Joe Biden cuts off Russian oil and natural gas, and then says that spiking gas prices are all Vladimir Putin s fault. Plus, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky makes early moves toward a compromise. Plus, the average price for a gallon of regular gas hit an all-time high of $4.25 on Wednesday. That s still lower than 2008, but not for long, because we are about to see gas prices continue to skyrocket. According to CNN Business, that sticker shock is hard to ignore, if not impossible, for most Americans to ignore in the short term. And if you look at the areas of the country that are hardest hit, the West Coast is the hardest hit. There are certain places in New York where you ve got 7 bucks a gallon. These are really, really high prices. And this, of course, is going to put a damper on whatever economic growth was already taking place. Today s show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, and thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data. Join them at ExpressVpn.org/BenShapiroShow and join the conversation by using the hashtag on social media using and to help spread the word! about the show! Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and host of The Ben Shapiro Show on the show. . He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal. and is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times. as well as many other publications. He has a blog and radio show on the Weekly newsletter, The Daily Beast. in addition to hosting a podcast called . He can be found on Instapod, and he also on the airwaves on his website and social media accounts, and he is a podcast on the road on the internet, and his new book, is also on his podcast is which you can be reached at . Please like Ben Shapiro s , if you like what you hear on the Ben Shapiro show? or his podcast on . And his podcast is on , and you can become a friend on in also on insta on Insta and on his , the channel on social media is , or can be on the social media account website is .
00:00:56.000No hassle with multiple trips to a store or trying to meet up with a contractor or interior designer to consult you who's really just going to try and upsell you.
00:01:03.000All of the window treatments from Blinds.com come at a great price.
00:02:27.000And this, of course, is going to put a damper on whatever economic growth was already taking place.
00:02:32.000Inflation has already been eating into economic growth stats over the course of the last year.
00:02:37.000Inflation, of course, outpacing wage gains.
00:02:39.000Well, now that we've seen the price of gas skyrocketing over 75 cents over the course of just the last several weeks, And likely to continue into the near future, that is going to eat even more into whatever wage gains were taking place in the first place.
00:02:53.000According to CNN Business, when it comes to inflation, psychology matters.
00:02:56.000If consumers expect prices to rise, they spend more in the near term, which feeds demand, which pushes prices up further, a cycle that can be tough to break, especially when the source of the price spikes is making headlines daily.
00:03:05.000Again, one of the things that's truly incredible about all of this is that we've seen all of this before.
00:03:11.000We are now back in Jimmy Carter era with stagflation setting in, Russians invading a foreign country, a prolonged guerrilla war that is likely to last for a while, and an economy that is on the brink.
00:03:23.000So, well done to President Biden who, you know, he once suggested that Mitt Romney wanted to bring back the 1980s.
00:03:29.000Well, now he's bringing back 1979 in all of its glory.
00:03:32.000Now, I would be remiss if I did not point out here that Donald Trump predicted this, I believe, the day before the election.
00:03:38.000In 2020, he said, if Joe Biden is elected president, you're going to see seven buck a gallon gas.
00:03:42.000And everybody in the media was like, no, he's just exaggerating again.
00:03:56.000When Joe Biden hits the exaggeration numbers, when Donald Trump's like, it's going to be a million dollars a gallon, he's like, no, it'll never be a million dollars a gallon.
00:04:03.000And then a year and a half later, it's a million dollars a gallon.
00:05:00.000If that guy gets off teleprompter, things get wild really quickly.
00:05:05.000The three congressmen you have here, two of them look like they really could and did play ball, and the other one looks like he could bomb you.
00:07:01.000That's Legacybox.com slash Shapiro to unlock this podcast first offer.
00:07:06.000Remember that at the same time that Donald Trump was suggesting that gas prices were going to skyrocket under Joe Biden, Joe Biden was suggesting that he was going to solve all the world's problems.
00:07:15.000Well, just last year in October of 2021, Joe Biden was maintaining that the gas prices would come down because he was so good at this.
00:07:23.000Do you have a timeline for gas prices of when you think they may start coming down?
00:07:27.000My guess is you'll start to see gas prices come down as we get by and going into the winter.
00:07:34.000I mean, excuse me, and the next year in 2022.
00:07:52.000If you take a look at gas prices and you take a look at oil prices, that is a consequence of, thus far, the refusal of Russia or the OPEC nations to pump more oil.
00:08:13.000And we'll see what happens on that score sooner than later.
00:08:20.000Now, the reason that I'm pointing this out is because Joe Biden's newest line is that the reason that the gas prices have spiked is purely because of Russia-Ukraine.
00:08:28.000Now, there's no question that Russia-Ukraine, that conflict, and the cutoff of oil and natural gas from Russia has impacted world markets in a pretty severe way.
00:08:37.000But I need to show you the price of gas in the United States over the course of the last year and a half or so.
00:09:26.000So Joe Biden wants you to ignore the fact that the gas prices were rising continuously during his administration, largely because of his anti-gas and oil perspectives on how we should pursue our energy future.
00:09:39.000So yes, we are in a significant crunch.
00:09:42.000But you know what makes a crunch worse?
00:09:43.000Is when you have exacerbated shortages in the first place.
00:09:47.000This is like saying that there's an earthquake and you have no water in the house.
00:09:50.000And so you say, well, the earthquake is a real problem because I have no water in the house.
00:09:54.000You know, it would have been really, really helpful if you hadn't gotten rid of the gallons and gallons of water that you had in the garage just before the earthquake, which is what Joe Biden basically did.
