Biden prepares for his first official State of the Union address as president. Chaos continues in Ukraine, as Putin stares down the barrel of a humiliating setback, and Democrats prepare to unmask Americans just in time for the midterms.
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00:01:38.000All right, so Joe Biden is slated to give his first official State of the Union address tonight.
00:01:43.000He gave an address to the joint session of Congress shortly after his election in 2021.
00:01:48.000But this is his first official State of the Union, and were he an honest man, it would sound like the beginning of Terry Crews' address in Idiocracy.
00:01:56.000I know things are bleep right now, but he's not going to say that.
00:01:58.000Instead, he's going to talk about how strong the union is because his party needs some sort, some sort of reset here.
00:02:05.000If they don't get a reset, they are in such serious trouble that it is beyond reckoning for them.
00:02:10.000I believe 31 Democrats have said they're not running.
00:02:14.000And that number is going to go up before November in the House of Representatives because the polling is just that bad.
00:03:50.000Yep, high inflation, war abroad, a disintegrating social fabric.
00:03:55.000Yeah, that's what they got, what they asked for.
00:03:58.000According to the New York Times, Democratic governors are now looking to Joe Biden for a political reset.
00:04:02.000They met in Florida, which is hysterically funny.
00:04:04.000So they jet set it over to the state that they hate the most, the hellscape run by Ron Death Sanders.
00:04:10.000Uh, by the way, a hellscape from which they basically pulled all their money because they're looking at the polling data in Florida and they know that Ron DeSantis is easily going to win re-election.
00:04:17.000According to the New York Times, Democratic governors and their allies are expressing deep anxiety about the political conditions facing their party, as President Biden's approval rating slumps in a year when three dozen governorships are on the line, including in some of the nation's most important battleground states.
00:04:31.000At a weekend fundraising retreat in South Florida, several governors, candidates for governor, and donors acknowledged voters' frustration with the lingering pandemic was damaging the party more than expected.
00:04:39.000They hoped that Mr. Biden's State of the Union address might serve as a pivot point.
00:04:43.000Yeah, because that's what Joe Biden is great at, is pivoting.
00:04:45.000Actually, he's more like Ross in the stairwell on Friends trying to shove that couch up the stairwell.
00:05:07.000It is just a replacement of one liberal with another liberal.
00:05:09.000The Russian invasion of Ukraine is really not going to change anything because the long-term effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are really going to be Rather deleterious to the world order.
00:05:18.000And again, one of the reasons that Vladimir Putin went into Ukraine in the first place is because he calibrated wrong.
00:05:24.000He thought because of all of the weakness that the West had been signaling for literally decades that he could walk into Ukraine.
00:05:30.000And it turns out that the West actually reacted this time.
00:05:33.000But the only reason he's in Ukraine is because of all the bad signals that were being put out by the West in Georgia, in Crimea, in Afghanistan, in Hong Kong.
00:05:41.000And finally, the loosing of coronavirus restrictions.
00:05:44.000We're not going to forget that you did this to us for two years, that you locked our kids down and masked our kids up for two years.
00:05:49.000We're not going to just pretend that didn't happen now.
00:05:52.000So good luck to Joe Biden on pivoting here.
00:05:55.000The environment is not where we want it to be right now, said Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
00:06:01.000Yeah, that would be one of the great understatements of all time.
00:06:03.000The environment is not where we want it to be right now.
00:06:06.000I believe it's going to get substantially better.
00:06:07.000Yeah, you can believe what you want, dude.
00:06:08.000as the water began flowing through the gaping hole in the hall.
00:06:11.000I believe it's going to get substantially better.
00:06:13.000Yeah, you can believe what you want, dude.
00:06:14.000Democrats are defending 16 governorships in November, including in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada, and Minnesota.
00:06:19.000Yeah, those are not going to look great, a lot of those races.
00:06:22.000Those battleground races have taken on outsized importance after Donald Trump and many in the Republican Party showed an unwillingness to accept electoral defeat in 2020.
00:06:29.000In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, incumbent Democratic governors vetoed legislation Yeah, so they're gonna make this into, well, if you don't elect governors to these states where Democrats, then Donald Trump will steal the election.
00:06:44.000Republicans also see an opportunity to pick up a seat in Kansas, a conservative state where Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is seeking re-election.
00:06:50.000In informal poolside chats and closed-door political strategy sessions, attendees considered what could be done to change the trajectory of the president's standing in the Democratic brand.
