The Ben Shapiro Show - The Most Dangerous Moment In Recent Memory | Ep. 1455

00:00:00.000 The Federal Reserve signals a bevy of rate hikes coming as the economy teeters on the brink of recession.

00:00:04.000 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for more help as the Russian offensive continues to stall.

00:00:09.000 And the Biden administration keeps reaching out to Iran.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:01:31.000 Well, the Federal Reserve finally did what everybody expected it to do, and they raised the interest rates yesterday by a mere 0.25%.

00:01:37.000 That is not going to do it in terms of curbing inflation.

00:01:40.000 It is signaling to the market that there will be a steady increase in the interest rates, that it's going to be 0.25 percentage points every time.

00:01:47.000 They're going to do this very incrementally, but they're going to do it six more times by the end of the year, which would put the interest rates at about 1.5, 1.75% if they are on track.

00:01:56.000 That is significantly higher than it is now.

00:01:57.000 It is well below what it would need to be In order to curb inflation, considering that inflation rates right now are running so hot, they're probably in double digits year over year.

00:02:05.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials voted Wednesday to lift interest rates and penciled in six more increases by year's end, the most aggressive pace in more than 15 years, in an escalating effort to slow inflation that is running at its highest levels in four decades.

00:02:17.000 The Fed will raise its benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to a range between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent.

00:02:23.000 That is the first rate increase since 2018.

00:02:27.000 Officials signaled they expect to lift the rates nearly 2% by the end of the year, slightly higher than the level that prevailed before the pandemic hit the United States economy two years ago when they slashed rates to near zero.

00:02:36.000 Now, you should remember that what that means is that when they slashed rates to near zero at the beginning of the pandemic, the interest rates were about 2%.

00:02:44.000 We did not have inflation rates that were running at 8%, 10%, 12%, 15% in terms of goods.

00:02:50.000 Right now, services are running about 5% inflation rate.

00:02:53.000 Goods are running about 15% inflation rate.

00:02:57.000 Increasing the interest rates to what we had just before the pandemic is not going to do it.

00:03:00.000 You're going to need many, many more interest rate increases.

00:03:03.000 The market took this as a sign that the Fed is getting serious and that they think that the economic growth of the country is going to remain strong.

00:03:09.000 But I would take this as a sign the Fed, once again, is playing around with things that it does not understand.

00:03:15.000 I've constantly been told the Federal Reserve is filled with experts, and yet throughout my lifetime, the Federal Reserve has blown it with easy monetary policies.

00:03:20.000 This was true under Alan Greenspan in the 2000s.

00:03:22.000 It led to the cratering of the economy 2007-2008.

00:03:25.000 It's been true under Jerome Powell, who spent the last two years printing more money than God has ever seen.

00:03:31.000 The Fed's post-meeting statement hinted at rising concern about inflation that initially appeared last year to be driven by pandemic-related bottlenecks, but has since broadened.

00:03:38.000 Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced he said, as I looked around the table at today's meeting, I saw a committee that's acutely aware of the need to return the economy to price stability and determined to use our tools to do exactly that.

00:03:50.000 Powell announced yesterday that wage increases should slow.

00:03:53.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:03:54.000 There's a misalignment of demand and supply, particularly in the labor market.

00:03:58.000 And that is leading to wages moving up at ways that are not consistent with 2% inflation over time.

00:04:07.000 And so we need to use our tools to, you know, Okay, so what he is essentially saying is that by raising the interest rates, you're going to get the wildly overpaid segment of the population that has been sitting it out back into the workforce because the economy is going to slow just a little bit, people are going to go back to work, and when they go back to work, they're going to be paid a little bit less.

00:04:31.000 He then said that the Fed is also going to start shrinking its balance sheet.

00:04:35.000 They're going to start selling off their $9 trillion asset portfolio.

00:04:39.000 He said that the Fed will finalize that plan by May 3rd or 4th.

00:04:42.000 Here he is yesterday.

00:04:43.000 We made excellent progress toward agreeing on the parameters of a plan to shrink the balance sheet.

00:04:49.000 And I'd say we're now in a position to finalize and implement that plan so that we're actually beginning runoff at a coming meeting.

00:04:56.000 And that could come as soon as our next meeting in May.

00:04:59.000 So this has some pretty serious ramifications for everybody involved.

00:05:04.000 If you take a look at the Wall Street Journal piece, they say, what the Fed's interest rate increase means to you.

00:05:08.000 Well, you will feel the impact of rising rates on the individual level and on a household level, says the Wall Street Journal, when interest rates go up or down.

00:05:15.000 The resulting changes in other rates impact the way we borrow money, but also how we save money.

00:05:18.000 Frustrated house hunters, for example, have already seen mortgage rates increase in recent months.

00:05:22.000 Rising rates mean homebuyers will pay a little bit more each month in mortgage payments.

00:05:26.000 So those mortgage payments are probably going to go up.

00:05:29.000 You should have taken advantage of American financing and refined your mortgage six months ago.

00:05:33.000 Okay, the reality of the situation is that you're about to see all of those mortgage interest rates go up, and that's going to have an impact on how you pay your mortgage or whether you can even buy that new home.

00:05:43.000 Raising the interest rate is about creating an inducement to saves.

00:05:45.000 And Laura Veldkamp, professor of finance and economics at Columbia University, it's basically a deterrent to consumption spending.

00:05:51.000 When an economy is overheated, raising the interest rate is a way to pull back and say, I'll hold on and postpone that spending.

00:05:57.000 Right, because inflation makes you want to spend.

00:05:58.000 Inflation means that your savings are worth less tomorrow than they are today.

00:06:02.000 So you need to spend that money before the spending is gone, basically.

00:06:05.000 When you raise the interest rates, you're trying to resupply the monetary value.

00:06:11.000 And what that means is that people are going to want to save rather than to spend.

00:06:15.000 And that means that you're going to have a drawback in certain parts of the economy.

00:06:18.000 The way mortgage prices are set is based largely on the yield of the 10-year U.S.

00:06:21.000 government bond known as the Treasury Note.

