The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden Blocks Russian Oil and How Weak Leadership Led to Invasion, with Ric Grenell, Michael Shellenberger, and John Daniel Davidson ｜ Ep. 275

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.760 So much news to get to today as the implications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine grow.

00:00:20.320 In just a bit, we are going to be joined by Rick Grinnell, who's got a lot of thoughts on how tough diplomacy might have helped avoid some of this.

00:00:28.140 But first, after facing pressure from Republicans and, more importantly, from Democrats, his own party,

00:00:36.980 President Joe Biden just announced a short time ago that the United States will ban Russian oil imports.

00:00:44.300 Now, the U.S. only gets about 7% of its oil from Russia, but it's a move the president was nonetheless reluctant to do

00:00:50.660 because we've got gas prices hitting an all-time record high right now.

00:00:54.460 And there's some reporting out of Fox News right now, and the New York Times as well, sort of dovetails on it,

00:01:00.700 suggesting, weirdly, this was a weird race between Joe Biden and his Democratic colleagues over in the Congress

00:01:07.580 to see who could ban the Russian oil imports first.

00:01:10.680 They were going to make them look bad.

00:01:11.880 So he ran out to the mic to say, I'm banning it.

00:01:14.400 I'm the one who did it.

00:01:16.960 So what does it mean?

00:01:18.280 Anything?

00:01:19.440 There's no better person to ask than Michael Schellenberger.

00:01:21.940 For years, he's been the best-selling author of the book Apocalypse Never.

00:01:26.740 He has been warning the United States and Europe that these delusional green energy policies we've been pushing

00:01:34.060 were leaving us and our European friends too reliant on countries like Russia.

00:01:39.960 And he joins me now.

00:01:40.940 Michael, so, so good to have you back.

00:01:42.400 So Joe Biden is saying we're going to get rid of these 7%, you know, the 7% of oil imports here in the United States,

00:01:49.980 and that's a middle finger to Russia.

00:01:52.180 And it could help increase pressure on them when, you know, already refiners are getting reluctant, I guess,

00:02:00.000 to handle Russian crude because they're worried the Europeans might jump on board now.

00:02:03.540 And it's amping up pressure.

00:02:05.560 So what does it mean, if anything?

00:02:06.860 Thanks for having me back, Megan.

00:02:08.700 It's been really, it's a pleasure to come back.

00:02:11.620 You know, I mean, I don't know how anybody could see Russian shelling of Ukrainian apartment buildings

00:02:16.800 and the killing of civilians and not want to cut off economic ties with that country.

00:02:22.380 Anybody that knows anything about Putin, you know, knows that he's willing to inflict significant amounts of human misery

00:02:28.020 to achieve his objectives.

00:02:29.200 So a pretty horrible situation.

00:02:31.600 You know, as you pointed out, the United States gets 7% of its oil from Russia.

00:02:37.260 Europe gets more like 40%, which is why, you know, you're Germany certainly,

00:02:41.040 which is why you're not seeing them quick to follow.

00:02:44.620 Unfortunately, all of the machines that power modern life and that power our economy are still petroleum.

00:02:50.680 And you can't just kind of from one day to the next switch to electric cars or biofuels or hydrogen fuel cells.

00:02:57.060 It just doesn't work that way.

00:02:58.400 Our society runs on big machines.

00:03:01.320 So it's not great.

00:03:03.880 We shouldn't, you know, Europe should not have become so dependent on Russian oil, gas and other energy fuels.

00:03:11.020 That's the bottom line.

00:03:12.300 And, you know, to give you a sense of it, 15 years ago, Europe produced more natural gas than Russia does today.

00:03:18.200 Today, Russia exports three times more than Europe produces.

00:03:22.700 So the basic numbers here are super simple.

00:03:25.260 Well, Europe just, you know, consumes two to three times more energy than it produces.

00:03:29.040 And Russia exports two to three times more than it produces, depending on the fuel.

00:03:33.620 And that's the bottom line.

00:03:34.880 And you can't power societies on unreliable solar panels made in China, by the way, or on unreliable wind turbines.

00:03:41.720 We still need these fossil fuels or nuclear plants.

