The Ben Shapiro Show - The West Is Running Out Of Tools Against Russia | Ep. 1445

00:00:00.000 As Vladimir Putin reportedly takes a major Ukrainian city, the West runs out of tools to fight him.

00:00:05.000 And the Biden administration continues working with Russia to help out Iran.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:21.000 Slash Ben.

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00:01:34.000 All right, so the latest in the Russia-Ukraine saga is that Russian forces are now pounding Kharkiv, which is Ukraine's second largest city, with airstrikes in a bid to break the will of the country's resistance, as Moscow's offensive toward Kiev stalled amid fierce Ukrainian counterattacks and logistics mishaps, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:49.000 So the Russians have now shifted their tactics.

00:01:51.000 Over the past couple of days, they're going to use sheer, brute, overwhelming force in order to just destroy the Ukrainian resistance.

00:01:57.000 The basic idea here is that they don't care about civilian casualties.

00:02:01.000 They don't really even care about the casualties.

00:02:03.000 With regard to their own soldiers, the Russians are sort of famous for taking extraordinary numbers of casualties in war.

00:02:09.000 And to get this straight, over the course of the entire Afghanistan war, the United States lost approximately 3,000 American service people in Afghanistan.

00:02:17.000 According to Ukrainian sources, the Russians have already lost 6,000 people inside of a week.

00:02:22.000 Now, even if that is exaggerated by a factor of 10, even if it's only 600 people, the fact is that that's happened inside of one week.

00:02:29.000 The West hasn't really seen a war like this for a very long time, and I think that's why people are going to be shocked by a lot of the images coming out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

00:02:37.000 The reason is because in the conflicts that we've seen in the past, basically it's been the United States, which is the world's most sophisticated military power, by a factor of 10.

00:02:44.000 The United States spends more money on its military budget than the rest of the world combined.

00:02:48.000 And our military hardware and our military infrastructure is super sophisticated.

00:02:53.000 So when we fire a missile, we know exactly where it is going.

00:02:56.000 The tech on it is better.

00:02:57.000 Our targeting mechanisms are better.

00:03:00.000 When you see the United States go to war and we miss, we miss very, very narrow.

00:03:05.000 And when we hit and we hit somebody innocent, it's because we made a mistake in the intel, not because we hit something we didn't mean to hit.

00:03:11.000 The United States is extraordinarily precise in its battle plans.

00:03:14.000 And so when you see the war in Afghanistan, you see an extraordinarily sophisticated military power going to war with barbarians. 0.74

00:03:19.000 And so that means that the casualties on both sides tend to be low because the United States uses really, really precise weaponry in order to do what it wants to do.

00:03:29.000 Other conflicts that we've watched in the course of the Western world over the course of the last 20, 30 years, Israel versus the Palestinians, for example.

00:03:35.000 Israel has a very, very sophisticated military.

00:03:38.000 Its infrastructure is very sophisticated.

00:03:39.000 Its tech is very sophisticated.

00:03:41.000 And so it's a big scandal if Israel misses and kills one person.

00:03:45.000 Meanwhile, you have Russia, and Russia is not a first world power.

00:03:49.000 Russia is a second world power. 0.95

00:03:51.000 As they suggested, it's a gas station with a nuclear arsenal.

00:03:53.000 That doesn't mean it's not geostrategically important.

00:03:55.000 It doesn't mean that it can't cause all sorts of headaches and problems for the West. 0.98

00:03:58.000 It doesn't mean that it can't turn off the gas spigot and cause serious problems for Western and Eastern Europe.

00:04:03.000 What it does mean is that when Russia goes to war, Russia does not go to war in the same way the United States does.

00:04:08.000 It does not go to war in the same way that Israel or the UK or NATO does.

00:04:12.000 When Russia goes to war, Russia basically just uses overwhelming force and kills enormous numbers of civilians.

00:04:18.000 It sends its soldiers into battle without the proper gear.

00:04:21.000 It sends its soldiers into battle without apparently supplying its own troops.

00:04:26.000 And we're now seeing reports that the Russians don't even have the supplies they need in order to fight this battle.

00:04:30.000 What that means is that the war gets ugly and it gets ground down.

00:04:33.000 It's very vicious.

00:04:34.000 Street fighting.

00:04:35.000 Lots of civilian deaths.

00:04:37.000 And this has been part of Russia's playbook for quite a while. 0.63

00:04:39.000 They've been using this since Chechnya in the late 1990s.

00:04:43.000 If you cannot pacify a region, you just start killing as many civilians as you can.

00:04:47.000 Or at the very least, you try to shock and awe people into surrendering by killing civilians and demonstrating that you are harder than they are.

00:04:53.000 You do not care how many civilians you have to kill and you really don't care how many soldiers you lose in the course of the battle.

00:04:58.000 And so the numbers that we've seen out of Ukraine, if you compare them to World War II, they're nothing.

00:05:03.000 If you compare them to a normal American war, they're extraordinary.

00:05:07.000 For the United States, we pulled out of Afghanistan after a year in which we lost zero soldiers in combat because Joe Biden suggested that there were going to be too many American soldiers killed.

00:05:16.000 Russia just lost at a very minimum, as according to the Russians, they lost about 600 troops in the last week alone.

00:05:22.000 And according to the Ukrainians, it's 10 times that number.

00:05:24.000 And Russia's willing to absorb that.

00:05:26.000 So the images that we're likely to see out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict are likely to be worse and worse and worse.

00:05:31.000 And it's part of Russia's playbook. 0.74

00:05:32.000 It's part of what makes Russia extremely dangerous. 0.97

00:05:34.000 Because again, Russia does not care. 0.61

00:05:36.000 And so part of their playbook is if they start to lose, like really lose, they could They've not ruled out first use of tactical nuclear weapons.

00:05:43.000 That doesn't mean they're going to fire a nuke into the center of Krakow or something.

00:05:47.000 It does mean that they would consider, if they were really going to lose a battle, deploying a battlefield tactical nuclear weapon, the first use of nuclear weapons since World War II.

00:05:56.000 And nobody wants that because then that does require some sort of world response.

00:06:00.000 And would the world respond to a tactical nuclear weapon being used on a battlefield in Ukraine, which is in the heart of Europe?

00:06:06.000 How could they, without actually driving a larger Russian nuclear response?

00:06:12.000 This is the danger here.

00:06:14.000 The world's in a very precarious situation, and all the economic warfare that has been waged against Russia, which is morally justifiable, and geostrategically justifiable, there's got to be an off-ramp here. 0.72

00:06:24.000 Because if there's not an off-ramp here, the best-case scenario is a guerrilla war that lasts 10 to 20 years in the heart of the continent.

