The Ben Shapiro Show - It’s War | Ep. 1440

00:00:00.000 Vladimir Putin begins a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Americans prepare for higher gas prices, and the Chinese watch with interest as the world reacts.

00:00:08.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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00:00:25.000 Well, you may have noticed a lot of chaos on the world stage.

00:00:28.000 We're going to get to all of the extraordinary news in just one moment.

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00:01:30.000 All right, so late last night, the Russian military began attacking targets all over Ukraine.

00:01:36.000 We have a map of the attacks.

00:01:38.000 It was not just in the eastern regions, the separatist regions of Ukraine, which is pilot in that sort of shaded yellow on the right-hand side of the map.

00:01:47.000 It is all over Ukraine, including near Kiev.

00:01:50.000 The Russian military has crossed the border in a wide variety of places.

00:01:53.000 This is, in fact, a full-scale assault on Ukraine. 0.57

00:01:58.000 Vladimir Putin announced that this would happen last night.

00:02:00.000 He is suggesting, of course, that this is denazification of Ukraine.

00:02:04.000 He called the invasion a special operation, did the president of the Russian state.

00:02:11.000 He suggested that this was temporary.

00:02:13.000 He said it's not going to be an occupation.

00:02:15.000 We're just going to denazify.

00:02:16.000 What he means by denazify, Zelensky, by the way, the president of Ukraine, is Jewish.

00:02:20.000 He says he's going to denazify.

00:02:22.000 What he means by this is that he is going to set up another Russian puppet state in Ukraine by deposing the current leadership of Ukraine.

00:02:28.000 If that means tens of thousands of casualties and millions of refugees, then so be it. 1.00

00:02:32.000 Here was Vladimir Putin last night.

00:02:38.000 He says I decided to conduct a special military operation.

00:02:44.000 It aims to protect people who have been bullied and subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.

00:02:54.000 For that, we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. 0.99

00:02:58.000 The reason that he is invoking the Nazis, of course, is because in the sort of Soviet mind, The idea that justified the Soviet regime was the resistance to the Nazis in World War II.

00:03:07.000 Forget about the fact that they originally allied with the Nazis in World War II.

00:03:09.000 It was the resistance to the Nazis in World War II.

00:03:12.000 And so Putin is calling on that storied history in order to invoke some rationale for why, in fact, he is invading Ukraine at this point.

00:03:21.000 The New York Times has live updates, and the live updates are stunning because you are seeing attack after attack on high-profile target after high-profile target.

00:03:30.000 The videos are amazing.

00:03:32.000 Here are some of the explosions in Kiev, for example.

00:03:40.000 You can see the ordnance hitting.

00:03:42.000 You can see the sky lighting up.

00:03:47.000 A lot of these sorts of clips are going around.

00:03:50.000 targets being blown up by the Russian military.

00:03:53.000 This is not a quiet cleanup mission, as Putin likes to suggest.

00:04:02.000 Everybody knows what this is.

00:04:03.000 He's attempting to fully decapitate the Ukrainian administration, which had made the grave mistake for years of not being openly allied with the Russians.

00:04:13.000 According to the New York Times, Ukrainian forces are in all-out defense mode to repel a multi-pronged Russian assault by land, sea, and air.

00:04:19.000 The Ukrainian military claims to have shot down several Russian military aircraft.

00:04:22.000 Civilians lined up at recruitment offices to take up arms against Vladimir Putin's forces.

00:04:27.000 More than 40 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed already.

00:04:29.000 Dozens were wounded in fighting on Thursday morning, according to Alexei Aristovich, an advisor to President Vladimir Putin.

00:04:35.000 The country's foreign minister, Dmitry Kuleba, said Ukraine was facing a full-scale attack from multiple directions, but that it continues to defend itself from Russian advance.

00:04:43.000 Initial reports of the fighting suggested that Russian forces had crossed into Ukraine at multiple points, with helicopter-borne troops flying in under cover of machine gun fire, naval units coming ashore in the southern port city of Odessa, military vehicles crossing in from Crimea, that's the peninsula that Russia seized, to the west.

00:04:58.000 Nothing in 2014.

00:05:00.000 Remember the West did nothing in 2014 when they seized Crimea.

00:05:02.000 So all of the areas that Russia had essentially seized have been used as staging points for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

00:05:09.000 Ukrainian forces said they had shot down several Russian fighters and a helicopter in an increasingly intense battle to maintain control over key cities.

00:05:16.000 According to a senior Ukrainian military official, Ukrainian troops had also repelled Russian advances on two major cities, Chernihiv in the north near the Belarus border, which Belarus is allied with the Russians, and Kharkiv in the northeast, close to Russia.

00:05:28.000 The Ukrainian army is badly outgunned and outmanned by Russian forces, but in one indication it was mounting resistance.

00:05:33.000 Two Russian armored personnel carriers were seen damaged.

00:05:35.000 One crashed into a tree in an eastern Ukrainian town.

00:05:39.000 Apparently the refugees have already started to flow into Poland by the thousands, and it's likely to get worse. 1.00

00:05:46.000 Well, as you can see from the news, it is a very risky world out there.

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00:06:58.000 What's going on right here is in fact, a challenge to the West.

00:07:01.000 That doesn't mean the West is in a place where it can put troops into Ukraine without fear of an all out war with Russia.

00:07:07.000 It also doesn't mean that sanctions are gonna be sufficient to deter Russia.

00:07:11.000 This is the natural outgrowth of decades of the West basically deciding after the Cold War that it was going to focus inward, that it was going to spend inordinate amounts of money, that it was going to cripple its own natural energy independence, that it was going to kowtow to aggressive foreign powers like China and Russia in order to avoid conflict.

00:07:27.000 And it is no wonder that Russia has decided it's going to make a move like this. 0.64

00:07:30.000 Now, we in the West don't understand this kind of move.

00:07:32.000 We don't understand why China would try to take Hong Kong.

00:07:32.000 We don't.

00:07:34.000 We don't understand why the Taliban would try to take Afghanistan.

00:07:36.000 We don't understand why Iran would be threatening Israel. 0.86

00:07:39.000 We don't understand any of these things.

00:07:40.000 And the reason we don't understand any of these things is because we in the West used to be animated by something like a higher purpose.

00:07:48.000 The idea that we were a fundamental force in favor of freedom and liberty.

00:07:55.000 And what we used to call Western civilization.

00:07:58.000 And we've lost that.

00:07:59.000 And this has been an ongoing battle in the West for a very, very long time.

00:08:03.000 The substitution of materialist hedonism in favor of some sort of higher purpose has been a serious battle.

00:08:08.000 I was reading last night one of the best political essays ever written by George Orwell about Hitler.

00:08:13.000 And this is not me saying that Vladimir Putin is Hitler, because Vladimir Putin is not Hitler. 0.90

00:08:17.000 He's a thug dictator of a second-rate backwater economy. 0.96

00:08:22.000 with imperial aspirations. 1.00

00:08:23.000 But he is not genocidal in the way that Hitler was, although he is in fact a murderer. 0.79

00:08:28.000 But the essay is making a broader point, this Orwell essay.

00:08:33.000 And I think it's important for us to understand this because we have a weird parochialism in the West.

00:08:36.000 We like nice houses.

00:08:37.000 We like nice cars.

00:08:38.000 We like nice things.

00:08:39.000 We like being able to speak freely.

00:08:41.000 We like the lives that we've created.

00:08:43.000 And we don't know why everybody doesn't see this as the end goal.

00:08:48.000 You know, this is why we think that sanctions will work against Russia.

00:08:50.000 Because, I mean, if we impoverish Russia, don't the Russians want to be more wealthy?

00:08:55.000 Don't they want to have slightly nicer Dachas? 1.00

00:08:58.000 Don't they want to have better clothes? 0.99

00:08:59.000 Don't they want to have Levi's?

00:09:01.000 So George Orwell wrote about this in 1940.

00:09:03.000 He said, Hitler has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. 0.70

00:09:08.000 Nearly all Western thought since the last war, certainly all progressive thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain.

00:09:17.000 In such a view of life, there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues.

00:09:21.000 The socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers. 0.64

00:09:26.000 Tin pacifists somehow won't do.