00:10:02.000Joe Biden has made it very difficult to set up a pipeline of energy futures in the United States.
00:10:08.000And what that means is that when the crunch comes, it affects us much more severely.
00:10:12.000Because we don't actually have the capacity to ramp up production in the way that we would have, say, two years ago under Donald Trump.
00:10:21.000For their part, the Democrats are simultaneously claiming it's not a problem and then sort of recognizing that it is a problem.
00:10:26.000So you have Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who's been discussed as a possible heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi as the head of Democratic caucus.
00:10:33.000He says, you know, we haven't even discussed gas prices during our caucus meeting, which seems like a weird thing to not discuss considering it's the number one topic in America.
00:10:40.000What has been the reaction of your colleagues to, you know, things like diplomatic outreach to countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in terms of like increasing the global oil supply?
00:10:48.000I assume those conversations are taking place, but I haven't been read into them.
00:10:53.000And we await, you know, further clarity from, you know, from the administration.
00:10:56.000OK, so, yeah, no, no, no conversations taking place at all.
00:11:04.000By the way, you know where there are conversations taking place is on the state level, where governors are about to feel the shellacking.
00:11:09.000There are a bunch of governors who are going to be up for re-election over the course of the next couple of years, and you know what they don't like?
00:11:17.000And so a series of governors, governors from Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, all Democrats wrote directly to Speaker Pelosi and Schumer and McCarthy and McConnell asking them to relieve the gas tax.
00:11:31.000Now, it's Democrats who've been pushing the gas tax for years.
00:11:34.000It's Democrats who believe that because gas is a staple in American life, they can make more government revenue if they just pass a federal gas tax.
00:11:40.000So all of these governors, all of Democratic states, are asking now Democrats to relieve them of the taxes they put in place in the first place.
00:11:49.000They say, according to the American Automobile Association, the national average gas price in the United States is $4.17, up more than a buck from 2021.
00:11:56.000The Gas Prices Relief Act, as introduced in the House and Senate, would alleviate the consumer cost of rising gas prices while protecting the federal government's capacity to make infrastructure investments.
00:12:06.000First, it saves Americans at the pump by suspending the federal gas tax for the rest of the year.
00:12:10.000Money saved at the pump translates into dollars back in consumers' pockets for groceries, childcare, rent, and more.
00:12:14.000If only Democrats extended this logic to tax cuts generally.
00:12:17.000It turns out that when you cut people's taxes, they have more money in their pocket to invest and spend on things.
00:12:22.000It is impressive that the Democrats are at the same time claiming this is not a problem and also please relieve us of the gas tax.
00:12:30.000In just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden's announcement about getting off of Russian oil and natural gas.
00:12:35.000You may have noticed right now that crypto is going a bit nuts.
00:12:37.000And the reason crypto is going a bit nuts is because whenever there is chaos on the world stage, people start to diversify by getting out of the business of American dollars and American bonds and all other forms of currency.
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00:13:44.000And meanwhile, Joe Biden yesterday, he announced that he was finally going to ban Russian gas and oil imports.
00:13:50.000He'd been called upon to do this for a couple of weeks.
00:13:52.000Bizarrely, he had been lagging behind many of the European countries on this, despite the fact that only about 5% of imported American oil comes from Russia, whereas it's like 40, 50% for certain European countries.
00:14:03.000Here was Joe Biden announcing this yesterday.
00:14:06.000Today I'm announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia's economy.
00:14:11.000We're banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy.
00:14:16.000That means Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S.
00:14:19.000ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin's war machine.
00:14:28.000He should have done this a couple of weeks ago when he first rolled out the sanctions.
00:14:31.000But if he's going to do this now, then it seems as though he's doing this as an excuse.
00:14:37.000Honestly, it seems as though he is doing this as an excuse so then he can blame Putin and Russia for gas prices that are already rising on his watch.
00:14:44.000Now, this is, it's the right move to cut off Russian natural gas and oil if you actually are hoping that sanctions are going to effectuate policy change.
00:14:51.000I'm skeptical that's actually going to happen.
00:14:53.000But, you do want to undermine the Russian war making machine, I get it.
00:14:56.000However, you are the president of the United States and you don't get to just say, wash your hands clean of this thing and be like, yeah, you know, it's all Putin.
00:15:03.000But that's exactly what Joe Biden is doing now.
00:15:05.000Now he's going to abdicate responsibility on an issue where, again, he was talking back in October, November, about how gas prices were way too high for most Americans.
00:15:14.000And so we're just going to pretend that didn't exist.
00:15:15.000We're going to pretend that the world of high gas prices started spinning yesterday.
00:16:22.000So this is going to be the new talking point, and the media is going to go for it, because the way that the media cover issues is they just take whatever is the Democratic talking point, and then they turn it into a weaponized propaganda machine, and they just spin it out.
00:16:33.000So Florida passes a bill that says that you're not allowed to indoctrinate children in sexual orientation and radical gender ideology, like small kids.
00:16:40.000And the media immediately labeled it the Don't Say Gay Bill, which of course it is not.
00:16:44.000And then you have a bunch of morons on Twitter, the Mark Hamills of the world, who are just tweeting out the word gay, as though this makes any sort of difference, or as though the people on Twitter are typically five and six-year-olds in public school.
00:16:54.000Which, by the way, if you were just saying gay over and over and over to a five-year-old, I would think that you were a weirdo.
00:17:13.000It is partially Putin's gas hike because you have an exogenous situation that has now created a spike.