00:06:30.000 Russia is bombing the hell out of Kharkiv.

00:06:32.000 They've changed their strategy.

00:06:33.000 Originally, it was quick occupation.

00:06:35.000 Now, obviously, it has inflicted extraordinary amounts of damage.

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00:07:47.000 So according to the Wall Street Journal, Russian missile debris fell near Kiev's central train station on Wednesday night, damaging a major heating pipeline with a blast wave breaking the station's windows.

00:07:55.000 Thousands of civilians, particularly women and children, are sheltering in the station at night as they await evacuation trains to western Ukraine.

00:08:01.000 Ukrainian officials said the missile was shot down by Kiev's air defenses.

00:08:05.000 In the southern part of the country, Russian forces are really making progress.

00:08:08.000 They gained a swath of land.

00:08:09.000 They've now entered the Black Sea port city of Kherson.

00:08:12.000 For the first time, Russia's defense ministry acknowledged that extensive losses that I was talking about.

00:08:16.000 They said that 498 Russian troops had been killed, 1,600 had been injured.

00:08:20.000 Moscow said its forces had killed almost 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

00:08:23.000 Ukraine hasn't released its own casualties.

00:08:25.000 They said that its military has killed almost 6,000 Russian troops.

00:08:29.000 Ukrainian officials have put the invasion's civilian death toll at 2,000.

00:08:31.000 So this is a very serious war, guys.

00:08:34.000 Kharkiv residents, said the city of 1.4 million, suffered heavy bombardment for the third day in a row, including airstrikes that hit residential areas and civilian infrastructure.

00:08:42.000 Kharkiv's municipal and police headquarters, as well as the nearby university building, were severely damaged and caught fire.

00:08:47.000 Local authorities reported 21 dead, 112 injured in the past 24 hours alone.

00:08:51.000 Moscow says it is not targeting civilians, but obviously they are hitting civilian buildings with a fair bit of regularity.

00:08:57.000 Russian forces also attempted to seize the city's military hospital, according to local authorities.

00:09:01.000 The front line held the city, located 30 miles from the Russian border, remained under firm Ukrainian control.

00:09:05.000 According to Kharkiv's deputy governor Roman Semenuka, he said, we have understood their tactic. They can't enter the city.

00:09:11.000 Every time they try, we hit them in the teeth. So instead they're trying to sow panic with missile strikes hitting critical infrastructure and residential areas, trying to demoralize us. Kiev was hit by several strikes on Wednesday night.

00:09:20.000 In fact, there was film that was coming out from CBS News of its reporters.

00:09:24.000 And behind them, you can see giant explosions in the background.

00:09:28.000 Ukrainian defenses are still holding on in all the major urban areas under attack, with the exception of that Russian advance north of Crimea, which of course was a Russian base of operations.

00:09:37.000 If you look at the map, what you're starting to see is that that Russian red move up the map and you're starting to see Russian red move a little bit down the map.

00:09:43.000 They're having a much tougher time in the north than they are in the south because Crimea, of course, had already been essentially run by Russia since 2014.

00:09:50.000 There's also talk, by the way, that the Russians may swivel to the west and try to take Moldova.

00:09:55.000 Moldova is another sort of border country with Ukraine.

00:09:58.000 It's located between Romania and Ukraine.

00:10:00.000 Moldova is not a part of NATO.

00:10:01.000 So any country that is not part of NATO is now living on borrowed time if they are watching what Vladimir Putin is doing right here.

00:10:08.000 So Kherson was the first major city to fall here.

00:10:12.000 And again, you can see that the Russian invasion is having some pretty significant success in eastern Ukraine as well as in southern Ukraine.

00:10:19.000 It's pretty ugly.

00:10:20.000 Meanwhile, European officials said they expected Moldova and Georgia to follow Ukraine in applying for membership in the European Union.

00:10:27.000 Expanding the EU eastwards, according to Matina Steves-Gridnev reporting from Brussels for the New York Times, expanding the EU eastwards has traditionally been a divisive topic among older member states.

00:10:36.000 There's no consensus currently.

00:10:37.000 The bloc should grow in that direction despite the Russian invasion.

00:10:40.000 The reason is because the West is very nervous that if they simply say that these places can enter the EU without actually stationing significant military resources there, then Russia could theoretically break NATO just by walking into these states because these states do not actually have enough defenses against Russian predation.

00:10:55.000 So Russians could walk in and then they could claim victory and then they could claim that they broke NATO because NATO didn't actually defend the territory because they didn't have the wherewithal, the power, the people on the ground to defend the territory at this point.

00:11:07.000 Meanwhile, Germany has said that it's going to keep rearming.

00:11:10.000 This is NATO's new move.

00:11:11.000 NATO is just going to be rearming from abroad.

00:11:12.000 Germany is going to send 2,700 shoulder-launched surface-to-air rockets to Ukraine in addition to arms shipments the country has already announced.

00:11:19.000 The Soviet-made Strela rockets were in East Germany's arsenal when Germany reunited more than three decades ago.

00:11:24.000 So ironically, you now have Soviet-made arsenals being sent to Ukraine to fight off the Russians.

00:11:29.000 Germany said last weekend it would send more modern, shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and surface-to-air Stinger missiles to Ukraine after decades of reluctance to send weapons into conflict zones.

00:11:39.000 Now, all of this is accompanied by some very weird sort of PR moves, and I don't understand them.

00:11:43.000 So, for example, a university in Milan, in Italy, has decided to no longer teach Dostoevsky?

00:11:49.000 Because Dostoevsky's a Russian name? 1.00

00:11:52.000 That's idiotic. 1.00

00:11:52.000 Dostoevsky was actually put in a camp because he opposed the Tsarist regime. 1.00

00:11:58.000 So I'm not sure why Dostoevsky, what did he ever do to you?

00:12:01.000 He's been dead for quite a while.

00:12:02.000 There's been also an attempt to bar Russian movies from film festivals.

00:12:06.000 I'm not sure if those Russian creators are somehow complicit in the invasion.

00:12:10.000 There's been an attempt to Take Russian assets without proper evidence that those Russian assets are linked to the attack on Ukraine.

00:12:20.000 There's been an attempt to bar Russian athletes from participating in meets.

00:12:26.000 I don't know why those people should pay for the sins of Vladimir Putin, and I don't think it's going to convince Vladimir Putin to stop doing what he is doing.

00:12:34.000 That seems foolhardy almost all the way across the board.

00:12:37.000 With that said, The problem here is that the West is running out of tools.

00:12:40.000 So again, the newest tool that the West is using is to try and resupply.

00:12:45.000 According to the New York Times, the Dutch are sending rocket launchers for air defense.

