The Federal Reserve signals a bevy of rate hikes coming as the economy teeters on the brink of recession. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for more help, as the Russian offensive continues to stall, and the Biden administration keeps reaching out to Iran. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. It's a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so you can't be hacked, even if a hacker with a supercomputer could get past your VPN. Get an extra 3 months of ExpressVPN for free at Expressvpn.com/getprotected. Ben Shapiro is a writer and host of the Ben Shapiro Show on the FiveThirtyEight podcast. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Huffington Post, and he has been featured on CNN, NPR, and NPR. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review on iTunes. Subscribe to our new podcast, The FiveThirtyeight, wherever you get your stuff, and don't forget to tell a friend about Ben Shapiro's show! if you like the show. You can also become a supporter of his work: bit.ly/BenShapiro and we'll be giving him a shoutout in next week's next episode of his new show, The Six Figures Podcast on Friday, November 14th, coming out on Tuesday, November 15th, at 7 PM Eastern Standard and 17th at 7/19th at 9/27th/evenings at 7th/Frinday at 8/7th/9th/10th/day. Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro? Thank you, Ben Shapiro Thanks Ben Shapiro, too! - Your continued support is greatly appreciated. - The Best Fiends - Ben Shapiro and I hope you're having a good day! - Your support is much appreciated! - Thank you Ben Shapiro. Timestamps: 5:00 - 5:30 - 7:00 - What would you like it? 8:30 9:15 10:00) 11:40 12:30) 15:00% 16:30% 17:15% 19:10 21:40% 16 :30 17 :00 17 - What's your favorite part of the show?
00:01:31.000Well, the Federal Reserve finally did what everybody expected it to do, and they raised the interest rates yesterday by a mere 0.25%.
00:01:37.000That is not going to do it in terms of curbing inflation.
00:01:40.000It 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.
00:01:47.000They'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.
00:01:56.000That is significantly higher than it is now.
00:01:57.000It 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.
00:02:05.000According 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.
00:02:17.000The Fed will raise its benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to a range between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent.
00:02:23.000That is the first rate increase since 2018.
00:02:27.000Officials 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.
00:02:36.000Now, 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%.
00:02:44.000We did not have inflation rates that were running at 8%, 10%, 12%, 15% in terms of goods.
00:02:50.000Right now, services are running about 5% inflation rate.
00:02:53.000Goods are running about 15% inflation rate.
00:02:57.000Increasing the interest rates to what we had just before the pandemic is not going to do it.
00:03:00.000You're going to need many, many more interest rate increases.
00:03:03.000The 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.
00:03:09.000But I would take this as a sign the Fed, once again, is playing around with things that it does not understand.
00:03:15.000I'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.
00:03:20.000This was true under Alan Greenspan in the 2000s.
00:03:22.000It led to the cratering of the economy 2007-2008.
00:03:25.000It's been true under Jerome Powell, who spent the last two years printing more money than God has ever seen.
00:03:31.000The 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.
00:03:38.000Fed 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.
00:03:50.000Powell announced yesterday that wage increases should slow.
00:03:54.000There's a misalignment of demand and supply, particularly in the labor market.
00:03:58.000And that is leading to wages moving up at ways that are not consistent with 2% inflation over time.
00:04:07.000And 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.
00:04:31.000He then said that the Fed is also going to start shrinking its balance sheet.
00:04:35.000They're going to start selling off their $9 trillion asset portfolio.
00:04:39.000He said that the Fed will finalize that plan by May 3rd or 4th.
00:04:43.000We made excellent progress toward agreeing on the parameters of a plan to shrink the balance sheet.
00:04:49.000And 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.
00:04:56.000And that could come as soon as our next meeting in May.
00:04:59.000So this has some pretty serious ramifications for everybody involved.
00:05:04.000If you take a look at the Wall Street Journal piece, they say, what the Fed's interest rate increase means to you.
00:05:08.000Well, 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.
00:05:15.000The resulting changes in other rates impact the way we borrow money, but also how we save money.
00:05:18.000Frustrated house hunters, for example, have already seen mortgage rates increase in recent months.
00:05:22.000Rising rates mean homebuyers will pay a little bit more each month in mortgage payments.
00:05:26.000So those mortgage payments are probably going to go up.
00:05:29.000You should have taken advantage of American financing and refined your mortgage six months ago.
00:05:33.000Okay, 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.
00:05:43.000Raising the interest rate is about creating an inducement to saves.
00:05:45.000And Laura Veldkamp, professor of finance and economics at Columbia University, it's basically a deterrent to consumption spending.