00:06:23.000 This rate is used as a benchmark for all different types of loans, including mortgages.

00:06:26.000 When the Fed raises rates, this pushes the yield on the Treasury Note higher.

00:06:29.000 This will, in turn, push mortgage rates higher.

00:06:32.000 As the Fed has signaled higher rates, the 10-year yield has moved higher.

00:06:35.000 This has, in turn, pushed the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to 3.85%.

00:06:37.000 A year ago, it was about 3%.

00:06:42.000 Meanwhile, banks have little incentive to raise interest on savings accounts.

00:06:45.000 During the pandemic, Americans have been hoarding cash, leading to the highest personal savings rate since World War II, and then edging down in recent months.

00:06:51.000 Carolyn Folin, professor of economics at Emory University, she says that her traditional view is that rising interest rates helps savers, but most people who are savvy are in a broad range of assets.

00:07:00.000 For your average person who just has their money in a savings account, you make nothing.

00:07:05.000 The interest rates offered on savings account and many certificates of deposit often move with the Fed funds rate.

00:07:09.000 According to the FDIC, the average annual percentage yield on a one-year CD is at 0.14 percent.

00:07:14.000 Goldman Sachs Group's Marks account is offering 0.50 percent.

00:07:18.000 Low interest rates very much affected savers, said Fernando Martin, assistant VP at the Federal Reserve Bank of St.

00:07:23.000 Louis.

00:07:23.000 People were looking for alternative investments and yield, which always implied more risk.

00:07:26.000 As interest rates go up, CDs will go up, which should perhaps help savers a little bit more.

00:07:30.000 So what you're going to see, by the way, is less investment in startups.

00:07:33.000 You're going to see less investment in brand new SPACs.

00:07:37.000 There's going to be less investment, generally speaking.

00:07:40.000 Inflation creates stock market bubbles.

00:07:43.000 When you take out a car loan, that loan has a fixed interest rate pegged to treasury yields.

00:07:46.000 That means the rise in interest rates shouldn't bring a lot of surprises for those who have fixed rates.

00:07:50.000 But if you have a variable rate, you're about to feel it.

00:07:53.000 Credit card debt is about to go up.

00:07:55.000 According to WalletHub's March report of more than 1,500 credit card offers, the annual percentage rate for those with good credit is 18.98%.

00:08:01.000 APR, an increase in interest rates, can sometimes affect the credit card percentage rate.

00:08:07.000 Student loans, those interest rates are probably going to go up.

00:08:11.000 So, bottom line is that when you raise interest rates, what you end up doing is you end up encouraging, saving, discouraging, spending.

00:08:19.000 You end up discouraging lending by banks.

00:08:21.000 The goal is to take money out of the economy.

00:08:23.000 That is the stated goal of increasing the interest rates.

00:08:27.000 And when you have the economy that is running super hot right now, and then you start increasing the interest rates, you are looking at the possibility of stagflation.

00:08:34.000 That possibility, by the way, gets worse when you don't just crush it right away.

00:08:38.000 is part of the problem here. You see that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, they're attempting a sort of lukewarm policy here where they gradually and slowly increase the interest rates the way that we did in 2004 to 2006 when we had 17 straight quarters where we had an interest rate increase.

00:08:53.000 The difference is that 2004 to 2006 was not seeing inflation, 40-year inflation waves. I mean, this is a 40-year inflation wave that we are seeing right now, and it's likely to continue to be bad, not just because of the Russia-Ukraine war, but because we have manufacturing shutdowns in China from the new wave of COVID. Something like over 1% of the entire South Korean population tested positive for COVID in the last couple of days.

00:09:15.000 So COVID is not through with the manufacturing chains.

00:09:18.000 You're starting to see the global economy separating off into spheres of interest, as opposed to the globalized economy we have been used to since the end of the Cold War.

00:09:26.000 All of this spells inflation in products and services in terms of cost.

00:09:31.000 And meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is not doing enough to tamp down those interest rates, to ramp up the interest rates, to tamp down the inflation.

00:09:37.000 They're not doing enough for that.

00:09:39.000 Instead, they're just doing it really slowly in the hopes that it won't cause a recession.

00:09:44.000 What that's likely to lead to is longer-term inflation, which leads to stagflation.

00:09:48.000 See, the calculation here is, do you take a lot of short-term pain for long-term gain, or do you try and sort of massage this thing?

00:09:56.000 And right now, it appears the Federal Reserve is trying to massage this thing at the moment.

00:10:00.000 Meanwhile, the White House continues to whistle past the graveyard.

00:10:03.000 They have shifted their narrative again on oil and gas.

00:10:07.000 So you remember that when it came to oil and gas inflation, it was originally inflation is imaginary and temporary.

00:10:13.000 Then it was, well, it may be permanent, but it's good because it just means that there's high demand.

00:10:18.000 And then it was, it's oil and gas companies fault for being greedy.

00:10:21.000 And then it was Putin.

00:10:22.000 And now they are back to it's oil and gas companies fault for being greedy.

00:10:25.000 Here's the White House blaming oil and gas companies again for the price of oil.

00:10:29.000 While we reiterate what the president said to oil and gas companies last week, the invasion of Ukraine and the volatility of the oil market is no excuse for excessive price increases, profit padding, or any effort to exploit American consumers.

00:10:43.000 No one should capitalize on Putin's aggression by taking advantage of American families.

00:10:48.000 That's what's happening here.

00:10:49.000 They just got greedy.

00:10:49.000 They got super duper duper greedy.

00:10:51.000 So the reason that I point this out is because what this says is they are not shifting their approach at all.

00:10:56.000 Their approach is the same as it was six weeks ago or two months ago or six months ago, which means that the economic policy pursued by this administration is going to be very, very hard on business.

00:11:05.000 It's going to be very easy on useless businesses that require massive government subsidies.

00:11:09.000 It's going to be subsidies all the way down for all of their union buddies.

00:11:13.000 None of this spells a future of serious growth.

00:11:16.000 Now, as I've said before on this program, in the mid to long term, I'm less worried about inflation than I am about economic stagnation.