00:09:28.000 Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth control, and in general, common sense. 0.86

00:09:37.000 They also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags, and loyalty parades.

00:09:43.000 However they may be, as economic theories, fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.

00:09:49.000 The same is probably true of Stalin's militarized version of socialism.

00:09:52.000 All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples.

00:09:57.000 Whereas socialism and even capitalism, in a more grudging way, has said to people, I offer you a good time, Hitler has said to them, I offer you struggle, danger, and death.

00:10:04.000 And as a result, a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

00:10:06.000 Perhaps later on they'll get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war, after a few years of slaughter and starvation, greatest happiness of the greatest number is a good slogan.

00:10:14.000 But at the moment, better an end with honor than a horror without end is a winner.

00:10:17.000 Now that we're fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate his emotional appeal.

00:10:21.000 George Orwell wrote that in March of 1940.

00:10:23.000 Right before the all-out assault on the continent had already begun by that point.

00:10:31.000 Well, you see the same sort of feeling crop up for Vladimir Putin.

00:10:36.000 People wonder why Putin is doing what he's doing. 0.87

00:10:37.000 They keep calling him a madman. 0.84

00:10:38.000 He's not a madman.

00:10:40.000 Vladimir Putin has been very clear about his intentions.

00:10:41.000 He wishes to reconstitute the Soviet Empire.

00:10:43.000 It's why he's made aggressive moves in Georgia.

00:10:45.000 It's why he's made aggressive moves in Ukraine before.

00:10:47.000 It's why he's made aggressive moves in Kazakhstan.

00:10:49.000 He wants to... He's been very clear about this.

00:10:51.000 He has said it over and over and over again.

00:10:54.000 And in believing this, he is revivifying a belief in the Russian people.

00:10:59.000 Because the fact is that since the end of the Cold War, there has been a tremendous amount of nostalgia in the former Soviet Union for the era of the Soviet Union.

00:11:09.000 However much we may not understand it, the reality is that Stalin remains extraordinarily popular in polls in Russia.

00:11:16.000 As of 2019, a record 70% of Russians approved of Joseph Stalin's role in Russian history.

00:11:24.000 In the early 2000s, that was not the case.

00:11:27.000 People saw Stalin as a hallmark of a bloody, terrible past.

00:11:31.000 But Putin had revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades, and Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.

00:11:37.000 And by 2019, Respondents said that 70% that Stalin played a positive role in Russian history, only 19% viewed Stalin's role negatively.

00:11:48.000 Why?

00:11:48.000 Because it turns out that there are a lot of people who are interested in the notion of Russian greatness.

00:11:54.000 After all, what else do they have to substitute for it?

00:11:56.000 A backwater economy?

00:11:58.000 Understand the entire GDP of Russia, the entire GDP of Russia is about equivalent to the state of Florida. 0.52

00:12:04.000 It's about $1.3 trillion per year.

00:12:06.000 The state of Florida is at $1.2 trillion per year.

00:12:08.000 This is not a major world power as an economy. 0.79

00:12:11.000 It is a dump.

00:12:14.000 Economically, so what exactly do you have to give your people?

00:12:17.000 Except for dreams of glory and reconstitution of a Soviet empire. 0.90

00:12:22.000 There's a great book called Secondhand Time, won the Nobel Prize a few years back by a woman named Svetlana Alexeyevich.

00:12:32.000 In this book, Secondhand Time, it's an oral history, so she went and she interviewed a bunch of people about the Soviet era.

00:12:37.000 And one of the people she interviewed was a former communist factory worker who'd been imprisoned and beaten half to death by the regime.

00:12:43.000 So you'd imagine that he didn't like the regime very much, right?

00:12:45.000 Well, a year later, he was released, and then World War II broke out.

00:12:49.000 And in the middle of World War II, he met the guy who had interrogated him, meaning who had tortured him.

00:12:53.000 And that person said, we share motherland.

00:12:56.000 Well, now...

00:12:58.000 You know, in modern times, Alekseevich interviewed this person.

00:13:01.000 And what he said is, quote, when I go into my grandchildren's room, everything in there is foreign. The shirts, the jeans, the books, the music, savages.

00:13:08.000 I want to die a communist. 0.95

00:13:09.000 That's my final wish. Well, there's a lot of truth to this perspective that you need a higher purpose in order to explain why you're here, in order to justify why you matter.

00:13:21.000 And that higher purpose isn't just going to be, well, you know, we have a slightly better economic relationship with the West than we would have if Vladimir Putin didn't invent invade Ukraine.

00:13:28.000 If you don't understand the motivation of the bad guys.

00:13:31.000 You're not going to understand how to stop them.

00:13:33.000 The West seems to be under the grave misimpression since the end of the Cold War that everybody wants the same thing that the West does.

00:13:37.000 And so we make deals with Iran.

00:13:39.000 We make deals with the Taliban. 0.99

00:13:40.000 We make deals with the Chinese.

00:13:41.000 We make deals with the Russians. 0.99

00:13:42.000 And then we're surprised when none of those deals are actually adhered to.

00:13:46.000 We spend all of our time blowing out the welfare state, destroying our own national energy independence on behalf of Swedish teens who lecture us about how terrible we are. 1.00

00:13:58.000 For wanting, you know, a functioning world order and economy.

00:14:02.000 And then all of this is slow and it doesn't have a real impact and then it all materializes at once.

00:14:06.000 And what we are watching is the quickening of history right now.

00:14:09.000 The last 20 years have been a slow roll toward what we have seen in the last three years alone.

00:14:14.000 In 2020, China invaded Hong Kong.

00:14:18.000 In 1997, the British turned over control of Hong Kong to the Chinese.

00:14:22.000 For the promise by the Chinese that they would allow autonomy in Hong Kong.

00:14:26.000 And then in 2020, the Chinese just rolled right into Hong Kong and nobody did a damn thing. 1.00

00:14:30.000 There weren't sanctions of any serious consequence.

00:14:32.000 There wasn't any world reaction.

00:14:33.000 There was nothing.

00:14:35.000 In 2020 when China did that.

00:14:38.000 And then in 2021, The Biden administration decided to turn over Afghanistan to the Taliban for no reason at all.

00:14:44.000 We're just going to turn over a country that we had guaranteed security to.

00:14:47.000 Remember, we had worked with those people.

00:14:49.000 They had worked with us.

00:14:50.000 They'd sacrificed tens of thousands of lives in a battle with the Taliban.

00:14:55.000 And we just completely undercut them.

00:14:56.000 And then we left them to starvation.

00:14:59.000 That was 2021.

00:15:00.000 And just a few months later, not even a year later, Vladimir Putin has full-scale invaded Ukraine.

00:15:05.000 Already coming up, we'll talk about what Ukraine gave up for a promise of protection from the West.

00:15:11.000 Because once again, if you're a non-aligned country or you're a country that's an American ally but not in a formal treaty agreement with the United States, Man, you best watch your back at this point.

00:15:19.000 We'll get to more on that in just one second.

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00:16:40.000 We should note that when it comes to Ukraine, the Ukrainians, again, were effectively guaranteed security by the West in exchange for turning over their nuclear weapons. 0.81

00:16:52.000 That had been a deal that the Ukrainians made all the way back in 1994.

00:17:01.000 Right after the end of the Cold War, there was really wide debate over whether or not Ukrainians should turn over their nuclear arsenal.

00:17:08.000 They had about 5,000 nuclear weapons left over after the end of the Cold War.

00:17:12.000 And there were questions, what do you do with this nuclear arsenal?

00:17:14.000 And there were some who suggested they should keep the nuclear arsenal and they should point it at Russia and say, if you cross that border, you're going to regret it.

00:17:21.000 Instead, the United States and Russia encouraged Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons.

00:17:27.000 And Ukraine did. 0.94

00:17:29.000 John Mearsheimer.

00:17:29.000 I'm not a fan of Mearsheimer, but he's right on this particular issue.

00:17:32.000 In the summer of 1993, according to the New York Times, Mearsheimer, a prominent international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, lent his voice to the issue of atomic retention.

00:17:40.000 He argued in Foreign Affairs, a nuclear arsenal was imperative if Ukraine was to maintain peace.

00:17:44.000 The deterrence, he added, would ensure that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.

00:17:49.000 In Kiev, the government went so far as to consider seizing operational control of its nuclear missiles and bombers.