00:12:48.000 The Estonians are sending Javelin anti-tank missiles.

00:12:50.000 The Poles and Latvians are sending Stinger surface-to-air missiles.

00:12:53.000 The Czechs are sending machine guns, sniper rifles, pistols, and ammo.

00:12:56.000 Even formerly neutral countries like Sweden and Finland are sending weapons.

00:12:59.000 Germany, long allergic to sending weapons into conflict zones, is sending Stingers as well as other shoulder-launched rockets, according to the New York Times, in all about 20 countries.

00:13:07.000 Most members of NATO and the EU, but not all, are funneling arms into Ukraine to fight off Russian invaders in armed insurgency if the war comes to that.

00:13:14.000 At the same time, NATO is moving military equipment and as many as 22,000 more troops into member states bordering Russia and Belarus to reassure them and enhance deterrence.

00:13:24.000 According to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU, she said European security and defense has evolved more in the last six days than in the last two decades.

00:13:31.000 Brussels has moved to Europeanize the efforts of member states to aid Ukraine with weapons and money, put down a marker for the bloc as a significant military actor.

00:13:38.000 But whether European weaponry will continue to reach the Ukrainian battlefield in time to make a difference is far from certain.

00:13:44.000 It's a strategy that risks encouraging a wider war, possible retaliation from Putin.

00:13:48.000 Putin already sees NATO as committed to threaten or even destroy Russia through its support for Ukraine.

00:13:52.000 That is what he has said over and over and over again.

00:13:54.000 And this is the excuse that Putin has used all along, is that these evil Westerners, they keep provoking me by allowing Ukraine to move toward the West. 0.96

00:14:04.000 One of the people who's been promoting that idea is John Mearsheimer, most famous for his idiotic book with Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. 0.97

00:14:09.000 Foreign Policy, in which he suggested that essentially the Jews control American foreign policy. 1.00

00:14:13.000 So Mearsheimer also has similarly idiotic ideas with regard to Russia and Ukraine. 0.99

00:14:18.000 He did an interview with The New Yorker trying to say that the West is at fault for Putin's invasion of Ukraine. 0.96

00:14:24.000 He said, I think all the trouble in this case really started in April 2008 at the NATO summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO.

00:14:32.000 The Russians made it unequivocally clear at that time.

00:14:34.000 They viewed this as an existential threat.

00:14:36.000 They drew a line in the sand.

00:14:38.000 Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border.

00:14:44.000 Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion.

00:14:46.000 NATO expansion is at the heart of the strategy, but it includes EU expansion as well.

00:14:49.000 It includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

00:14:52.000 And from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat. 1.00

00:14:54.000 So he doesn't explain why that's an existential threat.

00:14:57.000 Why is Ukraine being a liberal democracy an existential threat to Russia?

00:15:00.000 There has not been a single attack launched, as far as I'm aware, across the Russian border by Ukraine.

00:15:05.000 This is not like Lebanon attacking Israel or something.

00:15:08.000 Ukraine has not been used as a staging ground to attack Russia.

00:15:11.000 Russia used to occupy Ukraine.

00:15:12.000 Then the Soviet Union crumbled and Ukraine became an independent territory.

00:15:15.000 At the point that Ukraine became an independent country, they now had the ability to ally themselves with the West if they so chose.

00:15:22.000 And the fact that NATO already exists on Russia's border in the form of Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia, effectively.

00:15:30.000 Why exactly would Ukraine be any different?

00:15:33.000 Mearsheimer's suggestion that America is trying to turn countries into pro-American liberal democracies.

00:15:38.000 First of all, even if we were, I don't see the big problem.

00:15:40.000 I'll be honest with you, I'm missing the part where that's bad.

00:15:43.000 But second of all, we're not.

00:15:45.000 I mean, Ukraine became a pro-America liberal democracy of its own accord.

00:15:50.000 They've had democratic elections multiple times, and they've shifted.

00:15:53.000 Sometimes they're more pro-America, sometimes they're less pro-America.

00:15:57.000 If a country decides of its own accord that it wishes to ally itself with Western democratic values, why should Russia see that as an existential threat?

00:16:07.000 We're not trying to overthrow the Russian regime, and we've made no attempts to do so.

00:16:11.000 More on John Mearsheimer's take that the United States is responsible for Ukraine being invaded by Russia, which is a self-defeating and illogical take.

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00:17:26.000 Mearsheimer says, this is not imperialism, this is great power politics.

00:17:30.000 When you're a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they're going to retaliate.

00:17:38.000 States in the Western Hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.

00:17:43.000 Yes, but that assumes that the Ukrainians didn't of their own accord attempt to join the pro-America bloc in the EU.

00:17:48.000 It assumes that really it was just the United States that had been promoting this.

00:17:52.000 That we had overthrown the popular sentiment in Ukraine and wanted to join Russia.

00:17:57.000 But as the war is currently proving, Ukrainians do not want to join Russia.

00:18:00.000 Like, at all.

00:18:02.000 Listen, I understand Russia pursuing its own interests here.

00:18:04.000 I do.

00:18:04.000 I get it.

00:18:05.000 That does not mean that we quote-unquote provoked it.

00:18:08.000 What it means is that Russia pursuing its own interests is in direct opposition to the interests of the people of Ukraine.

00:18:13.000 If you wish to take all of the morality out of the situation, yes, Russia is making a power move, and then the West is making a power move back.

00:18:19.000 But that does not mean a moral equivalence between the West and Russia, which is a gas-powered thugocracy. 0.93

00:18:26.000 Mearsheimer says, when you try to create a world that looks like that, you end up with the disastrous policies the United States pursued during the unipolar moment.

00:18:32.000 We went around the world trying to create liberal democracies.

00:18:34.000 Our main focus, of course, was in the greater Middle East.

00:18:36.000 You know how well that worked out?

00:18:37.000 Not very well.

00:18:39.000 So according to Mearsheimer, it is not a predation when Russia invades Ukraine.

00:18:42.000 It is a predation when we attempt to push Ukrainian politics in a pro-American direction.

00:18:49.000 That just sounds like anti-American politics to me.

00:18:52.000 If you were really interested in just great power politics, I don't see his objection to the West doing what it was doing.

00:19:00.000 I mean, we're a great power as well.

00:19:01.000 So either you object to both or you object to neither.

00:19:03.000 You can't pick and choose.

00:19:05.000 This has been used as a sort of crutch by people who are arguing against Western involvement in Ukraine.

00:19:11.000 The bottom line, however, is that we are running out of weapons with regard to deterring Vladimir Putin.

00:19:16.000 And this was the big problem.