00:11:22.000 Because I think that the conditions for innovation in this country are getting worse and worse under the Biden administration.

00:11:27.000 Regulations are getting worse.

00:11:28.000 They keep threatening higher taxes.

00:11:30.000 They keep threatening more subsidies for the least productive industries.

00:11:34.000 That is a recipe for European-style stagnation, economically speaking. 0.95

00:11:40.000 We spent more money than we could afford in the last couple of years, and that obviously has driven up things like the inflation rates.

00:11:47.000 But as we tamp those down, that just means, by the way, as we raise the interest rates, what that really means also is that we're going to have to pay back more on our national debt.

00:11:55.000 We've trapped ourselves here.

00:11:57.000 We're at a very perilous moment here, and we are not taking our medicine.

00:12:00.000 We are instead attempting to, again, sort of take the easy path of least resistance.

00:12:06.000 There's a famous story in the Talmud about a man who walks up to another man who's at a crossroads, and he says to the guide, he says, which way should I go?

00:12:14.000 It's a kid.

00:12:15.000 He says to the kid, which way should I go here?

00:12:17.000 And the kid says, well, there's the long way that's short, and there's the short way that's long.

00:12:21.000 And the guy says, oh, I'll take the short way that's long.

00:12:23.000 So he goes on the short way that's long, and it turns out that the short way that's long is filled with thickets and brambles and blockages, and he can't get through.

00:12:29.000 He goes back.

00:12:30.000 He says, I see what you meant now.

00:12:32.000 What you meant is that the long way that's short is a longer road, but you get there more quickly because there are fewer obstacles.

00:12:40.000 It seems as though the Federal Reserve is determined to take the short way that is long.

00:12:44.000 The easy solution that is not a solution at all.

00:12:46.000 And I have serious doubts as to whether the interest rate increases that they've announced yesterday are actually going to handle this job.

00:12:52.000 Again, the Democrats, there are two aspects of the American economy.

00:12:56.000 There's economic policy and there's fiscal policy.

00:12:58.000 Fiscal policy is set by the Federal Reserve.

00:12:59.000 They're doing it wrong.

00:13:00.000 Economic policy is being set by the White House and they're doing it wrong as well.

00:13:04.000 This is why Jennifer Granholm yesterday, in the middle of a price spike on gas, She's once again saying this is a moment to transition to green energy.

00:13:10.000 No, this is exactly the wrong moment to transition to green energy.

00:13:14.000 You dope?

00:13:16.000 The reduction of supply of natural gas and oil from Russia creates a moment that we should be acting.

00:13:25.000 I mean, we heard President Zelensky.

00:13:27.000 We do not want to see any country that is held hostage to Vladimir Putin.

00:13:34.000 And this is a moment for Congress to be able to act.

00:13:38.000 These people are out of their mind.

00:13:39.000 They're out of their mind.

00:13:40.000 They look at President Zelensky talking about what's going on in Ukraine and their first move is, what if we cut ourselves off further from natural gas and oil?

00:13:47.000 Meaning that we're going to make ourselves more dependent on foreign natural gas and oil? 1.00

00:13:52.000 It's just stupidity. 1.00

00:13:53.000 So we are on a perilous economic front right now. 1.00

00:13:55.000 Very, very perilous.

00:13:56.000 Like, many economists think we're going to slide into recession over the course of the next few months.

00:14:00.000 You combine that with the perilousness of the situation in Ukraine, and you have a recipe for a real conflagration.

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00:15:11.000 Now, everybody is sort of taking it as though Russia's failures in Ukraine are going to somehow tamp down the prospect of serious war.

00:15:21.000 I am not so sure that is the case.

00:15:22.000 The reason that I am a little more skeptical is because the deeper that Vladimir Putin gets in here, and the fewer off-ramps that are available to him, the more volatile he is going to become.

00:15:31.000 This was always seen by the West, which is why it was important to box him in before he invaded Ukraine. 0.86

00:15:36.000 Once he invaded Ukraine, there are not a lot of good solutions on the table, as I keep saying. 0.79

00:15:40.000 Now the West is sort of getting happy and fat over the idea that Ukraine is going to completely repel Russia here. 0.78

00:15:47.000 But this neglects the fact that not only is Russia a much larger country than Ukraine, but also Vladimir Putin has a lot more at stake than the West does here.

00:15:55.000 The West has something at stake in defending Ukraine in that they want to dissuade Russia from doing things like this again.

00:16:00.000 They want to dissuade China from going after Taiwan.

00:16:02.000 We do have a heavy stake here, which is why we're doing what we're doing.

00:16:05.000 Of Vladimir Putin, his entire regime may be tottering right now because he's completely destroyed the economy of his own country in order to make this move.

00:16:12.000 And so he has to come up with something.

00:16:14.000 And so what you've seen is him ramping up in radical fashion the attacks on civilians.

00:16:19.000 I mean, in serious, like, there was a report yesterday that he just attacked a theater in Mariupol.

00:16:23.000 The people were just sheltering there.

00:16:24.000 And so, the Russians just bombed the theater, which would not be a shock.

00:16:27.000 They did the same thing in Grozny and Chechnya way back in 1999-2000.

00:16:30.000 Just killed several hundred people.

00:16:33.000 It is unclear how many people died in that theater in Mariupol over the last 24 hours.

00:16:38.000 Meanwhile, things get worse for the Russians, not better, on the military front.

00:16:41.000 According to the New York Times, In the 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima during World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed.

00:16:48.000 Now, 20 days after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his military has already lost more soldiers than that, according to American intelligence estimates.

00:16:55.000 That's unbelievable.

00:16:56.000 So, he has lost more soldiers in three weeks than we lost during the entirety of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which is totally crazy.

00:17:03.000 That was one of the bloodiest battles in modern American history.

00:17:07.000 The conservative side of the estimate at more than 7,000 Russian troop deaths is greater than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

00:17:15.000 Russia's strategy, by the way, is the same as it was during World War II, which is just throw men into the meat grinder. 0.89

00:17:20.000 It's an insane strategy, particularly in a time when Russia does not have the resources to replenish those men.