00:17:55.000 That never came to pass.

00:17:56.000 Instead, Ukraine punted and demanded, in exchange for nuclear disarmament, it would need ironclad security guarantees.

00:18:02.000 There was an agreement in late 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia, Ukraine, Britain, and the United States promising that none of the nations would use force or threats against Ukraine and all would respect its sovereignty and existing borders.

00:18:13.000 That agreement also vowed that if aggression took place, the signatories would immediately seek action from the UN Security Council to aid Ukraine.

00:18:18.000 Of course, that was a ridiculous agreement on its face because the UN Security Council is a joke and always has been a joke.

00:18:24.000 I mean, Russia sits on the UN Security Council.

00:18:27.000 Russia did not get a legally binding guarantee of security, but it received assurances.

00:18:32.000 And by 1996, all of its nuclear weapons were gone.

00:18:36.000 And now, Ukraine is being invaded by Russia, and the West is basically doing nothing.

00:18:40.000 The West has issued a series of rather toothless sanctions, as we'll discuss in just one moment.

00:18:46.000 But Russia, you know, again, Russia made a promise.

00:18:51.000 Russia broke the promise.

00:18:52.000 Russia does not care. 0.82

00:18:54.000 Countries that oppose the United States in this way are forming alliances with one another.

00:18:59.000 They're not interested in the same things that we are interested in. 0.62

00:19:01.000 So the idea that we're going to levy sanctions against them and they're going to somehow stop their aggressive military action is foolishness.

00:19:07.000 You have to understand why they're doing what they're doing if you want to stop them.

00:19:10.000 If the United States had actually wanted to stop Russia from invading Ukraine, then it should have signed an actual security guarantee with Ukraine back in 1994.

00:19:17.000 Or it should have allowed Ukraine to maintain its nuclear weapons. 0.86

00:19:20.000 And by the way, if you're an American ally right now, why would you not seek to develop your own nuclear weapons?

00:19:25.000 I mean, you've seen what the U.S.

00:19:26.000 and the West do.

00:19:27.000 They make promises and then they just retreat on those promises.

00:19:31.000 They don't fulfill them in any serious way.

00:19:33.000 Why do you think that Finland, which is not part of NATO, is now seeking NATO membership?

00:19:37.000 They want a full-scale security guarantee against the Russians. 0.99

00:19:41.000 And if countries don't get that, they're not going to sit by.

00:19:43.000 They're not going to wait for the next Russian invasion or Chinese invasion or Iranian invasion. 0.56

00:19:48.000 They're not going to do that.

00:19:49.000 They're going to develop their own military capacity, their own nuclear resources.

00:19:53.000 People are going to arm up.

00:19:54.000 And if they're smart, they should arm up.

00:19:57.000 As we'll discuss in a second, all of this is a prelude to what's coming next, which is going to be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

00:20:02.000 That is the most likely next shoe to drop here.

00:20:05.000 Whether it happens this year, whether it happens next year, this is not 10 years down the road.

00:20:08.000 We are talking probably months or short years down the road when China invades Taiwan.

00:20:13.000 Because all the predicates have been set.

00:20:15.000 2020, China takes Hong Kong.

00:20:16.000 2021, we hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban. 0.98

00:20:19.000 2022, Ukraine falls to the Russians, presumably. 0.67

00:20:22.000 Because the West is not going to intervene.

00:20:23.000 The West has made clear it's not going to intervene.

00:20:26.000 The best the West here is going to do is provide weapons.

00:20:28.000 Well, if you were never going to intervene, then at the very least, you should have provided a lot more weapons.

00:20:32.000 Remember, we had intelligence back in November.

00:20:34.000 The Biden administration was claiming that Russia was about to invade.

00:20:37.000 So for three months, the West did nothing.

00:20:40.000 The West didn't even levy sanctions on energy, which is the chief Russian way of running its economy.

00:20:45.000 But we were afraid of higher oil prices, and so we didn't do it.

00:20:48.000 In fact, we still haven't done it.

00:20:51.000 It's an amazing thing.

00:20:51.000 We're going to have to have like secondary meetings to talk about whether we do that or not.

00:20:55.000 Because we were too busy, again, caving to the demands of the environmentalists to decommission nuclear plants and ensure that we were going to build more windmills or some such.

00:21:06.000 And while the situation on the ground, it's Ukraine that's now paying the price, according to CNN.

00:21:12.000 Ukrainian casualties already in the hundreds and we are just hours into this conflict.

00:21:16.000 Here's one of their reporters yesterday.

00:21:18.000 Ukraine is putting the number of casualties so far in this nationwide assault, missile assault at this stage, for the most part, in the hundreds, which is, you know, I mean, incredibly alarming.

00:21:33.000 OK, according to the Financial Times, Western security services, which have actually accurately predicted the course of events up until now.

00:21:40.000 And by the way, we should remember that for all the people who said that it was all fake, it was all phony, it was the West ramping up all of this.

00:21:45.000 That's what Putin was saying, but he was lying.

00:21:48.000 Western security services have so far been correct about this.

00:21:48.000 Don't fall for it.

00:21:51.000 They believe that Putin intends to overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a puppet regime in its place.

00:21:55.000 The decapitation strategy will take in not only the central government but also regional and local governments.

00:22:00.000 Lists have been drawn up of Ukrainian officials who will be arrested or murdered.

00:22:04.000 The military tactics Russia uses are likely to be extremely brutal, the kind of thing we saw in Syria and Chechnya, according to one U.S.

00:22:09.000 official.

00:22:11.000 Remember, this is also in the heart of Europe.

00:22:12.000 This is not a far-off place in the Middle East.

00:22:15.000 The deployment of Russian artillery and its air force would mean heavy military and civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side.

00:22:19.000 Some Western sources have spoken of 50,000 deaths within a week.

00:22:23.000 The Ukrainian military is determined to fight back.

00:22:26.000 It's likely to find itself heavily outgunned.

00:22:28.000 The Russians don't want to get involved in urban warfare if they can avoid it.

00:22:31.000 They're also determined to keep the West out of this conflict.

00:22:33.000 In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin warned outsiders tempted to interfere there would be consequences you have never encountered in your history, which is a thinly veiled reference to nuclear war.

00:22:42.000 That's very unlikely.

00:22:43.000 You're going to see foreign troops shipping into Ukraine specifically because nobody wants a direct conflict with the Russians.

00:22:48.000 Once deterrence has failed, it's over.

00:22:51.000 Right, because he called the bluff.

00:22:53.000 And the bluff, it turns out, was a bluff.

00:22:55.000 There really wasn't anything behind the bluff.

00:22:58.000 Alrighty, coming up, Joe Biden made a statement, and everybody shrugged.

00:23:02.000 And Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is pleading for peace.

00:23:05.000 It's unlikely to go heated.

00:23:07.000 We'll go to that in just one second.

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00:24:09.000 So Joe Biden, for his part, he says the world is going to react.

00:24:15.000 .

00:24:16.000 The President of the United States put out a written statement, a tweet, because he couldn't be bothered.

00:24:20.000 He was asleep.

00:24:21.000 Saying the prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces.

00:24:27.000 President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.

00:24:31.000 Well, I mean, I guess then he's going to stop now that you've tweeted that.

00:24:35.000 Hashtag united for Ukraine.

00:24:37.000 Well done, everybody.

00:24:39.000 Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine is pleading for help.

00:24:44.000 So last night, Zelensky made a speech.

00:24:46.000 It's kind of heartbreaking.

00:24:48.000 Pleading for help.

00:24:49.000 Pleading for peace.

00:24:54.000 Many of you have been to Ukraine.

00:24:56.000 Many of you have relatives in Ukraine.

00:25:01.000 Someone studied at Ukrainian universities.

00:25:03.000 You're friends with Ukrainians.

00:25:05.000 You know our character.

00:25:06.000 You know our people.

00:25:07.000 You know our prince.

00:25:08.000 You know what we are.

00:25:12.000 We value you to listen to yourself.

00:25:15.000 Listen to the voice of reason.

00:25:17.000 Common sense.

00:25:17.000 The people of Ukraine want peace.

00:25:17.000 Hear us.

00:25:22.000 The government of Ukraine wants peace and does everything it can.