00:07:00.000A new poll from the WaPo, Washington Post, showed Biden with a 37% overall approval rating and a 30% approval rating among independents.
00:07:09.000On the retreat's sidelines, several officials expressed frustration with the White House's political operation when granted anonymity to speak candidly.
00:07:15.000In interviews, state-level Democrats made clear they want less debate over stalled legislation in Washington and more ribbon cuttings and other events highlighting the economic and infrastructure packages already signed into law.
00:07:33.000That's definitely going to recalibrate how Americans are feeling about all of this.
00:07:37.000We've undersold historic investment in our country, said Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey.
00:07:40.000And by the way, you should definitely take political advice from a guy who nearly got beaten by a person whose name I don't even remember in New Jersey and who spent $1.72 running against Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey.
00:07:53.000Murphy said, I just got reelected in the teeth of, and then he cut himself off before noting that people are quote-unquote mad as hell.
00:07:59.000He said, they're not necessarily sure why they're mad or who they're mad at, but they're mad and they're frustrated.
00:08:03.000Nope, we know why we're mad and we know who we're mad at, dude.
00:08:06.000I'm sorry to break it to you, but it turns out we're all mad at you because you suck at your job.
00:08:11.000That would be the ridiculous pandemic restrictions, the attempts to fire literally millions of Americans and treat them as the enemy, the attempt to indoctrinate children in critical race theory and gender Fluidity?
00:08:27.000The Democrats are in serious, serious trouble and Joe Biden is looking for a bit of a reset tonight.
00:08:31.000So what exactly is he going to talk about in his State of the Union address?
00:08:34.000According to the New York Times, President Biden will use his first State of the Union address on Tuesday to claim credit for a robust economy.
00:08:42.000And a unified global response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even as he acknowledges the pain of inflation and the struggle between democracy and autocracy around the world, administration officials said on Monday.
00:08:55.000The economy where inflation is outpacing wage growth, and where the Federal Reserve is set to increase the interest rates to fight inflation, which presumably will hamper economic growth, and also where the price of gas is exorbitant, and also where you would like to spend trillions more dollars, this is your plan?
00:09:14.000The speech, which has been in the works for months, was originally meant to focus primarily on the president's domestic agenda, using the rare primetime platform as a way to jumpstart his stalled efforts to pass far-reaching social spending legislation.
00:09:26.000It's after we spend $7 trillion in blowing up the national debt from $23 trillion prior to 2020 to $30 trillion today, he was going to go out there and talk about his stalled social legislation, and Americans were going to rally behind the old man who can barely spew out a couple of sentences without falling all over himself.
00:09:46.000The war in Europe that erupted last week has forced the White House to ensure that Biden's address, quote, reflects a moment in time.
00:09:50.000As Jen Psaki, the press secretary, put it Monday afternoon, she said Biden will use part of his remarks to describe the administration's efforts to prevent the Russian invasion and to impose costs on Vladimir Putin of Russia.
00:09:59.000So here's the thing about the prevention of the invasion.
00:10:15.000And by then, it was too late for Vladimir Putin to pull out.
00:10:18.000So you basically cowardiced us into a war.
00:10:22.000What you did is you kept saying over and over and over again that we might do something, we might not do something.
00:10:27.000It depends on the size of the invasion.
00:10:28.000If it's a partial invasion, but not a total invasion, then maybe the sanctions will not be all that bad.
00:10:33.000And Vladimir Putin got the impression from the West That nothing was going to happen.
00:10:37.000Because after all, nothing had happened in Georgia.
00:10:39.000Nothing had happened in Ukraine in 2014 under Barack Obama.
00:10:43.000And Joe Biden made signals that not much was going to happen, even if Vladimir Putin was going to go into Ukraine full force.
00:10:50.000And so Vladimir Putin went into Ukraine full force.
00:10:52.000And now here's the problem, as we'll get to in just a few minutes here.
00:10:54.000Vladimir Putin is boxed in, which means that he has no way out but through.
00:10:59.000And that means real ugliness, real hideous stuff happening in Ukraine over the course of the next few days.
00:11:05.000We're going to watch the evisceration of large civilian centers in Ukraine, if Vladimir Putin's history is anything to guide us.
00:11:12.000Psaki said, I think people can expect to hear him position that as the importance of the U.S.
00:11:16.000as a leader of the world, of standing up for values, standing up for global norms.