00:17:24.000 But Russia has one way of doing things, and they have not changed that way of doing things.

00:17:30.000 With the more than 150,000 Russian troops now involved in the war in Ukraine, Russian casualties, when including the estimated 14 to 21,000 injured, are near the level of the 10% casualty rate for a single unit that renders it unable to carry out combat-related tasks.

00:17:46.000 So the idea here is that Russia may be on the brink of losing.

00:17:49.000 Pentagon officials say a high and rising number of war dead can destroy the will to continue fighting.

00:17:53.000 The result, they say, has shown up in intelligence reports that senior officials in the Biden administration read every day.

00:17:57.000 One recent report focused on low morale among Russian troops described soldiers just parking their vehicles and walking off into the woods.

00:18:03.000 The American officials caution their number of Russian troop deaths are inexact.

00:18:07.000 Though, compiled with the analysis of the latest news media, Ukrainian figures, which tend to be high, they say almost 14,000 troop deaths, and Russian figures, which tend to be really low, they say just 500 troop deaths.

00:18:17.000 This should be somewhere near accurate.

00:18:19.000 American military and intelligence officials know, for example, how many troops are usually in a tank.

00:18:23.000 They can extrapolate from that by the number of casualties when an armored vehicle is hit by, say, a Javelin anti-tank missile.

00:18:29.000 Evelyn Farkas, top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration, says, Okay, so all of that is good and wonderful in the sense that we don't want Russia to win.

00:18:44.000 However, we should mention that as things get worse for Russia, it is more likely that they become more volatile.

00:18:49.000 It is not more likely that they become less volatile and just sort of go away.

00:18:53.000 On the economic front, Russia's in serious trouble.

00:18:56.000 On the economic front, Russia's about to default on all of its bombs, which means it won't be able to take out any credit on world markets anytime soon ever again, meaning it becomes basically a gas proxy state for China. 0.94

00:19:05.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia's finance minister said the country paid what it owed on its foreign debts on Wednesday, but wasn't even sure if the payments would go through.

00:19:13.000 The Russian government is required to pay $117 million in interest payments on $2 denominated government bonds on Wednesday.

00:19:19.000 Failure to pay or attempting to pay in rubles would set the stage for Russia to be placed in default by its creditors.

00:19:25.000 The impossibility of fulfilling our obligations in foreign currency does not depend on us, said Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

00:19:32.000 He says we have the money, we paid the payment, now the bill is on the side, first of all, of the American authorities.

00:19:37.000 So Russia may be on the brink of basically defaulting, which again means that the country is effectively bankrupt and nobody's going to invest there pretty much ever again.

00:19:47.000 Which is why it is no shock that the US is now warning Moscow against using chemical or biological weapons.

00:19:53.000 President Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned his Russian counterpart on Wednesday, according to the New York Times, against, quote, any possible Russian decision to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine.

00:20:02.000 The explicit warning to Nikolai Petrushev, President Putin's main national security adviser, reflected escalating concerns in Washington that the Russians, stymied in their hopes of a quick takeover of the country, could resort to weapons of mass destruction.

00:20:14.000 Officials said there was no direct mention of the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, though two officials said the administration did send a separate warning on that issue.

00:20:21.000 And this does raise the question, OK, if Russia goes ahead and they feel so boxed in that they use chemical or biological weapons or, God forbid, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield, what exactly does the West do at this point?

00:20:33.000 Remember, it was Barack Obama who drew a red line against using chemical weapons in Syria, only to back off wildly from that red line as soon as Assad used chlorine gas in Syria, and he just handed over the entire place to the Russians.

00:20:47.000 So if you're Vladimir Putin, you feel totally boxed in.

00:20:50.000 Do you just go for broke here?

00:20:51.000 I mean, you already went into Ukraine.

00:20:53.000 You've already lost thousands of troops, more than the entire Western losses during the Afghanistan-Iraq War, probably.

00:20:59.000 So what do you do?

00:21:01.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:21:46.000 Okay, so let's take that for example.

00:21:47.000 Let's say that, for example, Vladimir Putin does go for it.

00:21:50.000 Let's say that he uses chemical or biological weapons.

00:21:51.000 professional and get it taken care of. Go to getroman.com slash ben today. If you're prescribed, get 15 bucks off your first month of ED treatment. Make sure you're ready to have confidence and control this year. Roman ready. Okay, so let's take that for example.

00:22:04.000 Let's say that that, for example, Vladimir Putin does go for it. Let's say that he uses chemical or biological weapons. Is the West willing to get directly involved here? So there have been recommendations that what the West actually what the West actually should do here is station troops in Western Ukraine.

00:22:19.000 They should sort of edge over the border.

00:22:21.000 Western Ukraine has not been taken over by the Russians.

00:22:23.000 There's been really no Russian activity in the western part of Ukraine.

00:22:26.000 The furthest west they've gone is Kiev, which is about two-thirds of the way west of the eastern border of Ukraine.

00:22:33.000 But they've not really done anything in the in the western third of Ukraine.

00:22:37.000 So if you station NATO troops there, then you basically say to Putin, listen, if you cross this particular line, you're going to start killing NATO troops.

00:22:43.000 And at that point, we have to get directly involved.

00:22:46.000 The problem with setting a red line with regard to chemical or biological weapons is that if Putin uses them, are you willing to go to full scale boots on the ground war with Vladimir Putin over his use of chemical or even tactical battlefield nuclear weapons?

00:22:59.000 If Vladimir Putin decides he's just going to level population centers, what exactly are you going to do about it?

00:23:04.000 This is the real question for the West right now.

00:23:08.000 Because as that box tightens in around Vladimir Putin, and as Zelensky feels that he might be able to win this thing outright because too many Russian troops are getting killed, what happens if Putin just decides to go for it?

00:23:20.000 This is what Bret Stephens over at the New York Times is writing about today.

00:23:24.000 He says, before the invasion, we had the Russian invasions of Georgia, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine, the Russian carpet bombing of Aleppo, the use of exotic radioactive and chemical agents against Russian dissidents on British soil, Russian interference in U.S.

