The Ben Shapiro Show


Biden Visits Ukraine, Not Ohio Or The Border | Ep. 1672


Summary

After two weeks of humiliating screw-ups, Joe Biden tries a reset by flying to Ukraine. Meanwhile, China threatens intervention in the Ukraine war, and Roald Dahl s children s books are now being written for woke purposes. All that and more on this week s episode of The Ben Shapiro Show! Subscribe to my new podcast Other Words For Smoke, wherever you get your podcasts. Click here to become a supporter of the podcast and get 20% off for the first month with discount code: CROWN2020. Use the discount code CROWN20 at checkout to save 20% on your first month of membership. You'll also get access to all my other podcasts, including The FiveThirtyEight original video series, CROWN, and CROWN TV's new original series CROWNTV. I'm your host, Ben Shapiro. Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to my other podcast, The Five ThirtyEight. Thank you so much for all the support you've shown over the years, and I can't wait to do more of this in the future. Much love, your continued support is so important to me and my ability to do my best to support the podcast. - Your continued support will be felt by me and I'll be able to provide a better listening experience to the next generation of people in the next few months. Thank you, my team, and my appreciation is so much in advance of you all. - Your support is truly appreciated. - Ben Shapiro, Sr. & Alyssa Morgan, Jr., Jr., Sr. - Elyssa Mays, Sr., etc., etc. - Thank you. - AYO, MURCHES, AUGMENTED, etc., PEN AND AVAILABULARY, etc. etc., ENJOYED, MALAYTERED, PEDOTA, AND SO MUCH CHASED, VOCAL SUPPORTED, CRYPR AND PEDOTES AND THANKSGIVED, MAKE ME THOTTERED IN THE PRAISE AND CREDIBLE, MAKING ME A PODCAST SUPPORTED INSPIRED BY ME AND OTHER ME AND A PEDCAST AND APPEARANCE SUPPORTED BY ME RETURCASTED IN SCOTTER AND APPGOTED IN A VOTING IN A PLACE TO CHOTOTES ARE ALSO INCLOGGED IN CHAPTER AND A FABCAST AND MALOR AND CRY TO ME AND AN AIRPRONE AND A THOTCAST AND A PLACED IN LAKE AND KED OUT IN A THIRD PLACTER AND AN ESTMENT AND APPROECMENT AND ME WAS TOTALLY SUPPORTED AND APPRONEED IN TOUCH AND MACASTED OUTED IN SPYPRY AND APPORTMENT AND OTHER THIRD AND A BABY AND A TAPIN AND A CRYBOOK AND A FEEDBACK AND A LIPCAST AND AN APPGED INCLINMENT AND A PREDCAST OF HIS MAKING SOMED AND A MEARING OUTED AND AN ACTUAL MEAR AND AN AMED OUT AND A SUPPORTER AND GAP AND A VOTE AND A CREATING SOMETHAND AND A RELATIONARY RECAP OF THE MAKING THOT AND A DESTINE AND A RETREMENT AND AN ANCOTION AND A MONTH AND A FILTER AND CHAPCAST OF THE MEETING THEM AND A QOTED THEM AND AN ALABOR AND A S NOTCH AND A MAKE AND A GOT AN OCAST AND FINALLY A LOT OF THE FALLY AND A CHRISTY AND SOMAL AND A BLOT AND AN MEARED THAT AND A FINALLY ... ...)


Transcript

00:00:00.000 After two weeks of humiliating screw-ups, Joe Biden tries a reset by flying to Ukraine, China threatens intervention in the Ukraine war, and Roald Dahl's children's books are now being rewritten for woke purposes.
00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:11.000 Well, Joe Biden has had a rough couple of weeks.
00:00:20.000 The last couple of weeks have seen a giant train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that resulted in a giant mushroom cloud of apparently toxic gases being released into the air and poisoning some of the waters and all the rest of this.
00:00:31.000 And FEMA has been denying help over there, suggesting it is outside their remit under Joe Biden's auspices.
00:00:37.000 Joe Biden has not visited East Palestine, Ohio.
00:00:40.000 Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to fly across the entirety of the continental United States for a full week.
00:00:46.000 And then we shot it down off the waters of South Carolina.
00:00:49.000 And then he started randomly authorizing the Air Force to shoot down Mylar Valentine's Day balloons from Party City with $400,000 sidewinder missiles in an apparent attempt to look tough to the rest of the world.
00:01:01.000 After again, having allowed a giant three bus size Chinese spy balloon to fly across the entire continental United States has been a rough couple of weeks for President Biden, and that followed what he thought was going to be a triumphal moment at the State of the Union address in which he took on the Republicans.
00:01:16.000 The problem for Joe Biden, of course, is that Joe Biden's approval rating has been absolutely stagnant for the past couple of years.
00:01:21.000 And the thing that people forget about Joe Biden's approval rating is that what made it go down in the first place was his weakness in Afghanistan.
00:01:27.000 If you look at the at the history of Joe Biden's job approval rating, His job approval rating was at about 50%, 51% for a long period of time to begin his presidency.
00:01:38.000 And then it really dipped and went negative right around the time that he decided that he was going to ignominiously pull out of Afghanistan with no plan whatsoever, hand the country over to 8th century Islamic barbarians, and then allow a bunch of American soldiers to get killed and a bunch of Afghan translators get stuck behind, a bunch of Americans get stuck behind.
00:01:57.000 So foreign policy weakness does have dramatic ramifications for Joe Biden.
00:02:01.000 And he must know this.
00:02:02.000 So right now, Joe Biden's approval rating is stuck in the 43, 44% range according to RealClearPolitics.
00:02:08.000 Now, that has been a slight increase from its real absolute low of about 37%, which was back in July of 2022.
00:02:15.000 But he's been kind of trending about even since September.
00:02:19.000 And so he has to do something to reset because now we are starting to look at his reelect campaign.
00:02:23.000 His reelect campaign is going to be launched any day now.
00:02:26.000 We are rolling closer.
00:02:27.000 It's near the end of February.
00:02:28.000 We're going to start seeing his real-life campaign pump into full gear starting March, April, May.
00:02:33.000 And so he has to do something to reset.
00:02:35.000 So the way he decided that he was going to reset is by heading over to Ukraine over the weekend.
00:02:39.000 It was a secret Ukraine trip, and it was promoted by all the usual media sources as a groundbreaking, unbelievably brave thing for the president of the United States to do.
00:02:49.000 Never mind the fact that we've had a multiplicity of American senators and congresspeople who have already gone over to Ukraine.
00:02:53.000 Never mind the fact that Boris Johnson went over to Ukraine when he was prime minister of the UK.
00:02:58.000 Never mind the fact that you've had pretty much every Western leader except for Joe Biden go over to Ukraine Over the course of the past year since the war began in Ukraine, Joe Biden finally went over to Ukraine and the media reacted with their usual combination of sycophantic drooling and massaging his unmentionables.
00:03:14.000 It was, you know, exactly what Joe Biden had bargained for.
00:03:17.000 Now, is it going to have any real impact on Joe Biden's presidency?
00:03:20.000 My guess is absolutely not, because nothing actually changed except for Joe Biden posturing.
00:03:25.000 So, how did this thing come about?
00:03:28.000 Apparently, it was a trip months in the works, according to Politico, but President Joe Biden and a small cadre of administration officials made the decision final in a meeting on Friday.
00:03:36.000 Setting into motion a complex plan with substantial risks for Biden's safety, political standing, and international relations.
00:03:40.000 Well, there is no risk to his political standing because, again, what's going to happen?
00:03:44.000 People are going to get mad at him for going to Ukraine?
00:03:46.000 International relations?
00:03:47.000 Some more significant risk for international relations, as we'll discuss in just a minute, because international relations is very delicate, especially in a hot war zone.
00:03:55.000 But the real question is not.
00:03:57.000 The administration is trying to trot out this lie that this was months in the making and it was already pre-planned and political blows it out of the water.
00:04:03.000 Friday is when he decided he's going to Ukraine.
00:04:05.000 Why Friday?
00:04:06.000 Why?
00:04:07.000 So they're suggesting it's because of the one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
00:04:11.000 And granted, it is the one year anniversary this week of Vladimir Putin's Russia invading Ukraine.
00:04:16.000 With that said, that date would have been planned months in advance, would it have not?
00:04:20.000 So what happened on Friday?
00:04:22.000 Well, the answer is bad political news cycle.
00:04:25.000 A bad political news cycle is what drove Joe Biden to go to Ukraine so he could completely reset the political table while not visiting, say, the American southern border or not visiting East Palestine, Ohio.
00:04:34.000 Those are places where he's failed.
00:04:36.000 Ukraine is a place where U.S.
00:04:37.000 policy has manifestly succeeded.
00:04:40.000 Now, I know that there are a lot of folks on the right who are not big fans of the Ukraine war.
00:04:43.000 They think that the United States should not be involved in Ukraine at all.