00:17:18.000But the spike is not entirely because of Putin.
00:17:21.000If you artificially create a shortage and that shortage is exacerbated by an exogenous event, that's partially your fault and it's partially Putin's fault.
00:17:28.000And if you're the head of the leading oil-producing nation on planet Earth, which is what the United States is, then it's really kind of more your fault over the course of time.
00:17:37.000Joe Biden yesterday, he said, I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike.
00:17:41.000Again, this is going to be the slogan they say over and over and over.
00:17:45.000Since Putin began his military buildup on Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of the gas at the pump in America went up 75 cents.
00:17:54.000And with this action, it's going to go up further.
00:17:56.000I'm gonna do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home.
00:18:00.000I saw but it was a Medina deal new girls biking into boom.
00:18:05.000And then Joe Biden adds that it's not true that his administration has been holding back natural gas and oil growth in the.
00:18:36.000Even amid the pandemic, companies in the United States pumped more oil during my first year in office than they did during my predecessor's first year.
00:18:43.000And that, well, first of all, you would imagine that the production would have gone up somewhat.
00:18:53.000I like how he's comparing his predecessors first year to his first year.
00:18:57.000You have to compare your predecessors last year to your first year and preferably your predecessors last year before a giant pandemic wiped out the world economy.
00:19:05.000So you'd actually want to compare 2019 to now if you wanted to make an apples to apples comparison.
00:19:09.000But that's not exactly what Joe Biden is doing.
00:19:11.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden says, I don't It's not that I don't like the oil and gas industry.
00:20:15.000I'm co-sponsoring with Senator Whitehouse and others a bill on windfall profits tax.
00:20:22.000Look, we get it, supply and demand, that prices go up, but profit margins should not go up.
00:20:31.000Okay, the fact that you think Elizabeth Warren should regulate your energy production demonstrates all you need to know.
00:20:37.000By the way, again, the White House says that they've not cut down oil and natural gas production or capacity, and that's just not true.
00:20:42.000According to the Washington Free Beacon, despite reassurances from the White House, it is doing nothing to discourage oil companies from opening new drill sites.
00:20:49.000President Biden's allies in Congress just months ago Pressured oil executives to decrease outputs because of climate change.
00:20:56.000Raising questions about the Democratic Party's strategy to lower prices for consumers.
00:20:59.000In late October, for example, the House Oversight and Reform Committee called in the CEOs of Exxon, BP, Shell, and Chevron to explain what steps they are taking to produce less oil and gas, with Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, alleging the world can't wait any longer.
00:21:12.000At that time, gas prices were already hovering around a 10-year high.
00:21:16.000That hearing has gained new relevance as a global gas shortage has pushed prices to an all-time high.
00:21:20.000Prices are rising even more due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with no sign of falling after Biden's announcement the United States will no longer accept Russian oil imports.
00:21:27.000The president said on Tuesday his administration's policies are not holding back domestic energy production.
00:21:33.000However, according to CounterPoint Strategies President Jim McCarthy, policy advisor for leading energy companies, he can draw a direct line from how the Democrats marauded energy production yesterday to the unprecedented pain Americans are feeling at the pump today.
00:21:46.000Some Democrats, like Representative Ro Khanna of California, have demanded that domestic oil companies dramatically curtail their domestic operations.
00:21:52.000At the same time, Cana has called for the United States to end its dependency on oil imports from countries like Russia.
00:21:57.000In one exchange during that October hearing, Cana pressed Shell President Gretchen Watkins on whether she agreed that under the Paris Agreement, we need to have oil and gas production declining every year.
00:22:07.000Again, Democrats continue to push all of these oil companies to cut production.
00:22:13.000Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal pointing out that Joe Biden has a long and inglorious history of attempting to undermine natural gas and oil production in the United States.
00:22:23.000So Joe Biden says that, you know, he's actually not cutting down on oil and natural gas production in the United States.
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00:23:49.000If he did that, if he announced a moratorium on new regulations, expedite permits, encourage investment, the price of Brent crude would probably fall 20 bucks a barrel in anticipation of higher production.
00:23:57.000But Biden is doing precisely the opposite.
00:23:59.000On Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, he even blamed U.S.
00:24:02.000companies, not his policies, for not producing more.
00:24:04.000There are 9,000 available unused drilling permits, he claimed.
00:24:08.000Only 10% of onshore oil production takes place on federal land.
00:24:12.000Companies have to obtain additional permits for rights-of-way to access leases and build pipelines to transport fuel.
00:24:17.000This has become harder under the Biden administration.
00:24:20.000Second, Companies must build up a sufficient inventory of permits before they can contract rigs because of the regulatory difficulties of operating on federal land.
00:24:27.000It takes 140 days or so for the feds to approve a drilling permit versus two for the state of Texas.
00:24:32.000The administration has halted onshore lease sales.
00:24:34.000Producers are developing leases more slowly because they don't know when more will be available.
00:24:38.000Offshore leases were snapped up at a November auction because companies expect it might be the last one.
00:24:42.000Interior's five-year leasing program for the Gulf of Mexico expires in June.
00:24:46.000The administration still has not promulgated a new plan, nor did it appeal a liberal judge's order in January revoking those November leases.
00:24:53.000But the administration has appealed another judge's order requiring that it hold lease sales.
00:24:57.000Then there's the not small problem of financing.
00:24:59.000Companies cannot explore and drill or build pipelines without capital.
00:25:02.000Biden financial regulators allied with progressive investors are working to cut it off.