00:23:35.000 elections, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the blatant poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny.

00:23:39.000 Were any of these sovereignty violations, legal violations, treaty violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity met with a strong, united, punitive response that could have averted the next round of outrages?

00:23:49.000 In short, did Putin have any reason to think before February 24th, he wouldn't be able to get away with this invasion?

00:23:53.000 Beijing's eradication of Hong Kong's autonomy, Iran's war by proxy against its neighbors.

00:23:57.000 Give Vladimir Putin pause.

00:23:59.000 In short, did Putin have any reason to think before February 24th, he wouldn't be able to get away with this invasion?

00:24:04.000 He did not.

00:24:04.000 The West has spent 22 years placating Putin through a long cycle of resets and wrist slaps.

00:24:10.000 The devastation of Ukraine is the fruit of this appeasement.

00:24:12.000 The Biden administration now faces the question of whether it wants to bring this cycle to an end.

00:24:16.000 And the answer is not clear.

00:24:17.000 Sanctions have hurt the Russian economy.

00:24:19.000 Arms shipments to Ukraine have helped slow the Russian advance.

00:24:21.000 Russia's brutality has unified NATO. 0.90

00:24:23.000 This is to Biden's credit, but the administration continues to operate under a series of potentially catastrophic illusions.

00:24:29.000 Sanctions may devastate Russia in the short term, but the immediate struggle in Ukraine is short term.

00:24:34.000 It is not long term.

00:24:35.000 So if the sanctions hurt Russia long-term, short-term, doesn't matter all that much.

00:24:40.000 For Russia, what do they care? 0.89

00:24:41.000 Their economy's bad for three years, but if they get what they want in Ukraine, that's happening over the next six weeks.

00:24:47.000 Arming Ukraine with Javelin and Stinger missiles has wounded and embarrassed the Russian military.

00:24:52.000 Providing Kiev with MiG-29 fighter jets and other potentially game-changing weapon systems could help turn the tide.

00:24:57.000 Refusing to do so may only prolong Ukraine's agony.

00:25:01.000 Frequent suggestions Putin has already lost the war, or that he can't possibly win when Ukrainians are united in their hatred for him, or that he's looking for an off-ramp may turn out to be right, but they are grossly premature, says Brett Stevens.

00:25:10.000 This war is only in its third week.

00:25:12.000 It took the Nazis longer to conquer Poland.

00:25:14.000 The ability to subdue a restive population is chiefly a function of the pain an occupier is willing to inflict.

00:25:19.000 And Putin has no limits on that one.

00:25:22.000 There is now a serious risk these illusions could collapse very suddenly.

00:25:25.000 There's little evidence so far Putin is eager to cut his losses.

00:25:27.000 On the contrary, to do so now would jeopardize his grip on power.

00:25:30.000 So expect him to double down.

00:25:32.000 If he uses a chemical weapon or deploys a battlefield nuclear weapon in keeping with long-standing Russian military doctrine, does he lose more than he gains?

00:25:39.000 The question answers itself.

00:25:41.000 He wins swiftly, he terrifies the West, he consolidates power.

00:25:44.000 He suffers consequences only marginally graver than the ones already inflicted.

00:25:47.000 And his fellow travelers in Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang take note.

00:25:52.000 So I tend to agree with Brett Stevens here.

00:25:54.000 The fact that our deterrence failed with regard to Ukraine means that trying to reestablish deterrence in Ukraine is going to, it's the same thing as the economy.

00:26:00.000 It's going to cause pain.

00:26:01.000 The question is when you want to take the pain.

00:26:04.000 So is the pain going to be in watching Putin devastate Ukraine?

00:26:07.000 Is public opinion going to be willing to go along with that to avert an open war between NATO and Russia?

00:26:15.000 Because Putin is probably going to up the ante here.

00:26:17.000 Or alternatively, is the West basically going to look the other way while Putin Subjects the Ukrainians to the kind of treatment that the Chechens got in Grozny or that the Syrians got in Aleppo.

00:26:29.000 And if that happens, how do you re-establish deterrence after that?

00:26:33.000 Because every time you fail in deterrence, you now have to react more harshly in order to re-establish the possibility of deterrence.

00:26:39.000 If you let the bully beat up everybody on the playground, you're gonna need to stand up to him pretty damn strong if you want him to stop doing that at some point here.

00:26:47.000 So the possibility of World War III is becoming significantly more likely, not less likely, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. 0.55

00:26:56.000 And now it's not clear whether it becomes even more likely or less likely should the NATO forces start to engage in actual containment mechanisms against Vladimir Putin at this point.

00:27:05.000 Meanwhile, if you're Vladimir Zelensky, you're just looking for help because obviously the short-term problem is your problem.

00:27:10.000 You're not worried about the ramifications of World War III.

00:27:12.000 The West is. 0.60

00:27:13.000 You're worried about the ramifications of bombs falling on theaters in the middle of Mariupol right now.

00:27:17.000 So Zelensky spoke in front of the U.S.

00:27:19.000 Congress yesterday.

00:27:20.000 He did about half the speech in Ukrainian.

00:27:22.000 He did half the speech In English, he started by talking about Pearl Harbor at 9-11.

00:27:27.000 And by the way, one thing that should become very clear from all of this is how lucky you are and I am and everybody is to live in the United States.

00:27:33.000 We have lived in a country where bombs do not fall on us on the regular.

00:27:36.000 We have lived in a country that has never had to experience this in our history.

00:27:39.000 And the worst things that we've seen in our lifetime are 9-11, which was a horrific terrorist attack, but it was not a regular weeks long bombing campaign against civilian centers in the United States.

00:27:49.000 It was a really horrifyingly evil terrorist day.

00:27:54.000 But what you see in other countries on a fairly regular basis is just violence that pervades life.

00:27:59.000 Here's Zelensky talking about how bad it is in Ukraine.

00:28:02.000 Remember Pearl Harbor.

00:28:04.000 Terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you.

00:28:13.000 Just remember it.