00:05:51.000When an economy is overheated, raising the interest rate is a way to pull back and say, I'll hold on and postpone that spending.
00:05:57.000Right, because inflation makes you want to spend.
00:05:58.000Inflation means that your savings are worth less tomorrow than they are today.
00:06:02.000So you need to spend that money before the spending is gone, basically.
00:06:05.000When you raise the interest rates, you're trying to resupply the monetary value.
00:06:11.000And what that means is that people are going to want to save rather than to spend.
00:06:15.000And that means that you're going to have a drawback in certain parts of the economy.
00:06:18.000The way mortgage prices are set is based largely on the yield of the 10-year U.S.
00:06:21.000government bond known as the Treasury Note.
00:06:23.000This rate is used as a benchmark for all different types of loans, including mortgages.
00:06:26.000When the Fed raises rates, this pushes the yield on the Treasury Note higher.
00:06:29.000This will, in turn, push mortgage rates higher.
00:06:32.000As the Fed has signaled higher rates, the 10-year yield has moved higher.
00:06:35.000This has, in turn, pushed the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to 3.85%.
00:06:42.000Meanwhile, banks have little incentive to raise interest on savings accounts.
00:06:45.000During 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.
00:06:51.000Carolyn 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.
00:07:00.000For your average person who just has their money in a savings account, you make nothing.
00:07:05.000The interest rates offered on savings account and many certificates of deposit often move with the Fed funds rate.
00:07:09.000According to the FDIC, the average annual percentage yield on a one-year CD is at 0.14 percent.
00:07:14.000Goldman Sachs Group's Marks account is offering 0.50 percent.
00:07:18.000Low interest rates very much affected savers, said Fernando Martin, assistant VP at the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
00:07:55.000According 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%.
00:08:01.000APR, an increase in interest rates, can sometimes affect the credit card percentage rate.
00:08:07.000Student loans, those interest rates are probably going to go up.
00:08:11.000So, bottom line is that when you raise interest rates, what you end up doing is you end up encouraging, saving, discouraging, spending.
00:08:19.000You end up discouraging lending by banks.
00:08:21.000The goal is to take money out of the economy.
00:08:23.000That is the stated goal of increasing the interest rates.
00:08:27.000And 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.
00:08:34.000That possibility, by the way, gets worse when you don't just crush it right away.
00:08:38.000is 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.
00:08:53.000The 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.
00:09:15.000So COVID is not through with the manufacturing chains.
00:09:18.000You'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.
00:09:26.000All of this spells inflation in products and services in terms of cost.
00:09:31.000And 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.
00:10:22.000And now they are back to it's oil and gas companies fault for being greedy.
00:10:25.000Here's the White House blaming oil and gas companies again for the price of oil.
00:10:29.000While 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.
00:10:43.000No one should capitalize on Putin's aggression by taking advantage of American families.
00:10:51.000So the reason that I point this out is because what this says is they are not shifting their approach at all.
00:10:56.000Their 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.
00:11:05.000It's going to be very easy on useless businesses that require massive government subsidies.
00:11:09.000It's going to be subsidies all the way down for all of their union buddies.
00:11:13.000None of this spells a future of serious growth.
00:11:16.000Now, 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.
00:11:22.000Because I think that the conditions for innovation in this country are getting worse and worse under the Biden administration.
00:11:30.000They keep threatening more subsidies for the least productive industries.
00:11:34.000That is a recipe for European-style stagnation, economically speaking.
00:11:40.000We spent more money than we could afford in the last couple of years, and that obviously has driven up things like the inflation rates.
00:11:47.000But 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.
00:11:57.000We're at a very perilous moment here, and we are not taking our medicine.
00:12:00.000We are instead attempting to, again, sort of take the easy path of least resistance.
00:12:06.000There'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?
00:12:15.000He says to the kid, which way should I go here?
00:12:17.000And the kid says, well, there's the long way that's short, and there's the short way that's long.
00:12:21.000And the guy says, oh, I'll take the short way that's long.
00:12:23.000So 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.
00:12:32.000What 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.
00:12:40.000It seems as though the Federal Reserve is determined to take the short way that is long.
00:12:44.000The easy solution that is not a solution at all.
00:12:46.000And I have serious doubts as to whether the interest rate increases that they've announced yesterday are actually going to handle this job.
00:12:52.000Again, the Democrats, there are two aspects of the American economy.
00:12:56.000There's economic policy and there's fiscal policy.
00:12:58.000Fiscal policy is set by the Federal Reserve.
00:13:00.000Economic policy is being set by the White House and they're doing it wrong as well.
00:13:04.000This 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.
00:13:10.000No, this is exactly the wrong moment to transition to green energy.