00:25:06.000The Labor Department is now proposing a rule that would require 401k managers to consider the climate impact of their investment holdings.
00:25:12.000The SEC is expected to issue a rule requiring companies and their financiers to disclose greenhouse gas emissions.
00:25:18.000Biden has nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin of all people to be the Fed's top bank supervisor.
00:25:22.000Her top priority is using bank regulation to redirect capital from fossil fuels to green energy.
00:25:28.000Large energy producers are buying back stock and redirecting capital to renewables because they see the administration's writing on the wall.
00:25:34.000Small independent producers are eager to take advantage of higher prices, but they can't get loans.
00:25:38.000Many relied on private equity during the last shale boom.
00:25:42.000Progressive outfit Global Energy Monitor gleefully proclaimed on Tuesday that $244 billion in U.S.
00:25:48.000liquefied natural gas projects are stalled because they are struggling to find financiers and buyers amid pressure from cheap renewables, i.e.
00:25:54.000rich green energy subsidies Democrats want to make richer, and tightening climate commitments.
00:26:00.000The Biden administration has taken overt measures in order to quash American energy production.
00:26:16.000But yesterday, literally yesterday, as the gas prices were spiking to record highs, Joe Biden was saying, our actual goal should not be to open up the floodgates on energy production in the United States in the same speech.
00:26:33.000And also, how do you expect to achieve this, given the fact that carbon-based fuels are significantly more efficient on a material-to-energy level than anything that has been come up with that is quote-unquote green-friendly, with the exception possibly of nuclear power, which again, Democrats oppose.
00:28:01.000Maybe basically Joe Biden is deliberately driving up energy prices so as to get everybody to embrace the sort of Green New Deal idea.
00:28:08.000If so, he's a moron because the fact is that when energy prices are high, people have far less tolerance for this sort of Gambling around and pretending that green energy is going to be the solution.
00:28:19.000Environmentalism is the privilege of rich countries and rich people.
00:28:22.000People who are poor don't care about it.
00:28:23.000People who are struggling to get by, they do not care about carbon emissions.
00:28:26.000They care about making sure they can get to work and get food on their family's table.
00:28:31.000So if that's the plan, to purposefully drive up the price of energy in order to encourage people to go green, it is likely to backfire on the Democrats in pretty dramatic fashion.
00:28:40.000Instead, it seems more like to me, because Hanlon's razor I tend to attribute to stupidity rather than malice.
00:28:45.000Although in this case, it's stupidity combined with malice.
00:28:48.000When it comes to the Democratic Party, it seems much more like they are taking advantage of the price spike in order to push the Green New Deal kind of stuff because their preferred solution is always the solution to any given problem.
00:28:59.000You saw this with Build Back Better, right?
00:29:01.000Inflation was happening, and so Joe Biden was like, Build Back What I'm Gonna Do is gonna solve inflation.
00:29:44.000He does this sort of self-comforting thing where he's holding his little briefcase and then he kind of starts clutching it to himself and you know that he wants to be done.
00:29:50.000You know, I heard an argument yesterday from a pro-abortion fanatic suggesting that sentience ought to be the standard for life.
00:29:56.000Well, the president of the United States had better hope that's not the case because that man is no longer with us.
00:30:02.000Meanwhile, again, this administration is not... They're being pretty clear that they are fine with the suffering so long as it allows them to push green energy.
00:30:10.000Here's Biden economic advisor Brian Deese yesterday suggesting that the answer to high energy prices is not to produce more energy, it's to produce more windmills that chop up baby seagulls or something.
00:30:21.000The only viable path to energy independence for the American economy is to reduce the energy intensity of our economy overall, and ultimately to reduce it to zero and get ourselves to a position where we're no longer reliant on fossil fuels.
00:30:37.000Oh, well, I'm glad that that is your long-term vision.
00:30:40.000What do you expect to do for the soccer mom who's trying to get her kids to the park today?
00:30:45.000You're going to attach a windmill to the top of that car?
00:30:59.000I mean, probably what we should do is we should figure out some way To put that little device on the DeLorean that Doc Brown does at the end of Back to the Future 1.
00:31:12.000When he comes back from the future and he's got that like food compactor and he can throw like banana peels in the car and suddenly it just runs.
00:31:20.000It runs on banana peels and trash and he's just picking through the organic matter in order to power the DeLorean.
00:31:24.000If we could do that, that probably solves the problem.
00:31:29.000As Kamala Harris said yesterday, imagine.
00:31:31.000So here's Jennifer Granholm imagining.
00:31:34.000Ultimately, it's difficult to imagine flipping a switch and seeing those barrels, those Russian barrels, come online and be acceptable around the world, given the egregious activities of Vladimir Putin.
00:31:46.000So this is why increasing production is really, and increasing clean energy, transitioning to clean energy, are the solutions for being able to reduce those prices at the pump.
00:32:00.000She's like, increasing production of green energy.
00:32:04.000Increasing production because everyone knows if you want the price to go down, you have to increase the supply.
00:32:09.000Except apparently members of the Biden administration who believe that in order to bring prices down, what you actually do is not increase supply.
00:32:19.000All these environmentally friendly solutions, all the electric cars, those are powered by things like lithium.
00:32:24.000They're powered by rare earth materials.
00:32:27.000Who's in control of those rare earth materials?
00:32:28.000So, we are getting off our dependency on Russian oil by apparently going to the Venezuelans for their oil and also going to the Chinese for rare earth minerals.