00:19:17.000 If you don't deter the action, and then the action happens, your tools shrink dramatically.

00:19:21.000 If you've already levied sanctions, and you say to Vladimir Putin, listen, let's say we had canceled Nord Stream 2.

00:19:26.000 Let's say we never greenlit Nord Stream 2 before this.

00:19:28.000 And we had said to Putin, if you don't invade, then we'd be happy to discuss the opening of Nord Stream 2.

00:19:34.000 That seems like more of a carrot.

00:19:36.000 If we had canceled Nord Stream 2, and we said, listen, we're hearing rumors you're going to go into Ukraine.

00:19:40.000 You go say, I guarantee you're not going into Ukraine.

00:19:41.000 We're happy to remove the sanctions.

00:19:44.000 We'll go back to status quo ante.

00:19:46.000 Perhaps Putin doesn't go into Ukraine.

00:19:48.000 We'd spent not the last 30 years.

00:19:51.000 Steadfastly ignoring predations by the Chinese in Hong Kong and ignoring predations by the Russians in Georgia and Crimea.

00:19:59.000 If we had not done that, perhaps Vladimir Putin wouldn't have been convinced, as he apparently was, that the world was a paper tiger and would do nothing in the face of a Russian advance.

00:20:07.000 Now that he has gone in, the tools radically shrink.

00:20:09.000 Because what can you do to him that you haven't already done?

00:20:12.000 Not all that much.

00:20:13.000 Basically, we're already doing it.

00:20:14.000 We've levied these major economic sanctions.

00:20:17.000 We have rearmed the opposition in Ukraine the best that we can.

00:20:21.000 And so, the West's options are shrinking and shrinking fast, as the Wall Street Journal points out today.

00:20:26.000 They say seven days into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the U.S.

00:20:29.000 and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are coming under increasing pressure to do more to help Ukraine, even as they face diminishing options for doing so.

00:20:36.000 As Russia continues to push to capture urban areas, one of the more drastic options discussed publicly has been a no-fly zone that would stop Russian aircraft from launching strikes over Ukraine.

00:20:44.000 The idea has been dismissed by the United States and NATO countries.

00:20:47.000 The reason being, we don't want to be in a direct conflict with the Russians.

00:20:51.000 Not because we wouldn't win.

00:20:52.000 We would. 0.95

00:20:52.000 I mean, we'd shoot down all of their jets in a matter of moments. 0.95

00:20:55.000 We have a much more sophisticated military.

00:20:57.000 I mean, the Ukrainians are shooting down Russian jets right now, and they have Soviet-era weaponry.

00:21:02.000 If NATO got directly involved in this conflict, and there were no fears of broader conflict or tactical nuclear warheads, this conflict would be over already.

00:21:10.000 Russia does not have anything like the military power in the conventional sense necessary to stop NATO or the United States, for example.

00:21:16.000 But that's not really the question.

00:21:18.000 The question is bleed over.

00:21:19.000 The question is, does Russia then start attacking actual NATO states?

00:21:22.000 Does it start launching those tactical nuclear weapons?

00:21:25.000 That really is the question.

00:21:26.000 And that's what Putin was saying, right?

00:21:27.000 When Putin raised the nuclear alert, what he's saying is, do not do a no-fly zone because if you do, you're just going to push me further and you've already seen how far I'm willing to go.

00:21:35.000 Creating a continuous effective no-fly zone over Ukraine, particularly with several NATO nations, would require several hundred planes not only to uphold the no-fly zone, but to support those aircraft maintaining that no-fly zone.

00:21:45.000 In addition, air force across multiple nations would have to coordinate, and should Russia attack NATO member aircraft, that would be seen as an attack on the 30-member alliance, and at that point you do have a world war.

00:21:54.000 The British government has said it would instead continue to impose more sanctions.

00:21:57.000 Sanctions, however, are not having an immediate impact on the battlefield, as Western leaders have acknowledged.

00:22:02.000 Officials hope that the unprecedented economic hit will bite the Russian economy rapidly, meaning that as the bombs fall on Kiev, there will be Russian bank runs and Russian businesses collapsing, showing real-world consequences for Putin.

00:22:14.000 But that's going to mean... Basically, there are only a few scenarios here left on the table.

00:22:18.000 Scenario number one is that the Russian oligarchs take a look at Putin.

00:22:22.000 They say, you're destroying our livelihoods, you've destroyed our holdings, you're getting Russian soldiers killed, you need to go.

00:22:28.000 And the Russian military turns on Putin and they oust him.

00:22:31.000 That is the wild hope.

00:22:33.000 That is hope number one.

00:22:34.000 It's never worked anywhere else, but that is sort of the hope here.

00:22:36.000 Okay, so good luck with that.

00:22:38.000 Then there is situation number two, and that is a large-scale guerrilla war that carries on the continent for 10 to 20 years, according to intelligence sources, in which Russia uses the overwhelming bulk of its force to take Ukraine, installs a puppet dictator, and then the Ukrainian people just resist for the next couple of decades with help from the West.

00:22:54.000 Very, very ugly canker growing in the middle.

00:22:57.000 of Europe, with extraordinary repercussions for the border states around Ukraine already.

00:23:02.000 A million refugees have been swamping the border. 1.00

00:23:05.000 Hundreds of thousands of them have been moving into Poland.

00:23:07.000 Whenever you have a major international crisis like this, whether it is in Libya or whether it is in Ukraine, and Ukraine's a lot closer than Libya, you end up with a situation with huge refugee issues and massive overflow into the West, which creates significant domestic problems for Western European countries at the very, very least.

00:23:24.000 Plus an emboldened Russian state, which has taken it and really has no reason not to try and break the NATO alliance even further.

00:23:30.000 So what exactly does Vladimir Putin have to lose at this point?

00:23:32.000 We have now hit him with the largest economic sanctions probably in world history.

00:23:37.000 We have him isolated on an international level from everybody except for maybe India, China.

00:23:43.000 And Iran. 0.53

00:23:44.000 And yet, he continues going.

00:23:45.000 So what exactly can we do to get him to an off-ramp?

00:23:49.000 We'll get to that in just a moment.

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00:24:58.000 And then there's scenario number three.

00:24:59.000 Scenario number three is an off-ramp.

00:25:00.000 And this is kind of what everybody is looking for at this point, except for maybe Putin.

00:25:05.000 So while we talk about how we have the whip hand over Putin, that really isn't true.

00:25:08.000 Putin has the whip hand because whoever has the least to lose is the person who is also least likely to come to the table.

00:25:15.000 And at this point, what exactly does Putin have to lose?

00:25:19.000 They took the economic hit.

00:25:20.000 They're going to continue to take the economic hit.