00:11:18.000Again, not accurate, considering the Europeans have actually been leading the way, and it's the United States that has been trailing.
00:11:24.000The president has earned mostly bipartisan support for his efforts to stand up to Putin, but there has been some criticism from both parties that Biden's team was too slow to impose sanctions on Russia, in part because of a desire to accommodate the concerns of European nations.
00:11:35.000In response to that criticism, Biden will describe what Psaki called steps he has taken to build a global coalition imposing crippling financial sanctions on Russian banks, industries, companies, wealthy oligarchs, and Putin himself.
00:11:47.000Vladimir Putin did that by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
00:11:50.000And it is Joe Biden and his administration, as we'll discuss in a moment, that has actually been holding up sanctions on oil and natural gas because he doesn't want the prices to spike too high in advance of the midterms.
00:12:00.000Even as Biden takes note of a global crisis overseas, aide said his speech will remain focused on the two most critical issues in his presidency, the economy and COVID.
00:12:09.000Yeah, I'm sure people are going to love that.
00:12:11.000Biden will deliver his address to a joint session of Congress as the economy continues to recover from the pandemic-induced recession that caused millions to lose their jobs.
00:12:18.000I love how the New York Times biases this.
00:12:21.000The president will use the speech to highlight the low unemployment rate, rapid growth in GDP, and the addition of more than 6 million jobs since he took office about a year ago.
00:12:28.000If he had just stayed out of the way, it would have been a lot more than that.
00:12:30.000The president's feel-good message will be tempered, however, by the growing concern about inflation, which has reached levels not seen in decades.
00:12:36.000That gloominess has helped to drag down Biden's approval rating, The president will absolutely use the word inflation tomorrow, Psaki said on Monday, calling it a huge issue on the minds of Americans.
00:12:45.000And of course, Biden will urge Congress to spend more money.
00:12:47.000The Democrats are seeking to pivot away from COVID just in time for the State of the Union.
00:12:52.000However, they are experiencing some Failure to launch.
00:12:55.000Well, if you're experiencing some failure to launch, you need to go check out GetRoman.com slash Ben right now.
00:14:08.000But in an attempt to pivot away from COVID, which is what Democrats are trying to do right now, you're starting to see Democratic cities and states opening, getting rid of mask mandates.
00:14:16.000And just in time for the State of the Union, as predicted by me a month ago, just in time, you had the congressional doctors say, you know, everyone doesn't have to wear masks.
00:14:59.000The president is very powerful, but he couldn't make us be in the green zone that we're in right now in D.C.
00:15:04.000That's why we are not required, we're not going to be required to wear masks starting tomorrow.
00:15:09.000So I would say that for him, it had nothing to do with the timing around the State of the Union.
00:15:14.000He wanted to give the CDC the time to assess and make recommendations that would be clear to the American public about what their recommendations would be for mask wearing moving forward.
00:15:24.000Oh, it has nothing to do with the State of the Union.
00:15:25.000It's just a big coincidence that the congressional doctor was like, oh, you know what, guys?
00:15:29.000We actually don't want the picture of everybody wearing masks and socially distancing in the audience while everyone is done with the pandemic.
00:16:14.000And here's what it said, quote, after two years that necessitated lockdowns, travel bans, school closures, mask mandates, and nearly a million deaths, nearly every American finally has the tools to protect themselves from this virus.
00:16:24.000Now, we can stop right there and just point out that we've had the tools to protect ourselves from this virus literally since last March.
00:16:38.000like vaccine distribution and providing economic stability to Americans and fully enter the rebuilding phase that comes after any war. So what do they recommend? And I'm sure it will be reflected in Joe Biden's speech tonight to clear the crisis phase of COVID over and push for feeling and acting more normal. Good luck saying this to all of the Democrats who you have trained for two years to be paranoid lunatics.
00:16:58.000I don't want you to take my side, man.
00:17:05.000I literally picked up my family and moved from California to Florida because I don't trust you guys.
00:17:09.000And now you're saying you're on my side?
00:17:11.000You shut down the playgrounds where my kids used to play in Los Angeles and you allowed homeless people to take over the streets and rioters to burn things down in the middle of the pandemic on behalf of racial justice.
00:17:21.000And you expect me to believe that you're taking my side?
00:18:07.000Why it's almost as though all the Democrats got on the same page just before Joe Biden's big speech in which he can announce that he and his Democratic friends have ended COVID, which is a lie.