00:03:44.640 But they've also been shutting those down in Europe.

00:03:46.600 So, unfortunately, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, you know, the Europeans kind of brought this on themselves and the United States didn't do any favors to them.

00:03:55.240 And frankly, all the banks got involved in repressing oil and gas production when we should have been increasing it.

00:04:00.820 The Europeans are notably not going along. 0.91

00:04:04.040 And according to what I read, are really not even in a position to go along because since they get it's, I guess, 40 percent of their gas from Russia and gas, as I understand it, is a lot tougher to replace than oil.

00:04:18.080 So while other providers might be able to step in and fill the void if what they needed was oil, if you're excited to get tough, much tougher to backstop the gas.

00:04:29.140 And even if they said we don't want to shut off gas, right, we'll keep the gas relationship going with Russia, but we're going to follow the United States and shut off the oil. 0.56

00:04:40.580 Putin has been saying you do that and I'm shutting off the gas because before there was Nord Stream.

00:04:46.140 Nord Stream 2, there was Nord Stream 1 and already this is correct me if I'm wrong.

00:04:51.580 You're the expert and you know me and the energy and I'm struggling to follow all of it.

00:04:56.080 But Nord Stream 1 is what Russia uses to get gas to Europe right now.

00:05:00.080 And he Putin has been defensively saying you get too tough with me, Europe on oil.

00:05:05.660 You're going to pay the price on gas and don't think I won't do it.

00:05:09.780 Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

00:05:11.580 I mean, basically, Europe got itself in a position where it can be controlled by Putin.

00:05:17.720 I mean, it just it's sounds terrible.

00:05:19.640 But the consequences, look, we may have a recession with oil prices at their level now.

00:05:25.220 I mean, when oil prices go to to go to 100 and they could go to $200 a barrel, which, by the way, is six to seven dollars a gallon of gasoline for Americans.

00:05:33.220 And that often triggers a recession.

00:05:36.120 And so, you know, and of course, it's really the worst of all worlds, Megan.

00:05:40.140 I mean, I think the other thing people haven't been talking about is that Russia is going to be able to sell that oil to China.

00:05:45.380 You know, you saw Shell even bought it and then it apologized like a couple of days later for buying a bunch of Russian oil.

00:05:50.860 But Russia is still going to be able to sell that oil.

00:05:52.700 There's not really any good solution here.

00:05:56.720 I think it's unfortunately unlikely that anything like these sanctions or even more significant is going to stop Putin from invading and taking over Ukraine.

00:06:08.000 You know, I think that really, you know, Biden is well within his rights.

00:06:11.020 And maybe it's a good idea for him to restrict oil exports from the United States abroad in order to keep oil prices lower at home, gasoline prices.

00:06:19.840 But if he does that, that's just going to strengthen Putin's hands even further.

00:06:22.440 It's going to make it easier for Putin to basically bribe countries with the offer of of oil and gas or cheaper oil and gas in exchange for them kind of going along with Ukraine or really whatever Putin wants.

00:06:33.860 So it's you know, as I pointed out, I mean, the West has had its head in the clouds.

00:06:38.620 I mean, we've been in these fantasies of of harmonizing with nature through renewables.

00:06:43.300 It's had a lot of I think most people can detect a religious tone to it.

00:06:48.560 Obviously, big financial interests, the bankers and importing solar panels from China and becoming dependent on Russia.

00:06:53.820 But I do think that, you know, Putin had his feet more firmly on the ground.

00:06:57.960 He knew that what he did basically was just build a bunch of nuclear plants to replace the gas they were using for electricity.

00:07:04.180 And then he exported the gas abroad and made Europe dependent.

00:07:07.360 So that's the same strategy really anywhere.

00:07:10.080 I mean, if we want to have greater energy independence, either for ourselves or for Europe, there's no alternative to basically building reliable sources of energy, particularly nuclear plants.

00:07:20.380 But if it has to be coal so that you're not so dependent on imported natural gas and then they have to expand gas production.

00:07:26.800 And the problem with expanding gas production, as you pointed out, is it just takes a lot longer than than doing, you know, even coal for that matter.