00:25:24.000 We are not alone.

00:25:32.000 I mean, it's, um, that's not true.

00:25:35.000 I mean, effectively speaking, they are alone at this point.

00:25:38.000 He also suggested that Putin had ordered the invasion, which of course is true. 1.00

00:25:41.000 And then he put out a statement that everybody would be given weapons.

00:25:45.000 Things are so dire in Ukraine, they're basically just handing out weapons to anybody who's willing to defend the country at this point.

00:25:49.000 He actually tweeted it out.

00:25:53.000 Meanwhile, the Ukrainian diplomats are doing their best to raise the alarm. 0.98

00:25:59.000 The Ukrainian ambassador, he said, there's no purgatory for war criminals, you go straight to hell.

00:26:04.000 But this sort of language at the UN is likely to avail them not.

00:26:09.000 Well, as I said, relinquish your duties as a chair.

00:26:13.000 Call Putin, call Lavrov to stop aggression.

00:26:18.000 And I welcome the decision of some members of this council To meet as soon as possible to consider the necessary decision that would condemn the aggression that you launch on my people.

00:26:35.000 There is no purgatory for war criminals. 0.61

00:26:38.000 They go straight to hell, Ambassador.

00:26:43.000 Well, I mean, all of that is well and good, but words are not going to stop Vladimir Putin or China or Iran.

00:26:49.000 None of that is going to have any impact.

00:26:51.000 You can see that the fecklessness of the West here.

00:26:54.000 UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, he literally started quoting peacenik hippie songs from the 1960s in an attempt to stop Vladimir Putin yesterday.

00:27:05.000 If indeed an operation is being prepared, I have only one thing to say.

00:27:12.000 From the bottom of my heart.

00:27:16.000 President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine.

00:27:23.000 Give peace a chance.

00:27:25.000 Too many people have already died.

00:27:27.000 Thank you, Mr. President.

00:27:29.000 Okay, well, give peace a chance ain't gonna stop it.

00:27:33.000 Okay, so what is going to stop it?

00:27:35.000 Nothing that the West is attempting at this point.

00:27:36.000 And in fact, the West only has a few options to even put pressure on Putin.

00:27:42.000 Option number one is oil and natural gas.

00:27:44.000 There's only one problem.

00:27:45.000 The U.S.

00:27:46.000 has no interest in actually doing that.

00:27:47.000 The State Department literally said yesterday that they are not going to hit global energy markets.

00:27:52.000 They're afraid of the increase in gas prices, so they're actually not going to cut off at this point.

00:27:57.000 The natural gas and the oil.

00:27:58.000 And by the way, even if they do, Putin knows that's only temporary. 0.95

00:28:01.000 Because in its own idiotic, self-obsessed narcissism, the West decided the most important thing on planet Earth was to pretend that we were going to lower carbon emissions by not developing our own energy resources and instead shipping in cheap oil and gas from the Russians into Europe while building useless windmills. 0.96

00:28:18.000 That was their actual plan. 1.00

00:28:20.000 It was an idiotic plan? 0.99

00:28:21.000 I mean, listen, when Biden first came into office, his first couple moves were green light Nord Stream 2, which is the Russian gas pipeline from Russia into Europe, and to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. 0.99

00:28:35.000 Dan Crenshaw was pointing out today, and he is correct, of course, that we import almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Russia.

00:28:42.000 The Keystone XL pipeline would have produced 830,000 barrels per day.

00:28:47.000 But Joe Biden had his orders and his orders were that cheap oil is bad as long as we produce it.

00:28:54.000 And if we sort of bring it under the table from other countries, I guess that we should probably do that.

00:28:57.000 So we've made ourselves more dependent on some of the worst people on Earth.

00:28:59.000 So Joe Biden sanctioned Nord Stream 2 yesterday.

00:29:02.000 He put out a statement saying, since Russia began deploying troops to the Ukrainian border, the United States has worked closely with our allies and partners to deliver a strong unified response.

00:29:09.000 As I said, when I met with Chancellor Scholz earlier this month, Germany has been a leader in that effort.

00:29:13.000 We have closely coordinated our efforts to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia further invaded Ukraine.

00:29:18.000 Yesterday, after further close consultations between our two governments, Germany announced it would halt certification of the pipeline.

00:29:24.000 Okay, so this prompted Matt Lee of the Associated Press, one of the few good reporters left in the industry, to ask, so why did you greenlight Nord Stream 2 in the first place?

00:29:33.000 Since obviously your decommissioning of Nord Stream 2 didn't stop Putin in any serious way.

00:29:37.000 Thank you.

00:29:39.000 You guys have been saying for months, indeed for over a year, since the waivers were first granted, that in fact this gave you additional leverage withholding the sanctions and would serve as a deterrent.

00:29:52.000 Clearly, that didn't They didn't provide you with any leverage at all that we can tell because of what you just said in your opening statement about the invasion beginning.

00:30:04.000 So, you know, how do you explain to people why you didn't impose these sanctions earlier?

00:30:13.000 Okay, and of course, they have no good answer for that.

00:30:17.000 In fact, Jen Psaki suggested yesterday from the podium of the White House that Biden's sanction strategy was working.

00:30:25.000 What would not working look like then?

00:30:27.000 Exactly.

00:30:29.000 Why is this a better way, a more effective way than issuing sanctions unilaterally and then possibly pressuring the Germans to take action themselves?

00:30:37.000 Well, it hasn't been operational, which is an important component, right?

00:30:40.000 It's not like oil has been flowing through Nord Stream 2, which is a very important component here.

00:30:45.000 And we made the assessment, others can have different assessments, that this would be the way to achieve the outcome that we've now achieved.

00:30:52.000 Others can have different assessments.

00:30:53.000 There's no proof or evidence that their approach would have worked.

00:30:56.000 Ours has worked.

00:30:59.000 In what sense has yours worked, lady?

00:31:01.000 Do you have a different definition of the word worked?

00:31:05.000 Because, are we talking like worked with an E or what?

00:31:09.000 How are you defining worked?

00:31:11.000 Because it seems to me, with the Russians in Kiev, that it has most definitely not worked.

00:31:15.000 In fact, Jen Psaki was asked, this is right before the invasion, this is yesterday afternoon, the invasion happened late last night in American time, Eastern time.

00:31:24.000 And Jen Psaki was asked about whether, if it was working, Putin would invade further, and she had no answer for this.

00:31:30.000 Do you think these sanctions will actually be a deterrent?

00:31:34.000 Well, I think that is a decision for President Putin to make.

00:31:37.000 I mean, there are statements he has conveyed in terms of what he wants to achieve here, right?

00:31:42.000 The division of NATO, the opposite is happening, right?

00:31:45.000 He wanted to see Nord Stream 2 move forward, a key prize for him.

00:31:50.000 That is obviously not happening.

00:31:51.000 He wants to have a flourishing economy for the Russian people.

00:31:55.000 Uh, just even without the bite of our sanctions, that is clearly not happening.

00:31:59.000 So, this is an assessment he's gonna have to make, and we expect he'll hear, uh, from people around him who are being impacted, and other people in Russia about the impact of these sanctions.

00:32:09.000 Nope.

00:32:10.000 Nope.

00:32:11.000 I love when she says he'll have a- he wants a flourishing Russian economy.

00:32:13.000 No, you, if you were in his place, might want a flourishing Russian economy, but- but he does not.

00:32:19.000 It really is amazing.

00:32:20.000 The complete mental break between the West and its enemies.

00:32:24.000 And our inability to get outside our own heads long enough to even understand what they are attempting to do.

00:32:28.000 Honestly, it is not all that complex.

00:32:30.000 It's not all that complex.

00:32:32.000 The left has its own higher purposes in the West as well.

00:32:34.000 And it's not just pure making money.

00:32:38.000 It has its own higher purposes.

00:32:40.000 I don't like those higher purposes at all, by the way.

00:32:43.000 But why can't it just transfer that same utopianism over to what Putin is trying to do?

00:32:47.000 Because that's much more indicative of what he's trying to do than any talk about how if we sanction oil or natural gas pipelines, that's going to magically change his mind on any of this.

00:32:55.000 But again, we don't even have the stomach for that.

00:32:58.000 We don't have the stomach for that because Putin could upend the world oil markets.

