The Great America Show - February 26, 2022


PUTIN FURIOUS AT UKRAINE’S STRONG RESISTANCE TO HIS INVASION


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

160.0653

Word count

5,981

Sentence count

366

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is becoming deadlier and more destructive by the day. Women and children are fleeing as more men join the resistance to Russian forces. Casualties on both sides are rising, and Vladimir Putin is apparently and reportedly furious that his military is not meeting his expectations of a timetable in which to seize Kiev. Western military analysts say they worry that Putin will resort to even more fearsome bombs and weaponry to accelerate the Russian occupation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America podcast with Lou Dobbs,
00:00:04.200 always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
00:00:09.220 And now here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
00:00:14.380 Hello, everybody, and welcome to this edition of the Great America Show.
00:00:18.360 The Russian invasion of Ukraine is becoming deadlier and more destructive by the day.
00:00:23.860 Women and children are fleeing Ukraine as more men join the resistance to Russian forces.
00:00:30.000 Casualties on both sides are rising, and Vladimir Putin is apparently and reportedly
00:00:35.600 furious that his military is not meeting his expectations of a timetable in which to seize
00:00:43.420 Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
00:00:46.180 Western military analysts say they worry that Putin will resort to deadlier and even more
00:00:51.180 fearsome bombs and weaponry to accelerate the Russian occupation.
00:00:55.260 Geopolitical strategists, for the most part, regard NATO and U.S. sanctions to this point
00:01:01.400 as weak and ineffective.
00:01:04.260 A few days into this invasion, NATO is exposed as a hapless semblance of a military alliance.
00:01:10.840 Many member states, including especially Germany, clearly intent on remaining passive and out
00:01:17.200 of the fray.
00:01:17.820 Joining us today, leading national security and intelligence experts, KT McFarland and
00:01:24.900 Fred Flights.
00:01:26.100 KT is a former deputy national security advisor who studied Russia and the former Soviet Union.
00:01:32.200 And Fred was chief of staff for the national security advisor.
00:01:35.380 He worked for the CIA for 25 years, also at DIA and the State Department.
00:01:40.520 Thank you both for being with us.
00:01:43.100 KT, how does the Ukraine crisis look to you as it stands right now?
00:01:48.700 Well, I think Putin has to wrap it up very quickly.
00:01:52.220 He's got maybe another 24, 48 hours to establish control over the Ukraine government.
00:01:57.560 If it drags on, it's either because he's going to look incompetent.
00:02:01.200 You know, are you getting blowback as the mighty Ukrainian army giving the Russian army some
00:02:06.200 problems or if there's a lot of civilian casualties, then then he's going to look like a nasty little 0.88
00:02:11.340 bully.
00:02:11.780 So I think it has to wrap up very quickly.
00:02:13.860 Now, the question, the bigger question is, how is Putin able to do it?
00:02:17.380 And what's the response of the world?
00:02:19.380 I put a lot of this at the foot of President Biden.
00:02:22.440 When he came into office, oil was at $40 a barrel and lethal arms were being given to
00:02:28.200 the Ukrainians.
00:02:29.600 And the leverage that Russia had over the world was more or less insignificant.
00:02:34.020 But once President Biden canceled the American energy industry, oil, natural gas, what happened
00:02:40.620 predictably was the price of oil doubled.
00:02:43.160 That means Vladimir Putin's rich again, money in his coffers, words are expensive.
00:02:47.680 But most importantly, it gave him leverage over the Europeans, especially Germany.
00:02:51.560 So there's really nothing anybody can do without the Germans, and the Germans aren't willing 1.00
00:02:56.220 to do it.
00:02:57.880 And Fred, you're out, Block?
00:03:00.120 Well, I'm really heartened to see the brave Ukrainian people fighting back against the
00:03:08.220 Russians.
00:03:08.580 I think it's a hopeless cause.
00:03:10.780 They're greatly outmatched.
00:03:11.920 I think there will be some significant Ukrainian casualties.
00:03:16.260 I was skeptical there'd be such a large invasion because once Russia took control of the country
00:03:22.260 and installs a puppet government, which I think is likely, what then?
00:03:27.460 The last puppet government that Putin installed was overthrown in 2014.
00:03:33.060 I think there's going to be an insurgency movement.
00:03:35.160 I think there's going to be mass demonstrations.
00:03:37.480 I just don't see this ending well for Putin.
00:03:41.400 I mean, there are protests in Moscow.
00:03:43.100 They're not widespread, but this, I think that, you know, Putin may take control of the country
00:03:50.420 in the short term, but in the long term, I don't see where this is going.
00:03:55.440 And the short term here is critically important.
00:04:01.340 But it's also difficult to see what the long term is when he's already moved beyond the boundaries
00:04:09.000 of Donbos and has gone beyond what were his original claims.