00:25:21.000 Vladimir Putin doesn't care about the economic hit.

00:25:23.000 If he feels that he can maintain his position at the head of the Russian thugocracy only by winning the war in Ukraine, why would he stop?

00:25:33.000 Why would he stop?

00:25:34.000 What concessions could the West make that would dissuade him?

00:25:37.000 And it's unclear at this point what concessions would look like in that case.

00:25:40.000 So you have to hope for scenario number one and number three, but it looks like the most realistic scenario is scenario number two.

00:25:47.000 You can see that the Biden administration is pushing for scenario number three.

00:25:50.000 John Kirby over at the Pentagon, he says, we'd like to see Moscow take the temperature down about the nukes.

00:25:54.000 Yeah, I'm sure we would.

00:25:55.000 I mean, yes, we would like to see all the temperatures decreased at this point.

00:26:00.000 We'd certainly like to see Moscow reciprocate by taking the temperature down on rhetoric about nuclear posture.

00:26:08.000 We certainly would like to see him de-escalate by coming to a ceasefire and de-escalating and moving those forces back home and getting out of Ukraine.

00:26:20.000 So, he is correct about this.

00:26:22.000 And the Biden administration, again, the mistakes that the Biden administration made were mistakes that were made before the invasion.

00:26:28.000 What the Biden administration has done since the invasion is the correct thing.

00:26:31.000 And that's not because they somehow rallied the world or because Joe Biden is a great politician.

00:26:35.000 It's because this is what happens in politics.

00:26:38.000 A thing happens, everybody reacts to the thing.

00:26:40.000 That is what has happened in Eastern Europe right now.

00:26:43.000 According to Secretary of State Tony Blinken, the United States is monitoring the shelling of civilians.

00:26:47.000 He says that the Russians have really ratcheted things up in the last couple of days.

00:26:52.000 We've certainly seen in the past that one of Russia's methods of war is to be absolutely brutal in trying to cow the citizenry of a given country.

00:27:09.000 And that includes, at the very least, indiscriminate targeting and potentially deliberate targeting as well.

00:27:19.000 We're looking very closely at what's happening in Ukraine right now, including what's happening to civilians.

00:27:26.000 We're taking account of it.

00:27:27.000 We're documenting it.

00:27:29.000 And we want to ensure, among other things, that there's accountability for it.

00:27:35.000 What sort of accountability, though?

00:27:36.000 The problem is weakness breeds weakness.

00:27:38.000 If you didn't stop it before it started, it's very difficult to start it now, which is why Joe Biden, correctly, was saying yesterday that while it's clear that Russia is targeting civilians, he's not sure if it's war crimes yet.

00:27:48.000 The reason that Biden is saying that, he knows it's war crimes.

00:27:51.000 When I say he's correct, What I mean is that Joe Biden is looking for that off ramp.

00:27:53.000 He's desperately looking for Vladimir Putin to take that off ramp, which is what the West has to hope for at this point.

00:27:58.000 Because if Putin doesn't, then you're going to end up with scenario number two, which is that large scale, long lasting occupation of a country that does not want to be occupied, dead center of Europe.

00:28:07.000 Here is Joe Biden trying to take down the rhetoric.

00:28:11.000 Russia is committing war crimes.

00:28:14.000 We are following it very closely.

00:28:16.000 It's early to say that.

00:28:17.000 By disrespect, he's intentionally targeting civilian areas.

00:28:21.000 There are over 2,000 civilian deaths right now.

00:28:23.000 There they are.

00:28:24.000 Okay, so again, he's admitting that they're doing it, but at the same time, he won't say they're doing it.

00:28:31.000 This would be all well and good and sort of the sort of normal way this would proceed, I mean, there's no normal here, but this is sort of the understandable way in which this would proceed, except for the fact that this administration continues to be very, very unserious about Russia with regard to ancillary issues.

00:28:47.000 So if you're seeking to dissuade Russia from doing what it is doing, you do need to cut off relations with them.

00:28:52.000 You do need to stop attempting to work with them on issues supposedly important to them.

00:28:58.000 And you actually do need to call on the American people to make a sacrifice.

00:29:02.000 Now Joe Biden said in the State of the Union that you will have to make a sacrifice.

00:29:05.000 Then he wouldn't actually detail what the sacrifice was.

00:29:07.000 Because here's the problem for Joe Biden.

00:29:10.000 In the sense that weakness breeds submission.

00:29:13.000 And so Joe Biden's weakness brought about this conflict.

00:29:16.000 They pull out from Afghanistan and bolden Putin. 0.67

00:29:18.000 Several months of us saying that NATO alliances were split and that a minor incursion might not merit any sort of response.

00:29:25.000 That all of that encouraged Putin's invasion.

00:29:29.000 That means that he has now brought this about.

00:29:33.000 And so now he's trying to split the baby because instead of saying, listen, we have to bring the harshest sanctions we possibly can.

00:29:37.000 That might mean higher prices at the pump.

00:29:40.000 And we are also going to have to tell the left.

00:29:42.000 We're going to have to tell people on the progressive left that we are going to put our environmental policies on hold because we need to compete with Russia. 0.89

00:29:48.000 We need to compete with China. 1.00

00:29:49.000 We need to be energy independent.

00:29:50.000 That is a national security issue.

00:29:52.000 Instead of Joe Biden saying that to his left.

00:29:54.000 And instead of saying to everybody else, and that means that temporarily your gas prices are going to go up, but this is what it means to be the leader of the free world.

00:30:01.000 Instead of Joe Biden saying any of that, they just refuse to say any of that.

00:30:04.000 So Jen Psaki said yesterday that we are thinking about energy sanctions, but we're still importing 600,000 barrels of Russian oil every day because after all, we have to minimize the price impact on Americans. 0.87

00:30:14.000 So he's a coward.

00:30:15.000 Because if you're going to be a leader, that means you sometimes have to say things you know will be unpopular to the American people. 0.98

00:30:22.000 Joe Biden is willing to do that.

00:30:23.000 Here's Jen Psaki. 1.00

00:30:25.000 We want to minimize the impact on the global marketplace, and that includes the global oil marketplace and the impact of energy prices for the American people.

00:30:35.000 So that's one of the factors that we really look at.

00:30:38.000 We're considering it.

00:30:39.000 It's very much on the table, but we need to weigh what all of the impacts will be.

00:30:43.000 We're not trying to hurt ourselves.

00:30:44.000 We're trying to hurt President Putin and the Russian economy.

00:30:49.000 Okay, but if you're trying to hurt the Russian economy, it's going to hurt them a lot worse than it's going to hurt us.

00:30:52.000 I mean, we'll pay some more at the pump.