00:32:36.000I can't see how this goes wrong in any way.
00:32:37.000It's a perfect... Now, here's the thing.
00:32:39.000If you are an elite leftist, which is basically the Democratic coalition at this point.
00:32:43.000The Democratic coalition is minorities.
00:32:54.000And so it tends to be people, economically speaking, who are either at the bottom of the economic spectrum or at the top of the economic spectrum and not much in between.
00:33:01.000One of the people at the top of the economic spectrum, of course, is Stephen Colbert.
00:33:04.000And the beautiful thing about being Stephen Colbert is you can be as elitist as you want to be.
00:33:12.000When Stephen Colbert says, I don't care about paying a couple extra bucks at the pump, what does it matter to me?
00:33:34.000Here is Stephen Colbert, however, saying he doesn't care if the price of gas goes up to $15 a gallon, because after all, he's very wealthy.
00:33:42.000And you, you people, you can eat Prius.
00:35:58.000Because when it comes to the movies you watch, you just want something that entertains you and doesn't slap you in the face with left-wing messaging.
00:37:15.000Bill is a fascinating thinker, and I think you're going to be really interested in what he has to say.
00:37:20.000It's one of the best conversations we've ever had on the Sunday special.
00:37:22.000It's available early to DailyWire members starting Saturday morning.
00:37:25.000So, get ready for an entire weekend of amazing content only at DailyWire.
00:37:29.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:37:33.000Alrighty, so meanwhile, the foreign policy of this administration continues to be a So, if you can't get oil from the Russians, apparently you're going to try and get it from the Venezuelans.
00:37:47.000As we mentioned yesterday, this is nuts.
00:37:49.000If you're Nicolas Maduro, the socialist tyrant of Venezuela, and you have your people eating dogs in the streets of Caracas, then apparently the Biden administration has you to talk to.
00:37:59.000By the way, he's openly allied with Vladimir Putin.
00:38:02.000The solution to not giving money to a dictator who is murdering people in Ukraine is to give money to a dictator who is murdering people in his own country and is allied with the dictator who's murdering people in Ukraine.
00:38:16.000It's a genius move by the Biden administration.
00:38:19.000Again, all of this is a consequence of you refusing to up oil production in your own country, which is inexcusable.
00:38:24.000The United States is blessed with this unbelievable natural resource.
00:38:28.000And the Biden administration solution is what if we could produce it, but With less environmental safety, like much more environmental damage in other countries that are oppressive and horrific and make ourselves dependent on them.
00:38:40.000What if we could do that instead of just, you know, ramming up production here at home?
00:38:44.000According to the New York Times, Venezuela is trying to make overtures to the United States.
00:38:50.000Venezuela's authoritarian government on Tuesday released at least two imprisoned Americans, a potential turning point in the Biden administration's relationship with Russia's staunchest ally in the Western Hemisphere.
00:39:00.000The release follows a rare trip by a high-level U.S.
00:39:02.000delegation to Venezuela over the weekend to meet with President Nicolas Maduro, part of a broader Biden administration agenda in autocratic countries that may be rethinking their ties with President Putin in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
00:39:13.000Yeah, that is a bunch of wishful thinking crap.
00:39:15.000Okay, this is where the Biden administration is like, we're prying Venezuela away from Russia.
00:39:23.000If you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, it's you.
00:39:26.000Joe Biden is the sucker at the poker table, and every single human knows it.
00:39:30.000Obama was the sucker at the poker table, too.
00:39:31.000I'm old enough to remember when Syria unleashed chemical weapons on its own citizens, and Barack Obama had drawn a red line, and then he made a deal with the Russians.
00:39:40.000And the idea was, we have opened a new era of great international relations with the Russians.
00:40:11.000Meanwhile, we've been reaching out to the Saudis and to the Emiratis, the UAE, who are actually allied with the United States, at least much more than Venezuela and Russia and Iran.
00:40:26.000They're not doing that because they are radically opposed to American interests.
00:40:30.000They have in the past opened up the floodgates when it came to pumping.
00:40:33.000The reason that they are doing that is because they are saying to the Biden administration, you cannot make overtures to the country that is on our borders in the north and exporting terrorism to Yemen in our south.
00:40:45.000You cannot make overtures to that country, offer them a pathway to a nuclear weapon, open up their economy, while they are fostering terrorism inside our own countries, and expect us to bail you out of your crappy foreign policy decisions.
00:40:58.000Why would the Saudis and the UAE help out the United States right now?
00:41:09.000If you're the Saudis, why would you make overtures to the United States?
00:41:12.000Why would you bail Joe Biden out of his problems while he is simultaneously negotiating a deal with Russia and Iran in order to give Iran a pathway to a nuclear weapon?
00:41:27.000You're going to have to deal with whatever domestic turmoil you have to deal with.
00:41:29.000You're going to have to deal with whatever world consequences there are for your policy.
00:41:32.000But we are not bailing you out of this problem so that you can turn around and expend your political capital to make a deal with the Russians to help the Iranians who want to wipe us out.
00:41:41.000They'd be fools to do otherwise, by the way.
00:41:42.000And everybody's like, well, what's the point of Saudi allyship if they're just not going to help us on this?
00:41:47.000The answer is maybe they don't see you as the allies that you said that you were even 10 years ago or five years ago or four years ago or two years ago.
00:41:57.000You're seeing this from countries all over the world hedging their bets because they do not trust the United States, because why would they trust the United States under administrations that consistently seem to want to make deals with enemies of our allies rather than make deals with our allies?