00:04:15.380 Yeah, I think he's going to, you know, see how Ukraine goes.
00:04:17.580 I'm sure he's trying to figure it out.
00:04:19.700 Ukraine is relatively easy for him.
00:04:22.040 And it's pretty clear the Germans aren't going to do anything to help Ukraine.
00:04:25.540 Not a NATO member, of course.
00:04:27.640 But could Putin push it one step further?
00:04:30.260 Could he decide, well, it's an easy, militarily it's quite an easy operation, to take that
00:04:37.660 there's a corridor that goes from Russia to the Baltic Sea, and it would cut off those
00:04:43.900 three very small Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, historically Russian-owned
00:04:49.580 and controlled states.
00:04:51.040 So maybe he makes a decision to do that.
00:04:52.880 He could do it within a couple of hours, and then he presents NATO with a fait accompli.
00:04:57.160 There he's taken part of NATO.
00:04:58.900 NATO, he's dismembered NATO, and what's NATO going to do about it?
00:05:02.600 And again, I'm very concerned that because of the energy blackmail that the Russians can 0.96
00:05:07.700 do, especially over Germany, that the NATO members are going to hem and haw, maybe they'll
00:05:12.620 need it, but they won't actually do anything to honor the Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which
00:05:17.920 is an attack against one, is an attack against all.
00:05:21.200 I think Putin, at this point, I think Putin's going for the whole thing.
00:05:24.040 I think he's going to try to break the back of NATO.
00:05:27.740 Do you agree, Fred?
00:05:29.880 I think it's unlikely that Putin is going to attack NATO states or send troops into NATO
00:05:35.420 territory.
00:05:36.340 But we have to reaffirm our strong support for NATO and make that less likely.
00:05:42.780 But, you know, looking at this from another perspective, Biden has handled this so badly
00:05:47.260 in many ways, and one of which is the constant demonizing of Putin, demonizing of the Russians,
00:05:53.840 throwing these sanctions out that Biden doesn't intend to impose or Putin doesn't intend to
00:06:00.620 deal with.
00:06:01.860 Donald Trump understood that we had to coexist with Russia.
00:06:05.740 He was tough on the Russians.
00:06:07.060 But I think he understood that as the nation with the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth,
00:06:13.780 demonizing them and calling them out and, you know, basically, I mean, Trump didn't come
00:06:20.380 out and say that Putin is a killer like Biden did.
00:06:25.060 What was the purpose of that? 0.87
00:06:26.520 We're making the situation worse by alienating Putin, driving him towards China.
00:06:32.480 And I think it would be better not, I mean, I want to see strong sanctions against Putin
00:06:38.080 for what happened in Ukraine, but we need to find a way to bring Putin into Europe and
00:06:43.820 to start engaging him so he won't consider what might be a disastrous move, such as moving
00:06:49.700 into a NATO country.
00:06:51.540 I think that's unlikely, but we can't let him go down that road.
00:06:56.300 Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make.
00:06:58.340 I wrote my undergraduate, this is actually graduate, doctoral dissertation on China-Russia,
00:07:03.520 the Sino-Soviet alliance.
00:07:05.160 And the fear we've always had in American foreign policy is the two of them together
00:07:10.340 ganging up against the United States.
00:07:12.540 In the 50s and 60s, it wasn't much of a gang up because there was nothing to China, although
00:07:17.220 the Soviet Union was quite strong.
00:07:19.260 But today, the gang up is really different because it's Russian natural resources and
00:07:24.160 energy, Russian military equipment, married up to Chinese technology and Chinese
00:07:28.300 money.
00:07:28.640 And that is a formidable national security threat to the United States that, frankly,
00:07:33.700 I don't think we can deal with alone and prevail.
00:07:37.980 And so the point that Fred is making, that we should not put Russia into the arms of the
00:07:43.420 Chinese, I think is an important one.
00:07:45.300 And early on in the Trump administration, we understood China was never going to be a country
00:07:50.360 that wanted to coexist as it equals with us.
00:07:53.880 But Russia might.
00:07:55.640 And that's why the effort initially would have been to see if there was a way we could
00:08:00.380 work and cooperate with the Russians over something.
00:08:03.100 Maybe it's only terrorism.
00:08:04.320 Maybe it leads from there.
00:08:05.300 But to prevent them from falling into the happy and open arms of the Chinese. 0.99
00:08:10.880 Sadly, the whole Russiagate, faux-Russiagate accusations made against President Trump really
00:08:18.280 made it politically possible for any American leader to have a relationship with Russia.
00:08:22.940 And I think it's as a result, we push Russia into the open arms of China. 0.94
00:08:27.460 I do not understand how Germany and all of Europe could be so blind to the threat that
00:08:36.240 is now sitting on their doorstep in Ukraine without reacting.