00:04:45.000 To me, this seems like a bargain.
00:04:47.000 The truth is that just on a monetary level, the Ukraine war has been, in American foreign policy terms, a bargain.
00:04:53.000 We spend, literally over the course of decades, trillions and trillions of trillions of dollars on national defense.
00:05:00.000 And that money is sunk into weaponry that we don't end up using if we are successful in deterring everybody else from doing this sort of stuff.
00:05:07.000 We have sent 20 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, over to Ukraine and we have crippled the Russian military.
00:05:13.000 The Russian military is aggressive.
00:05:14.000 It's been aggressive on its borders for two decades.
00:05:16.000 Nobody's known how to handle Vladimir Putin.
00:05:18.000 This has been true since the Bush administration, really since the end of the Clinton administration.
00:05:23.000 There's been no idea really how to handle Russia.
00:05:27.000 Vladimir Putin made a mistake.
00:05:28.000 He stepped into a hornet's nest.
00:05:29.000 He stepped into Ukraine thinking that he was going to be able to take Kiev.
00:05:32.000 And the original going wisdom, you'll recall, is that he was going to be able to take Ukraine, no problem, just ingest it.
00:05:37.000 And as it turns out, it is not just a question of pure numerical superiority when it comes to war anymore.
00:05:42.000 Now it is a measure of technical sophistication.
00:05:45.000 NATO armaments are way, way more sophisticated than whatever Russia has.
00:05:49.000 Russia is using like World War II ordnance in some cases.
00:05:51.000 Meanwhile, Ukraine is armed with all of the systems that NATO can provide it.
00:05:57.000 Sophisticated microchip systems that Russia just does not have the availability of.
00:06:01.000 And that means that in technical terms, Ukraine is far superior to the Russian military, which has been shown by the apparently 150,000 dead Russian soldiers over the course of the last year.
00:06:14.000 So the Ukraine war has effectively single handedly taken Russia's fighting force as a global threat off the table.
00:06:21.000 We'll talk about what that means for America and what that means for American foreign policy in a second.
00:06:24.000 Then we'll get to Joe Biden's actual trip.
00:06:26.000 But one thing that's clear is that the administration has not been clear about what America's goals are in Ukraine.
00:06:31.000 That actually is a serious problem.
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00:07:37.000 Alrighty, so.
00:07:39.000 The goal of American foreign policy in Ukraine was really several fold.
00:07:44.000 One is cripple the Russian military so it couldn't perform more aggressive attacks on its borders because they have pushed into places like Kazakhstan, threatening oil supply.
00:07:52.000 They have pushed into Ukraine before.
00:07:53.000 Obviously, they carted off Crimea.
00:07:55.000 Donetsk and Luhansk.
00:07:56.000 They've pushed before into Georgia.
00:07:59.000 So Vladimir Putin has been a very aggressive leader in terms of foreign policy and in terms of utilization of the military.
00:08:05.000 Crippling the Russian military, so that was no longer an issue, is actually a big win for the United States on the cheap in the sense that we've spent not a single American life on this.
00:08:13.000 So just in terms of why we are there, that is one good reason.
00:08:16.000 Containing Russia.
00:08:17.000 That actually has been the purpose of NATO since its inception, and that has been the purpose of NATO post the fall of the Soviet Union.
00:08:25.000 So that is purpose number one.
00:08:26.000 Purpose number two is demonstrating to the rest of the world that you can't just randomly cross other countries' borders and try to take their capitals.
00:08:31.000 It was to serve as a warning to China.
00:08:34.000 If Russia had been able to just ingest Ukraine, the next move is China goes directly after Taiwan.
00:08:38.000 And so if surrendering in Afghanistan to, again, a bunch of 8th century barbarians was the impetus for Vladimir Putin looking at the United States and saying, this is a weak horse and I'm going to go after it.
00:08:49.000 Well, now Vladimir Putin has learned that when NATO is activated against him, Even a country like Ukraine can hold off Russia.
00:08:57.000 So China may be looking at that and say, OK, maybe it's not worth the bargain for us to try to go after Taiwan.
00:09:01.000 That was purpose number two.
00:09:03.000 And purpose number three is to demonstrate that the post-Cold War order is still existent.
00:09:09.000 And now this is kind of important.
00:09:11.000 It's also controversial.
00:09:12.000 So one of the things that happened, if you look at the history of the United States and our sort of international relations and global involvement, What you see is that the United States in the post-World War II era basically guaranteed global growth.
00:09:24.000 Every place that was not directly controlled or indirectly controlled by the Soviet Union for that entire order.
00:09:28.000 And then in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, expanded our role in creating global order to essentially the entire Earth.
00:09:36.000 That does not mean that we are imperialists.
00:09:37.000 We were not.
00:09:38.000 We allowed other countries to run their countries very much as they wanted to in the post-Cold War era, with the proviso that they had to be open to trade, and also we were going to help ensure the freedom of trade on the high seas, which is one of the reasons why you see these very diffuse supply chains.
00:09:53.000 The reason that when you get an iPhone, it is now produced in about a dozen different places and not produced in one place.
00:09:59.000 And thus, it is much, much cheaper and much more cost effective.
00:10:02.000 And you have better technology every year.
00:10:03.000 The reason for that is because America guarantees the safety of the high seas.
00:10:07.000 America has the world's most powerful deepwater Navy by a factor of about 10 to 1.
00:10:10.000 Like to the rest of the world, 10 to 1.
00:10:13.000 The United States is an unbelievably powerful economy.
00:10:17.000 And that is a matter, as Peter Zeihan, the geopolitical expert from Harvard talks about, we have this incredible strength in terms of our domestic markets and in terms of our domestic geography.
00:10:27.000 And we have Canada to our north, we have Mexico to our south, and we have two oceans to our east and west, which means that we are safe from pretty much everything.
00:10:34.000 And that means that we have the capacity to actually ensure, if we want to, a global trade system that allows for diffuse supply chains, which does in fact benefit America.
00:10:43.000 Because America is still the world's safest bet in terms of finances, which is why we have not gotten crushed economically over the course of the last couple of years, the way a lot of other countries have.
00:10:51.000 Also, the United States is not in a state of full-scale demographic collapse, the same way that Europe is right now, the same way that much of Asia is.
00:10:58.000 China is in a state of full-scale demographic collapse.
00:11:01.000 The United States right now, if you had to put money on any country on Earth to retain its power, just geopolitically speaking, the United States would be the bet.
00:11:09.000 But that only applies so long as the United States is able to maintain this tenuous world order.
00:11:17.000 The world turns into a bunch of regional blocks.
00:11:19.000 The United States may still be the most powerful player among those regional blocks, but our lifestyles are going to change an awful lot.
00:11:26.000 Just to give you an example, during COVID, basically all the supply chains broke down.
00:11:30.000 The diffuse network of supply lines broke down.
00:11:33.000 The manufacturing lines broke down.
00:11:35.000 Free trade broke down.
00:11:37.000 And the result was you couldn't get basic stuff that you needed on a daily basis.
00:11:41.000 All the things you'd become used to, advancements in technology, being able to get things cheaply and easily to your front door, things that made your life easier and better, that all broke down.
00:11:49.000 If the world system breaks down and turns into a bunch of regional blocks, essentially, and the United States retreats from the world, you're going to see a lot more of that.
00:11:57.000 That is what the future is actually going to look a lot more like, and not like the steady progress in terms of technology and in terms of availability that you've seen over the course of the last couple of decades.
00:12:05.000 When people talk about the evils of globalization, there are costs to literally every policy.
00:12:09.000 There is no policy that has ever been implemented on planet Earth that does not have costs and benefits, but the cost to de-globalization To the breakup of any sort of global trade system.
00:12:18.000 I'm not talking here about the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund.
00:12:23.000 I'm talking about the United States guaranteeing the freedom of the high seat.
00:12:27.000 United States making sure that you can get the stuff that you need.
00:12:30.000 United States making sure, for example, that China can't shut down the South China Sea or making sure that the Iranians can't shut down The Straits of Tehran or anything like that.
00:12:41.000 When you have the United States guaranteeing all of that, it makes your life better.
00:12:44.000 We don't see that in foreign policy terms because, again, it's very indirect.
00:12:47.000 These are costs that are sort of silently undergone by the United States in order to preserve world order.
00:12:52.000 In repelling Russia from Ukraine, we have essentially reinforced that we are not retreating from the world.
00:12:58.000 We are not making room for Russia to create its own sphere of influence again or China to create its own sphere of influence again.
00:13:03.000 So all of these things are great and wonderful and good things, I think, overall.
00:13:08.000 And all of the talk about how we're being enmeshed in an endless war over there, just in terms of cost, that is not true.
00:13:14.000 Now, does that mean that we should not have an eye on where the money goes?
00:13:16.000 Of course we should have an eye on where the money goes.
00:13:18.000 I mean, this is a point that pretty much every Republican politician is making right now.