00:07:35.040 And nuclear also takes a while.

00:07:36.420 So not a lot of great options.

00:07:38.960 And really, it's required to learn from our mistakes.

00:07:41.320 Yeah, this required years of planning.

00:07:43.120 And so, by the way, everybody should should be should be subscribing to your sub stack because it's great.

00:07:47.960 It's wonderful access to Michael and all of his expertise.

00:07:51.940 And you posted one on March 3rd called The West's Green Energy Delusions Empowered Putin.

00:07:58.260 And it really walks us through what happened here, similar to what you just said.

00:08:02.040 You write, while Putin expanded Russia's oil production, expanded natural gas production and then doubled nuclear energy production to allow more exports of its precious gas.

00:08:14.300 Europe, led by Germany, shut down its nuclear power plants, closed gas fields and refused to develop more through advanced methods like fracking.

00:08:23.780 So they were going in exactly two opposing directions.

00:08:29.480 And that's that's how they empowered him.

00:08:31.700 And that's you, right.

00:08:33.040 You posit that's what he he understood.

00:08:35.700 And nobody else seemed to when calculating the risks of invading Ukraine.

00:08:41.040 Yeah, you got it.

00:08:42.140 And you even alluded to something that I haven't even mentioned yet, which is maybe one of the biggest and most important elements of the story is that you now have the secretary of you have the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

00:08:52.660 The former secretary general of NATO, a well-respected French professor at one of their leading universities, basically the equivalent of their MIT in France, all saying that the Russian government financed anti fracking activism in Europe by climate activists to stop natural gas production in Europe, which would have made the continent less reliable, reliant on Russian gas.

00:09:15.120 So they're now I mean, and so, you know, I haven't seen the intelligence directly, but I mean, it's would be quite a conspiracy theory for them all to mention it, especially, you know, given that Hillary at the time was trying to tell people that she was better on climate in the United States.

00:09:30.960 We also report that the Russians financed almost 100 million dollars in anti fracking advocacy in Great Britain, where they have a lot of shale, but there's a lot of shale in Europe, too.

00:09:43.620 I mean, people think it's just in the United States where you can frack.

00:09:46.220 It's not the case.

00:09:46.820 You could do it in Europe.

00:09:47.560 So I think that's pretty wild, you know, where you basically have a story where confirmed at the highest levels of government by people that are quite friendly to action on climate change, saying that climate activists funded by Putin were a big part of making Europe dependent on Putin of shaming Europe out of developing its own or just continuing the development of its own energy supplies and instead turning to Vladimir Putin.

00:10:12.280 Right. Exactly. And because now you say there are things that they can do so far there.

00:10:16.720 We haven't seen it. Germany has said they're going to shut down Nord Stream 2 permanently.

00:10:22.500 OK, that's one thing. That's good. But Germany, as you point out in one of these pieces, six nuclear power plants.

00:10:29.280 Right. They shut down three and they're about to shut down the other three. And it's totally unnecessary.

00:10:33.200 They can help save themselves. Maybe not that easily now that they've already pulled the plug on three of them.

00:10:38.980 But you tell me how feasible it is for them to rejigger that.

00:10:42.880 Well, yeah, and I should also say in the midst of all there's so many things to talk about.

00:10:46.080 I mean, in the midst of all the chaos, there was also a gunfight, gun battle between Ukrainian forces and Russian forces at a nuclear plant.

00:10:53.880 So we had this little we had like a nuclear scare lit, you know, was just a minor scare in the history of nuclear scares.

00:11:02.080 And the interesting story, of course, the plants, the reactors that have been operating have kept operating because they want them for electricity.

00:11:08.460 You know, the irony, of course, both sides have an interest in maintaining those nuclear plants.

00:11:13.000 So actually, also that that ended well, certainly plenty of dangers in that region.

00:11:17.840 But you can see where people are getting killed. It's by civilian attacks.

00:11:21.080 But, yeah, to your point, I mean, nuclear provides this reliable source of energy.

00:11:25.300 So, I mean, the bottom line is Germany could just burn more coal or they could do nuclear.