00:08:43.120 And for both the United States and the European nations to ignore, you talked about not being
00:08:49.780 NATO nations.
00:08:50.500 The Ukrainians have the Budapest memorandum on their walls right now, an agreement that
00:08:59.300 the United States will stand up for them.
00:09:01.560 And that, as a result of a deal, as you both well know, to exchange those security guarantees
00:09:10.180 for their nuclear weapons, which they did.
00:09:13.540 I mean, why is there no discussion of that agreement, that profound commitment on the
00:09:20.920 part of the United States and other nations to defend this country?
00:09:26.580 I agree that that agreement is significant.
00:09:31.580 But when I don't, by the way, the last thing I want is this country in a war, because we
00:09:36.720 don't have a very good track record over the last 20 years in war, even with third world
00:09:42.640 nations, for crying out loud, let alone the second most powerful nuclear state in the
00:09:47.660 world.
00:09:48.520 Look, I'm with the American First Policy Institute, Lou, and one of our objectives is keeping
00:09:52.900 our country out of unnecessary wars, not stopping more and more wars, starting more wars.
00:09:59.240 We don't like what's going on in Ukraine, but the U.S. does not have strategic interests
00:10:03.860 there.
00:10:04.420 I don't want to see U.S. troops in Ukraine.
00:10:06.280 We have to use diplomacy, persuasion, sanctions.
00:10:11.580 But I mean, there are members of Congress who would send U.S. troops in there right now.
00:10:15.560 And I mean, Biden has a lot of flaws, but fortunately, he-
00:10:19.780 My reaction to that, by the way, Fred, would be hell no.
00:10:23.180 Well, fortunately, Biden understands that he simply can't do that.
00:10:26.740 And look, that would risk a nuclear war with Russia.
00:10:29.800 And I think there's so many journalists who wonder why we're not sending U.S. troops into
00:10:35.040 Ukraine.
00:10:35.580 They don't understand this.
00:10:37.140 Well, they just want a good story.
00:10:38.620 Look, I think it's time to take out of the Reagan playbook and think outside the box.
00:10:43.400 All right.
00:10:43.740 So here we have a fait accompli, China, Russia together, Europe vacillating on who it supports
00:10:48.900 and when.
00:10:49.800 We should take note of the situation that the United States is sitting on the greatest reservoir
00:10:56.060 of energy in the history of the world.
00:10:59.040 Between our shale oil, shale natural gas, we can not only become energy self-sufficient
00:11:05.440 for ourselves, which we were a year ago, but we could really power the world.
00:11:09.300 We could replace Russia. 0.99
00:11:10.680 We could replace the Middle East. 1.00
00:11:12.600 And so Russia has now shown the Europeans, it's a pretty unreliable supplier of your energy
00:11:18.680 needs.
00:11:19.220 Half of Europe's energy needs are met by Russia.
00:11:21.960 And then the Russians have made it pretty clear.
00:11:23.380 They'll turn it on.
00:11:24.140 They'll turn it off.
00:11:24.840 It'll use it as a political and economic weapon to get what they want. 1.00
00:11:28.680 So maybe we can take this dire situation and turn it to our advantage, which is maybe not
00:11:35.100 with President Biden, but the next American president, turn back on the American energy
00:11:38.960 industry, set ourselves up as an energy hub for the world.
00:11:43.420 You know, the original Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement was always meant to be the beginning
00:11:48.220 step to then be built out with an energy consortium of the three nations.
00:11:53.280 It's a sort of OPEC of North America, if you will.
00:11:56.780 Maybe the rest of the world, which thought Russia was going to be pretty benign in supplying 0.84
00:12:02.280 energy, now the rest of the world sees it's not.
00:12:04.780 And this could be our moment.
00:12:06.120 It could be our moment.
00:12:09.200 But then again, that would take it, by the way, that's KT McFarland, former deputy national
00:12:15.100 security advisor.
00:12:16.620 We're talking with her and we're talking with Fred Flight, senior fellow at the America
00:12:21.380 First Institute.
00:12:22.560 I mean, that's, I think, a wonderful idea.
00:12:26.380 But I do think we have to recognize that the personality who is in the White House right
00:12:30.860 now is that an out-of-the-box thinker, nor is anyone in his immediate, his proximate
00:12:38.680 range in the White House.
00:12:41.480 It is very difficult to imagine this White House, which has done everything wrong to
00:12:46.160 this point, suddenly confronted with Russia in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, suddenly coming
00:12:56.260 to his senses and doing something masterful in a bold stroke, like you just suggested,
00:13:01.180 which I think is terrific.
00:13:02.460 I just think the reality overwhelms us.
00:13:06.100 Your thoughts, Fred?
