never had anyone tell me anything that I could do or not do.
00:35:25.060
And when we went to these areas, it was free reign.
00:35:31.520
It wasn't like I had to go on a certain route and follow a prescribed, talk to anyone.
00:35:36.100
You were like locked in a room and given access to three people.
00:35:40.200
They said, ask them whatever you want, talk to whoever you want.
00:35:42.920
So with that as the baseline that you drove the reporting on this, what is your reaction to like the Kiev press saying that Russia has this grand strategy to ensorcel American journalists such as yourself?
00:36:00.040
It's very similar to what happened when I went to Syria because there's basically an identical phenomenon where the Western media just attacked me in droves for my reporting and said that, well, he's doing it because of this.
00:36:23.780
Just all these false accusations and just made up claims from people who were never there, who have no firsthand experience, who didn't talk to any of these people.
00:36:32.800
And I think that's part of the same effort to control the narrative.
00:36:39.960
We have this other, in the case of Syria, it was Bashar al-Assad who wouldn't cooperate with the West the way we wanted him to.
00:37:13.960
But anyway, you have these reporters, first in Syria and now here, who are just ready to jump on to anybody who contradicts their version of events, whether they have any firsthand knowledge of it or not.
00:37:25.720
I also found it interesting that people weren't all that interested in confronting the presentation of viewpoint that your journalism offered.
00:37:35.700
Instead, they just wanted to say that because you went, you had somehow been converted into an agent of the Russian government.
00:37:43.540
Maybe that's what you and Donald Trump have in common.
00:37:45.360
You've both now been falsely accused of being agents of the Russian government.
00:37:49.220
No, there was definitely a point where I got off the plane and I was whisked away to, you know, an FSB bureau room.
00:37:56.680
And after that, everything was all in alignment.
00:37:59.180
Do you think that there's going to be more of this?
00:38:02.520
Well, no, what I mean, more of the actual life in Russia, the cultural experiences there, the viewpoints on the war being accurately told in the West.
00:38:13.560
Or do you think that the ecosystem to really limit the exposure of that information is too strong?
00:38:22.740
I was there with at least 10 other journalists and we all saw the same things.
00:38:27.740
And from talking to them, I know they reported similar experiences to me.
00:38:37.060
This press tour, I think this was the 10th one they've done.
00:38:40.900
And I know they're going to do more of them in the future.
00:38:43.840
And other independent journalists are going to get out there and be able to share their stories.
00:38:48.260
President Trump, I think, has also opened the door for that because unlike Biden, he's not trying to continue the war.
00:38:57.260
And so he's not just dumping money into an endless war that we're going to be in forever.
00:39:01.440
So I think the mindset that people have about this war is changing and the people who are against it are allowed to have a platform.
00:39:18.300
Either Russia is going to march into Kiev and raise the Russian flag over Kiev, or there's going to be some sort of economic deal that ends the hostilities.
00:39:31.740
The latter is definitely Trump's preferred outcome and certainly Ukraine's preferred outcome.
00:39:38.980
Despite what Dugan said and what Putin has indicated in the past about needing to take all of Ukraine, I think it is going to be divided up.
00:39:48.720
I just I think that's the most realistic option.
00:39:52.040
I just have a real hard time picturing a scenario where Russia successfully takes all of Ukraine and is allowed to keep it by the West, like without being harassed.
00:40:06.320
I mean, these battle lines aren't really moving that much if you in the grand scheme of things, but they are moving and they're moving in Russia's favor.
00:40:17.040
Ukraine can't take back these territories and Russia won't give them back.
00:40:25.260
So I think that Putin and Trump are going to arrive at an agreement because, I mean, let's face it, they're the big boys in the room.
00:40:33.260
And I think that Ukraine will be divided and that will have to be the end of it, because I think Trump and America will stop funding the war.
00:40:46.980
Our viewers are really going to get something special when this sharp report comes out.
00:40:51.400
Is there a specific person, a specific interview that was your favorite, putting it together?