00:11:30.340 And the difference is that the nuclear plants emit basically no carbon emissions, a small amount of very, very, very small amount of carbon emissions in their total life cycle.

00:11:38.480 Whereas the coal plants are the dirtiest fossil fuel producing significant amounts of carbon emissions.

00:11:44.660 That's the bottom line. So I think that's the wake up call.

00:11:47.420 You know, it's that this all this stuff about solar panels and wind turbines, they're just not reliable enough.

00:11:52.480 They've spread them over so many distances.

00:11:54.900 They've captured the best wind and sunlight they can.

00:11:57.800 They're just at their physical limit, basically.

00:12:02.020 So, yeah, it's not a great situation.

00:12:05.440 Well, you pointed out when our first interview together how you are you once were part of Greenpeace.

00:12:12.540 I mean, you are of the left. You were an activist.

00:12:15.540 You really cared about the environment, about American land and so on and so forth, and sort of came to these views on what the right place to go was.

00:12:23.020 P.S. It's nuclear organically by you worked during the Obama administration on the Solyndra deal.

00:12:29.200 You really were put you were a true believer.

00:12:30.900 But after testing all these things out and seeing them fail, you came to realize a lot of these renewables are fraught and are worse for the environment than, for example, nuclear, which has gotten a bad rap.

00:12:42.620 And you write in one of your pieces a little bit about this, and it jumped out at me, given what we talked about.

00:12:48.260 And people should go back and check out that episode while we're through time.

00:12:51.120 You write Germany has spent lavishly on weather dependent renewables.

00:12:54.300 Right. So they're going the same way our president is trying to push us right now to the tune of thirty six billion dollars a year.

00:13:01.020 Mainly solar panels and industrial wind turbines.

00:13:04.700 Same for us. But those have their problems.

00:13:07.360 You write solar panels have to go somewhere in a solar plant in Europe needs four hundred to eight hundred times more land than natural gas or nuclear plants to make the same amount of power.

00:13:22.520 And you continue farmland has to be cut apart to host solar.

00:13:25.420 This is one of your issues that it's not all about carbon emissions.

00:13:30.040 If you care about the environment, you have to take a serious look at what solar and wind reliance is doing to our land.

00:13:39.540 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I pointed out I tweeted also yesterday, you know, that nuclear heavy France or that rather I should say Germany, which is moving away from nuclear, as you noted, it closed three reactors at the end of last year.

00:13:53.780 And it's going to close three more unless it stops the closure.

00:13:56.120 At the end of this year, Germany produces six times more carbon emissions per unit of electricity as France.

00:14:03.360 And then everybody says, oh, nuclear is just too expensive or something and renewables are cheap.

00:14:07.460 Well, if that were the case, then then French electricity wouldn't cost fifty nine percent of what German electricity costs.

00:14:13.540 So you can see the continent wide levels.

00:14:16.100 You know, I mean, look, it's like and, you know, as for natural gas, particularly if you don't have nuclear natural gas is the reason that U.S.

00:14:24.600 carbon emissions declined by twenty two percent between the year 2005 and twenty twenty, which was five percentage points more than we were supposed to reduce them under the United Nations Paris climate agreement.

00:14:37.000 So if you're really concerned about the climate, then you should be in favor of natural gas and nuclear.

00:14:42.420 And thus we should be suspicious of people who call themselves climate activists like Greta Thunberg, like Al Gore, like John Kerry, who are constantly either trashing, criticizing or dismissing the importance of nuclear and natural gas.

00:14:57.900 And fracking.

00:14:58.260 Yeah, fracking, because that's how you get the gas out of shale.

00:15:03.400 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are all things I learned from you in our first episode for people who are climate dummies like yours truly.

00:15:10.300 Go back and listen to that episode. I'll give you the number in just a minute.

00:15:12.600 My team looks it up because Michael walks you through it and sort of explains this is what natural gas is.

00:15:16.900 This is how we get it. This is what we do with oil and so on and so forth.

00:15:19.700 Very good primer. Yeah.

00:15:21.140 You write Berlin was faced with a choice between unleashing the wrath of Putin on neighboring countries or inviting the wrath of Greta Thunberg.