00:13:06.620 Well, you know, KT is right.
00:13:08.700 We have to fully restore American energy production.
00:13:13.380 But there's a limit to how much we can help Europe because getting our natural gas to Europe
00:13:19.100 is difficult.
00:13:20.260 There's enormous infrastructure investments.
00:13:22.900 We can't begin to replace the amount of natural gas the Russians are providing.
00:13:27.280 And part of this effort to counter Russia's stranglehold on energy is to get the Europeans
00:13:33.640 to start producing energy again.
00:13:35.260 Germany shut down all its nuclear plants.
00:13:37.740 It's phasing out its oil-fired electricity plants.
00:13:41.740 The Germans are a big cause of this problem. 1.00
00:13:44.940 Now, maybe there are other sources of natural gas in Africa and the Middle East that could
00:13:49.020 somehow be piped or brought to Germany.
00:13:52.040 But at the end of the day, the Germans are helping fuel the Russian war machine because 0.83
00:13:58.520 it shut down its energy industry.
00:14:01.000 And this is a problem in every European state except for the UK and France.
00:14:05.820 France, for some reason, has a robust nuclear program, but they are a little unique there.
00:14:12.280 This administration hasn't figured out the basic economics.
00:14:16.220 And that tells you that this is a poorly served president.
00:14:19.680 And certainly, this White House is serving poorly the American people.
00:14:25.360 We have a difficult time in front of us because there's no one in Congress, not Mitch McConnell,
00:14:31.360 not Kevin McCarthy, with the leadership and the vision to stand up and be wise men.
00:14:38.700 But instead, they're simply hacks.
00:14:42.380 And that's where we are.
00:14:44.320 Yeah, I think if anybody's looking for answers from Washington, look again, you're not going to get anything from Washington,
00:14:49.960 frankly, from either political party.
00:14:51.760 That's why I think a lot of us should put our efforts into the states, the state and local government grassroots,
00:14:59.220 as the ideas factory and the people factory for the next round.
00:15:03.240 But, you know, here's the thing.
00:15:04.640 It's going to be bad.
00:15:05.780 OK, for the next couple of years, it's going to be really bad.
00:15:07.820 If Republicans take the House and the Senate a year from now, the good news is it comes along with subpoena power.
00:15:13.460 And what that means is they can subpoena everything from Hunter Biden's laptop
00:15:19.580 to the Justice Department's memoranda of going after housewives at school board meetings.
00:15:25.240 And you could tie them up into a lot of knots so that they couldn't do a lot of problems and get in a lot of trouble.
00:15:31.860 And then in a Republican administration coming in in the 2024 election,
00:15:36.440 whether that's President Trump coming back or someone like President Trump, the policies will be roughly the same.
00:15:42.400 And that it's a bit late in the game, but it's still a time to have that out of the box original thinking.
00:15:47.760 And, you know, the thing is that I mean, you're so right when you say, who are these people?
00:15:53.440 Don't they understand the basic aspects of the economy?
00:15:58.280 I mean, I was with someone when President Biden was saying, had made a statement saying, well, the Russians,
00:16:04.020 the Russians aren't going to dare shut down the energy pipelines because they need that income.
00:16:09.440 And the man, the Wall Street guy, he said, does he not understand the basic fundamental principles?
00:16:14.480 Biden doesn't have to, you know, the Russians don't have to shut it down.
00:16:17.380 They'll just sort of maybe take 95 percent online.
00:16:20.660 And then the price of oil will go through the roof.
00:16:23.140 It'll double.
00:16:23.720 So the Russians will get twice as much money for half as much product.
00:16:28.520 And again, I really do think that they're almost criminally incompetent in the Biden administration.
00:16:33.240 I don't think there's any almost based on the Durham investigation and the role of the new
00:16:39.660 national security advisor who seemed to have been a very active fellow through the campaign of 2016
00:16:49.700 through four years of the Trump administration.
00:16:52.380 But now he's he's at Biden's knee.
00:16:56.120 It's truly frightening.
00:16:58.140 Let's talk about this issue of elemental logic and just rudimentary knowledge about the world.
00:17:08.160 This administration betrays not even those low levels of capacity, and it makes it very
00:17:16.520 difficult to understand why the national left wing corporate media can stand there and listen
00:17:23.780 to him prattle on when they know full well nothing he's saying makes any sense whatsoever.
00:17:31.280 For example, he applies sanctions to Russia for the reasons that you just described, KT, but he
00:17:39.980 doesn't shut the Russians out of SWIFT, the clearinghouse, the financial information clearinghouse
00:17:46.200 for export imports, international trade, which would shut down a sizable portion of his revenue,
00:17:54.540 maybe as much as 50 percent of it, maybe, maybe even slightly more.