00:42:11.000This, by the way, is not relegated to the Middle East.
00:42:15.000The reason that Europe is arming up right now is because they don't trust that the United States is actually going to back them in a time of war.
00:42:22.000We pulled out of Afghanistan for no reason and turned over the country to a bunch of 8th century barbarians who proceeded to sell small girls into slavery.
00:42:47.000An American non-led world order is a worse world order for America.
00:42:51.000If you're rooting for America to win, you want a stronger America that keeps its commitments, that backs its allies, that does not make overt overtures to some of the world's worst regimes on the basis of some perverse notion that if you are nice to them, they will be nice to you.
00:43:31.000Then we're all supposed to be surprised when the state of Israel, which is caught between a Russia on its northern border in Syria, And the Iranian funded Hamas in itself on the Gaza border were surprised when they're like, yeah, we're going to try and stay out of this conflict with Ukraine because frankly, we have some competing interests right here.
00:43:52.000If people don't trust you, they are not going to give you what you want.
00:43:56.000If they don't trust you, they're not going to give you what you want.
00:43:58.000And you'll hear people on the left say, yes, but you have to make peace deals with your enemies.
00:44:01.000Well, in order to make good peace deals with your enemies, you first have to show your friends that you are, in fact, their friends.
00:44:06.000And this does not mean excusing Saudi predations on the human rights front.
00:44:11.000Saudi violates human rights all the time.
00:44:13.000But in the world of real politique, it's funny, all of the hard-headed Natcons that I hear from a lot, all of them seem to be bewildered by what's going on with Saudi Arabia.
00:44:32.000The United States looks weak, and so everybody is taking advantage, and everybody who's allied with the United States is feeling the pressure.
00:44:39.000And so they're beginning to get worried, as they should be at this point.
00:44:44.000I mean, the simple fact of the matter is that if you're an Eastern European country, why would you trust the United States?
00:44:48.000The United States, under Joe Biden, under Barack Obama, continuously refused to listen to Eastern European countries who were saying that the Russians are predators on our border.
00:44:59.000Why don't you bring us into the family of nations and arm us up?
00:45:02.000I mean, it's Barack Obama who was saying that he would not arm up the Ukrainians, because after all, if Russia walked in, it would be a cakewalk for them anyway, so what exactly was the point?
00:45:11.000It was Joe Biden in the 90s who was like, yeah, you know those Baltic states?
00:45:14.000We should just leave them out there for the Russians.
00:45:16.000And now the Baltic states are very worried again, as they should be.
00:45:20.000When you are an untrustworthy country, people do not pay attention to you.
00:45:25.000They're not interested in paying attention to you.
00:45:38.000And a country that keeps its commitments sporadically is a country that does not keep its commitments in any serious way.
00:45:44.000When you engage in intermittent reinforcement of the bad guys, Then they are going to be reinforced, which is what is happening globally speaking right now.
00:45:52.000And by the way, this is going to have ramifications for how the situation ends in Ukraine.
00:45:56.000Speaking of which, we should talk about how the situation is going to likely end in Ukraine.
00:46:00.000So the way the situation is likely to end in Ukraine right now is that the Ukrainians are likely to cave to many of the Russian demands in a way that NATO is not going to like.
00:46:14.000So, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who's been hailed as a Churchillian hero, yesterday, he spoke in front of the UK parliament via satellite, and he was talking about how he would never surrender to Russia.
00:46:28.000And I would like to remind you the words that the United Kingdom have already heard and which are important again.
00:46:36.000We will not give up and we will not lose.
00:46:41.000We will fight till the end at sea, in the air.
00:46:46.000We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.
00:46:53.000Okay, but at the same time, Vladimir Zelensky did an interview with ABC's David Muir, in which he said he was now prepared to drop his demand to join NATO.
00:47:00.000And the reason that he is saying he's prepared to drop his demand to join NATO is because NATO hasn't done what they were supposed to do, namely protect from Russian predation.
00:47:06.000So here is Vladimir Zelensky basically leaving the overture to peace open here, because the deal that's going to get done here, and this is the most likely outcome here, because Russia does not want to continue to pour hundreds of thousands of troops into Ukraine, taking away from all the other places on earth where it wishes to extend its military power.
00:47:21.000It doesn't want to take troops out from near the Kazakh border in order to shift them over to Ukraine, for example.
00:47:28.000And they also are not loving these sanctions.
00:47:30.000So they're looking for a way out and Zelensky is looking for a way out.
00:47:32.000So my guess is that we are closer to a deal than people think we are.
00:47:36.000And the deal is not going to please a lot of the people in the West who've been cheerleading Ukraine under the impression that Ukraine's solution looks exactly like our solution, which is utter defeat of the Russians.
00:47:43.000The Russians leave, the battle goes on.
00:47:46.000Zelensky is making clear that he will return to a non-aligned status that is somewhat friendly to Russia, and he might have to take that deal.
00:47:55.000And the reason for that, again, is because the West didn't make commitments early enough, didn't make those commitments strong enough.
00:47:59.000So if you're a non-aligned country, you have to walk that razor's edge.
00:48:05.000I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago, after we understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.
00:48:15.000The alliance is afraid of controversial things and confrontation with Russia.
00:48:23.000I never wanted to be a country which is begging something on its knees.
00:48:28.000And we're not going to be that country, and I don't want to be that president.
00:48:34.000Okay, so he's now saying that he might give up his demands to join NATO or his attempts to join the EU, which is one of the Russian demands to end this war.