00:33:02.000 David Frum has a piece in the Atlantic talking about this.

00:33:04.000 He's wrong on a lot of things.

00:33:05.000 He's not wrong about this.

00:33:06.000 He says some commentators are comparing the current Russian aggression against Ukraine to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939.

00:33:11.000 Here's another analogy that could be more accurate.

00:33:14.000 In 1979, a people in the Middle East sensed energy prices soaring and Western economies tumbling.

00:33:18.000 Russia is the world's number three exporter of oil.

00:33:21.000 It's number two exporter of natural gas.

00:33:23.000 If Western countries respond to Russia's invasion by imposing sanctions, Russia's obvious counter move is to retaliate by cutting back fuel sales.

00:33:29.000 Such a move would hurt Russia too, but Putin has prepared for the shock.

00:33:33.000 The real explanation for Putin's timing is the slackness of the world energy market in the late 2010s and its new tightness in the 2020s.

00:33:40.000 From mid-2014 until the onset of the global pandemic in 2020, Russian gas sold for less than $10 per million metric British thermal units, often for under $5.

00:33:50.000 But the gas market is cyclical, and right now Russia has leverage.

00:33:53.000 The higher prices enabled Russia to build massive holdings of dollars, euros, and gold.

00:33:57.000 Those holdings now exceed $630 billion, an impressive stash for a country with a GDP of only $1.5 trillion.

00:34:03.000 In 2017, 18, and 19, Russia's dominance over its gas customers in Western Europe was weaker.

00:34:08.000 Its financial resources to endure market disruption were fewer.

00:34:11.000 In 2022, Russia's power over its gas customers is at a zenith, and its financial resources are enormous.

00:34:17.000 Putin has been building to this crisis for a long time.

00:34:19.000 Now we have arrived at an impasse where Russia could inflict real havoc on world energy markets if it so chooses. 0.79

00:34:25.000 And the West knows this.

00:34:27.000 But we are unwilling to take the measures necessary.

00:34:31.000 I mean, Europe right now is in the midst of dithering.

00:34:34.000 We're going to have another meeting.

00:34:36.000 Now, again, they've known this was coming for months, and they still had not set up.

00:34:39.000 You know, Biden had said just two days ago, he suggested that we were going to hit him with one sanction.

00:34:45.000 And then if you move forward, more sanctions.

00:34:46.000 Well, shouldn't you have like a step-by-step process where it triggers immediately?

00:34:49.000 They didn't.

00:34:50.000 They have to get back together to try and figure out what to do right now.

00:34:54.000 Now, again, the West could compete its way out of this.

00:34:58.000 Kenneth Griffin and Neil Ferguson have a piece of The Wall Street Journal talking about this.

00:35:02.000 They say the foundation of Russian power today is the energy industry, which funds Russia's foreign policy, including its formidable armed forces.

00:35:08.000 Russia is an energy superpower in no small part because European consumers buy Russian gas.

00:35:13.000 Europeans wagered that energy interdependence would temper Russian militarism, but instead, Europe has funded the Kremlin's rearmament.

00:35:19.000 Europe would be safer if it had relied on allies for its gas.

00:35:22.000 The problem isn't just Europe's energy dependence, but Russia's use of energy to co-opt European politicians. 0.58

00:35:27.000 In early February, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrader was nominated to join the board of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly.

00:35:34.000 He already sits on the board of Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil giant.

00:35:37.000 These appointments highlight Germany's dependence on Russian gas.

00:35:41.000 Is it any surprise that Chancellor Olaf Scholz initially sought to exclude energy explicitly from sanctions on Russia if it invaded Ukraine?

00:35:49.000 The U.S.

00:35:49.000 should encourage its European allies to reduce their reliance on Russian gas exports.

00:35:52.000 The additional sanctions against Russia envisaged by the Biden administration would come at a tremendous cost to Americans without addressing any long-term source of Putin's power.

00:35:59.000 Tougher financial sanctions would only further reduce the attractiveness of the dollar as a reserve currency.

00:36:04.000 Withholding U.S. 0.91

00:36:05.000 technology from Russia would inflict both direct and indirect damage on American companies, which have many international competitors, not least in China.

00:36:12.000 Reducing reliance on Russian gas will require substantial investment and political will.

00:36:16.000 Europe needs to replace as much Russian gas as possible with liquefied natural gas, ideally with long-term contracts to buy gas from allied countries such as the United States.

00:36:24.000 But then they would have to give up all of their ridiculous environmental nonsense for five seconds and come to grip with the fact that they haven't actually been... They've been powered by the carbon-based energy that they supposedly decry.

00:36:37.000 Once again, Giving in to a screamy Nordic teen about your energy policy, it turns out, enables a mass-murdering Russian dictator to cross borders. 0.97

00:36:51.000 And you can see the reluctance in the West to do anything.

00:36:55.000 This is kind of an amazing thing.

00:36:56.000 Yesterday, the U.S.

00:36:57.000 Deputy National Security Advisor, a person named Dalip Singh, was asked about more sanctions.

00:37:01.000 And he decried what he called the bloodlust for more sanctions.

00:37:05.000 You know, sometimes I wonder if there's almost a bloodlust out there for sanctions as an end to themselves.

00:37:10.000 Let me just be really clear.

00:37:12.000 We did hit hard yesterday.

00:37:14.000 And it was only a demonstration effect.

00:37:16.000 We shut down an $11 billion natural gas pipeline.

00:37:19.000 We took out two of the major banks in the Russian banking system that controlled $80 billion in assets.

00:37:25.000 We cut off Russia from Western financing in terms of government debt.

00:37:29.000 And we put on notice the oligarchy in Russia that no one is safe.

00:37:34.000 And there's a chilling effect now for any oligarch or any crony or their family members that have gained from Russian kleptocracy. 0.55

00:37:40.000 They're not going to share in the pain.

00:37:41.000 OK, well, I mean, he keeps talking about bloodlust for sanctions.

00:37:48.000 I mean, you have Russia crossing borders.

00:37:50.000 So this, I mean, look, we're just weak.

00:37:52.000 We're weak.

00:37:53.000 And Putin knows that we're weak.

00:37:54.000 Doesn't mean we're weaker than Russia is.

00:37:56.000 But here's the point.

00:37:58.000 It's not about the innate weakness of Russia versus the strength of the United States or the innate weakness of China.

00:38:03.000 Russia and China are both failed states.

00:38:05.000 I know everyone wants to treat China as a rising power.

00:38:07.000 China is not a rising power.

00:38:08.000 China is a declining power.

00:38:10.000 China has serious internal problems.

00:38:11.000 They have a massive debt-to-GDP ratio.

00:38:13.000 China has serious demographic problems.

00:38:14.000 They're demographically upside down.

00:38:16.000 Russia doesn't even have an economy.

00:38:17.000 It is demographically upside down.

00:38:19.000 But that's not what matters when it comes to geopolitics.

00:38:22.000 When it comes to geopolitics, what matters is power and the will to expend it.

00:38:27.000 Russia and China have it.

00:38:28.000 Iran has it.

00:38:29.000 The West does not.

00:38:30.000 The West is willing to appease and appease and appease simply to avoid conflict because we like our lifestyles.

00:38:36.000 So we're not going to do anything about oil and natural gas, not in any serious way.

00:38:39.000 At least that's the bet that Russia is making. 0.94

00:38:41.000 So they don't feel that bad about going into Ukraine.

00:38:45.000 So what other possibilities are on the table?

00:38:47.000 There's another possibility that's on the table that could theoretically accelerate China's drive toward war with Taiwan.

00:38:53.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:38:55.000 First, the gas prices are going to go up.

00:38:57.000 They're just going to go up.

00:38:58.000 They're going to spike pretty rapidly now.

00:38:59.000 Everybody knows this.

00:39:00.000 They're already bad.

00:39:01.000 Wait for the price inflation that is going to hit.

00:39:03.000 Given what Russia is doing in Ukraine?

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00:39:57.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more on the crisis in Ukraine in just one moment.

00:40:02.000 If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall for conversations that normally don't take place on screen, now would be your chance.

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00:40:39.000 It's fantastic.

00:40:41.000 The episode releases tonight.