00:17:59.700 He doesn't in any way call upon the United States to end its imports of Russian oil, which amount
00:18:06.700 to 15 percent of our oil now, which, by the way, is only half as much oil as would have been
00:18:12.640 transported by the Keystone pipeline that he killed.
00:18:16.240 It's madness that emanates there is nothing but dark days that result when this White House takes
00:18:27.120 action.
00:18:29.220 Lou, I want to give you a related example.
00:18:33.720 It might make you mad.
00:18:35.340 You may heard yesterday that John Kerry said that he's worried that the Russia-Ukraine conflict
00:18:42.440 will distract from climate change.
00:18:45.480 This is such a significant statement because it just shows the frivolous, unserious national 1.00
00:18:52.860 security policy of this administration.
00:18:55.740 It's why we have this crisis in Ukraine.
00:18:58.140 And this is certainly the belief of every member of the Biden administration, that the idea that
00:19:03.920 Kerry would say that while Ukrainians are dying because of this Russian invasion, it says
00:19:11.020 everything about where we are.
00:19:13.080 Well, of course, first of all, he is he's a he's a laughingstock of his own party, of even
00:19:19.660 the green element of his own party.
00:19:22.140 But certainly the rest of America knows him to be completely, completely an oaf on this issue.
00:19:30.760 And I just can't I can't comprehend the tolerance of the of the American people putting up with
00:19:38.820 a party like the Democrats.
00:19:40.420 They are responsible for for theft, for lies, stealing, trying to overthrow presidents.
00:19:49.060 And I mean, I don't know what it would take to be embarrassed to be a Democrat.
00:19:53.460 But if the last last six years haven't done it, I don't know what will.
00:19:57.660 Do you, Katie?
00:19:59.400 Well, here's the thing.
00:20:00.720 When you were mentioning earlier about the corporate media and how they're not really doing
00:20:04.640 their job, right, they're not holding truth to power or what happened in the country.
00:20:08.660 I'm sorry.
00:20:09.640 I they are doing their job.
00:20:11.420 They're propagandists.
00:20:13.020 They're OK.
00:20:13.620 They're not their not their real job, which is to speak truth to power.
00:20:18.680 They're doing their new paid job.
00:20:21.140 But the country's voting.
00:20:22.420 You know, Lou, you taught me years ago.
00:20:23.960 Look at the ratings.
00:20:24.740 Look at the ratings.
00:20:25.880 So what are the ratings of places like CNN?
00:20:27.980 Right.
00:20:28.320 Four hundred thousand people a day watch CNN.
00:20:30.320 My God, they're down to friends and immediate family watching CNN and the future of me media
00:20:37.040 and the future of news, of how news gets taken from one place to the people, I think is what
00:20:41.900 you're doing is podcast.
00:20:43.280 So I'm not so worried about the legacy media, because frankly, nobody's listening to them.
00:20:48.720 Certainly nobody under the age of 40 is paying a hoot of attention to them.
00:20:52.460 And as far as sort of the cycles, you know, Lou, I don't know if I ever told you this,
00:20:57.200 but so when I was in the Trump administration, I got slapped around pretty hard by the Mueller
00:21:02.420 people, really hard, in fact.
00:21:04.720 And they tried to you witnessed it and they tried to break me and they tried to get me
00:21:10.120 to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit.
00:21:12.720 Then he wanted me to implicate President Trump in crimes he did not commit.
00:21:16.620 And at the end of the day, I looked at my husband and I said, oh, my gosh, you know,
00:21:20.800 we're hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for legal fees.
00:21:24.500 Maybe I should just give them what they want.
00:21:26.040 And Alan said, no, you can't do that.
00:21:28.100 You'll never live with yourself.
00:21:29.540 So I went back to the Mueller people and said, no, no, I'm just not going to lie.
00:21:33.740 Well, they finally went away.
00:21:35.560 But what it made me do was I was just so frazzled by my I figured my career was over,
00:21:40.920 my life was over.
00:21:42.160 But what had happened to my country?
00:21:43.800 So we went away to the most remote part of Western Scotland.
00:21:48.180 And I tried to think about what's happened to America.
00:21:50.600 And I realized that we go through these periods every 40 years where we have a major political
00:21:57.300 civil war inside the United States and that that's what we're going through now.
00:22:01.920 And it's nasty when it happens.
00:22:04.620 And it usually happens around times of great changes, demographic changes, technological changes,
00:22:11.040 changes in how people make a living, changes in how people communicate with each other.
00:22:16.520 And at the end of the day, though, America reinvents itself.
00:22:19.960 And I think that's what's happening now. 0.99
00:22:22.340 So nasty as it is, when you say six years of this idiocy, yeah, guess what? 0.99
00:22:28.540 And it's going to be another two years. 0.99
00:22:30.040 And then we're not going to hear from those people for another generation.