00:13:20.000 You can't just give a bag of cash to the Ukrainians and hope that it gets to the right place.
00:13:24.000 We should, of course, keep an eye on where the money goes.
00:13:26.000 But the notion that we would be better off, for example, if Russia just ingested Ukraine is wrong.
00:13:32.000 Now, with all of that said, Joe Biden has achieved virtually all of these goals.
00:13:37.000 And the question now is, what is he doing?
00:13:39.000 The question is, why is he upping the ante?
00:13:42.000 What is the goal of upping the ante at this point?
00:13:45.000 And why is he visiting?
00:13:46.000 Is he doing it for domestic political constituencies or is he doing it for the greater good of the world?
00:13:51.000 I think the answer is going to be the former and not the latter.
00:13:54.000 Largely because I don't think that you can trust the people in power, which, by the way, is one reason why.
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00:15:01.000 Okay, so.
00:15:02.000 Joe Biden flies over to Ukraine, right?
00:15:04.000 As I said, they're real goals that we have in Ukraine and people who are saying we don't understand why we're even over there.
00:15:09.000 It's all the reasons above.
00:15:10.000 Containing Russia, deterring the breaking of other people's borders and ensuring a world order that actually benefits the American manufacturer because a lot of the manufacturing facilities from abroad are now being located in the United States to shorten the supply chains.
00:15:24.000 It benefits American jobs, American economics, American power.
00:15:28.000 All those are good reasons.
00:15:29.000 That does not answer the question as to why Joe Biden flew over to Ukraine right now.
00:15:33.000 The answer is that he flew over to Ukraine right now again for domestic political purposes.
00:15:38.000 And that's the only reason to do it, really.
00:15:42.000 Because we're doing all of these things, and we're doing them quite quietly.
00:15:44.000 See, the general rule of American foreign policy is that you're supposed to speak softly and carry a big stick.
00:15:49.000 Speaking softly generally means you provide the support that is necessary.
00:15:53.000 And especially in this particular dicey situation, where everybody knows what the off-ramp is going to be, which is going to be Russia retaining some of the territory in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea.
00:16:02.000 Everyone knows this is going to be the end goal.
00:16:03.000 The question is, how do you get to that end goal with the minimum loss of life at this point?
00:16:08.000 Again, because America has already achieved all of the goals previously stated.
00:16:12.000 America has already crippled the Russian military to an unprecedented effect.
00:16:17.000 The United States has already reinforced the notion that we are not going to sit idly by when sovereign nations violate the borders of other sovereign nations.
00:16:25.000 And the United States has suggested that we are not retreating from the world in the way that many people thought we were going to retreat from the world.
00:16:29.000 By the way, even under Trump, we didn't retreat from the world.
00:16:31.000 This great lie that America went isolationist under Trump, it is a lie.
00:16:34.000 The United States was very active in foreign policy under the Trump administration.
00:16:37.000 It was just smart in that we didn't get ourselves embroiled in actual shooting wars with other people.
00:16:42.000 First president in my lifetime not to do that was President Trump.
00:16:46.000 Okay, but the question of what exactly is happening here is pretty obvious, and it's obvious in what the White House is saying.
00:16:52.000 So White House comms director Kate Benningfield told reporters, quote, it was risky.
00:16:55.000 It should leave no doubt in anyone's mind.
00:16:57.000 Joe Biden is a leader who takes commitment seriously, but this was a risk he wanted to take.
00:17:00.000 Now, that's a lie.
00:17:01.000 Joe Biden does not take commitment seriously.
00:17:03.000 He literally sold out our Afghan allies over the course of 20 years and then just handed them over to the world's worst human beings.
00:17:10.000 And meanwhile, his charged affair over in Qatar is tweeting out about Black girl magic to the Afghan women.
00:17:16.000 I'm not kidding.
00:17:16.000 That's an actual thing that she did last week because it's Black History Month.
00:17:19.000 So she's worried about Afghan women getting on board with the black girl magic.
00:17:23.000 Meanwhile, they are being oppressed and shoved into basements and raped.
00:17:26.000 So good times over there.
00:17:28.000 As far as the risky notion, again, this is an attempt to prop up Joe Biden as a non weakling in the aftermath of the Chinese balloon fiasco.
00:17:34.000 And it was a fiasco.
00:17:37.000 So this was the entire pitch.
00:17:38.000 So Joe Biden goes to Kiev and he says, America stands with you and the world stands with you.
00:17:41.000 And there's another element here, which is that Joe Biden is now attempting, believe it or not, to polarize American support around Ukraine.
00:17:48.000 So there are a lot of members of the right who are becoming very uneasy with the length that this war is going on, because the longer it goes on, they fear the greater a shot that Vladimir Putin uses a nuclear weapon or something unexpected happens.
00:17:57.000 And again, those are those are thoroughly decent concerns in many arenas.
00:18:03.000 But what Joe Biden is looking at is he's looking at the polls.
00:18:06.000 And what the polls show right now is that the Ukraine war is becoming more and more partisan.
00:18:11.000 According to an AP NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 48% of Americans say they favor the United States providing weapons to Ukraine.
00:18:20.000 29% are opposed.
00:18:21.000 22% say that they are neither in favor nor opposed.
00:18:24.000 So it's not like super robust support for the Ukraine war. 37% Of Americans are in favor of sending government funds directly to Ukraine.
00:18:34.000 37% in favor, 38% opposed.
00:18:38.000 And this does, again, split along partisan lines.
00:18:41.000 Among Republicans, 76% of Americans say they have hardly any confidence in Joe Biden's handling of the situation.
00:18:48.000 Among Democrats, only 40%, by the way, say they have a great deal of confidence in Biden.
00:18:52.000 50% say they have some confidence.
00:18:55.000 So there is, in fact, a partisan gap and Biden is attempting to essentially drive a wedge here.
00:19:01.000 That is why he is doing this, because he could have just continued to operate on the bipartisan consensus of sending enough money to Ukraine to allow them to repel the Russians.
00:19:08.000 And instead, he's deciding to blow this thing up on the global stage.
00:19:10.000 Here was Joe Biden over yesterday.
00:19:14.000 One year later, he stands and Ukraine stands.
00:19:21.000 Democracy stands.
00:19:23.000 The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.
00:19:29.000 Now, again, if you look at the partisan breakdown, 40% of Democrats say the United States should have a major role in Ukraine.
00:19:35.000 Only 17% of Americans say the United States should have a major role in Ukraine.
00:19:38.000 Now, again, that's undefined.
00:19:39.000 I don't think anyone Democrat Republican wants to put American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
00:19:43.000 That's not something anybody wants.
00:19:46.000 But it is true that Joe Biden is attempting to exploit this by essentially ratcheting up tensions around Ukraine, I assume for domestic political purposes.
00:19:54.000 So Joe Biden says support will come for as long as it takes.
00:19:57.000 Now, again, that's a lie.
00:19:59.000 It's not going to come for as long as it takes.
00:20:00.000 There will be an end date here.
00:20:02.000 There's an end date everywhere.
00:20:03.000 Here was Joe Biden.
00:20:05.000 Together, we've committed nearly 700 tanks and thousands of armored vehicles.
00:20:14.000 1,000 artillery systems, all to defend Ukraine.
00:20:18.000 And that doesn't count the other half a billion dollars we're announcing with you today and tomorrow.
00:20:25.000 All walks of life.
00:20:28.000 It's astounding.
00:20:30.000 Astounding.
00:20:32.000 Remind us that freedom is priceless.
00:20:37.000 It's worth fighting for for as long as it takes.
00:20:42.000 And that's how long we're going to be with you, Mr. President, for as long as it takes.
00:20:49.000 OK, I'm sorry, but hearing the man who pulled out of Afghanistan say we're going to be there as long as it takes, it's obviously not true.
00:20:55.000 So then the question becomes, why exactly?
00:20:56.000 I keep coming back to this.
00:20:58.000 Why is he doing the trip right now?
00:20:59.000 Why are we supporting Ukraine?
00:21:01.000 We should support Ukraine to repel Russia, and then we should look for an off ramp.
00:21:05.000 I think everybody generally is on board with that particular sentiment.
00:21:07.000 There's some people who don't want to support Ukraine at all.
00:21:10.000 I frankly disagree with that argument.
00:21:11.000 Fine.
00:21:12.000 But that does not answer the question as to why Biden is ratcheting things up right now when theoretically we should be looking to pursue some sort of end to this thing.
00:21:21.000 Vladimir Zelensky, he said that Joe Biden's visit is a strong signal.
00:21:25.000 So he's going to take advantage of this.
00:21:26.000 I mean, his defense secretary literally said over the weekend that he wanted to see Ukrainian tanks in Red Square in Moscow, which I don't know about ratcheting up tensions, but that seems like not a great comment.
00:21:37.000 Good morning to everybody.
00:21:40.000 President Biden, that is so important signal for us, and all we are proud of it.