00:48:42.000In the end, a negotiated peace probably looks like Russia slices off regions of the Donbass, slices off Crimea completely.
00:48:49.000And ends up with a commitment in the Ukrainian constitution not to formally join NATO or the EU.
00:48:54.000Now, presumably, the Ukrainian government then starts buying as many weapons as humanly possible to deter a future invasion by the Russians.
00:49:00.000But why exactly would Zelensky trust NATO?
00:49:03.000Why would he trust the United States when, for example, the Pentagon yesterday nixed a plan to get MiGs to the Ukrainians?
00:49:14.000So yesterday, the Polish government said, they sort of announced it just publicly because they figured that they were getting nowhere with the Americans.
00:49:20.000The Polish government wants to see Russia defeated in Ukraine because the minute that Russia wins Ukraine, suddenly there's now a border with Poland again.
00:49:27.000And so this is something the Polish don't want.
00:49:29.000So the Polish are like, okay, we want to get the MiGs in, but we can't get the MiGs in directly.
00:49:34.000So what we would like to do is use the Ramstein base in Germany in order to ship the MiGs in, and then you are going to reimburse us for the cost of the planes.
00:49:44.000We'll take our old planes, we'll give them to Ukraine, we'll use Ramstein as sort of the thoroughfare, and then you get us new planes.
00:49:49.000And they announced this publicly because they want to make clear, they want to shame Joe Biden and the United States into going along with that deal.
00:49:56.000So if you're Ukraine, why would you trust the United States?
00:49:58.000They won't even ship you the MiGs when the MiGs aren't even coming from you, they're coming from Poland.
00:50:03.000According to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, quote, we are now in contact with the Polish government following the statement issued today.
00:50:09.000As we have said, the decision about whether to transfer Polish-owned planes to Ukraine is ultimately one for the Polish government.
00:50:18.000But also, you Poles, you're on your own in the same way the Ukrainians are on your own.
00:50:22.000We will continue consulting with our allies and partners about ongoing security assistance to Ukraine because, in fact, Poland's proposal shows just some of the complexities this issue presents.
00:50:30.000The prospect of fighter jets at the disposal of the government of the United States of America departing from a US-NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.
00:50:42.000It is simply not clear to us there is a substantive rationale for it.
00:50:45.000Well, no, there is in fact a substantive rationale for it.
00:50:48.000The substantive rationale is that Russia does not want to go to war with the United States any more than we want to go to war with them.
00:50:55.000And we're not talking about establishing a no-fly zone now.
00:50:58.000We're talking about flying in military assets into Ukraine, which is not the same thing as a no-fly zone where we would establish complete air superiority over Ukraine and down any Russian jet that got in our way.
00:51:08.000John Kirby says, We will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents.
00:51:15.000We do not believe Poland's proposal is a tenable one.
00:51:16.000So, in other words, if Poland tried to fly planes into Ukraine's Iraq, we would be like, eh, maybe.
00:51:24.000But if NATO tries to do it via Ramstein, that'd be a... But here's the problem.
00:51:27.000NATO is a member... Poland is a member of NATO.
00:51:30.000So if Poland flew a plane into Ukraine, and then the Russians shot down that Polish plane, that would probably be an Article 5 violation and require an intervention by NATO.
00:51:41.000So all the United States is basically saying is they're going to allow not only air superiority over Ukraine to Russia, which at least is understandable because you don't want open conflict.
00:51:50.000They're not even willing to ship planes into Ukraine, which is the one thing that allows Ukraine to stave off Russian air superiority in the country.
00:51:58.000So why exactly would Zelensky not look for some sort of capitulation here?
00:52:01.000Why wouldn't Zelensky try to cut some sort of deal?
00:52:04.000And so the West is going to be all hot and bothered if this happens.
00:52:07.000But the truth is that the West's interests and Ukraine's interests diverge here.
00:52:11.000Mainly because the West wants something from Ukraine that Ukraine is not willing to give.
00:52:15.000Namely an endless war in which millions of people are made into refugees.
00:52:18.000We already have over 2 million people who are refugees from this particular war.
00:52:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of people forced to escape Ukraine has passed a milestone of 2 million as the civilian toll of the Russia-Ukraine war mounted along with international efforts to press Putin to halt the Russian offensive.
00:52:33.000A Russian military convoy opened fire near a checkpoint in the besieged northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, interrupting evacuations in violation of a brokered ceasefire.
00:52:41.000In many cities, Russia continued to obstruct civilians fleeing violence by firing in their vicinity and fighting nearby established humanitarian corridors.
00:52:49.000As heavy fighting continued across the country on day 13 of this Russian invasion, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said an additional 1 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine after fleeing their homes as well.
00:52:58.000Meanwhile, the United States intelligence, they're announcing that 4,000 Russian troops have died.
00:53:02.000Now, the United States is perfectly willing to continue supplying just enough material for the Ukrainians to continue killing Russian troops.
00:53:09.000And we are willing to undergo sacrifice on behalf of the Ukrainian people to the tune of a couple of extra bucks at the pump, and also a bunch of dead Ukrainians who are going to have to face down the threat of Russian tanks in their cities.
00:53:23.000So they seem perfectly happy with the fact that 4,000 Russian troops have been killed by the Ukrainians, but it may be that the Ukrainians get tired of this.
00:53:29.000And they're like, you know what, if we go back to something resembling status quo ante, With a commitment that we are not going to join the West.