00:40:42.000 Thursday the 24th will be exclusive to DailyWire members, so if you're not currently a member, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join today.

00:40:48.000 There's a lot of talk about China and Taiwan there, so it's going to be highly relevant.

00:40:51.000 Go check it out today at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:40:55.000 If you have not heard of my book club, well, now is your chance to sign up.

00:40:58.000 Last week, I took members through my analysis of Huck Finn.

00:41:01.000 Next up is Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

00:41:04.000 I can't wait to read it and discuss it with you next month.

00:41:06.000 We are reading the great works of Western literature together, and I'm having a blast.

00:41:10.000 I hope you are too, and if you haven't joined yet, find out why so many thousands of people already have.

00:41:15.000 Tens of thousands of people, actually.

00:41:16.000 Remember, 3rd Thursday Book Club is a live experience.

00:41:19.000 Get to engage with me like never before.

00:41:21.000 We go back and forth on the books.

00:41:22.000 We talk about them.

00:41:23.000 Here is the thing.

00:41:24.000 Even if you haven't read the book, you will feel well read by the time we're done.

00:41:28.000 You'll know a lot more about these works.

00:41:29.000 You can fake it at the water cooler.

00:41:31.000 I'm going to be your guide.

00:41:32.000 I'm going to show you why each one of these books is such an important work.

00:41:34.000 And when you sign up, you also get my notes.

00:41:36.000 That's a cheat sheet to the important lessons, themes, and characters.

00:41:38.000 And remember, you're doing all of this with thousands of other Daily Wire members live.

00:41:42.000 Seriously, this isn't like any other book club you've ever been a part of.

00:41:44.000 I love it.

00:41:45.000 I think it's great.

00:41:46.000 It's a great gift for somebody.

00:41:47.000 Sign up for the Third Thursday Book Club at thirdthursdaybookclub.com because I'll be sending out my notes for A Tale of Two Cities later today.

00:41:54.000 Set a reminder to join the conversation on Thursday, March 17th at 8 p.m.

00:41:57.000 Eastern.

00:41:58.000 Also, if you haven't noticed, The Daily Wire, we are constantly expanding our catalog.

00:42:02.000 One of our newest projects is exciting and vital, especially right now.

00:42:06.000 The Enemy Within, a new docu-series featuring acclaimed journalist and expert in national threats, Lee Smith.

00:42:10.000 Smith uncovers a political coup orchestrated by America's ruling class to generate their own wealth and power at the expense of the American people's safety and freedom.

00:42:18.000 In the third episode, Lee uncovers the infiltration of America's universities by Chinese spies, students affiliated with the CCP, and American professors who have sold their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party for bribes.

00:42:29.000 Check out some of the trailer.

00:42:31.000 What if everything we think we know about our leaders, our society, and our relations with the rest of the world is wrong?

00:42:43.000 America is facing two major challenges.

00:42:46.000 One is the Chinese Communist Party.

00:42:48.000 However, the most significant threat comes from within.

00:42:53.000 You're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world?

00:42:57.000 Okay, Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about.

00:43:01.000 We've already seen evidence of how the elites want to run the United States.

00:43:05.000 They're modeling themselves after Chinese autocracy. 0.98

00:43:09.000 For over a decade, the People's Republic of China has stood publicly accused of acts of cruelty and wickedness that match the cruelty and wickedness Diane Feinstein had a Chinese spy as her driver for 20 years! 0.65

00:43:33.000 We're not talking about one person infiltrating senior levels at the CIA or the White House.

00:43:40.000 We're talking about an entire elite class.

00:43:43.000 Throughout the political, corporate, academic, cultural, and media establishment.

00:43:49.000 My name is Lee Smith.

00:43:50.000 I've been a journalist for more than 30 years.

00:43:54.000 This is the most astonishing espionage and infiltration operation in history.

00:44:00.000 What you're going to see in this series will shock you.

00:44:04.000 This is the enemy within.

00:44:07.000 It's truly vital stuff.

00:44:18.000 I mean, given the geopolitical situation right now, it gets more vital every minute.

00:44:21.000 All episodes of The Enemy Within are streaming now exclusively at The Daily Wire.

00:44:25.000 So if you're not a member, now's the time to change that.

00:44:27.000 Head to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join us today.

00:44:30.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:44:33.000 So what other options are on the table with regard to Heming in Russia?

00:44:44.000 Well, now the White House is considering curbs on Russia's access to American technology, which, you know, might have been good before. 0.97

00:44:51.000 Again, all the measures that are currently being discussed are too little too late.

00:44:53.000 And not only that, they're going to have unintended consequences, which I'll get to in just one moment.

00:44:57.000 According to the New York Times, the Biden administration warned on Wednesday it had prepared additional measures aimed at cutting off Russia from advanced technology critical to its economy and military in the event of further aggression by Putin toward Ukraine.

00:45:07.000 The U.S.

00:45:07.000 on Tuesday announced sanctions on two Russian banks and curbs on Russia's sovereign debt Biden also announced sanctions on Nord Stream 2.

00:45:13.000 Export controls could ratchet up pressure on Russia by preventing the country from obtaining semiconductors and other advanced technology used to power Russia's aerospace, military, and tech industries.

00:45:23.000 Wally Adeyemo, the Deputy Treasury Secretary, said, if he chooses to invade, what we're telling him very directly is that we're going to cut that off.

00:45:29.000 We're going to cut him off from Western technology that's critical to advancing his military, cut him off from Western financial resources that will be critical to feeding his economy and also to enriching himself.

00:45:38.000 The actions and statements of administration officials suggest they could repurpose a novel measure the Trump administration turned to to cripple the business of Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, in 2020.

00:45:47.000 The tool, called Foreign Direct Product Rule, allows U.S.

00:45:50.000 officials to block more than just exports from the U.S.

00:45:52.000 to Russia, which totaled just $4.9 billion in 2020.

00:45:55.000 It also allows American officials to restrict exports to Russia from any country in the world if they use American technology, including software or machinery.

00:46:04.000 Companies could seek licenses to sidestep the restrictions, but they would be likely to be denied.

00:46:09.000 According to Dalip Singh, who we heard from a moment ago, we produce the most sophisticated technological inputs across a range of foundational technologies, AI, quantum, biotech, hypersonic flight, robotics.

00:46:18.000 As we and our partners move in lockstep to deny these critical technology inputs to Russia's economy, Putin's desire to diversify outside of oil and gas, which is two-thirds of his export revenue, half of his budget revenues, that will be denied.

00:46:30.000 So we're going to deny them this technology.

00:46:32.000 Okay, so let's say that we do that.

00:46:34.000 Let's say we deny them these technologies.

00:46:36.000 Which will be ineffective, by the way, at driving them out of Ukraine. 1.00

00:46:41.000 It's not going to happen.

00:46:42.000 What exactly will Russia do?

00:46:43.000 Well, Russia will then turn to China, of course.

00:46:47.000 And let's say that we then start restricting the flow of technology to China in order to stop it from flowing into Russia.

00:46:53.000 What do you think China's going to do?

00:46:55.000 What do you think China's going to do?

00:46:57.000 So China, so far throughout this conflict, has been going very, very easy on Russia.

00:47:02.000 There seems to be this bizarre going theory among the smart sets that China would either stay out of this completely or that they would tacitly tell Russia to cut it, cut it back, just stop it a little bit.

00:47:11.000 Instead, China seems to be quietly cheering us on and then watching from the sidelines to see what the West will do.

00:47:17.000 According to Russia Today, which of course is a Russian official news outlet, as the Ukraine crisis deepens, it has been widely reported the Biden administration is considering technology sanctions on Russia, specifically with regard to semiconductors.

00:47:27.000 By weaponizing its position in the semiconductor value chain, the U.S.

00:47:31.000 would essentially be repeating the action it took against the Chinese telecommunications from Huawei, this time targeting an entire country.

00:47:37.000 As China has recently learned, this amounts to an act of extraterritorial jurisdiction by the U.S.

00:47:42.000 America has politicized the global semiconductor market and supply chain and sparked Beijing to urgently attempt to develop its own industry and capabilities.

00:47:50.000 Whilst Huawei is the only firm that has been subject to these tough rules to their full extent, around 400 companies have been added to America's dreaded entity list, a tool used by the U.S.

00:47:58.000 to restrict trade.