00:13:40.000They 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?
00:13:47.000Meaning that we're going to make ourselves more dependent on foreign natural gas and oil?
00:13:56.000Like, many economists think we're going to slide into recession over the course of the next few months.
00:14:00.000You combine that with the perilousness of the situation in Ukraine, and you have a recipe for a real conflagration.
00:14:06.000With the economy teetering on the brink the way that it is, you really need to take advantage of any possible business advantage you can find.
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00:15:22.000The 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.
00:15:31.000This was always seen by the West, which is why it was important to box him in before he invaded Ukraine.
00:15:36.000Once he invaded Ukraine, there are not a lot of good solutions on the table, as I keep saying.
00:15:40.000Now the West is sort of getting happy and fat over the idea that Ukraine is going to completely repel Russia here.
00:15:47.000But 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.
00:15:55.000The West has something at stake in defending Ukraine in that they want to dissuade Russia from doing things like this again.
00:16:00.000They want to dissuade China from going after Taiwan.
00:16:02.000We do have a heavy stake here, which is why we're doing what we're doing.
00:16:05.000Of 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.
00:16:12.000And so he has to come up with something.
00:16:14.000And so what you've seen is him ramping up in radical fashion the attacks on civilians.
00:16:19.000I mean, in serious, like, there was a report yesterday that he just attacked a theater in Mariupol.
00:16:23.000The people were just sheltering there.
00:16:24.000And so, the Russians just bombed the theater, which would not be a shock.
00:16:27.000They did the same thing in Grozny and Chechnya way back in 1999-2000.
00:16:33.000It is unclear how many people died in that theater in Mariupol over the last 24 hours.
00:16:38.000Meanwhile, things get worse for the Russians, not better, on the military front.
00:16:41.000According to the New York Times, In the 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima during World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed.
00:16:48.000Now, 20 days after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his military has already lost more soldiers than that, according to American intelligence estimates.
00:16:56.000So, he has lost more soldiers in three weeks than we lost during the entirety of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which is totally crazy.
00:17:03.000That was one of the bloodiest battles in modern American history.
00:17:07.000The 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.
00:17:15.000Russia's strategy, by the way, is the same as it was during World War II, which is just throw men into the meat grinder.
00:17:20.000It's an insane strategy, particularly in a time when Russia does not have the resources to replenish those men.
00:17:24.000But Russia has one way of doing things, and they have not changed that way of doing things.
00:17:30.000With 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.
00:17:46.000So the idea here is that Russia may be on the brink of losing.
00:17:49.000Pentagon officials say a high and rising number of war dead can destroy the will to continue fighting.
00:17:53.000The result, they say, has shown up in intelligence reports that senior officials in the Biden administration read every day.
00:17:57.000One recent report focused on low morale among Russian troops described soldiers just parking their vehicles and walking off into the woods.
00:18:03.000The American officials caution their number of Russian troop deaths are inexact.
00:18:07.000Though, 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.
00:18:17.000This should be somewhere near accurate.
00:18:19.000American military and intelligence officials know, for example, how many troops are usually in a tank.
00:18:23.000They can extrapolate from that by the number of casualties when an armored vehicle is hit by, say, a Javelin anti-tank missile.
00:18:29.000Evelyn 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.
00:18:44.000However, we should mention that as things get worse for Russia, it is more likely that they become more volatile.
00:18:49.000It is not more likely that they become less volatile and just sort of go away.
00:18:53.000On the economic front, Russia's in serious trouble.
00:18:56.000On 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.
00:19:05.000According 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.
00:19:13.000The Russian government is required to pay $117 million in interest payments on $2 denominated government bonds on Wednesday.
00:19:19.000Failure to pay or attempting to pay in rubles would set the stage for Russia to be placed in default by its creditors.
00:19:25.000The impossibility of fulfilling our obligations in foreign currency does not depend on us, said Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.
00:19:32.000He says we have the money, we paid the payment, now the bill is on the side, first of all, of the American authorities.
00:19:37.000So 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.
00:19:47.000Which is why it is no shock that the US is now warning Moscow against using chemical or biological weapons.
00:19:53.000President 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.
00:20:02.000The 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.
00:20:14.000Officials 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.
00:20:21.000And 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?
00:20:33.000Remember, 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.
00:20:47.000So if you're Vladimir Putin, you feel totally boxed in.
00:21:47.000Let's say that, for example, Vladimir Putin does go for it.
00:21:50.000Let's say that he uses chemical or biological weapons.
00:21:51.000professional 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.
00:22:04.000Let'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.
00:22:19.000They should sort of edge over the border.