00:53:34.000Maybe that's the best we can get out of this.
00:53:36.000After all, what did the West ever do for us other than shipping us insufficient weaponry to actually maintain the country?
00:53:51.000Are you able to say in open session how many Russian troops have been killed?
00:53:56.000With low confidence, somewhere between two and four thousand.
00:54:00.000That number comes from some intelligence sources, but also open source and how we pull that together.
00:54:07.000So we may be satisfied with that, but it seems unlikely that the Ukrainians are going to be satisfied with that because they have a lot of people who are dying to and two million people who have been displaced.
00:54:15.000Meanwhile, China is getting involved in Russia.
00:54:19.000And so if you are if you are, again, Ukraine and you look to the east and what you see is a Chinese-Russian alliance, That seems to be growing stronger, not weaker.
00:54:29.000Not in terms of global power, but in terms of the connections between the two countries, meaning that Russia can do this indefinitely.
00:54:34.000Are you going to attempt to cut some sort of deal?
00:54:36.000China, by the way, is gaining a lot from this because China is now buying up Russian assets on the cheap, knowing that eventually there's likely to be a deal and then those stocks are likely to rise again.
00:54:45.000And people are going to retain their dependency on Russian oil and natural gas because, again, the Greens on the left are insistent that they not increase production or get production from the United States.
00:54:54.000According to the Business Standard, China is now considering buying or increasing stakes in Russian energy and commodities companies like Gazprom and aluminum producer United company Rusal International, according to people familiar with the matter.
00:55:06.000Beijing is in talks with its state-owned firms, including China National Petroleum, China Petrochemical, Aluminum Corporation of China, So when you reshape the world order in ways that do not actually demonstrate long-term strength, you have a problem on your hands.
00:55:17.000assets, those people said any deal would be to bolster China's imports as it intensifies its focus on energy and food security, not as a show of support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but because now there are a bunch of assets that are available to China that weren't available to China before.
00:55:31.000So when you reshape the world order in ways that do not actually demonstrate long term strength, you have a problem on your hands.
00:55:39.000And there are going to be other opportunities for China here as well.
00:55:42.000So as the West cuts off China economically and as corporations pull out of Russia, that Russia China Iran access is going to grow is going to grow stronger and stronger.
00:55:54.000Which, again, is not exactly the problem.
00:55:58.000The problem instead is that a lack of strength and fortitude on the other side, without America in position as global leader, is likely to embolden that access in a variety of ways that are really inimical to the interests of the United States.
00:56:12.000A bunch of American companies, by the way, are already pulling out of Russia.
00:56:16.000Ford Motor Company suspended its joint venture with Russia's Solar's OJCC and halted sales to the country, citing concerns over the invasion.
00:56:23.000Volkswagen has cut relations with the company.
00:56:25.000Toyota is suspending production in Russia.
00:56:31.000BP is suspending, Exxon is suspending, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, all suspending operations in Russia.
00:56:37.000Coca-Cola and Pepsi have decided to halt sales of their brand.
00:56:41.000McDonald's is closing its 850 stores in Russia, which, by the way, demonstrates the stupidity of the golden arches theory of foreign policy promoted by Thomas Friedman, who once suggested that any countries with McDonald's wouldn't fight each other.
00:56:51.000So that lasts precisely as long as they don't fight each other and McDonald's doesn't pull out.
00:56:55.000It seems that, as they say, McDonald's has now established a no-fry zone in Russia.
00:56:59.000Starbucks is suspending operations at Russia locations as well.
00:57:04.000Again, the sort of pulling apart of the world's order in the absence of American power is clear to see.
00:57:10.000AWS, by the way, is also Preventing customers from Russia and Belarus from getting web space as well.
00:57:18.000So the polarization of the global economy, the polarization of the global system continues to pace.
00:57:22.000And all of that was driven by a simple fact.
00:57:24.000The Russians thought they could get away with anything.
00:57:26.000And the reason they thought they could get away with anything is because historically they had gotten away with pretty much anything.
00:57:32.000And supply lines are growing more attenuated as well.
00:57:35.000There are a bunch of ships that are now trapped by the Ukraine war, endangering sailors and global trade, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:57:40.000The war in Ukraine has severely hobbled shipping in the Black Sea, with broad consequences for international transport and global supply chains.
00:57:46.000Dozens of cargo ships are stranded at the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, shipping trackers said.
00:57:51.000An estimated 3,500 sailors have been stuck on some 200 ships at Ukrainian ports, according to the London-based shipping tracker Windward Ltd.
00:57:58.000More ships are stranded around the globe than at any point since World War II, according to maritime historians.
00:58:03.000The result is a shutdown of the world's second-largest grain-exporting region.
00:58:06.000Ukraine accounts for 16% of global corn exports.
00:58:09.000Together with Russia, 30% of wheat exports.
00:58:12.000Global wheat prices have jumped more than 55% since the week before the invasion.
00:58:17.000It turns out that when the world order collapses because of reaction to American weakness, things get worse for pretty much everyone.
00:58:24.000Which is why it seems imperative that the West stop showing weakness.
00:58:29.000And yet that is precisely what the Biden administration continues to show on the energy front by making overtures to Russia, Iran, Venezuela.
00:59:27.000officials worry that Russians will seize biolabs that we funded in Ukraine, another conspiracy theory proven true.
00:59:34.000And the Department of Health and Human Services is recommending Americans enroll in an after-vaccine health checker to monitor any injuries they might sustain from the 100% totally safe COVID vaccines.