00:18:17.000Omicron ended COVID by everyone getting it.
00:18:20.000So yeah, no, that is not accurate, but they're all going to do this so that they can claim that the science has changed and now we can all move on together.
00:18:28.000Sure, we abused you and beat the living hell out of you for two years, and we destroyed hundreds of thousands of businesses, and we tried to get you fired for not vaxxing.
00:18:35.000And sure, we made your small children mask up to their own misery while we were out partying at the Super Bowl.
00:18:40.000But aren't we all on the same page now, guys?
00:18:44.000According to the Wall Street Journal, California, Oregon, and Washington will end their statewide mask mandates for schools and other indoor settings by March 12th, in a coordinated move announced on Monday.
00:18:55.000Now, all of these states have different rates of COVID at this point, but it doesn't matter.
00:18:58.000The science says it's time to remove the mask, just in time for the midterms.
00:19:01.000California, which lifted its indoor mask requirement for vaccinated people on February 15th, is ending it for unvaccinated people on Tuesday.
00:19:07.000Oregon and Washington will take the same step on March 12th, the same day all three West Coast states will no longer require masks inside schools.
00:19:13.000They're joining a growing list of other Democratic-led states, counties, and cities that have relaxed or ended mask requirements in recent weeks as the Omicron surge has faded.
00:19:22.000New York State said Sunday it would lift its statewide public school mask mandate starting on Wednesday.
00:19:27.000Oh, you mean like the day after the State of the Union address?
00:19:46.000There's new data out from New York State and Pfizer.
00:19:49.000According to CNBC, the New York State Department of Health found that the effectiveness of Pfizer's vaccine against COVID infection plummeted from 68% to 12% for kids aged 5 to 11 during the Omicron surge from December 13th through January 24th.
00:20:04.000Protection against hospitalization dropped from 100% to 48% during the same period.
00:20:10.000So I look forward to you trying to now claim that you got us out of the pandemic.
00:20:14.000It wasn't you who shut down the economy.
00:20:16.000It wasn't you who damaged businesses and made kids' lives miserable.
00:20:21.000It wasn't you who listened to Randy Weingarten at the National Education Association dictating terms as to when teachers should be in schools.
00:20:27.000But it was you who got us out of this pandemic.
00:20:29.000If you think Americans are going to buy that for one iota of one millisecond, you are out of your damn mind.
00:20:34.000People are not going to buy that and they shouldn't buy that.
00:20:36.000So the attempted shift from Joe Biden being a terrible president to a good president based on the end of COVID, which had nothing to do with and actually impeded with many of his measures, That is going to be a fun thing to watch, the President of the United States try to tap dance around tonight.
00:20:55.000And then apparently he is going to get to the situation in Ukraine.
00:20:58.000That is the other issue that he is going to be discussing, is the continued chaos in Eastern Europe.
00:21:03.000And he's going to claim that he has put together a world coalition.
00:21:05.000Here's the thing, he didn't do anything.
00:21:08.000In the same way that it was Barack Obama's embrace of Iran that created the Abraham Accords by forcing Israel and the Arabs together against Iran, Europe has come together because of Vladimir Putin's invasion, not because Joe Biden is such a wonderful communicator.
00:21:21.000Does anyone actually believe that Joe Biden's a great communicator?
00:21:23.000You'd have to be crazy to believe that, right?
00:21:25.000Well, folks, in just one second, we'll get to all of the issues in Ukraine.
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00:22:50.000According to the Wall Street Journal, talks between Russia and Ukraine on a potential ceasefire ended with no deal on Monday, as Moscow intensified its assault, killing at least 10 civilians in a shelling attack on residential neighborhoods in the eastern city of Kharkiv and pursuing efforts to seize the capital of Kyiv.
00:23:12.000That is why the shift in pronunciation.
00:23:14.000Ukrainian and Russian negotiators who met in Belarus just inside its border with Ukraine returned to their capitals for consultations and agreed to meet again in the coming days on the Polish-Belarusian border.
00:23:23.000Both delegations said that the five-hour meeting led to some progress.
00:23:26.000Well, there's going to need to be some progress here because otherwise The likely outcome of what's happening right now is that Vladimir Putin just ups his game.
00:23:33.000That's what's going to have to happen for him.
00:23:34.000He can't afford to just lose this war outright.
00:23:36.000And so it is very likely that he is going to do exactly what he did to Grozny in 1994 and just bomb the living hell out of civilian centers.