00:40:57.480
Well, Dugans was phenomenal just because he's, I agree or disagree with him.
00:41:12.600
But the most powerful interview for me was the old man that I spoke with in Gorlovka, who was living in that bombed out building.
00:41:22.160
And I think I mentioned to you before, the pain and the sorrow in his eyes when you talk to him was overpowering.
00:41:35.780
And his sincere desire for peace with America and hope that we could resolve this was very inspirational.
00:41:49.300
The most powerful moment would be two moments for me.
00:41:54.280
One was in the Alley of Angels, which was in Donetsk.
00:41:59.440
And it was a memorial for the children who were killed.
00:42:01.460
One of the areas that has had some of the most fighting.
00:42:09.600
But there was a bunch of flowers and toys that were laying at the foot of it.
00:42:15.660
And they gave us some carnations that we could lay down.
00:42:19.100
And that, as a father, that was very difficult for me to be there and to experience that.
00:42:28.800
And since then, I didn't know anything about the Alley of Angels before I went.
00:42:32.980
But since then, I've heard Ukrainian leaders have come out.
00:42:40.440
It was someone very high up who said that, one, it not only doesn't exist, it's a fake, it's a forgery.
00:42:48.240
But two, that when Ukraine retakes that area, they're going to demolish it, which is just appalling on so many levels.
00:42:58.300
And it brings to mind another point, which was there are several memorials for Ukraine in Russia.
00:43:07.800
In fact, there's one right outside of Red Square.
00:43:12.860
And I forget, but it was a memorial for one of the towns that was destroyed during the war.
00:43:21.900
And it's right there, right outside of Red Square.
00:43:29.400
And I think that shows a difference in a mindset between the Ukrainians and the Russians,
00:43:33.820
as I definitely see a lot more animosity from the pro-Ukraine side than from the Russian side.
00:43:38.580
And the last thing I wanted to say was the other really powerful moment was we went to a school in Gorlovka.
00:43:47.000
And they've had to cancel in-person classes because the schools keep getting bombed so much, which tells you a lot.
00:43:54.460
So a lot of the students are now learning remotely.
00:44:08.580
And one of them was a, I think it was a two-month-old baby.
00:44:24.700
We've heard no explanation as to why the schools would be of any value to hit.
00:44:30.560
Lindsey Graham has introduced legislation to deem Russia a state sponsor of terror.
00:44:37.000
Until they return the children that Lindsey Graham says were taken out of Ukraine.
00:44:43.560
Do you see any evidence that children were taken out of Ukraine?
00:44:50.640
It almost makes you wonder if the Ukrainians believe that.
00:44:54.520
Are they like literally killing children in Russia as some sort of weird retaliation?
00:45:00.320
And if so, it's like so deeply dehumanizing and wrong.
00:45:03.760
One of the issues that I had when I was over there is determining whose version of events is correct.
00:45:13.960
And one of the areas that was most difficult was in Mariupol.
00:45:20.800
There's a theater there that was famous in the early parts of the war because there were, it was kind of like an evacuation center.
00:45:29.580
And I think there were several thousand Ukrainians that were evacuated to this theater as like a safe place.
00:45:35.440
And on the outside of the theater, there was a giant sign that you could see from the air that said children.
00:45:44.780
So obviously this was not a target, a military target, you know, like a hospital.
00:45:55.360
And the accusation was that Russians dropped a bomb on it and blew it up.
00:45:59.480
And I don't know the numbers of the people that were killed, but it was significant.
00:46:04.300
And so that was one of the examples and still is that Ukraine and others use as a justification for, you know, Russia being this vile aggressor.
00:46:15.220
However, when I was there, I actually went to that theater.
00:46:19.120
And I talked to people who lived there and people who had seen it happen.
00:46:25.820
And I didn't talk to this person, but I was told about them that there was a survivor who was in there.
00:46:31.920
And I said, I use as an example, I said, you know, the West points to this theater as an example of Russia's aggression.