00:47:59.000 These span everything from telecoms to computing, aviation, biotech, nuclear energy, and more.

00:48:04.000 Semiconductor sanctions have become a favored tool in Washington as a result, irrespective of what happens in Ukraine.

00:48:09.000 Again, this is Russia Today, which is an outlet associated with the Russian government.

00:48:13.000 Russia should anticipate it will eventually be subject to these sanctions in some form or another.

00:48:19.000 This places Moscow in the same position as Beijing in needing urgently to lose its dependence on U.S.

00:48:24.000 origin tech, which can then be weaponized against it without warning.

00:48:28.000 While Russia has plenty of strength of its own in engineering, aerospace, and military, America's patent monopoly over semiconductor tech and the branch industries it has created and exerts control over in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands creates a strategic problem.

00:48:40.000 As a result, according to Russia Today, it is pivotal that China and Russia work together in this domain.

00:48:46.000 Semiconductors need to be in the picture.

00:48:49.000 So, um, where are the semiconductors?

00:48:52.000 Where are the semiconductors, guys?

00:48:54.000 Oh, that's right, they're in Taiwan.

00:48:56.000 That's right, they're in Taiwan.

00:48:58.000 So, what are the chances that if the United States cracks down on the global semiconductor flow, that this merely exacerbates China's drive toward taking Taiwan, especially seeing as Russia has taken Ukraine with no serious repercussions other than some bitching and moaning from the United Nations and some sanctions that are unlikely to last the test of time because Europe does not have the actual will to stand up on its own without the support of Russia, gas, and oil?

00:49:24.000 Meanwhile, by the way, in the United States, the Department of Justice has now announced that it's shifting its approach to Chinese national security threats.

00:49:31.000 So while China is drawing closer to Russia, and it is, right before the invasion, China accused the United States of creating panic over the Ukraine crisis and dismissed the sanctions against Russia as ineffective.

00:49:43.000 And then the Chinese government basically said nothing after the invasion.

00:49:50.000 They said they didn't like the word invasion.

00:49:52.000 Which is basically a way of avoiding any sort of blowback at all.

00:49:58.000 They refused to describe the attack by Russia as an invasion.

00:50:00.000 They called it preconceived wording and then went on to echo Beijing's earlier line calling for dialogue and negotiation for de-escalation, which is a tacit way of basically saying they're not going to get involved.

00:50:09.000 Let Russia do what it wants to do. 0.64

00:50:10.000 Meanwhile, China is making pretty strong comments about Taiwan.

00:50:14.000 According to Reuters, Taiwan is, quote, not Ukraine and has always been in an alienable part of China.

00:50:20.000 So they're saying, first of all, we don't really care what happens to Ukraine and you guys might want to calm down over there.

00:50:24.000 And then two, Taiwan is not Ukraine because we already own Taiwan.

00:50:27.000 So it's not like.

00:50:29.000 Now, Putin makes the same claim about Ukraine, of course, but they're saying ours is even stronger about Taiwan, which should not make anyone sleep easy at night.

00:50:38.000 So while the DOJ is changing its rules for prosecution of Chinese nationals who are allegedly involved in, for example, technology theft in the United States.

00:50:49.000 And China is allying more closely with the Russians.

00:50:51.000 We're talking about cutting off the semiconductors to Russia, which will then ally with China, which will then invade Taiwan.

00:50:55.000 It seems to be the way this is going to work out.

00:50:58.000 Because semiconductors are the main resource on Earth right now.

00:51:03.000 We can develop our own energy independence.

00:51:04.000 The semiconductors and all the innovation they're in is on Taiwan.

00:51:09.000 Well over 90% of semiconductor advanced tech is in Taiwan.

00:51:13.000 And the remainder is in South Korea.

00:51:15.000 All areas that China is threatening. 0.97

00:51:19.000 So, the United States really has no response to any of this that is throwing a scare into pretty much anyone at this point.

00:51:27.000 And again, this goes back to a fundamental problem with the West.

00:51:30.000 We are so self-obsessed. 0.98

00:51:31.000 We are so pathetic in terms of what we believe our role on Earth is. 0.98

00:51:35.000 We can't even unify around what our chief philosophy is. 0.98

00:51:38.000 We can't even unify around the idea that the United States has a history that is worth revering.

00:51:42.000 We can't unify around the basic idea that our principles are better than the principles of other countries around the world.

00:51:48.000 Which, by the way, they are.

00:51:49.000 That's not chauvinism.

00:51:50.000 That is just reality.

00:51:51.000 But we can't unify around that.

00:51:52.000 Instead, what we're mostly focused on is, can the government cut us more checks?

00:51:57.000 Because we have not prepared ourselves in any way for a global conflict of any size or scale.

00:52:02.000 We have not prepared ourselves for an unfriendly world. 1.00

00:52:05.000 We have been the stupid, fat, happy kid walking around the playground with pockets full of candy, chomping and hoping that the bully is not going to knock us down and take our candy. 1.00

00:52:14.000 That's what we have been. 1.00

00:52:15.000 Because after all, we were the bully not all that long ago.

00:52:18.000 We were the most powerful kid on the playground.

00:52:20.000 But here's the thing.

00:52:21.000 You can be the most powerful kid on the playground, but if you don't work out, if you don't have the mindset, if you're not willing to defend yourself, somebody's going to knock you off your feet.

00:52:29.000 And that's what Russia and China are preparing to do right now.

00:52:33.000 We've not taken any of the measures to ensure our, like, if you actually saw the world as a rough and tumble place, you know what you wouldn't do?

00:52:39.000 You wouldn't blow out the national debt to the tune of $30 trillion for no apparent reason.

00:52:42.000 You wouldn't focus on reorienting the military around woke values.

00:52:49.000 You wouldn't worry About masking toddlers, right?

00:52:53.000 These are all things that do not bespeak a country worthy of its greatness.

00:52:58.000 They don't.

00:52:58.000 We are so navel-gazing.

00:53:00.000 We're trapped in our own reflection.

00:53:00.000 We're so narcissistic.

00:53:03.000 We're not even around to realize when everybody else is challenging us on the world stage.

00:53:06.000 And I know that a lot of people are saying, well, why should I care about Ukraine?

00:53:09.000 Why should I care about Taiwan? 1.00

00:53:10.000 Why should I care about these places?

00:53:11.000 Because your safety and your security and your prosperity are reliant on a global system.

00:53:15.000 And that global system is maintained by American hegemony.

00:53:18.000 And when that hegemony goes away, the system is not going to maintain.

00:53:21.000 Things will get worse in your life.

00:53:23.000 You will have more expensive products at the very least.

00:53:25.000 You will have more threats on our foreign borders. 0.87

00:53:28.000 You will have More problems, globally, in the supply chain.

00:53:32.000 You like the inflation right now?

00:53:33.000 Wait until the supply chains are being throttled by our enemies.

00:53:36.000 Wait until it's China, not just taking over Taiwan, but then threatening Australia. 0.95

00:53:41.000 Wait until it's Russia, not just taking over Ukraine, but threatening all the rest of the Baltic states. 0.97

00:53:46.000 And the Europeans kowtowing to it. 0.95

00:53:49.000 A global system matters because we live in a global system, and pretending otherwise is thinking before airplanes existed.

00:53:56.000 Certainly before the internet existed.

00:53:59.000 Again, we're all complaining about the inflation right now.

00:54:02.000 That's a supply chain problem created by the pandemic, and then exacerbated by overspending in the United States and loose Federal Reserve monetary policy.

00:54:09.000 What if it's purposeful?

00:54:10.000 Wait until that happens.

00:54:12.000 It's all fun and games until things get real, and things are beginning to get real right now.

00:54:15.000 But we are not treating the world with any sense of seriousness.

00:54:20.000 When you lose your higher sense of purpose, it turns out that that cannot be regained by a simple appeal to hedonistic check cutting.

00:54:28.000 Right now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the national debt this month reached $30 trillion, says Jeb Hensarling, writing for the Wall Street Journal.

00:54:34.000 Not only is this the largest debt in U.S.

00:54:36.000 history in dollar terms, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product is now 119%, the largest it has ever been.

00:54:41.000 And things are only getting worse.

00:54:42.000 The CBO predicts that the mammoth debt-to-GDP ratio will double over the next three decades.