00:30:54.000 It'll devastate his economy.

00:30:55.000 By the way, Germany is willing to undertake the sacrifice. 0.84

00:30:57.000 Germany, which until five seconds, I mean, they get like half of their power. 0.94

00:31:01.000 Literally half of their natural gas comes from Russia and they've cut it off.

00:31:04.000 Their prices have gone up 100% over the course of the last week because they understand that sometimes you need to take the hit in order to do the right thing.

00:31:11.000 I can't believe I'm saying that about the German government, but that's the reality.

00:31:16.000 They won't even tell their left that they are trying to move back toward ramping up oil production because, God forbid, the environmentalists who love Greta Thunberg, and she's so angry at you, she's so upset, they might piss off an 18-year-old Norwegian teen or whatever.

00:31:32.000 Here is Biden advisor Cedric Richmond saying yesterday, we still need to pass the climate agenda.

00:31:36.000 That's the real solution here is green energy.

00:31:38.000 Good luck with that.

00:31:40.000 We've put a solution on the table, and that is to pass legislation that will lower Americans' everyday costs, lower their health care.

00:31:47.000 If we pass our climate agenda, we would lower energy prices for the average American family by $500 a month.

00:31:55.000 We can reduce the expenses that they're paying for child care, which on average is about $14,000 a year, and we would cap it at 7% a year.

00:32:04.000 Income.

00:32:05.000 We would limit the amount that people would pay for prescription drugs.

00:32:10.000 Insulin, for example, we'd cap at $35.

00:32:12.000 Those things... Respectfully, those are good ideas to ease the burden on Americans, but those are months away, if ever.

00:32:22.000 Okay, and they're not only months away, they're not going to happen.

00:32:25.000 And not only are they not going to happen, they're very, very bad ideas.

00:32:27.000 They raise the national debt.

00:32:29.000 They create more inflation.

00:32:32.000 They're very bad.

00:32:33.000 It's just an unserious administration.

00:32:34.000 It's an unserious administration flying by the seat of its geriatric pants. 0.99

00:32:39.000 This guy, man, this administration just continues to crap the bed. 0.53

00:32:43.000 Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, the greatest of all expositors on both foreign and domestic policy, she was asked about what we are going to do, and she brought out her favorite line. 0.83

00:32:51.000 We are going to do what we've always done, and it is always that time.

00:32:54.000 See, the first time she said this, I thought it was a gaffe.

00:32:56.000 The second time, I think she actually thinks she knows what she's talking about.

00:32:59.000 It's kind of crazy.

00:33:02.000 So what else do we have to throw at this when Putin so far is undeterred?

00:33:06.000 Well, we are going to continue to do what we've done.

00:33:08.000 For example, in the sanctions, it's been sanctions against their financial institutions, against their oligarchs, where we are targeting their mansions and their jets.

00:33:17.000 What we are going to continue to do is stand firm with our allies in terms of reassessing what we are doing with sanctions.

00:33:24.000 Everything is on the table for consideration, frankly.

00:33:29.000 We're going to continue doing what we've always done.

00:33:31.000 But then Harris was asked, OK, so are we going to cut off their energy supplies?

00:33:35.000 Are we going to cut off the energy markets?

00:33:37.000 And she refuses to answer the question.

00:33:39.000 And then she just speaks mashed potatoes.

00:33:42.000 As it relates to what we need to do domestically as well as what we need to do in terms of this issue generally, we have, as the president said, re-evaluated what we're doing in terms of the strategic oil reserve here in the United States to make sure that it will not have an impact or we can mitigate the impact on the American consumer.

00:34:00.000 But let's take this one step at a time.

00:34:05.000 Okay, so thank you for that gobbledygook, Vice President Harris.

00:34:08.000 By the way, the Biden administration, when I say they're unserious, I mean they are deeply unserious when it comes to Russia in many, many ways.

00:34:13.000 The most obvious way is that they are still using Russia to broker a deal with the Iranian mullahs, the greatest exporters of terrorism on planet Earth, the Iranian government, which has destabilized regimes ranging from Yemen to Syria to Lebanon. 0.64

00:34:29.000 Which has sought to start wars with Saudi Arabia, with Israel, funded Hamas.

00:34:34.000 This regime, the United States is currently attempting to sign some sort of deal with them that is not going to achieve anything that would remotely look like an American interest, just because Joe Biden has these vanity projects.

00:34:45.000 It's amazing how one politician's vanity can really drive America off the road and into a ditch.

00:34:51.000 That's what happened in Afghanistan.

00:34:52.000 Joe Biden had a vain idea that he was going to end the war in Afghanistan, come hell or high water.

00:34:56.000 13 Americans died because he did that.

00:34:59.000 Millions of Afghans are going to starve. 0.69

00:35:01.000 19 million Afghan women will be subject to sexual abuse and predation and living under tyranny.

00:35:06.000 Thousands of Americans were left behind. 0.99

00:35:08.000 All because Joe Biden is a vain old man.

00:35:10.000 And the same thing is happening in Iran right now.

00:35:12.000 Joe Biden wants to sign an Iranian nuclear deal and he wants the Russians to broker it.

00:35:15.000 Well, the Russians are currently invading Ukraine. 0.69

00:35:17.000 He has got his envoy, Robert Malley, who is just a wild, terrible anti-Israel force in American foreign policy. 0.99

00:35:24.000 He's been garbage for years. 0.98

00:35:25.000 He's got Robert Malley negotiating this thing. 0.99

00:35:28.000 And Robert Malley, without the consultation of any of our supposed allies, you know, like Saudi Arabia or Israel or the UAE or any of those, he's negotiating a deal with the Iranians, brokered by the Russians, brokered by the Russians.

00:35:39.000 The Russians are currently murdering civilians in Ukraine. 0.93

00:35:42.000 And the United States, on the one hand, is like, we're going to sanction the hell out of them.

00:35:45.000 We're going to take care of this.

00:35:46.000 We're going to do it.

00:35:47.000 And on the other hand, they're going to the Russians and saying, can you help us broker a deal with a country even worse than you? 0.87

00:35:52.000 Can you make that happen for us?

00:35:54.000 A deal that will end, by the way, with Iran in charge of nuclear weapons and with more money. 0.77

00:35:58.000 That's what that deal will end with.

00:35:59.000 Because that's what the JCPOA was.

00:36:01.000 That was Obama's plan.

00:36:03.000 According to Gabriel Naranja, reporting from SASC, he's a former Iran official at the State Department, he says, my former career State Department, NSC, and EU colleagues are so concerned with the concessions being made by Robert Malley in Vienna, they've allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes Congress will stop the capitulation.