00:23:45.000He is a thug dictator who does not care how many civilians die in order for him to achieve his objectives.
00:23:51.000Russia has been pouring large reinforcement convoys across the border on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal, in what could be preparation for a renewed push to besiege Kiev.
00:23:58.000Satellite imagery on Monday from Maxar Technology shows a large Russian convoy approximately 40 miles long moving closer to Kiev.
00:24:04.000On Monday night, airstrikes on Kiev picked up.
00:24:06.000Russia also fired an Iskander ballistic missile at the capital's Brovery suburb, local officials said.
00:24:12.000Russia appears to be preparing for a possible escalation of the war on Ukraine.
00:24:15.000In an indication that Moscow may be shifting to a more destructive approach, two residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, came under heavy shelling on Monday, likely by multiple rocket launchers.
00:24:25.000More than 40 were injured, with the toll likely to grow because of continued shelling interfering with rescue efforts, according to Kharkiv Governor Oleh Tsianahubov.
00:24:35.000The city's mayor, Ihor Tarakov, said that the fatalities included four residents who'd left a shelter to get water and a family of two parents and three kids were incinerated when a Russian rocket hit their car.
00:24:45.000The pictures of that Russian convoy are rather stunning.
00:24:47.000Like one of those movies where you pull out the camera and you just see that it's an endless line of military hardware.
00:24:55.000One of the big questions, of course, is how exactly you're even going to get the aid to Kiev because Russia has been encircling Kiev.
00:25:01.000can only be resupplied through the West.
00:25:05.000If the West is cut off, it's going to be very difficult to get any sort of materiel in there.
00:25:10.000The Kremlin on Monday cited Putin's demands for ending the conflict as Ukraine recognizing the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia neutrality and quote demilitarization and denazification of the country.
00:25:20.000Russia, of course, likes to claim that in the Donbass region, there's a neo-Nazi group that's rather active over there.
00:25:26.000And that neo-Nazi group that's rather active over there has been targeting Russian citizens.
00:25:29.000That has been the claim of the Russian government that they say justifies this widespread invasion.
00:25:35.000Putin's claims, of course, go further than that.
00:25:37.000He suggests that the Russian government is just guided outright by neo-Nazis, which is wild, considering that the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, is Jewish.
00:25:45.000President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke to Putin on Monday.
00:25:48.000He said the Russian leader agreed during the call to his request not to attack Ukraine's civilian targets and infrastructure and not to encircle Kiev.
00:25:55.000In previous conversations, of course, Putin had told Macron that he wasn't going to invade at all.
00:25:59.000So that promise is not worth the paper it's printed on, and it's not printed on paper.
00:26:05.000Apparently, outside one Kyiv supermarket, the waiting time to enter was about two hours.
00:26:19.000Russian bonds have been completely decimated.
00:26:22.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the prices of Russian government bonds fell more than 50% Monday as foreign investors grew concerned that Western sanctions would undermine the country's ability and willingness to pay them back.
00:26:31.000Russia, of course, defaulted in the late 1990s.
00:26:33.000That was one of the earliest crises of the Putin regime.
00:26:37.000Moves by the US and European governments to cut off Russian access to the SWIFT banking network might prevent the network from distributing payments to bondholders abroad, emerging markets bond fund managers said.
00:26:46.000So people have stopped investing in Russia altogether.
00:26:49.000The price on that 5.25% government bond due in 2047?
00:26:54.000It's dropped to about 30 cents on the dollar from 120 cents on the dollar.
00:26:58.000So those are really, really bad numbers.
00:26:59.000It means that Russia is unable to raise any money at this point.
00:27:03.000Meanwhile, the blockade on Russia's central bank is neutralizing its ability to avoid sanctions, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:27:10.000The coordinated action blocks the central bank from selling dollars, euros and other foreign currencies in its reserve stockpile to even stabilize the ruble.
00:27:16.000So they can't even go on the open markets and they've been stockpiling foreign currencies.
00:27:23.000officials said they intended the sanctions to stoke already surging inflation, and the actions against the Bank of Russia are intended, in effect, to neutralize the country's monetary defenses.
00:27:31.000The sanctions also target another major government stockpile of assets, a key sovereign wealth fund called the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
00:27:37.000And prevent Moscow from using other government and private banks to sidestep sanctions on its financial system, the official said.