00:22:33.300 So I do have the confidence that American, not led by Washington, but by the grassroots,
00:22:39.460 will make a real change in the next year in the election.
00:22:42.460 And then certainly in the next two years.
00:22:44.180 That's exactly right.
00:22:45.340 We have an American president who drew a red line on Ukraine and Putin ignored it.
00:22:50.740 And he said, look, if the Russians break this red line, the toughest sanctions ever will
00:22:55.760 be implemented.
00:22:56.800 That didn't happen.
00:22:58.140 We know that yesterday.
00:22:59.680 But let me tell you something that I've been talking about lately.
00:23:02.500 The sanctions that President Trump put against Iran included the the SWIFT sanctions.
00:23:09.120 And that happened over the objections of the Europeans.
00:23:12.540 But Trump wouldn't let them get out of it.
00:23:14.640 He insisted that we use the SWIFT sanctions.
00:23:18.400 And as a result, the sanctions that President Trump put on Iran are much tougher than the
00:23:24.140 sanctions that Biden has announced against Russia, even after we have all this death and
00:23:30.880 destruction that the Russians are committing in Ukraine. 0.74
00:23:33.620 And I think the media should be asking this of the Biden White House.
00:23:37.400 Why are your sanctions against Russia weaker than President Trump's sanctions against Iran?
00:23:47.020 They're tougher.
00:23:48.700 President Trump was tougher.
00:23:50.840 President Trump was smarter.
00:23:52.140 President Trump couldn't be told what to do by the Wall Street establishment, nor corporate
00:23:57.720 America, nor the radical left, which, you know, and for those that group of establishment
00:24:05.360 interests, the Democratic Party is their political action arm.
00:24:09.880 It's that simple.
00:24:10.700 And to have President Obama come out and say, please, let's let's all embrace sacrifice and
00:24:20.000 pain for this president and for President Biden.
00:24:24.320 Let's really show great unity.
00:24:27.140 You know, he never said a word even suggesting in any way, implying that he would like to see
00:24:32.780 that as a result with Donald Trump.
00:24:34.880 It really does take a lot of nerve, doesn't it, to say that?
00:24:42.800 Look, I think Donald Trump is such a great president in so many ways.
00:24:47.420 And the number of things he was right on and the fact that he, in spite of the attacks against
00:24:54.020 the media, in spite of the attacks against the deep state, in spite of the attacks against
00:24:58.880 the intelligence community, the things that Donald Trump was able to accomplish in four
00:25:03.200 years are legendary.
00:25:05.180 And that's why I love to listen to Donald Trump now when he talks about the future.
00:25:09.180 And because, again, he has this unerring instinct to get to the absolute core of what's important.
00:25:16.360 At the end of the day, I don't think anybody's going to pay a whole lot of attention to President
00:25:20.740 Biden or President Obama.
00:25:23.040 There'll be a little footnote in the history books, but not in a big way.
00:25:26.280 Do you think, Fred, that we're going to see anything come of this overture, apparently,
00:25:34.660 at least a proffered possibility by the Russians, that there be talks in Belarus?
00:25:40.140 It's not the most neutral ground I would have imagined the Ukrainians would have sought.
00:25:45.260 But at least it would be a beginning of discussions between Ukraine and Russian officials.
00:25:50.560 Any hope?
00:25:52.680 I think that's probably coming because the Biden administration is desperate for some type of
00:25:58.300 diplomatic solution, a solution which will be a complete sellout by us.
00:26:03.420 But they will claim it's a victory, just like the nuclear deal with Iran.
00:26:07.520 I don't think the Biden administration has any clue about what to do in Ukraine, and they're
00:26:11.980 desperate to find an off-ramp.
00:26:13.420 Well, it's also interesting because having seized the Chernobyl nuclear, what is a reserve now
00:26:21.460 because of its disastrous environmental potential, the greatest threat to the environment, frankly,
00:26:29.800 anywhere in the world, even greater than Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.
00:26:37.660 Man, this may indicate that there's a problem there because higher radiation levels have
00:26:44.340 been detected.
00:26:45.520 So that makes me wonder.
00:26:46.960 I always wonder what motivates people because there's usually something, and it's usually
00:26:51.260 something that's not obvious.
00:26:53.280 That could be one.
00:26:54.780 Amongst the others is the reported, rumored, vast reserves of natural gas in Ukraine, which
00:27:03.880 are said to be much larger than any other place in the world.
00:27:09.260 Except for the United States.
00:27:11.540 Well, if that was true, and if Ukraine could maintain its sovereignty, it really would be
00:27:16.720 a game changer because right now it's completely dependent upon imports of natural gas from Russia,
00:27:23.020 and the Russians lawed this over them and overcharged them for gas.