00:22:21.000Western Ukraine has not been taken over by the Russians.
00:22:23.000There's been really no Russian activity in the western part of Ukraine.
00:22:26.000The furthest west they've gone is Kiev, which is about two-thirds of the way west of the eastern border of Ukraine.
00:22:33.000But they've not really done anything in the in the western third of Ukraine.
00:22:37.000So 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.
00:22:43.000And at that point, we have to get directly involved.
00:22:46.000The 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?
00:22:59.000If Vladimir Putin decides he's just going to level population centers, what exactly are you going to do about it?
00:23:04.000This is the real question for the West right now.
00:23:08.000Because 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?
00:23:20.000This is what Bret Stephens over at the New York Times is writing about today.
00:23:24.000He 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.
00:23:35.000elections, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the blatant poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny.
00:23:39.000Were 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?
00:23:49.000In short, did Putin have any reason to think before February 24th, he wouldn't be able to get away with this invasion?
00:23:53.000Beijing's eradication of Hong Kong's autonomy, Iran's war by proxy against its neighbors.
00:24:41.000Their economy's bad for three years, but if they get what they want in Ukraine, that's happening over the next six weeks.
00:24:47.000Arming Ukraine with Javelin and Stinger missiles has wounded and embarrassed the Russian military.
00:24:52.000Providing Kiev with MiG-29 fighter jets and other potentially game-changing weapon systems could help turn the tide.
00:24:57.000Refusing to do so may only prolong Ukraine's agony.
00:25:01.000Frequent 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.
00:25:32.000If 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?
00:25:41.000He wins swiftly, he terrifies the West, he consolidates power.
00:25:44.000He suffers consequences only marginally graver than the ones already inflicted.
00:25:47.000And his fellow travelers in Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang take note.
00:25:52.000So I tend to agree with Brett Stevens here.
00:25:54.000The 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.
00:26:01.000The question is when you want to take the pain.
00:26:04.000So is the pain going to be in watching Putin devastate Ukraine?
00:26:07.000Is public opinion going to be willing to go along with that to avert an open war between NATO and Russia?
00:26:15.000Because Putin is probably going to up the ante here.
00:26:17.000Or 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.
00:26:29.000And if that happens, how do you re-establish deterrence after that?
00:26:33.000Because every time you fail in deterrence, you now have to react more harshly in order to re-establish the possibility of deterrence.
00:26:39.000If 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.
00:26:47.000So the possibility of World War III is becoming significantly more likely, not less likely, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
00:26:56.000And 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.
00:27:05.000Meanwhile, if you're Vladimir Zelensky, you're just looking for help because obviously the short-term problem is your problem.
00:27:10.000You're not worried about the ramifications of World War III.
00:27:20.000He did about half the speech in Ukrainian.
00:27:22.000He did half the speech In English, he started by talking about Pearl Harbor at 9-11.
00:27:27.000And 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.
00:27:33.000We have lived in a country where bombs do not fall on us on the regular.
00:27:36.000We have lived in a country that has never had to experience this in our history.
00:27:39.000And 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.
00:27:49.000It was a really horrifyingly evil terrorist day.
00:27:54.000But what you see in other countries on a fairly regular basis is just violence that pervades life.
00:27:59.000Here's Zelensky talking about how bad it is in Ukraine.
00:29:31.000Strong is brave and ready to fight for the life of his citizens and citizens of the world.
00:29:39.000For human rights, for freedom, for the right to live decently and to die when your time comes.
00:29:47.000And not when it's wanted by someone else, by your neighbor.
00:29:54.000So Zelensky essentially saying, I'm willing to die for my country.
00:29:57.000Sentiments 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.
00:30:07.000Zelensky completed his speech by showing a video of the suffering that's been going on in Ukraine.
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00:33:11.000That's a cheat sheet to the important lessons, themes, and characters.
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00:33:37.000Also, There are a lot of books that are great that just don't get published.
00:34:23.000And all the while you're hearing all these outside influences from athletes and Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, all those people come in and attacking you, putting your name on their account, saying he should be in prison.
00:34:36.000All these things that they have no idea what they're talking about.
00:35:01.000If you want to know how the media skews the facts and lies about the facts, this book is just case 1A for why you can't trust the mainstream media.
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00:37:00.000So the White House has responded to Zelensky's appeal by announcing more aid, about 800 million dollars in more aid.
00:37:12.000Only a portion of that is military aid, a lot of it is humanitarian aid.
00:37:14.000Here was Joe Biden announcing that from the White House yesterday.
00:37:16.000Now I'm once again using my presidential authority to activate an additional security assistance to continue to help Ukraine fend off Russia's assault.