00:27:42.000In a statement, the fund said the action demonstrates the US has picked the course to destroy constructive dialogue between countries.
00:27:47.000China, by the way, came out and suggested, of course, that they are against these sorts of sanctions.
00:27:51.000They don't like that weapon because they're afraid that eventually it will be used against them.
00:27:55.000Western companies are piggybacking on the official actions by the various governments.
00:28:00.000The British energy giant Shell became the latest Western company to sever its ties completely with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, saying that it would stop financing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which basically kills it outright.
00:28:11.000Shell's decision came a day after British Petroleum said it would exit its 20% stake in the Russian oil producer Rosneft.
00:28:16.000So it's basically economic nuclear war with the Russian government at this point.
00:28:23.000Meanwhile, the Ukrainians were at the U.N.
00:29:48.000Okay, so that is a text message from a Russian soldier back to his parents before he was killed.
00:29:52.000This is one of the big problems that Putin has.
00:29:55.000Putin had this mythical belief that basically all of the resistance was going to crumble the way that it did in Afghanistan when the United States pulled out of Afghanistan.
00:31:04.000That would potentially put us into a place where we're in a military conflict with Russia.
00:31:09.000That is not something the president wants to do.
00:31:11.000Okay, so she actually happens to be correct about this.
00:31:13.000And I am encouraged that the Biden administration, while they have finally gotten on board with, for example, shipping military supplies into Ukraine, while they finally got on board with de-banking Russian oligarchs and de-banking the Russians, obviously months too late and after bad signaling, while they're doing all that, they are attempting at this point to de-escalate.
00:31:30.000There has to be a way out here because here is the problem.
00:31:32.000Once you've decimated the Russian economy, and if that military material that's being poured into Ukraine is effective in stymying the Russian advance, Then you have to offer some sort of fig leaf for Putin to stop, because otherwise Putin is just going to continue to do what Putin has been doing, which is he's going to make this more brutal and more vicious, knowing that nobody's actually going to get in open conflict with him other than the Ukrainian people.
00:31:54.000He's just going to keep upping the ante.
00:31:55.000So there has to be some way out offered to Putin here, because otherwise you could see a situation in which he's stymied so far that he actually goes back to the Russian Soviet playbook, which actually suggested that in last ditch scenarios, The Russians could actually first use nuclear weapons in tactical battlefield scenarios.
00:32:11.000Remember, nuclear weapon doesn't have to be a missile fired at the United States.
00:32:14.000A nuclear weapon could be deployed on a battlefield in order to eviscerate the enemy.
00:32:19.000That's long been part of the Russian military playbook.
00:32:21.000So you could actually have first use of nuclear weapons since World War II, not fired against a NATO ally, for example, but detonated near, say, Kharkiv, because Vladimir Putin needs the win.
00:32:34.000So boxing him in actually makes Vladimir Putin a little bit more volatile.
00:32:38.000That doesn't mean that there's any other choice but to box him in.
00:32:40.000The crushing sanctions are useful and necessary.
00:32:43.000And in fact, we should be harshening the sanctions on the Russian energy sector, which continues to be Vladimir Putin's way out.
00:32:48.000But the fact that the Biden administration is simultaneously looking to crush Putin's invasion and also looking to de-escalate is correct.
00:32:57.000Whether they're able to achieve that or not may be a different question.
00:33:01.000Here was Jen Psaki yesterday saying we would like to reduce the rhetoric and to de-escalate.
00:33:06.000Listen, I'm more hawkish than pretty much everybody and this is going to have to happen because otherwise Vladimir Putin is just going to keep upping the ante.
00:33:13.000Putin is putting his nuclear forces on heightened alert.
00:33:18.000You said this is yet another instance of Putin trying to manufacture a threat that doesn't exist.
00:33:24.000But Jen, can you tell us what, if anything, is the administration doing about that threat and how concerned are you about it?
00:33:30.000I think this is why it's so important for everybody to know and understand how President Putin uses rhetoric and uses threats in order to justify further military aggression.
00:33:39.000That's what we've seen him do in the past.
00:33:41.000He has never been under threat from NATO, from Ukraine, from any country.
00:33:45.000So what we want to do right now is reduce the rhetoric and de-escalate.
00:33:50.000Okay, they actually are going to have to do that.
00:33:51.000Because again, once you've boxed in a rogue dictator and you've made him feel as though his only way out is through, then things could get a lot, a lot uglier.