00:21:48.000 Thank you very much for coming, Mr. President, and a huge moment of support for Ukraine.
00:21:54.000 And what can I say?
00:21:57.000 I really appreciate that President Biden, American society, being from the very beginning of this tragedy, from the very beginning of this full-scale war, from the first day it's been together with us.
00:22:14.000 Okay, so in a second we're going to get to the actual rationale for why Biden is doing this, because it's pretty obvious from the optics of the situation why he is doing that.
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00:23:34.000 Okay, so, how do we know that this is largely optics from Joe Biden?
00:23:40.000 Well, we can tell from the optics.
00:23:41.000 So, yesterday, A clip came out of Joe Biden walking through Kiev with Vladimir Zelensky, and the air raid sirens go off.
00:23:51.000 It's curious.
00:23:52.000 It's weird.
00:23:52.000 They don't even break.
00:23:53.000 Nobody even for a second in the press pool looks around.
00:23:56.000 Normally when the air raid sirens go off, and I've been in countries when air raid sirens have gone off.
00:24:04.000 I was in Jerusalem last year.
00:24:06.000 The air raid sirens didn't actually go off in Jerusalem, but you were checking your phone consistently for where are the rocket attacks falling.
00:24:12.000 People tend to have a tendency when a giant noise goes off that says you should get to shelter, people tend to at least look in the air.
00:24:18.000 In this clip, nobody looks in the air.
00:24:19.000 There's a reason for that, as we'll explain in just a moment.
00:24:20.000 Here was Joe Biden with Vladimir Zelensky yesterday walking through Kiev.
00:24:23.000 And Well, there's only a couple of problems with that clip.
00:24:49.000 One again, nobody looks in the air while the air raid sirens are going off.
00:24:53.000 The second is that a CNN reporter then went on the air and he's like, oh yeah, by the way, um, we haven't heard an air raid siren in Kiev for like five weeks.
00:25:00.000 Literally the only moment I've heard an air raid siren for the last five weeks has been when Joe Biden walked outside with Vladimir Zelensky, which sort of suggests that what they really wanted was a photo op of big, brave Joe Biden, dark aviator glasses, dark Brandon, walking around Kiev with the air raid sirens going off like he's Winston Churchill in the rubble of London or something.
00:25:16.000 Here is a reporter from CNN pointing out the oddity of this.
00:25:20.000 I've been here for the past five days.
00:25:22.000 I have not heard any explosions.
00:25:24.000 I have not heard any air sirens until about half an hour ago, right when President Biden was in the center of Kiev, as Clarissa was just mentioning.
00:25:36.000 Weird.
00:25:37.000 Weird.
00:25:38.000 Almost as though the Eritreans were kind of staged.
00:25:40.000 Almost as though.
00:25:42.000 That's weird, is it not?
00:25:44.000 Here's the thing.
00:25:45.000 For all the talk about the risky Joe, he's so risky, man.
00:25:47.000 That risk-seeking Joe Biden.
00:25:48.000 By the way, that does not hold water for one second.
00:25:52.000 Joe Biden is the same guy who bragged about how he was not actually the guy.
00:25:58.000 Who stood in favor of the Bin Laden raid, how he was the guy who tried to tell Barack Obama not to do it.
00:26:02.000 Joe Biden, when it comes to foreign policy, is as cowardly as any president we have ever had.
00:26:06.000 So this notion that he's like, I'm so brave, I'm walking around Kiev with the air raid sirens going, yeah, I was stumbling around.
00:26:12.000 Oh, no.
00:26:14.000 And the answer is no.
00:26:15.000 How do we know the answer is no?
00:26:16.000 Because the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on national television over the weekend that the administration called the Russians and told them Joe Biden was coming.
00:26:24.000 Because they didn't want the Russians accidentally shooting the President of the United States out of the air or hitting him with a stray missile.
00:26:30.000 So, uh, yeah, there's that.
00:26:33.000 It was planned and carried out in secret by the U.S.
00:26:35.000 military and the Secret Service, the White House Press Corps, unaware that this was happening.
00:26:41.000 National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, wrapping up a call moments ago, he provided more details about the President's trip.
00:26:49.000 We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be traveling to Kiev.
00:26:54.000 We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes.
00:27:01.000 And because of the sensitive nature of those communications, I won't get into how they responded.
00:27:13.000 Oh, so, um, it wasn't risky then.
00:27:16.000 Because you told the Russians that you were doing it.
00:27:18.000 And the Russians don't actually want to get into a direct shooting war with the United States after shooting down a plane with the President of the United States on it.
00:27:24.000 And they also don't want American jets flying over Moscow after they hit the president with a stray missile or something.
00:27:30.000 So for all of the talk of risky, risky, McRiskey, no, actually, actually not so much.
00:27:34.000 Again, this didn't stop the media from doing what they do.
00:27:37.000 And because you have to understand this is an inside outside game for the Democratic administration.
00:27:40.000 Any Democratic administration essentially has its Praetorian guard who are the media who will just Gosh, endlessly about whatever a Democrat does, no matter what.
00:27:49.000 Donald Trump makes peace in the Middle East and they're like, oh, whatever, man.
00:27:53.000 Joe Biden flies to Ukraine after telling the Russians he is coming, stays there for a short period of time and then leaves.
00:27:58.000 Like, my God, it's like Winston Churchill.
00:28:00.000 Oh, he's like George Washington and Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill and God wrapped into one, one old crazy ball.
00:28:08.000 Amazing stuff.
00:28:08.000 So John Heilemann, he was losing his mind over this.
00:28:11.000 Oh, the bravery.
00:28:12.000 Oh, the unbelievable bravery.
00:28:15.000 Someone like Mike Deaver from the Reagan administration, who was the master image maker, the guy who put Ronald Reagan at Normandy, for wherever he is in the great beyond, was tipping his hat to the image makers who had those shots of Joe Biden with Zelensky in Kiev, air raid sirens blaring.
00:28:34.000 Those are the stuff of image makers and the dream of politics, right?
00:28:39.000 He's not gonna date you, dude.
00:28:40.000 not just do this thing, but look the way he did, especially when so many people say, he's too old, he's too weak, he's too frail, he's past it.
00:28:48.000 The swagger of this trip, not just the execution of the secrecy, but the swagger of it on display on the streets of Keeve.
00:28:57.000 Swag.
00:28:57.000 Is an enormous boon to him politically.
00:29:00.000 He's not gonna date you, dude.
00:29:03.000 It's not a thing.
00:29:05.000 Meanwhile, he had reporters for CNN doing the same thing.
00:29:08.000 It was so significant.
00:29:09.000 It was like Churchill.
00:29:10.000 It was like when JFK went to Berlin in 1961.
00:29:13.000 Except for not at all like that, but sure.
00:29:17.000 Presidents have visited Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, but those were U.S.
00:29:20.000 wars.
00:29:21.000 This is a Ukrainian war.
00:29:22.000 No U.S.
00:29:23.000 military presence on the ground.
00:29:24.000 How significant?
00:29:25.000 It's worth, I mean, mentioning Churchill, because Zelensky has been called the Churchill of our generation, and Biden going there today, I think it's going to be a moment for the history books.
00:29:37.000 It's like when John F. Kennedy went to Berlin in 1961 and gave a speech at the height of the Cold War.
00:29:44.000 Ukraine is the new Berlin.
00:29:46.000 It's the rally point for NATO and the Western allies.
00:29:50.000 And I think Biden did something really heroic.
00:29:56.000 It's so heroic, so heroic that he actually went to a place that he'd warned everybody that he was going about a year after everybody else went.
00:30:01.000 Just super heroic.
00:30:02.000 Not at all with a domestic political constituency in mind at all.
00:30:05.000 Just heroism.
00:30:07.000 Meanwhile, Claire McCaskill and Chris Wallace has now moved on over from Fox News to CNN.
00:30:12.000 They decided that it was very important to contrast.
00:30:14.000 This was obviously Trump.
00:30:15.000 I mean, Trump was bad.
00:30:17.000 Guys, remember, Trump was a bad guy.
00:30:18.000 Even though there was no Ukraine war while Trump was president, Trump's the problem.
00:30:22.000 Again, the way that Trump haunts their strange little brains like a demented goblin, it's so weird.
00:30:27.000 Anyway, here they are.
00:30:29.000 When that Air Force One flew over the border into Ukraine, everybody knows it was just that airplane from the United States in that airspace.
00:30:40.000 And that took courage.
00:30:42.000 And that courage is a very important component of a reelect for Joe Biden, because strength matters.
00:30:51.000 Strength matters.
00:30:53.000 Come on!
00:30:55.000 Seriously, come on.
00:30:56.000 But again, the goal here was domestic political constituencies.
00:30:59.000 I'm going to say it over and over because it happens to be the case.
00:31:01.000 Joe Biden right now is running really weak.
00:31:03.000 There are a bunch of brand new polls out showing Ron DeSantis versus Joe Biden among independents, not among Republicans and Democrats, among independents.