00:37:29.000An additional $800 million in assistance.
00:37:34.000security assistance to Ukraine to $1 billion just this week.
00:37:39.000These 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.
00:38:04.000When deterrence fails, you have very few options that are very good.
00:38:07.000And 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.
00:38:20.000Russia has a strategy that they've termed escalating to deescalate, meaning we we ramp everything up in order to then deescalate.
00:38:26.000But 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.
00:38:32.000And at this point, I really wonder if that is the case.
00:38:36.000Biden has been pretty vague about what exactly his his end goal here.
00:39:03.000Make Putin pay the price, weaken his position, while strengthening the hand of the Ukrainians on the battlefield at the negotiating table.
00:39:10.000Okay, 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.
00:39:16.000Because 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.
00:39:26.000I've been pretty sanguine about the possibility of World War 3 so far.
00:39:29.000I 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.
00:39:35.000I think Russia has very little interest in it also.
00:39:37.000But the problem is that the lines that the United States and its allies have been setting are not credible lines.
00:39:43.000Putin 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.
00:39:51.000At least that's what the past would have suggested at this point.
00:39:55.000The West is being very robust in its economic response.
00:39:57.000They're being significantly less robust in their military response.
00:40:01.000But meanwhile, you got Joe Biden using language that is not useful.
00:40:05.000So, he may be correct, but it's not useful.
00:40:07.000In diplomacy, there's a difference between being right and being happy.
00:40:10.000And Joe Biden was asked yesterday whether Putin is a war criminal.
00:40:12.000Now, the answer clearly is yes, of course.
00:40:42.000Jen Psaki tried to back this one off yesterday from the White House.
00:40:45.000The president was answering a direct question that was asked and responding to what he has seen on television.
00:40:52.000We 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.
00:41:05.000And I think he was answering a direct question.
00:41:08.000Okay, so you saw that based on the news.
00:41:10.000That doesn't mean that he's actually labeling him a war criminal.
00:41:11.000There 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.
00:41:17.000But every time you let Joe Biden off the chain, something bad happens.
00:41:21.000The 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.
00:41:31.000And 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?
00:41:35.000Why is one escalatory, but the other is not?
00:41:37.000And the White House has no answer for this.
00:41:40.000Is 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?
00:41:49.000Again, 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.
00:42:02.000An offensive weapon is one that could be used offensively, which is like a drone that takes out artillery positions or Russian troop positions.
00:42:13.000One 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.
00:42:27.000The head is so far up the butt that it's coming out the face again.
00:42:30.000They've decided that they are just going to push forward with a deal with Iran's ayatollahs no matter how terroristic Iran is.
00:42:36.000And 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.
00:42:41.000According 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.
00:42:56.000Russian 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.
00:43:08.000Russia 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.
00:43:17.000So 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.
00:43:30.000And 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.
00:43:39.000So much for those crushing economic sanctions.
00:43:42.000So in other words, there are ways out here for Putin.
00:43:46.000And by the way, this is all happening like days after Iran fired off missiles at an American consulate in Iraq.
00:43:52.000That's how delusional this administration is.
00:43:55.000They're just doubling down on the truisms of American foreign policy that have been wrong for decades.
00:44:00.000That if you're nice to America's enemies, that the enemies will be nice to you rather than aggressive with you.
00:44:05.000Every 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.
00:44:17.000State 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.
00:44:26.000Russia'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.
00:44:45.000A 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.
00:44:53.000As Secretary Blinken said last week, Russia continues to be engaged in those efforts.
00:44:56.000It has its own interest in ensuring that Iran is not able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
00:45:00.000Well, no, Russia has an interest in continuing to use Iran as a proxy state.
00:45:04.000And 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.
00:45:12.000Meanwhile, 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.
00:45:18.000Jen Psaki yesterday refused to rule out delisting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.
00:45:24.000That organization, by the way, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops in Iraq.
00:45:29.000Is the White House willing to delist the IRGC from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in order to get a deal with Iran?
00:45:37.000We're still in the negotiations, so I'm not going to speculate or outline from here what the final details look like.
00:45:43.000She 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.
00:45:52.000Deterrence fails because you guys are not a credible threat.
00:46:36.000If 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.
00:46:43.000The possibility of major world conflict grows larger.
00:46:45.000Miscalculation based on misinterpretation of weakness leads to conflict.
00:46:50.000That is the story of every major world war that we have had.
00:46:54.000It'll be the cause of any future world war that we have as well.
00:46:57.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
00:46:59.000Coming up soon is the Matt Wall Show that airs 1.30 p.m.