00:36:22.000 One warned what's happening in Vienna is a total disaster.

00:36:25.000 The entire negotiations have been filtered and essentially run by Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov.

00:36:30.000 The concessions and other misguided policies have led three members of the negotiating team from the United States to leave.

00:36:37.000 Niranha says this is a long and technical thread.

00:36:39.000 Here's what you should know.

00:36:40.000 The deal being negotiated in Vienna is dangerous to our national security.

00:36:42.000 It is illegal.

00:36:43.000 It is illegitimate.

00:36:44.000 It in no way serves U.S.

00:36:45.000 interests in either the short or long term.

00:36:47.000 Led by Robert Malley, the United States has promised to lift sanctions on some of the Iranian regime's worst terrorists and torturers, leading officials in the regime's WMD infrastructure, and is currently trying to lift sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard itself.

00:36:47.000 Here is why.

00:37:02.000 Biden seems preparing to rescind the Supreme Leader's Office Executive Order as soon as this coming Monday, and lift sanctions on nearly every one of the 112 people and entities sanctioned under it, even if they are sanctioned by other legal authorities.

00:37:14.000 Some of the people who have been sanctioned are people like Mohsen Rezaei, who was involved in the 1994 AMIA bombing that killed 85 people in Argentina, who will be able to live free of sanctions next week if Malley has his way.

00:37:27.000 Other people who will be living free of sanctions We'll be people like Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to the Supreme Leader Khamenei, who was charged in Argentina for homicide for that terrorist attack and also propped up Assad's brutality in Syria.

00:37:41.000 According to Naranja, it's important to note the Supreme Leader's office EO was not at all related to Iran's nuclear program.

00:37:47.000 The removal of those sanctions under a so-called nuclear deal is a farce.

00:37:50.000 The State Department lawyers know better.

00:37:51.000 They were forced into this by Malley.

00:37:54.000 He says also sanctions will be lifted on huge swaths of the regime's economic and financial arms that were supporting the Iranian terror repression and WMD infrastructure.

00:38:03.000 Says the U.S. 0.99

00:38:04.000 is not lifting sanctions on the Basij responsible for killing thousands of Iranian protesters itself because the Iranians didn't care. 0.86

00:38:10.000 They just want the sanctions on the funding mechanism lifted.

00:38:12.000 And that's what Malley did.

00:38:14.000 The sanctions are not even related to Iran's nuclear program, but we're going to lift sanctions on those anyway.

00:38:20.000 So you've got America trying to lift sanctions on Iran, being negotiated by the Russians while we are telling the Russians that they have been banned from the international community, so to speak.

00:38:32.000 They also want, by the way, the Iranians haven't even accepted the deal yet. 0.89

00:38:35.000 They haven't even accepted the deal.

00:38:37.000 All that has to happen for them to accept the deal is that the United States will remove IRCG, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list and sanctions if the Iranians promise to talk about new negotiations.

00:38:49.000 If they promise.

00:38:51.000 Apparently, the Iranians have not accepted that offer yet because they want the unconditional removal of the terror organization designation.

00:39:00.000 For all of these concessions, we get nothing from the Iranians. 1.00

00:39:02.000 Nothing.

00:39:04.000 And that is precisely what is happening.

00:39:07.000 This administration is totally unserious.

00:39:09.000 It's an unserious administration.

00:39:10.000 And so we shouldn't be surprised that the Russians are treating us with a lack of seriousness. 0.98

00:39:14.000 They're willing to accept the blows that they've taken thus far.

00:39:17.000 And so that means that the best we can do is offer them some sort of carrot.

00:39:21.000 Because the stick ain't working.

00:39:23.000 Alrighty, coming up, the U.S.

00:39:25.000 economy is about to hit the skids.

00:39:27.000 We'll talk about that in just one second.

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00:40:15.000 Just call 866-721-3300.

00:40:15.000 That's 866-721-3300 or visit AmericanFinancing.net.

00:40:16.000 That's 866-721-3300 or visit American financing.net NMLS 1 8 2 3 3 4 NMLS 1 8 2 3 3 4.

00:40:23.000 to 334-NMLS-A-1.

00:40:25.000 If you thought that The Daily Wire was going to take a break from bringing you new awesome content, wrong!

00:40:27.000 financing.net 866-721-3300 to get started.

00:40:32.000 Okay guys, I have an exciting announcement today.

00:40:34.000 If you thought that The Daily Wire was going to take a break from bringing you new awesome content, wrong!

00:40:39.000 We are adding new content on like a weekly basis.

00:40:42.000 We are pumped because we've got a new film coming out just for you.

00:40:45.000 You thought that Shut In was just gonna be our film for the year.

00:40:48.000 Wrong you were, because get ready for March 10th, the premiere of our newest film, The Hyperions.

00:40:52.000 It doesn't follow that same old Hollywood prescribed formula.

00:40:55.000 It's a film that stands entirely on its own.

00:40:57.000 It is awesome and fun.

00:40:59.000 You're gonna love it.

00:41:00.000 And it is not for, it's not creepy like, okay?

00:41:03.000 It's not made, it's not a hard R. You can have your teenagers watch this film.

00:41:07.000 Check out the trailer.

00:41:08.000 Good day, Hyperion Club members.

00:41:14.000 We've come for one thing.

00:41:16.000 Our Titan Badge.

00:41:17.000 This Titan Badge can grant an individual superhuman power.

00:41:22.000 Perhaps it's time for someone else to take on the responsibility.

00:41:26.000 On my way.

00:41:26.000 She's trying to destroy me.

00:41:34.000 You you you The Hyperions is a throwback superhero meets dysfunctional family meets quirky criminals movie.

00:41:45.000 It is 100% worth the stream.

00:41:47.000 We're going to be streaming the film once on March 10th for all of YouTube to see.

00:41:50.000 After that, you need to be a member to get in on the action.

00:41:53.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe so you don't miss any more of the growing cache of content we have to offer.

00:42:00.000 Plus, My friend Jonathan Isaac, he has a new book out.

00:42:03.000 You need to go check it out right now.

00:42:04.000 It's no secret that wokeness has infiltrated everything, including sports. 1.00

00:42:07.000 We're not the only ones who are fed up.

00:42:08.000 That's why Orlando Magic star Jonathan Isaac is publishing a book with The Daily Wire about the rise of his basketball career, his journey into faith, his strength to stand alone in the face of immense social pressure.

00:42:18.000 I mean that literally.

00:42:19.000 While the rest of the NBA was kneeling to protest supposed American racism, Jonathan Isaac was standing for America and for his faith.

00:42:25.000 This autobiographical account will give insight and inspiration to anybody Looking to take the woke out of sports?