00:31:10.000 According to Quinnipiac, DeSantis versus Biden, direct head-to-head among independents, DeSantis is up nine.
00:31:17.000 So yeah, Joe Biden's gotta do something to recapitulate his presidency here.
00:31:31.000 He's gotta do something to reset this thing.
00:31:33.000 So he's hitting a reset button on his own presidency by going on over to Ukraine now.
00:31:36.000 The problem is that this actually has some pretty signal ramifications for actual foreign policy.
00:31:40.000 And right now, providing the kind of support Ukraine needs in order to repel Russia and push them back hard, I get it.
00:31:46.000 As I've discussed on the program before, essentially what you have between Russia and Ukraine is a prisoner's dilemma in which both sides have an interest in continuation of the war unless there's an actual on-the-ground change in the circumstance.
00:31:56.000 Unless Russia has a serious chance of losing, nothing changes.
00:31:59.000 Unless Ukraine has a serious chance of losing, nothing changes.
00:32:01.000 So, ratcheting up the pressure?
00:32:03.000 I get it.
00:32:04.000 Traveling over there to do this very loudly, I don't see how that's going to allow Putin a way out.
00:32:09.000 In fact, it's going to drive him to become louder because he needs some face-saving piece of credible withdrawal that is allowed to him here.
00:32:17.000 Well, he's not taking it.
00:32:19.000 Yesterday, Vladimir Putin made a big speech.
00:32:22.000 In which he declared that Moscow was suspending its participation in the new START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Russia over the fighting in Ukraine.
00:32:31.000 He was speaking in his State of the State address, and he said that Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the United States does so.
00:32:37.000 He accused the U.S.
00:32:38.000 and its NATO allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia's defeat in Ukraine.
00:32:42.000 He said they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time.
00:32:46.000 In this context, I have to share today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.
00:32:52.000 Now, does that actually make much of a difference?
00:32:54.000 It does not.
00:32:55.000 It is a symbolic move.
00:32:56.000 But I'll tell you what is significantly less of a symbolic move is a move by China.
00:32:59.000 Because China is now apparently openly considering the possibility of giving lethal aid to Moscow, getting indirectly involved in the war by funding Moscow the same way that the United States and NATO have been funding Ukraine.
00:33:12.000 This is not a great situation.
00:33:13.000 It suggests that some of the mid-level foreign policy staffers in the Biden administration are not very good at their jobs.
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00:35:27.000 So what are the actual impacts of what Joe Biden has been doing in Ukraine?
00:35:29.000 Well, first of all, when Joe Biden goes to Ukraine, he says things like, we must protect democracy.
00:35:33.000 We must protect liberty.
00:35:34.000 You'll notice that virtually every Explanation of why the United States ought to be funding Ukraine that I have given is utterly disconnected from this particular narrative.
00:35:43.000 The reason being, there are a lot of places around the world where we actually do not want democracy to rule.
00:35:48.000 It's just a fact of the matter.
00:35:49.000 You know, it's uncomfortable for people to think about this, but if democracy were to rule in Saudi Arabia, ISIS would probably be in charge.
00:35:56.000 If democracy were to rule in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge.
00:36:00.000 There are lots of places around the world where actually what you don't want is democracy.
00:36:05.000 What you actually want is an American ally in place to develop toward the protection of rights.
00:36:10.000 One of the things that Americans have traditionally understood is that democracy is a good, it is not the only good.
00:36:16.000 What is good for Americans is the long-scale development of property rights around the world.
00:36:21.000 The long-scale development of freedoms around the world.
00:36:24.000 And then, once that has been inculcated in a population, a population accepts all those things, then they can vote, obviously.
00:36:29.000 That's great.
00:36:29.000 Voting's great.
00:36:30.000 But only if people understand what they are able to vote on and what they are not able to vote on in the first place.
00:36:35.000 Because there are certain rights that are sacrosanct, certain things that are sacrosanct.
00:36:38.000 And if you don't have that, what you end up with is tyranny of the people.
00:36:42.000 Which is something that our founding fathers greatly opposed.
00:36:44.000 The reason that I say that is because one of the critiques and it is a correct critique of Joe Biden in Ukraine.
00:36:49.000 has come from authoritarian countries who are saying, well, you seem like you're okay with authoritarianism among your allies, and you're using Ukraine's freedom, democracy.
00:36:58.000 You're using that as sort of a prop to attack Russia.
00:37:01.000 That's not totally wrong.
00:37:02.000 We actually do have interests.
00:37:03.000 Now, those interests align with a long-term goal of democracy promotion or freedom promotion abroad and free trade abroad and capitalism abroad, right?
00:37:13.000 All of those things hold true.
00:37:14.000 That the means for the now may not match the ends for the later.
00:37:19.000 However, when Joe Biden does this sort of this highfalutin rhetoric, the goal, of course, is not to get more people on board.
00:37:24.000 The goal is domestic political constituencies.
00:37:26.000 The goal is maybe some of his allies in Europe, but it is not to, in fact, deescalate in places like China.
00:37:32.000 So China apparently is now considering lethal aid to Moscow because what China is looking at is, OK, fine, if the United States is really going to keep upping the ante in Ukraine to the point Where our ally is not just crippled in its ability to move abroad, which, by the way, does not actually harm China all that much, right?
00:37:47.000 If Russia's military is no longer able to, for example, defend its eastern border, That's actually not bad for China.
00:37:53.000 Remember, China and Russia share a border, and historically speaking, that border has been quite contentious.
00:37:58.000 And so theoretically, China could just take advantage of that.
00:38:01.000 Already, China has taken advantage of Russia's weakness in order to turn Russia into basically an oil proxy state for itself.
00:38:06.000 But if Russia were to be so internally weakened that it might take a chess piece off the board for the Chinese, that's a real problem for the Chinese.
00:38:14.000 So now they're talking openly about considering lethal aid to Moscow.
00:38:16.000 This is something the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was saying yesterday.
00:38:20.000 There is open source reporting that Chinese companies are providing surveillance equipment to that mercenary group, the Wagner group, fighting in Ukraine.
00:38:31.000 Does the U.S.
00:38:32.000 consider this to be providing military support to Russia?
00:38:36.000 The very first conversations that President Biden and President Xi had about Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, just a couple of weeks into the war, President Biden shared with President Xi our deep concern about the possibility China would provide lethal support to Russia in this effort.
00:38:57.000 Okay, so that actually is a problem, right?
00:38:59.000 We don't actually want China getting indirectly involved.
00:39:01.000 We want to deter them from doing exactly that.
00:39:04.000 Vice President Kamala Harris, the greatest and wisest, most immortal of all beings, she says that she's very troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow, which is funny because she was informed of it about 30 seconds before she went on stage, as per our usual arrangement.
00:39:18.000 We are also troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow since the war began.
00:39:29.000 Looking ahead, any steps by China to provide lethal support to Russia would only reward aggression, continue the killing, and further undermine a rules-based order.
00:39:50.000 Okay, by rules-based order, see, this is one of the big problems.
00:39:52.000 Whenever we say a rules-based international order, we should recognize foreign policy is not a place of rules.
00:39:57.000 Foreign policy is a place of wolves.
00:39:59.000 Foreign policy is a wild and chaotic place.
00:40:02.000 And so when China looks at us and they're like, uh, you guys are funding Ukraine.
00:40:04.000 Why can't we fund Russia?
00:40:06.000 You say we violate the rules-based order.
00:40:07.000 You guys are actively involving yourselves in Ukraine.
00:40:10.000 We get to do what we want on the other side.
00:40:11.000 That's not wrong.
00:40:13.000 That is not on any, I mean, it may be morally wrong because we don't like China's regime.
00:40:17.000 We don't like Russia's regime, but it is not wrong on a logical level to suggest that if you have outside funding for one side, outside funding for the other side is not verboten because clearly it is not.
00:40:26.000 The real question is going to be how we get to the aims that we wish to get to.
00:40:30.000 How do we achieve those goals?
00:40:31.000 That's the thing that we really should be worried about right now.
00:40:33.000 And de-escalation would be the way to do this, which is why visits like Joe Biden's, I'm not sure that they are, like they're not useful particularly.
00:40:39.000 It's the same thing as when Nancy Pelosi flew into Taiwan.
00:40:42.000 Listen, I'm a big supporter of the American Navy protecting Taiwan from Chinese invasion.
00:40:48.000 I think Taiwan being invaded by the Chinese would be a disaster for the world for a wide variety of reasons that we've discussed before on the program.
00:40:54.000 However, Escalatory moves, for no apparent reason, I just don't understand.
00:41:01.000 Nancy Pelosi flying to Taiwan when it didn't actually change American foreign policy in any real way.
00:41:06.000 What was the point of that?
00:41:07.000 Same sort of thing as Joe Biden flying into Ukraine.
00:41:10.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, some foreign policy strategists in Beijing have raised the question of whether China should consider providing military support to Russia for defensive purposes.