00:27:27.180 So I think this would be a game changer.
00:27:29.000 And you're right, it would be ironic that Ukraine didn't get adequate support from the United
00:27:34.000 States or from Europe in defending itself against Russia.
00:27:38.780 And then this huge windfall of energy is discovered that the Russians will probably seize control 1.00
00:27:45.040 of.
00:27:46.360 And the irony goes on because this would be much akin to the same irony as the United States
00:27:53.140 surrendering, Katie, in Afghanistan and turning de facto, turning over vast stores of rare
00:28:04.140 earths, which we all desperately need.
00:28:08.260 And now it's in China's hands, which already has the world's largest deposits of rare earths.
00:28:15.500 Your thoughts?
00:28:16.480 Yeah.
00:28:16.680 Well, actually, with regard to eastern Ukraine and the oil and gas reserves, I talked to
00:28:23.180 a couple of energy guys who had been part of a team that one of the major oil companies
00:28:29.320 had sent to Ukraine after the fall of the Iron Curtain to look over and to see, well, what
00:28:34.220 was it?
00:28:34.540 Was there anything there that had long been thought of that there would be these vast reserves?
00:28:39.260 And he said, yeah, there actually are.
00:28:40.800 There are great and vast natural gas reserves, less oil.
00:28:43.780 And he said, but we determined that it wouldn't be profitable to extract them because of the
00:28:50.600 corruption, the corruption from Ukraine and, you know, potentially whatever the Russian 0.85
00:28:56.040 corruption was going to be.
00:28:57.180 So it's there.
00:28:58.400 It's just got to be uncorrupted by the politicians.
00:29:01.800 I think that's right.
00:29:03.140 And look, people say that Ukraine is a democracy and democracy is being eclipsed there.
00:29:09.880 It is a democracy of sorts.
00:29:14.540 Maybe we'll call it an evolving democracy, but there's enormous corruption.
00:29:19.220 And yeah, and the right.
00:29:20.580 I mean, there are politicians who are in prison for expressing views of the government didn't
00:29:25.580 like.
00:29:26.160 The country has its problems.
00:29:27.620 And the Russians are, of course, using this to justify the invasion, which is just so absurd
00:29:32.940 when we see people protesting for peace in Moscow who are being arrested and beaten.
00:29:40.320 It's really an absurd situation.
00:29:43.140 You know, and I mean, this only is the joke, but you know how to tell if Ukraine is corrupt. 0.63
00:29:48.940 Has Joe Biden ever spent any time there?
00:29:51.160 I'm just kidding.
00:29:55.820 I'm just kidding.
00:29:56.940 Left wing corporate media.
00:30:01.260 It's it's I tell you, it's just it's maddening to think of what has been permitted here by just
00:30:10.080 bad choices.
00:30:11.080 We know what Putin is.
00:30:12.980 We know what Russia is. 0.91
00:30:14.380 We knew what Ukraine was.
00:30:16.660 Well, I think I really have a lot of confidence that if Republicans take the House and the Senate
00:30:20.260 and get the subpoena power, they are chomping at the bit to investigate that all the wrongdoings,
00:30:27.540 whether it was part of the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, certainly the Biden
00:30:31.540 administration will be a ripe opportunity.
00:30:34.160 And so I think they're really waiting to.
00:30:36.760 They were pretty stunned at how the Democrats have treated them for the last four and six
00:30:42.140 years.
00:30:42.560 I think they're ready to for payback time.
00:30:44.480 And so, yes, I do have confidence that it will go somewhere.
00:30:48.260 Yeah.
00:30:48.700 I I'll turn to you in just a second, Fred, as I just insert this and I and this is just
00:30:56.880 a bald face point of view on my part of being straightforward for a change, KT.
00:31:04.200 As long as Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are the leaders of the majority in the House
00:31:08.800 and the Senate, not anything will change whatsoever in this country.
00:31:12.640 It will be a vote for fraud, fraudulent leaders who are more aligned in the case of McConnell.
00:31:20.420 He's more aligned with the Democratic Party than he is the America first Republican Party,
00:31:27.220 the Trump Republican Party.
00:31:30.040 Hell, he's more aligned with China than with.
00:31:33.320 How do you how do you how do you overcome that without a change of leadership and a purge of these rhinos from the Republican Party? 0.99
00:31:43.060 Well, I think that but, Lou, if Donald Trump is he's been very active in supporting candidates for the House and the Senate.
00:31:50.660 And I think he's doing what I think he's doing God's work terrifically.
00:31:54.020 He's doing a really good job at it.
00:31:55.860 So I think of a lot of the new Republicans are Trump Republicans.
00:31:59.920 That that problem may take care of itself.