00:34:00.000For his part, Joe Biden was walking around outside in a KN95 mask.
00:34:55.000The State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, he said that leaders around the world continue to work together to further politically and financially isolate Russia.
00:35:04.000Again, the problem is, we have two problems.
00:35:07.000One is sort of looking back, and one is looking forward.
00:35:09.000The looking back problem is, why did Vladimir Putin invade in the first place?
00:35:12.000And the answer is because you push where there's mush.
00:35:14.000And Vladimir Putin thought the West was mush, and he miscalibrated.
00:35:17.000This, by the way, is how many wars get started, is one side believes the other side will do nothing.
00:35:21.000This was, for a long time, the going theory as to how the Gulf War had gotten started, is that Saddam Hussein was given signals by the West that if he invaded Kuwait, nothing would actually happen.
00:35:29.000So that is problem number one, is that going forward, you actually have to establish a serious level of deterrence.
00:35:34.000You have to make the moves necessary to solidify yourself internally, to rebut any sort of aggression.
00:35:38.000And you have to make clear that there will be a price to that aggression.
00:35:41.000The United States and its allies didn't do that in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.
00:35:44.000Now the question is how you get out of this and the answer is you do have to crush Putin and at the same time you do have to offer him some way out of this that he is going to take.
00:35:52.000Here is the State Department spokesperson.
00:35:56.000Leaders from around the world are working together to further politically and financially isolate Russia, including by blocking Russia from international financial systems and economies.
00:36:06.000We took further measures against Russia's financial system in response to the Kremlin's flagrant violation of international law in utter disregard for the principles that underpin peace and security around the world.
00:36:22.000It is also true that the White House and the West still are not getting involved in cutting off natural gas and oil from Russia because they're afraid of the shock on the world markets.
00:36:31.000It was Jen Psaki saying that yesterday.
00:38:24.000That's because the Biden presidency is a giant, giant disaster.
00:38:28.000Of course, Biden isn't going to say that.
00:38:30.000But I'm going to, because tonight, for the first time, exactly 15 minutes following Joe Biden's remarks before a joint session of Congress, I will offer up my formal response.
00:38:38.000You can call it the real State of the Union.
00:38:39.000I'm going to tell you where we are really at as a country.
00:38:42.000The State of the Union is not exactly strong.
00:38:44.000I assure you that my State of the Union response will be free of focus group testing from the GOP.
00:38:50.000I will be holding the President accountable.
00:38:51.000There's no hiding behind COVID, or blaming rogue dictators, or having Brian Stelter cover it up.
00:38:55.000Join me, Jeremy Boring, Michael Molls, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Clayton tonight, 8.15pm Eastern, 7.15pm Central, on The Daily Wire's YouTube channel.
00:39:03.000My real State of the Union response will be airing as soon as Joe Biden's address ends on that very same channel.
00:39:08.000you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:39:12.000So if you look at the long-term impacts of what is happening in Ukraine, you're starting to see the beginnings of a really reshifted world order.
00:39:25.000So first of all, the Europeans are now actually going to rearm.
00:39:29.000The Europeans have decided they're going to get tough and they're no longer going to engage in the delusion where Greta Thunberg Actually ran their foreign policy.
00:39:36.000They're not going to do that any longer.
00:39:38.000European Parliament announced this morning that they've now accepted Ukraine's application to join the European Union.
00:39:43.000A special admission procedure has now begun.
00:39:45.000So Ukraine is now going to be joined into the EU.
00:39:49.000Meanwhile, you've seen Germany completely U-turning on its entire perspective on foreign policy.
00:39:54.000According to dnyuz.com, it took an invasion of a sovereign country nearby, threats of nuclear attack, images of civilians facing off against Russian tanks, and a spate of shaming from allies for Germany to shake its decades-long faith in a military-averse foreign policy that was born of the crimes of the Third Reich.
00:40:11.000But once Chancellor Olaf Scholz decided to act, the country's about-face was swift.
00:40:16.000February 24, 2022 marks a historic turning point in the history of our continent, said He's announced that Germany would increase its military spending to more than 2% of the country's economic output, beginning immediately with a one-off 100 billion euros, or 113 billion dollars, to invest in the country's woefully under-equipped armed forces.
00:40:32.000He added that Germany would speed up construction of two terminals for receiving liquefied natural gas, part of efforts to ease the country's reliance on Russian energy.