00:28:16.000 Remember September the 11th.

00:28:18.000 A terrible day in 2001 when evil tried to turn your cities, independent territories in battlefields.

00:28:30.000 When innocent people were attacked.

00:28:34.000 He continued along these lines.

00:28:35.000 He tried to make a direct argument to Joe Biden.

00:28:40.000 He's trying to get Joe Biden to take the leadership position that Joe Biden really does not want.

00:28:44.000 He says, you need to be the leader of the world, be the leader of peace.

00:28:47.000 Today it's not enough to be the leader of the nation.

00:28:52.000 Today it takes to be the leader of the world.

00:28:54.000 Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

00:29:00.000 Peace in your country doesn't depend anymore only on you and your people.

00:29:07.000 It depends on those next to you, on those who are strong.

00:29:13.000 You can't blame Zelensky for making this moral appeal.

00:29:15.000 After all, his country is under threat of essentially being overthrown by the Russian bear. 0.99

00:29:20.000 Zelensky continued along these lines.

00:29:21.000 He talked about the virtue of strength in the face of Russian aggression.

00:29:26.000 Strong doesn't mean weak.

00:29:31.000 Strong is brave and ready to fight for the life of his citizens and citizens of the world.

00:29:39.000 For human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently and to die when your time comes.

00:29:47.000 And not when it's wanted by someone else, by your neighbor.

00:29:54.000 So Zelensky essentially saying, I'm willing to die for my country.

00:29:57.000 Sentiments you don't hear too often in the United States, where literally five in 10 Democrats say that they would flee rather than fighting for their country, as opposed to four who would stay.

00:30:07.000 Zelensky completed his speech by showing a video of the suffering that's been going on in Ukraine.

00:30:14.000 Very, very difficult to watch.

00:30:15.000 It's graphic content, but you know, so is war.

00:30:17.000 So here's what Zelensky showed yesterday to the U.S.

00:30:19.000 Congress.

00:30:32.000 was devastated.

00:30:33.000 And it says, close the sky over Ukraine is how this completes.

00:30:58.000 And this was his call.

00:30:59.000 Close the sky, close the sky.

00:31:00.000 The idea of being calling for no fly zone.

00:31:02.000 NATO has rightly been hesitant to declare a no fly zone because they don't want to go to direct war with Russia.

00:31:08.000 And again, the question is going to be, what does Russia do in order to secure Ukraine that could provoke a war?

00:31:13.000 And is the West willing to do anything or is the West going to draw its next line at somewhere beyond Ukraine?

00:31:20.000 For its part, the Biden administration once again seems to be taking half measure.

00:31:22.000 It is not precisely clear where they are on this question.

00:31:25.000 They keep making warnings to Putin, and I just wonder whether Putin is going to care about those warnings.

00:31:30.000 We'll get to the White House response in just one second.

00:31:32.000 Well, as we've been talking about, the economy is right now on knife's edge.

00:31:36.000 Interest rate increases.

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00:32:39.000 That's 866-721-3300.

00:32:43.000 Well, tonight it's time for my third Thursday book club again.

00:32:46.000 You still have a chance to sign up.

00:32:47.000 Tonight, we're going to go through my analysis of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

00:32:51.000 I can't wait to read it and discuss it with you.

00:32:53.000 Perhaps the greatest book ever written on the French Revolution.

00:32:56.000 Remember, Third Thursday Book Club is a live experience you get to engage with me like never before.

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00:33:01.000 Even if you haven't read the book we discussed, you will feel well-read by the time we are done.

00:33:04.000 It's going to sound like you know the book, because I'm going to be your guide.

00:33:07.000 I'm going to show you why each one of these works is such an important work.

00:33:09.000 When you sign up, you get my notes.

00:33:11.000 That's a cheat sheet to the important lessons, themes, and characters.

00:33:13.000 Remember, You're doing all of this with thousands of other Daily Wire members live.

00:33:17.000 Seriously, this isn't like any other book club you've been a part of.

00:33:19.000 So sign up for the Third Thursday Book Club at thirdthursdaybookclub.com to get my notes sent straight to your inbox for A Tale of Two Cities.

00:33:26.000 Set a reminder to join the conversation tonight, 8 p.m.

00:33:29.000 Eastern, also at the end of the conversation, I'm gonna be giving you next month's book, which is a really, really great book.

00:33:34.000 We'll get to that tonight, thirdthursdaybookclub.com.

00:33:37.000 Also, There are a lot of books that are great that just don't get published.

00:33:41.000 That's why Daily Wire Books began.

00:33:43.000 DW Books.

00:33:43.000 We are proud to be publishing books that are actively fighting the left's monopoly on storytelling.

00:33:47.000 The first book is 12 Seconds in the Dark by Sergeant Jonathan Manningly.

00:33:51.000 Now, you know that story because 12 Seconds in the Dark is about what happened the night of the tragic Breonna Taylor shooting.

00:33:57.000 The media lied to you.

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00:33:59.000 And this book explodes those lies.

00:34:00.000 Check out the trailer.

00:34:01.000 It was very chaotic.

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00:34:06.000 Breonna Taylor, she was caught in the crossfire of those bullets.

00:34:09.000 As soon as your brain's registering, it's already over.

00:34:12.000 The media got so many things wrong in this case.

00:34:14.000 Saying we had the wrong apartment.

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00:37:00.000 So the White House has responded to Zelensky's appeal by announcing more aid, about 800 million dollars in more aid.

00:37:12.000 Only a portion of that is military aid, a lot of it is humanitarian aid.

00:37:14.000 Here was Joe Biden announcing that from the White House yesterday.

00:37:16.000 Now I'm once again using my presidential authority to activate an additional security assistance to continue to help Ukraine fend off Russia's assault. 0.65

00:37:29.000 An additional $800 million in assistance.

00:37:32.000 That brings the total of new U.S. 0.50

00:37:34.000 security assistance to Ukraine to $1 billion just this week.

00:37:39.000 These are the large, these are direct transfers of equipment from our Department of Defense to the Ukrainian military to help them as they fight against this invasion.