00:41:18.000 A scenario, they say, could significantly increase the cost of conflict.
00:41:20.000 That, in turn, could give China some leverage in proposing options to end the conflict.
00:41:24.000 But such a move would also stir up greater resentment against President Xi Jinping's leadership in the West.
00:41:28.000 It couldn't be determined whether the idea is gaining traction in the top leadership.
00:41:32.000 China's foreign ministry hit back at the U.S.
00:41:34.000 allegation, saying, quote, It's the U.S.
00:41:35.000 side, not the Chinese side, that's providing an endless flow of weapons.
00:41:37.000 The U.S.
00:41:38.000 side isn't qualified to point fingers at China or order China around.
00:41:41.000 We never accept the U.S.
00:41:41.000 criticizing Sino-Russia relations.
00:41:44.000 So, I mean, again, that is not totally wrong.
00:41:47.000 So the question is, do you want China to actually involve itself this way?
00:41:50.000 Part of the problem here is that we don't have actual transparency.
00:41:53.000 We have no clue what sort of negotiations, if any, are taking place between the United States, Russia, China over any of this, like what a solution actually looks like.
00:42:01.000 All we see is the posturing on the world stage.
00:42:04.000 If all we see is the posturing and there actually is nothing going on behind the scenes, which is kind of what I suspect, Then you are sleepwalking your way into a deeper and broader conflict.
00:42:13.000 And that is the real problem over here, which is why, again, optics, speaking loudly and carrying a medium-sized stick is not as good as carrying a big stick and speaking very, very softly.
00:42:23.000 And meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, he's obviously gearing up, I think, for a presidential run.
00:42:28.000 Come June, July, he's probably going to declare, but right now he's sort of in his pre-presidential mode.
00:42:32.000 He said over the weekend that we shouldn't forget, while the media is declaring that Joe Biden is just the strongest, most wonderful, most powerful man ever, Well, while the media is looking at Joe Biden like a piece of Arnold Schwarzenegger bodybuilding from 1982, that it was Joe Biden's weakness in Afghanistan that led to this invasion in the first place.
00:42:51.000 Here is Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
00:42:53.000 First things first, on the president's unannounced visit, is this a good move?
00:42:56.000 Well, you know, Brian, I'm reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years.
00:43:05.000 And then I'm also reminded that I don't think any of this would have happened, but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan.
00:43:17.000 So I think while he's over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, OK, he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world.
00:43:26.000 He's not done anything to secure our own border here at home.
00:43:31.000 Obviously that's a populist point that's going to reach a lot of ears.
00:43:33.000 DeSantis also said that Biden should not be giving a blank check to Ukraine, which again is a principle everybody should agree with.
00:43:38.000 There shouldn't be such a thing as blank checks generally in American policy.
00:43:40.000 I think a lot of Americans are asking, you know, how much more money?
00:43:44.000 How much more time?
00:43:45.000 How much more human suffering?
00:43:49.000 Well, they have effectively a blank check policy with no clear strategic objective identified.
00:43:55.000 And these things can escalate, and I don't think it's in our interest to be getting into proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea.
00:44:07.000 So I think it would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective that they're trying to achieve.
00:44:14.000 But just saying it's an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.
00:44:20.000 Obviously, he is exactly right about this, and this is why the posturing by Joe Biden, I think, is actually, in many ways, not useful.
00:44:26.000 It is actually counterproductive.
00:44:28.000 Okay, meanwhile, other controversy broke out over the weekend.
00:44:30.000 I don't know if you're a big fan of Roald Dahl's books.
00:44:33.000 I like Roald Dahl's books.
00:44:34.000 I've read my kids' Roald.
00:44:35.000 My son loves them.
00:44:35.000 My daughter loves them.
00:44:36.000 This would be like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda or James and the Giant Peach.
00:44:40.000 Well, now, the Wokies have come for the literature.
00:44:43.000 So it was only a matter of time.
00:44:45.000 Apparently, Puffin Books is now rewriting, I'm not kidding you, rewriting Roald Dahl's children's books.
00:44:52.000 Apparently, the Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that hundreds of words, including descriptions of characters' appearances, races, and genders, had now been changed or removed in at least 10 of the author's 19 children's books.
00:45:03.000 A review of the author's works began in 2020, according to the New York Times, before Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the author's copyrights and trademarks.
00:45:12.000 According to Rick Bahari, a company spokesperson, when publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it's not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details, including a book's cover and page layout.
00:45:21.000 Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text.
00:45:27.000 Apparently, the changes reported by The Telegraph includes, characters are no longer described as fat.
00:45:34.000 Because apparently, that's offensive to people, is if you describe certain characters as fat.
00:45:41.000 And also, references to mothers and fathers have been removed, and now changed to parents or family, because Matilda apparently had two dads.
00:45:47.000 One of them was just trans.
00:45:49.000 Or something.
00:45:51.000 Apparently, Bahari said the estate had partnered with Inclusive Minds, an organization that champions diversity and accessibility in children's literature.
00:45:58.000 The woke censorship regime is here, and it is ugly.
00:46:01.000 And this is direct from 1984.
00:46:03.000 I mean, George Orwell's 1984, he said that we were literally going to sit there and rewrite old literature.
00:46:08.000 We're going to take out references.
00:46:09.000 We're going to change words.
00:46:10.000 Roald Dahl died in 1990.
00:46:11.000 He's been dead for 30 years.
00:46:13.000 And now they're rewriting his stuff to make it less offensive.
00:46:17.000 The group said that it helped provide valuable input when it comes to reviewing language that can be damaging and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
00:46:24.000 This, of course, is an absurdity.
00:46:26.000 The changes are ridiculous, by the way.
00:46:29.000 And if we are going to do this routine, you're literally going to just have to wipe out pretty much all literature up till the last five seconds.
00:46:36.000 Because we have jumped into a brave new world when it comes to our gender and racial politics, in which we are apparently not allowed to say that men are different from women.
00:46:50.000 And we're also not allowed to point out anything remotely offensive to anyone, or even to read historically stuff that is actually offensive and then say, yeah, that's what people thought at the time, that was a bad thing.
00:47:02.000 The fact that they have actively changed the verbiage here is insane, and some of the changes are incredibly stupid.
00:47:09.000 I mean, I'm looking them up right now.
00:47:12.000 Some of the changes that have been made, they took out fat, ugly, and crazy.
00:47:18.000 You're not allowed to say fat or ugly or crazy.
00:47:21.000 These are all words that we still use today, by the way.
00:47:24.000 Apparently, you are no longer allowed to call Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory enormously fat.
00:47:31.000 You just call him enormous, which doesn't change it at all.
00:47:34.000 The entire premise of Augustus Gloop as a character is that he is a greedy little kid who becomes fat because he won't stop eating the candy.
00:47:40.000 I don't know how they're going to go back and remake the Gene Wilde or Willy Wonka film.
00:47:44.000 All I can tell you is I'm going to keep playing the Oompa Loompa song for my kids.
00:47:48.000 What do you do?
00:47:50.000 I'm trying to remember all the lyrics to the Oompa Loompa song now.
00:47:56.000 Right.
00:47:56.000 I know.
00:47:57.000 It's oompa loompa doopity doo.
00:47:59.000 I have another puzzle for you.
00:48:01.000 Oompa loompa doopity dee.
00:48:03.000 If you are wise, you'll listen to me.
00:48:06.000 Right?
00:48:07.000 I'm trying to remember the fat song.
00:48:08.000 There are like three of them.
00:48:09.000 Anyway, the entire premise of the song is that being incredibly greedy and fat is bad for you, right?
00:48:16.000 What do you get when you guzzle down sweets?
00:48:18.000 Eating as much as an elephant eats.
00:48:20.000 Where are you at getting terribly fat?
00:48:22.000 Oh, sorry.
00:48:23.000 Not allowed to say that.
00:48:24.000 Where are you at getting terribly enormous?
00:48:26.000 That's definitely gonna help.
00:48:28.000 Also, Ann Sponge from James and the Giant Peach is no longer the fat one.
00:48:31.000 Also, Mrs. Twit of the Twits is beastly rather than ugly.
00:48:34.000 And you're not allowed to say that somebody is mad or crazy.
00:48:37.000 The craziest change, by the way, so they said that the Cloud Men from James and the Giant Peach are now Cloud People?
00:48:42.000 Honestly, I think that the craziest change actually here, the Roald Dahl change that's the craziest, is that they change a list of books that Matilda is reading at the library.
00:48:51.000 To ban Rudyard Kipling but keep Ernest Hemingway in.
00:48:55.000 Which is weird because Ernest Hemingway was a super giant terrible sexist and kind of a bad person.
00:49:01.000 Rudyard Kipling has now been replaced.
00:49:03.000 Joseph Conrad, who wrote Lord Jim, who wrote a bunch of classics in the genre, he's also been replaced with Jane Austen.