00:54:47.000 The Highway Trust Fund will likely become insolvent in 2027.

00:54:49.000 Medicare Part A will run out of money in 2026.

00:54:52.000 Social Security will go completely bust in fiscal 2033.

00:54:56.000 Now Americans are beginning to experience inflation, one of the primary costs of rapidly growing levels of national debt.

00:55:01.000 Every day we hear supply chain challenges and the pandemic are to blame, but those aren't the only culprit.

00:55:06.000 To help finance $5.9 trillion of COVID relief, the Federal Reserve purchased treasury debt from third parties, typically large banks known as primary dealers.

00:55:14.000 And then with a few keystrokes, the Fed simply created a new set of credits on its books for the sellers.

00:55:19.000 Because of the additions of these credits, in two years, the Fed's balance has doubled to almost $9 trillion, creating a risk of significant and sustained inflation.

00:55:27.000 Some policymakers and economists maintain that sustained, harmful inflation can never happen here.

00:55:31.000 They argue the dollar is the world's reserve currency.

00:55:34.000 Investors will continue to purchase Treasury debt as long as they believe they'll get their money back.

00:55:37.000 But what happens if the national debt makes bondholders begin to question that proposition?

00:55:43.000 What happens if the American economy stops growing?

00:55:46.000 If we have a weak economy, if we overspend, if we treat our economy as a grab bag of cash filled with free money, guess what?

00:55:56.000 We are not making ourselves strong enough on the world stage to withstand any sort of real conflict.

00:56:02.000 If we distract ourselves with all this stuff, Then we give up our claim to be a global hegemon.

00:56:07.000 And when we do that, by the way, there are costs.

00:56:09.000 There are real, real world costs, not just in human lives around the world and U.S.

00:56:13.000 military lives that will be lost, but also in terms of the quality of life in the United States.

00:56:18.000 We are blessed.

00:56:20.000 We were born on third base, most of us, and think we hit a triple.

00:56:25.000 And we think, OK, what if we steal second?

00:56:28.000 And what if we what if we just go back and undermine the very foundations of the world order that has created our prosperity?

00:56:33.000 What if we just give up on those?

00:56:36.000 And this is what Putin is basically saying.

00:56:38.000 He's challenging us right now.

00:56:39.000 That doesn't mean that we have to go to outright war.

00:56:42.000 Because, let's face it, Ukraine is already pretty much gone.

00:56:46.000 Sanctions are not going to stop Putin from doing what he wants to do.

00:56:49.000 The question is going to be, what do we do with the next thing?

00:56:52.000 Do we allow China to take Taiwan the way that we've allowed Putin to take Ukraine?

00:56:56.000 Or do we ship in more weaponry than God has ever seen in Taiwan and damn the consequences with regard to China?

00:57:03.000 Do we start cutting China off at the knees economically?

00:57:05.000 Do we stop their intellectual property theft?

00:57:08.000 Do we treat our enemies like our enemies? 0.80

00:57:10.000 Or do we keep signing ridiculous deals with Iran with the help of China and Russia? 0.80

00:57:15.000 Do we keep focusing in on how to reimagine capitalism?

00:57:19.000 Which is something that the left has been very focused on.

00:57:21.000 Instead of unleashing the power of the American economy, American innovation and ingenuity, we've been focused on what kind of checks can we cut to people to stay home?

00:57:28.000 How can we reimagine capitalism on a global scale to cut down on innovation and redistribute?

00:57:34.000 The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today about the Hewlett Foundation.

00:57:39.000 Since the 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter famously wrote that capitalism sows its own destruction by creating a knowledge class who despise its success.

00:57:45.000 Behold the Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network's $40 million gift to the paupers at Harvard and MIT to reimagine capitalism.

00:57:54.000 The press release says, for more than 40 years, neoliberalism has dominated economic and political debates, both in the U.S.

00:57:59.000 and globally, with its free-market fundamentalism and growth-at-all-costs approach to economic and social policy.

00:58:04.000 It offers no solutions for the biggest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis, systemic racism, and rampant wealth inequality, and in many ways, it has made those problems even worse.

00:58:13.000 If you think these are the worst problems on Earth, climate crisis, systemic racism, and rampant wealth inequality, you are a first-world person who does not understand how the actual real world works.

00:58:22.000 It's our stupid focus on the so-called climate crisis that has led Europe to be completely dependent on Russian natural gas. 0.82

00:58:28.000 These things are not disconnected. 0.97

00:58:31.000 We're so busy focusing on the alleged systemic racism of America's police forces that we've forgotten about the fact that, you know, our enemies are committing actual genocides in places like Zhangjiang.

00:58:44.000 But again, we have too many navel-gazing rich people over here who are perfectly happy to undermine the foundations of their own society. 0.83

00:58:51.000 As the Wall Street Journal says, Joseph Schumpeter predicted that people in the comfortable West, including tech entrepreneurs, would take prosperity for granted.

00:58:57.000 And that's exactly what is happening.

00:58:59.000 I reimagine capitalism as the press release advertises.

00:59:02.000 What these foundations really mean is putting politicians and the administrative state in charge of redistributing more of its proceeds.

00:59:09.000 But if they've been paying attention in recent years, they might have noticed free market fundamentalism could have spared the United States from some terrible mistakes.

00:59:17.000 But they don't care about sparing the United States from terrible mistakes.

00:59:19.000 They think that the mistake is the system.

00:59:23.000 People on the left make fun of people on the right for pointing out things like, why are you so focused in on social policy in the United States when there are threats abroad?

00:59:31.000 Why do you think it matters?

00:59:32.000 Why do you focus in on silly stories about transgenderism and transgender swimmers and gender ideology and the indoctrination of our children?

00:59:40.000 Because when you're a society that is so engrossed in your own navel, you destroy the institutions that made your freedom possible and you undermine freedom around the world.

00:59:49.000 That's why.

00:59:51.000 If you're a weak, pusillanimous society, you will collapse.

00:59:56.000 Going all the way back to the Bible, when God suggests Yeshua got fat and kicked, what he means is that when you get fat, and when you get happy, and when you ignore what you had to do to get there, when you ignore your fundamental principles and your higher purpose, the predictable result is that you lose, and bad things happen.

01:00:12.000 And that's precisely what the United States has been doing for decades.

01:00:16.000 Until the end of the Cold War, at the very least, we had the ability to look at the Soviet Union and say, we're standing up to those guys. 0.94

01:00:20.000 That's our existential purpose.

01:00:21.000 But then the Cold War ended and the question became, what comes next?

01:00:25.000 What are we going to do?

01:00:26.000 What are we going to become?

01:00:27.000 Now, what we could have done is we could have stayed lean and mean.

01:00:31.000 We could have maintained our muscular military.

01:00:33.000 We could have maintained a robust economy focused on innovation.

01:00:36.000 To a certain extent, we did some of that in the 1990s.

01:00:40.000 But instead, we decided not to do that.

01:00:41.000 We decided that it was much more important for us to become basically post-World War II Britain.

01:00:47.000 We were going to look inward.

01:00:48.000 It was time to look home.

01:00:50.000 And it was time to redistribute the gains.

01:00:52.000 And it was time to think about what the next stage of capitalism would look like.

01:00:56.000 A nicer, kinder, gentler world.

01:00:57.000 Here's the thing.

01:00:58.000 The world does not get kinder.

01:00:58.000 It does not get gentler.

01:00:59.000 It does not get nicer.

01:01:00.000 You just get weaker.

01:01:01.000 And when you get weaker, the bully takes your lunch money.

01:01:05.000 All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon as the Matt Wall Show airing at 1.30 p.m.

01:01:10.000 Eastern.

01:01:10.000 Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.

01:01:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:01:13.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

01:01:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliott Felt.

01:01:22.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:01:24.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

01:01:26.000 And our production manager is Pavel Lydowsky.

01:01:28.000 Associate producer, Bradford Carrington.

01:01:30.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic.

01:01:32.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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01:01:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:01:40.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

01:01:43.000 On the Matt Wall Show, we talk about the things that matter.

01:01:45.000 Real issues that affect you, your family, our country, not just politics, but culture, faith, current events, all the fundamentals.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 24, 2022

It’s War | Ep. 1440

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