00:37:47.000 Okay, so this is right.

00:37:49.000 I mean, this is what we should be doing.

00:37:51.000 The question is, what is the actual strategy here?

00:37:54.000 What is the offer that is being offered to Putin?

00:37:57.000 Putin has to have some law for him here.

00:37:58.000 You know, it's amazing.

00:38:00.000 I'm as hawkish as anyone on the right.

00:38:02.000 I'm extraordinarily hawkish.

00:38:04.000 When deterrence fails, you have very few options that are very good.

00:38:07.000 And the possibility of biological, chemical, or nuclear warfare in Ukraine is rising exponentially the more, or as Joe Biden might put it, exponentially, exponentially, the longer this war goes on and the more losses Putin suffers.

00:38:20.000 Russia has a strategy that they've termed escalating to deescalate, meaning we we ramp everything up in order to then deescalate.

00:38:26.000 But the question is whether the West is willing to actually do the hard things that would be necessary in order to stop Putin from doing that.

00:38:32.000 And at this point, I really wonder if that is the case.

00:38:36.000 Biden has been pretty vague about what exactly his his end goal here.

00:38:40.000 What's the strategy?

00:38:41.000 And he says that the goal is to make Putin pay the price.

00:38:43.000 Well, Putin's paying the price, economically speaking.

00:38:45.000 He's paying the price militarily speaking.

00:38:47.000 The question is, what happens if Putin escalates?

00:38:49.000 Here's Biden not answering that particular question yesterday.

00:38:52.000 Together with our allies and partners, we will keep up the pressure on Putin's crumbling economy, isolating him on the global stage.

00:39:01.000 That's our goal.

00:39:03.000 Make Putin pay the price, weaken his position, while strengthening the hand of the Ukrainians on the battlefield at the negotiating table.

00:39:10.000 Okay, well, that is fine, but there's going to actually have to be some sort of negotiated solution in which Putin gets something of what he wants.

00:39:16.000 Because if that does not happen, then the likelihood, again, that an event happens that escalates this thing to the possibility of World War III actually rises fairly dramatically.

00:39:26.000 I've been pretty sanguine about the possibility of World War 3 so far.

00:39:29.000 I really don't think that this is going to break into a major shooting war between the major powers, mainly because I don't think that the West has any interest in that.

00:39:35.000 I think Russia has very little interest in it also.

00:39:37.000 But the problem is that the lines that the United States and its allies have been setting are not credible lines.

00:39:43.000 Putin has to know that if he uses a chemical weapon in Ukraine in order to subdue the native population, then the West is likely to do very little.

00:39:51.000 At least that's what the past would have suggested at this point.

00:39:55.000 The West is being very robust in its economic response.

00:39:57.000 They're being significantly less robust in their military response.

00:40:01.000 But meanwhile, you got Joe Biden using language that is not useful.

00:40:05.000 So, he may be correct, but it's not useful.

00:40:07.000 In diplomacy, there's a difference between being right and being happy.

00:40:10.000 And Joe Biden was asked yesterday whether Putin is a war criminal.

00:40:12.000 Now, the answer clearly is yes, of course.

00:40:13.000 Of course, Putin is a war criminal.

00:40:14.000 But the goal of the White House here, again, is to offer Putin an off-ramp.

00:40:18.000 How do you call Putin a war criminal publicly, and then within 24 hours try to sign a peace deal with him?

00:40:22.000 Makes it very difficult.

00:40:23.000 Here's Joe Biden yesterday.

00:40:26.000 He said, I think he is a war criminal.

00:40:34.000 Okay, well, again, that's true. 0.97

00:40:36.000 He is a war criminal.

00:40:37.000 And thus, don't write checks.

00:40:41.000 Your body can't cash here.

00:40:42.000 Jen Psaki tried to back this one off yesterday from the White House.

00:40:45.000 The president was answering a direct question that was asked and responding to what he has seen on television.

00:40:52.000 We have all seen barbaric acts, horrific acts by a foreign dictator in a country that is threatening and taking the lives of civilians, impacting hospitals, women who are pregnant, journalists, others.

00:41:05.000 And I think he was answering a direct question.

00:41:08.000 Okay, so you saw that based on the news.

00:41:10.000 That doesn't mean that he's actually labeling him a war criminal.

00:41:11.000 There will have to be processes that are put in place to determine whether they're trying to back off of it, which is what they should do.

00:41:17.000 But every time you let Joe Biden off the chain, something bad happens.

00:41:20.000 Jen Psaki also could not answer.

00:41:21.000 The United States and NATO, they are now providing drones, a certain type of drone that is directed at, for example, artillery positions among Russian troops.

00:41:31.000 And she was asked, why is it that you guys are willing to send those types of drones, but you're not willing to send MiGs?

00:41:35.000 Why is one escalatory, but the other is not?

00:41:37.000 And the White House has no answer for this.

00:41:40.000 Is your position that the drones were assessed by the Defense Department to not be perceived as escalatory and to not be perceived as offensive weapons?

00:41:49.000 Again, I don't have anything more to confirm beyond what was in the fact sheet and specifics in there, but defensive weapons is what we have provided.

00:41:56.000 No, you have not.

00:41:57.000 You've provided offensive weapons because the distinction between a defensive weapon is like a defensive weapon is like Iron Dome, right?

00:42:02.000 It's a shield.

00:42:02.000 An offensive weapon is one that could be used offensively, which is like a drone that takes out artillery positions or Russian troop positions.

00:42:10.000 That is an offensive weapon.

00:42:12.000 And meanwhile...

00:42:13.000 One of the reasons I think that Vladimir Putin still has cards to play here is because the Biden administration has made itself extraordinarily vulnerable with regard to this Iran deal.

00:42:20.000 So they are so stuck.

00:42:22.000 They're so up their own butts on this Iran deal. 0.92

00:42:24.000 It's insane. 0.96

00:42:25.000 It's totally crazy.