00:32:02.160 It's either those individuals you referred to are going to get the message and get on the program or they're going to get out.
00:32:08.200 They won't be elected to their leadership positions.
00:32:11.140 What I'm really looking forward to after the elect, the midterm election is giving the people's house back to the people.
00:32:18.640 I go to the Hill sometimes for meetings and you can't go into to the offices of your elected representative without an escort and an appointment.
00:32:27.500 And this is how it goes.
00:32:29.200 You call the staff and if you can get hold of the staff member of the member of Congress, many of them have answering machines.
00:32:36.540 You can't even get people on the phone.
00:32:38.700 The staffer will meet you in the lobby.
00:32:42.000 Everybody has to wear masks.
00:32:44.160 They take you to the desk for an ID card.
00:32:47.040 And after you leave the desk, the Republican staffer says, you can take your mask off now.
00:32:51.720 It's it's this kabuki dance.
00:32:53.840 You know, the Republicans don't wear the mask in the hallways, in the elevators.
00:32:57.440 They just wear them in the lobby where they're near the police.
00:33:00.080 And they laugh about this.
00:33:01.680 This has to go.
00:33:02.740 And this nonsense, these fences around the Capitol, the metal detectors in the house.
00:33:08.100 There's just so much there are so many abuses of power by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
00:33:14.900 I just and I mean, Joe Biden and Barack Obama and the entire radical dim power structure and political party.
00:33:24.380 I can't wait till the fences come down, the masks are gotten rid of, the people can come into the Capitol Visitor Center.
00:33:31.260 They can walk in and see their representative.
00:33:33.240 You've seen this.
00:33:33.940 So you've seen groups of schoolchildren.
00:33:36.420 They go to the Capitol.
00:33:37.400 They go into the lobby.
00:33:38.460 They're a member of Congress.
00:33:39.680 They wait there for the for the member to come out to wave at them.
00:33:42.420 That doesn't happen anymore because of Pelosi.
00:33:45.360 And it's been gratifying to see efforts lately by parents to throw out these far left woke characters on school boards who are destroying our schools.
00:33:58.220 And when this happened in San Francisco, this really is an alarm bell that Americans are fed up.
00:34:04.980 And if in one of America's most liberal cities has happened, I'm hoping I'm hoping this will happen thousands of times this November when the American people try to take back our schools from the far left.
00:34:18.360 Yep.
00:34:20.360 Fred, this has been a fascinating conversation with you and Katie, and I really appreciate your time.
00:34:26.120 I want to, if I may, conclude with your assessment of what happens next.
00:34:33.020 Are we consigned to what looks like an obvious Russian takeover of Ukraine, not just simply the disputed and separatist provinces that he has declared to be independent, but all of Ukraine?
00:34:52.020 I think Russia will take take control of Ukraine, but its control will be unstable.
00:34:56.800 There'll be an insurgency.
00:34:57.960 I don't think Russia is going to try to invade NATO, but I do believe that we may be facing a new Cold War. 0.59
00:35:06.400 And this is almost entirely because of the incompetence of Joe Biden, who doesn't understand that we have to find a way to coexist with the Russians.
00:35:15.360 We simply can't demonize them, threaten them, draw red lines.
00:35:18.940 We're not going to enforce.
00:35:21.420 We have to have another way, and I regret we're not going to see another way until there's another president.
00:35:28.760 Will that president be an America first president?
00:35:32.220 Will it be Donald Trump?
00:35:33.900 And will the Republican Party remain steadfastly Donald Trump's party?
00:35:39.800 Well, I will be rejoining the administration if it's Mr. Trump.
00:35:47.100 Proudly so.
00:35:48.040 I really thought it was an honor to work for him the first time, and I think there's a lot that he could do.
00:35:54.720 So let's just see what happens.
00:35:58.220 You know, we have a lot of work to do between now and then to educate the American people on what is really at stake in the 2022 and 2024 election.
00:36:06.360 Thanks, Fred, and thank you, KT.
00:36:08.520 We appreciate you being with us.
00:36:10.660 Dangerous days and uncertain times.
00:36:12.940 We appreciate you sharing your views and insights.
00:36:16.140 KT McFarland, Fred Flights, thank you.
00:36:19.080 And thank you for listening, for being with us.
00:36:22.100 We hope you'll join us tomorrow as we continue our focus on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:36:26.800 We'll be talking with General Keith Kellogg, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, retired Lieutenant General, and Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton.
00:36:38.220 We thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
00:36:42.420 Join us again tomorrow for the Great America Podcast.
00:36:45.600 Stay in the fight.
00:36:46.580 Truth, justice, and the American way will prevail against all enemies, against all odds.
00:36:51.980 Truth, justice, and the American way will prevail against all enemies, against all enemies, against all enemies, against all enemies.