00:46:40.980
And one of the survivors said that on that day, they were ushered into that area by the Ukrainians, the military, who were also carrying in crates of explosives.
00:46:53.340
And that they filled the center of the theater with these explosives.
00:47:00.980
And then the Ukrainians blew up the theater with the people inside.
00:47:06.340
And I've been told that the investigators, a forensic analysis shows that the explosion was not from top down, but was from bottom up.
00:47:14.720
I can't prove that, but that's what I was told.
00:47:23.080
It reminds me of some of the questions we were asking about the Assad attacks in Syria.
00:47:29.960
Because there was some evidence we were seeing that some of that was not delivered through bombs, but may have been delivered with other delivery systems.
00:47:39.400
And that got us thinking, well, gosh, that makes us think it might not have been Assad.
00:47:48.040
But the point, you know, people kind of accept these stories without proof.
00:47:54.880
And it just, you build it into the history of your mind.
00:47:59.480
But when you stop and you think about it, I mean, who on the Russian side would drop a bomb on a building that said children?
00:48:09.400
I mean, you would genuinely have to be a homicidal maniac to do that kind of thing.
00:48:25.840
Man, if history finds out that that survivor was telling the truth when they were sharing that story in that community you visited, it will tell us so much about the lies of modern warfare.
00:48:37.200
When folks are done watching this incredible piece you're going to put together for the Sharpe Report, how are they going to feel differently about this conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
00:48:48.020
I genuinely hope that this information will help people realize this war is not necessary.
00:48:54.640
That was my biggest takeaway, is that we don't need to be fighting this war.
00:49:00.240
The senselessness of the lives that are lost and are being sacrificed on this, and especially of the children.
00:49:06.980
I just, I really hope that people will question what they've been told and stop just accepting what they see on social media at face value, because there's such an agenda to sell this war and to continue it.
00:49:27.320
You have to fight information with information, with bigger information.
00:49:30.500
And you have to, it's easier to lie to somebody than to convince someone that they've been lied to.
00:49:43.480
There has to be something that's shocking enough to break you out of that mindset.
00:49:47.960
And actually, there is a lady that I interviewed there.
00:49:53.440
And she, at the start of the war, she was Russian.
00:49:56.180
She was hardcore anti-Putin, and she wore a Ukrainian flag, and she went to Red Square, and she protested against Putin and against the regime and the killing of the Ukrainians.
00:50:09.180
And on a fluke, she happened to be attached to someone who was going down to the Donbass region, and she was going to be the translator for them.
00:50:17.820
And she went down there expecting to see confirmation of, you know, all these things.
00:50:25.900
And she told me that the moment that her whole script flipped, like everything turned upside down for her, was when she went to this village, and they went to talk to a resident there.
00:50:36.220
And he took them to their backyard, and there was a makeshift graveyard for the people there and for the children who had died.
00:50:44.140
And that was when everything just, like, broke apart inside her.
00:50:48.960
And I think a lot of people need to have that moment before they realize that what they've believed is wrong.
00:50:54.540
You can't just suddenly one day switch your whole belief system.
00:50:59.240
The people who have Ukrainian flags in their cars, you can't just sit down and talk to them for 10 minutes and change their mind.
00:51:05.760
Well, if you wait long enough, it'll be the LGBTQ flag, then it'll be the trans flag, then it'll be a little black square.
00:51:15.600
Yeah, now, like, you know, Gavin Newsom's cartography, whatever it is.
00:51:20.680
I think that's why this type of journalism is so gritty and so admirable.
00:51:25.040
It's why I'm so proud to be here at One America News, where we're allowed to do this type of journalism.
00:51:30.360
This is not corporate journalism you get here on our network.
00:51:33.980
This is an ownership structure that allows fearless, fearless reporting.
00:51:40.140
And I just think the perfect capstone is that you got the critique from the Keeve media.
00:51:47.280
And I think that's how you really get a reward for showing effectiveness is that you get that kind of attention.
00:51:55.060
Cannot wait to see this episode of Sharp Report.
00:51:56.800
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00:52:02.120
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