00:49:14.000 Rudyard Kipling was replaced with John Steinbeck.
00:49:16.000 Now listen, I love John Steinbeck.
00:49:18.000 I'm lukewarm on Jane Austen.
00:49:19.000 But you don't just get to change faves of Matilda's here.
00:49:23.000 Like Heart of Darkness is still a classic.
00:49:26.000 This is what we do now.
00:49:27.000 And this is why people have been saying you should not buy digital copies of things.
00:49:30.000 You should buy actual hard copies of things because once the digital copies are there, they can just change them at a moment's notice.
00:49:35.000 You're seeing this, by the way, in terms of chat GPT and AI.
00:49:38.000 All the limitations that are placed there are insane.
00:49:40.000 Over the weekend, for example, AI Chat GPT revealed that if you try to rank Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson in terms of controversy from 0 to 10, they rank alongside Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.
00:49:51.000 This is how Chat GPT's presets are made.
00:49:53.000 The AI Chat GPT.
00:49:57.000 The perversion of kids' brains that are going to be created by simply barring them from seeing material that we don't want them to see in the name of wokeness is totally crazy.
00:50:05.000 Now, speaking of nastiness and meanness, I have to say it is kind of fun when the left comes for one of their own.
00:50:11.000 So this finally happened to Don Lemon.
00:50:13.000 So you will notice that the attacks on Nikki Haley have been ramping up from the left because the left actually wants Donald Trump to be the nominee.
00:50:19.000 He makes them a living.
00:50:20.000 When Donald Trump is in the news, the ratings are up.
00:50:22.000 When Donald Trump is out of the news, the ratings are down.
00:50:24.000 Not only that, the Democrats obviously think that Donald Trump is an easier candidate to run against than some of the others, so they are attacking with alacrity anybody who's not named Donald Trump who's in the race.
00:50:31.000 Right now, there's only one person not named Donald Trump who's in the race, and that person is Nikki Haley.
00:50:35.000 So over the weekend, Nikki Haley, she was, again, making the point that you don't have to be 80 years old in order to run for president, which, again, is a pretty good point.
00:50:42.000 I think that we are all tired of the octogenarians running the show.
00:50:44.000 Here was Nikki Haley over the weekend.
00:50:47.000 You know, America first, America should be powerful.
00:50:48.000 Those are things that any GOP candidate is going to say, so why you?
00:50:54.000 Why not me?
00:50:55.000 You know, I am the wife of a combat veteran.
00:50:58.000 I'm a mother of two children.
00:51:00.000 One who's getting married, and I see how hard it is for her to look at buying a home.
00:51:04.000 One that's in college, and I see what he's dealing with with woke education.
00:51:07.000 You know, I'm the daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what's happening at the border.
00:51:12.000 I think we need mental competency tests for people over the age of 75, and I think we need far more transparency than we're seeing today.
00:51:20.000 What I do strongly believe is the American people need options.
00:51:23.000 I don't think you have to be 80 years old to be in Washington, D.C.
00:51:28.000 Okay, this is a normal and fair point, and it has driven the left absolutely batty.
00:51:33.000 So, we saw Whoopi Goldberg over the weekend suggest that Nikki Haley is not a new generation.
00:51:39.000 How can you say she's a new generation?
00:51:41.000 Whoopi Goldberg is 67 years old.
00:51:42.000 Nikki Haley is 51 years old.
00:51:44.000 Donald Trump is nearing 80.
00:51:45.000 Joe Biden is 80.
00:51:47.000 So yeah, technically speaking, she is in fact a new generation, but here is Whoopi Goldberg speaking for the youth of America.
00:51:53.000 Now that's what they're saying, suddenly.
00:51:56.000 Everybody says, oh yeah, we should reflect all of us.
00:51:58.000 Okay.
00:52:00.000 Well, here's a clip.
00:52:01.000 Gen Z and millennials make up about a third of the country, but we're nowhere near a third of the government and think we need a government that needs to look like the country.
00:52:08.000 It's time for a new generation of Republican leadership.
00:52:12.000 The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again.
00:52:18.000 It's time for a new generation of leadership.
00:52:21.000 You're not a new generation.
00:52:22.000 You're 51.
00:52:22.000 What are you talking about?
00:52:26.000 And I love all of the crazy 40 year old women in the audience cheering.
00:52:30.000 Oh, you're not a new generation.
00:52:31.000 Oh, my God.
00:52:31.000 Oh, my God.
00:52:34.000 This has been the pitch.
00:52:35.000 The pitch has been that Nikki Haley is bad in a token.
00:52:38.000 Also, Wajahat Ali, who writes occasionally for The New York Times and is terrible.
00:52:42.000 He said on MSNBC that Haley is a Manchurian candidate for whiteness, which is a hell of a take.
00:52:48.000 You mentioned that the guy in the 1920s who declared himself white.
00:52:53.000 I mean, there's reporting from a local paper that Nikki Haley once declared herself white on a voter registration form.
00:52:58.000 Waj, your thoughts on this?
00:53:00.000 I mean, you wrote a book about growing up brown in America.
00:53:03.000 Will you be cheering on fellow brown American, fellow child of South Asian immigrants, Nikki Haley, and what she stands for?
00:53:10.000 To quote Zora Neale Hurston, not all skinfolk are kinfolk.
00:53:14.000 Nikki Haley instead is the Dinesh D'Souza of Candace Owens.
00:53:17.000 She's the Alpha Karen with brown skin.
00:53:20.000 And for white supremacists and racists, she's the perfect Manchurian candidate.
00:53:24.000 And instead of applauding her, I am just disgusted by people like Nikki Haley who know better, whose parents were the beneficiaries, as Asha said, of the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act, which passed thanks to those original BLM protesters and the Civil Rights Act.
00:53:41.000 Uh, that is such insane stupidity.
00:53:44.000 I don't even know where to begin with that.
00:53:45.000 First of all, anybody who disagrees with Shahad Ali is not legitimately a minority is a hell of a take.
00:53:49.000 Manny Hassan suggesting that Nikki Haley filed is white in her home state is absurd.
00:53:53.000 There was no category for South Asian on the actual census form.
00:53:57.000 And so your choices were Caucasian or black.
00:53:59.000 And so she chose Caucasian as many Indian Americans did, meaning like from India.
00:54:05.000 This sort of hatred directed at Nikki Haley, there's only one rationale for it.
00:54:08.000 I mean, aside from the fact that she's a Republican.
00:54:10.000 And the rationale is they kind of want Trump to be the nominee, Tara Setmire, who's supposedly an anti-Trump Republican.
00:54:14.000 Ha ha ha.
00:54:15.000 She says that Nikki Haley is a token, of course.
00:54:18.000 The executive director of the AAPI Victory Alliance told NBC, I think people can see through her much better now than ever before, so she can try to talk about her immigrant background.
00:54:28.000 I think it's going to fall flat.
00:54:30.000 Do you agree with that?
00:54:32.000 I mean, and if so, why won't that work for her?
00:54:36.000 Well, I mean, I can't speak on behalf of the Indian American community because I'm not part of that, but I can see where the comparisons would be to where oftentimes Republicans will try to use immigrants or minorities as tokens to try to deflect away from policies and positions that are actually exclusive of those communities.
00:54:56.000 And Nikki Haley is no different than a lot of the rest of them.
00:55:01.000 And then she's no different.
00:55:02.000 OK, so I do love that for the left, you can be as racially offensive as you want, but it's ageism that's the real problem.
00:55:07.000 Apparently, Don Lemon has now been forced into DEI training, which is hysterically funny.
00:55:12.000 So you'll recall that last week, Don Lemon suggested that Nikki Haley was pastor prime because women in their prime are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, by which he apparently meant sexual prime, which is something he's an expert on.
00:55:21.000 His female sexual prime is gay man Don Lemon.
00:55:23.000 Very, very expert at this.
00:55:24.000 So now he's been forced into DEI training, which the irony is just too rich for words.
00:55:28.000 Apparently, Chris Licht, the network's chief executive, said that Lemon would return to the network's air on Wednesday.
00:55:34.000 But he had to participate in formal training following sexist comments he made last week.
00:55:39.000 Now again, this sort of formal training is ridiculous because it never achieves anything.
00:55:45.000 Don Lemon is 56 years old.
00:55:46.000 He ain't changing his ways.
00:55:47.000 He's made millions of dollars to be as annoying and jackass as he is.
00:55:51.000 But Licht wrote in a memo, I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation.
00:55:54.000 He has agreed to participate in formal training as well as continuing to listen and learn.
00:55:58.000 We take the situation very seriously.
00:56:00.000 It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn, and grow from their mistakes.
00:56:07.000 The irony of Don Lemon, a gay black man, having to sit through diversity training is almost too rich.
00:56:12.000 It is almost too rich.
00:56:14.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then we'll get to some things that I hate.
00:56:19.000 So, things that I like.