00:42:30.000 Jonathan Isaac's Why I Stand is available for pre-order now today at Amazon Reserve.

00:42:35.000 Your copy.

00:42:36.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:42:39.000 Well, meanwhile, the U.S. economy is about to hit the skids.

00:42:47.000 There are just a number of forces that are militating against the upward trajectory of the United States economy.

00:42:54.000 One of those, by the way, is the continuing fostering of relationship between Russia and China.

00:42:58.000 China announced just yesterday They would not join in sanctions on Russia that have been led by the West.

00:43:02.000 So the Russia, China, Iran axis is growing stronger and stronger. 0.76

00:43:06.000 The United States is responding to that by moving to confront China on trade and industrial policy.

00:43:11.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is preparing to confront China on its industrial subsidies and seek ways to protect America's edge in new technologies, hardening U.S.

00:43:19.000 economic policy toward the nation's chief global rival.

00:43:21.000 That's a good thing.

00:43:22.000 We should be doing this.

00:43:23.000 We should have been doing this years ago, in fact.

00:43:26.000 The interrelationship between the Chinese economy and the American economy, it turns out, has been a boon for China and not quite such a boon for the United States.

00:43:33.000 The White House is weighing heightened scrutiny of U.S.

00:43:35.000 companies' investments in China, tighter export controls, and sensitive technologies, greater cooperation with European and Asian allies and partners on subsidies and other issues.

00:43:44.000 That approach is motivated by growing conviction within the Biden administration that Donald Trump's tariff campaign against Chinese imports did not persuade Beijing to compete fairly in international trade.

00:43:52.000 Apparently, they're going to confront Beijing's non-market practices by going to the World Trade Organization, is apparently the idea here.

00:44:00.000 The new initiative comes as efforts to build on the Phase One deal have stalled with high-level U.S.

00:44:04.000 and Chinese officials no longer in close communications on trade.

00:44:07.000 So, we are now breaking... It turns out, again, the age of American hegemony has serious costs.

00:44:12.000 The end of that has serious costs for the American public.

00:44:16.000 In other words, we now have to do things we didn't have to do before because we got weak on American foreign policy.

00:44:21.000 And so the predictable effect of that is that products are going to become a lot more expensive.

00:44:24.000 A lot of the interrelated economic relationships that have been created over the course of the last 30 years are about to fragment.

00:44:30.000 That may be necessary and it may be good.

00:44:31.000 You know what would have been better?

00:44:32.000 Is if we had never had to do any of that because we had been so strong on foreign policy that everybody was damned afraid of us.

00:44:38.000 But obviously that's no longer the case.

00:44:40.000 Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says he's going to propose a quarter percentage point rate increase at the central bank's meeting in two weeks amid high inflation, strong economic demand and a tight labor market.

00:44:50.000 He got explicit because he was afraid that the markets were getting very, very shaky.

00:44:53.000 There was a lot of prediction that he was going to raise by half a point as opposed to a quarter point.

00:44:57.000 The Fed really has only done quarter point raises for the past 15 years or so.

00:45:02.000 Powell said on Wednesday before Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week, he expected the central bank would follow that initial rate rise with a series of increases this year.

00:45:09.000 Powell said, for now, I would say we'll proceed carefully along the lines of that plan.

00:45:13.000 We're going to avoid adding uncertainty to what is already an extraordinarily challenging and uncertain moment.

00:45:18.000 The S&P 500 rose 1.9% on Wednesday.

00:45:22.000 The reason is because it's bouncing around a little bit like a yo-yo, but not just that.

00:45:26.000 Powell creating some certainty in the market is a useful thing for the market.

00:45:31.000 However, is that going to be enough to curb inflation?

00:45:32.000 Very doubtful.

00:45:34.000 Powell effectively ended a debate in markets and among other Fed officials over whether they would lift rates from zero this month with a larger half percentage point increase.

00:45:41.000 At the same time, he laid the groundwork for the possibility of half point increases this summer, pushing back against the idea that the more traditional quarter point increases represent a speed limit for the Fed.

00:45:51.000 So he's saying just for the moment, we're going to do 0.25, 25 basis points, but a little bit later, maybe three months from now, maybe we'll jump it from 0.25 to 0.75.

00:46:01.000 Pell said his colleagues expect inflation to peak and diminish soon.

00:46:04.000 He said to the extent inflation comes in higher or is more persistently high than that, we will be prepared to move more aggressively by raising rates by a half percentage point at one or more meetings later this year.

00:46:13.000 So all of the foreign policy discombobulation combined with Joe Biden's threats against various businesses Combined with Jerome Powell raising the interest rates is likely to lead to a bit of economic stagnation right here.

00:46:27.000 We're not going to see wildly booming economic numbers this year in the way that was once forecast by all of the economic predictors.

00:46:35.000 Now the best thing that could happen, honestly, for Joe Biden and for the country is for him to lose Congress in 2022.

00:46:40.000 If he loses Congress in November, the markets are going to go back to sleep.

00:46:43.000 If he loses in 2022, the markets are going to say, okay, at the very least, we're not going to get massive crackdowns on American business in a way that Joe Biden would prefer because Congress will stop it.

00:46:51.000 He'll actually have the power to stop it.

00:46:53.000 I think the markets are already starting to price that in, which is why you're seeing the markets somewhat stable in the face of all of this chaos.

00:47:00.000 Suffice it to say, however, that the growth numbers that were forecast at the beginning of Joe Biden's administration have not been hit, and that is because of Joe Biden's incompetence on both foreign and domestic policy.

00:47:09.000 The best thing that can happen to the markets is Joe Biden failing in his policy goals.

00:47:13.000 We've had massive job increases in December, in January, in February.

00:47:17.000 Those massive job increases are because Joe Biden didn't get what he wanted.

00:47:20.000 He's taking credit for them.

00:47:22.000 But Joe Biden is simultaneously going around whining that he didn't get what he wanted.

00:47:25.000 That's not a coincidence.

00:47:26.000 When Joe Biden does not get what he wants, the American people get what they want, namely a growing and booming economy.

00:47:32.000 All righty, we've reached the end of today's show.

00:47:34.000 However, we'll be back here later with an additional hour of content.

00:47:37.000 In the meantime, go check out The Michael Morales Show that's available right now.

00:47:40.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:47:40.000 Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:47:57.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Christina, production assistant Jessica Krand.

00:48:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:48:10.000 Joe Biden doubles down on transing the kids.

00:48:12.000 The New York Times admits the COVID vaccine isn't working very well in kids.

00:48:17.000 And the Queen beats COVID.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 03, 2022

The West Is Running Out Of Tools Against Russia | Ep. 1445

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