00:42:26.000 They've pretzeled themselves completely. 0.98

00:42:27.000 The head is so far up the butt that it's coming out the face again. 0.93

00:42:30.000 They've decided that they are just going to push forward with a deal with Iran's ayatollahs no matter how terroristic Iran is. 0.97

00:42:36.000 And not only that, they're going to provide cash to Iran and they're going to provide cash to Russia in order to make this deal happen.

00:42:41.000 According to the Washington Free Beacon, Russia's top state-controlled energy company is set to cash in on a $10 billion contract to build out one of Iran's most contested nuclear sites as part of concessions granted in the soon-to-be-announced nuclear agreement that will guarantee sanctions on both countries are lifted.

00:42:56.000 Russian and Iranian documents translated for the Washington Free Beacon show that Razatom, Russia's leading energy company, has a $10 billion contract with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization to expand Tehran's Bushehr nuclear plant.

00:43:08.000 Russia and the Biden administration confirmed on Tuesday the new nuclear agreement includes carve-outs that will waive sanctions on both countries so Russia can make good on the contract.

00:43:17.000 So Putin knows that he has Biden over the barrel with regard to Iran and that Biden would love to make a deal with Iran no matter how bad that deal is because Biden has a perverse view of the Middle East that he shares with his predecessor Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

00:43:30.000 And that he's so interested in making this deal that he's willing to allow Russia to make billions of dollars in building a nuclear facility in Iran while Russia is attacking Ukraine.

00:43:39.000 So much for those crushing economic sanctions.

00:43:42.000 So in other words, there are ways out here for Putin.

00:43:46.000 And by the way, this is all happening like days after Iran fired off missiles at an American consulate in Iraq.

00:43:52.000 That's how delusional this administration is.

00:43:55.000 They're just doubling down on the truisms of American foreign policy that have been wrong for decades.

00:44:00.000 That if you're nice to America's enemies, that the enemies will be nice to you rather than aggressive with you.

00:44:05.000 Every time you make a deal with the Russians, on a non-Ukraine basis, and you open the door so they can broker a deal with Iran, you are giving them a piece of leverage to use over you, and the Russians know this.

00:44:17.000 State Department spokesman Ned Price confirmed on Tuesday, quote, we of course would not sanction Russian participation in nuclear projects that are part of resuming full implementation of the JCPOA.

00:44:26.000 Russia's foreign ministry made a similar statement on Tuesday, saying, quote, additions were made to the text of the future agreement on JCPOA restoration to ensure that all JCPOA, that's the Iran deal, related projects, especially with Russian participation, as well as Bushir, are protected from negative impact of anti-Russian restrictions by both the United States and the European Union.

00:44:45.000 A State Department spokesman speaking on background told the Free Beacon the administration, quote, continues to engage with Russia on a return to full implementation of the JCPOA.

00:44:53.000 As Secretary Blinken said last week, Russia continues to be engaged in those efforts.

00:44:56.000 It has its own interest in ensuring that Iran is not able to acquire a nuclear weapon.

00:45:00.000 Well, no, Russia has an interest in continuing to use Iran as a proxy state.

00:45:04.000 And then they used Iran as a proxy state in Syria, and they've maximized their exposure in the Middle East and their control in the Middle East. 0.76

00:45:12.000 Meanwhile, of course, the Saudis are looking at the United States cross-eyed and saying, I guess we're going to have to triangulate with China right now.

00:45:18.000 Jen Psaki yesterday refused to rule out delisting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

00:45:24.000 That organization, by the way, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops in Iraq.

00:45:29.000 Is the White House willing to delist the IRGC from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in order to get a deal with Iran?

00:45:37.000 We're still in the negotiations, so I'm not going to speculate or outline from here what the final details look like.

00:45:42.000 I mean, it's just unbelievable.

00:45:43.000 She also, by the way, she was asked directly about the Iranians firing at a U.S. consulate, and she had nothing for you because she doesn't care because this administration does not And then they wonder why deterrence fails.

00:45:52.000 Deterrence fails because you guys are not a credible threat.

00:45:55.000 You're not a credible threat.

00:45:56.000 You can make a credible economic threat.

00:45:57.000 You cannot make any sort of actual credible military threat.

00:46:00.000 And it turns out that foreign policy does not run on economic threats.

00:46:03.000 It runs on the threat of force.

00:46:05.000 It always has and it always will.

00:46:08.000 Here is Jen Psaki being Jen Psaki. 0.94

00:46:11.000 These are likely the group responsible for firing missiles at U.S.

00:46:15.000 facilities in Iraq.

00:46:16.000 So as long as Americans aren't killed, are there no consequences for something like that?

00:46:21.000 All in an effort to get a nuclear deal?

00:46:23.000 Again, you're speculating on something that is not even finalized.

00:46:27.000 The deal is not finalized.

00:46:29.000 You can't show strength to Russia while at the same time showing weakness to Iran using Russian negotiators. 0.86

00:46:34.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:46:36.000 If you're seeking to establish deterrence, every time, by the way, you fail in your deterrence, the possibility, as I said, of World War III grows larger.

00:46:43.000 The possibility of major world conflict grows larger.

00:46:45.000 Miscalculation based on misinterpretation of weakness leads to conflict.

00:46:50.000 That is the story of every major world war that we have had.

00:46:54.000 It'll be the cause of any future world war that we have as well. 0.90

00:46:57.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:46:59.000 Coming up soon is the Matt Wall Show that airs 1.30 p.m.

00:47:01.000 Eastern.

00:47:02.000 Be sure to check it out over at DailyWire.com.

00:47:03.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:47:04.000 Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:47:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliott Felt.

00:47:13.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:47:15.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:47:17.000 And our production manager is Pavel Lydowsky.

00:47:19.000 Associate producer, Bradford Carrington.

00:47:21.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic.

00:47:23.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.

00:47:25.000 Hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:47:27.000 Production assistant, Jessica Crand.

00:47:29.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:47:31.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:47:34.000 On the Matt Wall Show, we talk about the things that matter.

00:47:36.000 Real issues that affect you, your family, our country, not just politics, but culture, faith, current events, all the fundamentals.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 17, 2022

The Most Dangerous Moment In Recent Memory | Ep. 1455

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