00:56:21.000 First thing that I like, the House Republicans have now given access to Tucker Carlson to 44,000 hours, 41,000 hours of capital surveillance footage from the January 6th riot.
00:56:33.000 I think this is good.
00:56:34.000 And full transparency would have been a good thing in the first place.
00:56:36.000 I am bewildered as to why House Democrats didn't do this.
00:56:38.000 If they were so confident about their narrative, that there was no one encouraging the riots, or that the police were not facilitating, or any of this sort of stuff, then why not just release all the footage?
00:56:47.000 I'm always very curious when people won't release all the footage in cases like this.
00:56:51.000 It's always strange.
00:56:53.000 Maybe they have some reasons they haven't quite expressed as of yet, but releasing it to Tucker, the left, of course, is going nuts, because how dare you give it to Tucker Carlson?
00:56:59.000 Well, why not?
00:57:00.000 You guys give it to your favorite people in the media all the time.
00:57:03.000 Apparently, according to Axios, Carlson says, if there's ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6th.
00:57:10.000 By definition, the video will reveal it.
00:57:11.000 It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.
00:57:15.000 This is correct.
00:57:16.000 I'm very confused as to why it was not given out to the public in the first place.
00:57:21.000 Like, make it searchable online if you can.
00:57:23.000 What's the problem with it?
00:57:24.000 So good for Kevin McCarthy for doing that.
00:57:26.000 I think that, again, transparency is in the public interest, particularly on matters of high public tension like this one.
00:57:32.000 Okay, other things that I like.
00:57:33.000 So over the weekend, Bernie Sanders has a new book coming out.
00:57:37.000 The fact that Bernie Sanders is considered like an actual valuable human in today's political day and age demonstrates how crazy today's politics are.
00:57:45.000 He has a book titled, It's Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism.
00:57:49.000 It is by Bernie Sanders, as well as John Nichols, who I guess is probably his ghostwriter or something.
00:57:56.000 And presumably it is about his lake house.
00:58:00.000 According to his Amazon description, a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.
00:58:12.000 So it'd be Das Kapital from the senator from Vermont who has been a career useless person, like totally useless his entire career.
00:58:18.000 So useless he was kicked out of a commune when he was a younger man.
00:58:21.000 So useless that he was kind of a deadbeat with regard to his own kids apparently for a while.
00:58:26.000 Sanders argues that unfettered capitalism is to blame for an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality is undermining our democracy and is destroying our planet.
00:58:33.000 How can we accept an economic order that allows three billionaires?
00:58:36.000 How can we accept a political system?
00:58:37.000 This, by the way, is always the shtick of our newfangled socialists.
00:58:41.000 How can we accept X?
00:58:42.000 And then you're like, well, what is the alternative to X?
00:58:45.000 It doesn't even matter.
00:58:45.000 How can we accept it?
00:58:46.000 Well, what's your plan for not being?
00:58:48.000 We're not going to talk about that.
00:58:49.000 We're not going to talk about that.
00:58:50.000 How can we accept that things happen in life?
00:58:53.000 Why do we allow people to die?
00:58:55.000 There should be no death.
00:58:56.000 Death is very bad.
00:58:57.000 You know, like, well, can you explain how you're going to cure?
00:59:00.000 Nope.
00:59:00.000 It's a result of capitalism.
00:59:03.000 If you just replace everything that Bernie Sanders asks about with the word death, you understand how nonsensical any of his arguments are?
00:59:08.000 Because again, he doesn't ever argue for his preventative measures.
00:59:13.000 All he does is just critique the status quo, which is the easiest game in the entire world.
00:59:19.000 He says the path forward has to be... Okay, so he was asked over the weekend by Margaret Brennan on CBS News about the fact that he is now doing events where the tickets are selling for 95 bucks a pop.
00:59:28.000 If you're a good communist, why aren't they free?
00:59:31.000 Why don't you eat the cost?
00:59:32.000 You're rich.
00:59:33.000 He has no good answer.
00:59:35.000 Tickets for your tour apparently are selling for $95 on Ticketmaster, which is accused of anti-competitive behavior.
00:59:42.000 You know that.
00:59:43.000 Some of your Democrats are criticizing them.
00:59:45.000 Aren't you benefiting yourself from the system that you're trying to dismantle?
00:59:48.000 First of all, those decisions are made totally by the publisher and the bookseller.
00:59:53.000 I think there's one case where in one place here in Washington, politics and pros and independent books are charging some tickets.
01:00:00.000 Most of them, I think, are $40, $50.
01:00:02.000 And you get a book as well.
01:00:04.000 So if you want to come, you're going to have to pay $40.
01:00:06.000 I'll throw in the book for free.
01:00:08.000 And we're doing a number of free events.
01:00:10.000 But I don't make a nickel out of these things.
01:00:12.000 But you're OK doing business with Ticketmaster?
01:00:14.000 No, not particularly.
01:00:15.000 But that's, again, nothing to do with that.
01:00:17.000 That is, if you wrote a book, probably be the same process.
01:00:22.000 I have a question.
01:00:24.000 Did he get an advance?
01:00:25.000 How much money is he actually making off of his book?
01:00:27.000 How much money is made total?
01:00:28.000 That dude has a lake house.
01:00:29.000 Do you have a lake house?
01:00:30.000 Bernie Sanders should not.
01:00:31.000 He is a socialist.
01:00:32.000 Redistribute your lake house, dude.
01:00:34.000 That's his third house, I believe.
01:00:36.000 So good stuff there from Bernie.
01:00:38.000 And you have to love the irony of all these very, very wealthy socialists who live in enormous houses.
01:00:44.000 Bernie Sanders, Hassan Piker.
01:00:46.000 Joe Biden is doing real well for himself.
01:00:48.000 It's a wonderful thing to be able to live off the excesses of capitalism while criticizing the system that makes you rich and famous.
01:00:54.000 It really is a wonderful thing.
01:00:55.000 Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
01:01:01.000 Alright, so, things that I hate.
01:01:03.000 So James O'Keefe has now apparently been thrown out of Project Veritas, which means Project Veritas no longer has, like, any reason for being, from what I understand.
01:01:11.000 The rationale for him being thrown out of Project Veritas is absolutely unclear.
01:01:14.000 They're claiming that he was mean to employees or something, which is a Strange claim for why you would throw out the face of the organization, the only prominent person who works at your organization, and the lead fundraiser for your organization.
01:01:26.000 Project Veritas, of course, James has spent years going undercover.
01:01:29.000 I've known James since before the ACORN scandal broke during the Andrew Breitbart days.
01:01:35.000 That's going back, you know, 15 years.
01:01:37.000 And James has always been somebody who's very controversial, goes about things in his own way.
01:01:42.000 He also happens to be responsible for breaking an enormous amount of news over the course of the last 15 years by going undercover and by actually getting people to admit things on tape that they would rather not have admitted on tape, including most recently admissions from high-ranking members of Pfizer that they were engaged in what kind of sounds like gain-of-function research.
01:02:00.000 Well now, according to the Washington Post, Project Veritas ...has split with O'Keefe, the group's founder and chairman, following a bitter management dispute that pulled back the curtain of allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money.
01:02:11.000 The group's executive director informed some staff on Monday that O'Keefe had issued an ultimatum demanding the board of directors resign as a condition for him to stay.
01:02:18.000 And apparently the board of directors said that they then removed him.
01:02:21.000 Now, I don't know how he constructed his board.
01:02:22.000 Typically, when you construct a board of directors for a 501c3, you put allies on the board.
01:02:26.000 So maybe there are other issues we don't know about.
01:02:27.000 If there are no other issues we don't know about, if what all that's happening here is that the board doesn't like how James is running the organization, I do not understand the logic here.
01:02:34.000 James, effectively speaking, is the public face of the organization.
01:02:39.000 Here was James announcing his ouster yesterday.
01:02:43.000 The only way to defeat us is if they take our spirit.
01:02:48.000 And from the looks of things, many of us remain completely undefeated.
01:02:52.000 And unbroken.
01:02:55.000 So, our mission continues on.
01:02:59.000 I'm not done.
01:03:01.000 The mission will perhaps take on a new name.
01:03:04.000 And it may be no longer called Veritas, Project Veritas.
01:03:08.000 I'll need a bunch of people around me and I'll make sure, I'll make sure you know how to find me.
01:03:19.000 And I'll quote the, when you invited me to New York City and did that little stand up, how fitting that from Shakespeare, quote, and this story shall the good man teach his son.
01:03:34.000 We few.
01:03:35.000 We happy few.
01:03:38.000 We band of brothers and sisters.
01:03:39.000 Okay, so James is obviously going to continue to be successful.
01:03:46.000 He'll go and find and found another organization if he has to.
01:03:50.000 I am confused as to what exactly was going on inside the organization, unless they are fully transparent about what went on here.
01:03:55.000 And again, there's a part of the story that's not being told.
01:03:57.000 It makes no sense to me.
01:03:58.000 And it is a loss to