00:40:39.000He said at the heart of the matter is the question of whether power can break the law, whether we allow Putin to turn back the hands of time to the days of the great powers of the 19th century, or whether we find it within ourselves to set limits on a warmonger like Putin.
00:40:51.000The events of the past week have shocked countries with typically pacifist means, as well as those more closely aligned with Russia.
00:40:56.000Both have found the invasion impossible to watch quietly.
00:40:58.000Viktor Orban, the generally pro-Russia, anti-immigrant Prime Minister of Hungary, who denounced sanctions against Russia just weeks ago, reversed his position this weekend.
00:41:05.000Japan, which was hesitant to impose sanctions on Russia in 2014, strongly condemned last week's invasion.
00:41:11.000Well, the reason they did that is because they're looking across the water and they see China right there.
00:41:16.000In fact, the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, he came out and he said that perhaps Japan should consider hosting American nuclear weapons on their soil, which is a massive reversal.
00:41:25.000So what we're about to see, primarily when it comes to hard power, is a real military buildup that's going to happen from all of our erstwhile allies.
00:41:34.000That's all fun and games until the point at which one of those Durst-Weill allies becomes a not-ally.
00:41:37.000It turns out that a wildly re-armed world, as opposed to an American-dominated world, is a much more dangerous world.
00:41:43.000Because the fact is that countries have differential interests.
00:42:39.000China and Russia are banding closer together with Iran.
00:42:42.000Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden are now moving to join NATO as well.
00:42:47.000So you're starting to see more and more countries in Europe sort of solidify as part of this broader Western alliance.
00:42:52.000So is that a new Cold War or is that more like just a series of discombobulated countries all seeking by this way nuclear weapons?
00:42:59.000If you're a non-aligned country, if you're not formally aligned with either one, you're not a member of the EU, but you're also not a member of the China-Russia Axis and there are no mutual defense guarantees, aren't you seeking a nuclear weapon?
00:43:11.000There's a reason, for example, that Israel sought a nuclear weapon in the 1960s.
00:43:14.000It was a non-aligned country, and the idea was that if it was invaded, last-ditch scenario, they were gonna nuke somebody.
00:43:21.000In fact, Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel, apparently in 1973, she basically said to the United States, when the United States was not sending material support, she said, listen, if you don't send us bullets, and we are down to our last man, then the nukes go off.
00:43:34.000And the United States is like, okay, fine, well, I guess we'll send you some bullets so you can defend yourself in the Yom Kippur War.
00:43:38.000But the simple fact of the matter is, Non-aligned countries are going to rearm.
00:43:41.000They're going to start seeing more and more countries looking for nuclear weapons.
00:43:45.000So the sort of era of widespread peace is coming to an end.
00:43:50.000And it's coming to an end because the West had bought into a delusion, and that delusion was the Thomas Friedman-Francis Fukuyama delusion that we had reached the end of history.
00:43:59.000We decided to ostrich our heads for three decades.
00:44:02.000And any time a conflict arose, the idea was it was an exception to the rule.
00:44:06.000The rule is not a more violent world in which people fight each other and have differential interests and different cultures, look for different borders and all the rest.
00:44:14.000Instead, we are going to say that we are moving toward a grand idealistic enterprise in which all economies were interrelated.
00:44:20.000And as Thomas Friedman suggested in the Lexus and the olive tree, the golden arches theory, if everybody had a McDonald's, then nobody would fight.
00:44:26.000And it turns out that all of that was nonsense.
00:44:29.000And now Vladimir Putin has shaken the West out of that feeling.
00:44:32.000Well, I'm glad that the West has been shaken awake.
00:44:35.000I'm a little bit concerned about the effects of a West that already has abandoned the idea of American hegemony, which was the guarantor of world peace really since the end of World War Two.
00:44:47.000Meanwhile, by the way, inflation is spiraling out of control and there are going to be some real costs in the West for that.
00:44:54.000Rising inflation is driving up expenses for many large U.S.
00:44:56.000pension funds that have promised retirees cost-of-living raises.
00:45:01.000So for all those who think that foreign policy doesn't matter, just understand life is about to get a lot more expensive because we didn't take the preventative measures necessary to keep America at the top of the world order.
00:45:09.000Foreign policy, just like domestic policy, has consequences.
00:45:13.000Okay, we'll be back here later today for an additional hour of content.
00:45:15.000In the meantime, go check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
00:45:18.000Today's episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.