00:15:29.980 They chose Putin. That's exactly it. Right.

00:15:32.820 They allowed, well, Putin's propaganda machine and Greta Thunberg, who knows nothing about anything, to shame them out of meaningful domestic energy production and got themselves and kind of the rest of us into the position we're in right now,

00:15:48.240 where Putin's got the upper hand and he knows it.

00:15:51.140 Yeah. I mean, it's a huge scandal because, I mean, look, there's so much noise right now, Megan, as you see on Twitter, people talking about military action by the United States against Russia.

00:16:01.980 It's just not going to happen. Like we're two nuclear armed powers. Like, forget about it.

00:16:07.080 Anything that gets you close to conflict with another nuclear armed power, you want to avoid.

00:16:11.480 Everybody knows the school children know that. So that's not going to happen.

00:16:14.820 And similarly, the politicians are not going to want to keep oil prices at super high levels because the public is going to pay for it.

00:16:22.420 I mean, we're facing I don't think people totally understand this yet.

00:16:25.340 I mean, we're facing very significant, sustained energy prices, which means high food prices.

00:16:32.620 We're also potentially seeing some disruption of wheat production.

00:16:36.480 I mean, it doesn't have to be this way, but it could be coming from Ukraine, which is a major global supplier of wheat.

00:16:42.400 It's considered the breadbasket of Europe. So we could be seeing, you know, energy, food, electricity shortages.

00:16:48.980 We could be seeing, you know, it could be a significantly worse situation than Arab than the food shortages that triggered Arab spring. 0.98

00:16:56.520 I think it's very clearly the worst energy crisis since 1973.

00:17:00.700 I now see other people are saying that as well.

00:17:03.500 So, you know, and people suffer when you don't have reliable sources of energy.

00:17:08.440 So I think it's yeah, I think it's really I think I think it says something about the potential decay of our civilization and really the decline of the West that it really allowed itself to indulge in this kind of, frankly, pretty decadent secular religion where it imagined that we were all going to become part of nature with renewables, even though they were, you know, solar panels are made by enslaved Uyghur Muslims in Chinese factories using coal. 0.99

00:17:36.080 It's like one of the worst processes for humans.

00:17:40.100 I mean, I'm a little bit I mean, I feel a little upset, too, because you kind of see all the concern for the Ukrainians.

00:17:46.580 And of course, I do, too.

00:17:48.300 I also feel it for the Africans who have people in the Congo who have suffered significantly producing the minerals for renewables, also for the Muslims in China who have been producing these solar panels.

00:17:58.780 So you kind of go, you know, what are we what was this about?

00:18:02.760 It was about a kind of delusion.

00:18:04.640 And it was one that was actively harmful in many situations to people and also harmful to natural environments, while at the same time strengthening Putin and making it so that really there was no consequence for him in invading Ukraine.

00:18:17.620 I mean, there's some I know right now, some sanctions.

00:18:20.320 I don't want to overstate it.

00:18:21.900 I support the resistance movement.

00:18:23.900 But I just think we got ourselves in a situation where, like, to punish Putin is really punishing ourselves.

00:18:30.740 Right.

00:18:31.020 And we're in the position now of imposing these sanctions through the front door as we fund this war through the back door.

00:18:36.920 I mean, as we in Europe continue buying his oil and gas, where do you think that money's going?

00:18:42.180 It's going into those tanks.

00:18:43.320 It's going to pay those soldiers.

00:18:44.460 So what and you see a kind of petulance that the moral high ground.

00:18:49.660 No, I'm just going to say we don't we don't have the moral high ground here unless we get serious about this.

00:18:54.400 And I think we see sorry to interrupt.

00:18:56.160 I think we see a kind of petulance on the part of people that use their ignorance as sort of cover for their demand, which is sort of like we just have to stop using oil.

00:19:07.220 It's like like the whole like are you aware of like the machinery that I think people don't even realize that like we have the

00:19:14.460 entire system built up around powerful machines that move us from place to place and that deliver Amazon boxes to our doorsteps and that make it possible to eat food.

00:19:25.180 And people are so in the West have been so disconnected from the productive sectors of the economy.

00:19:29.560 They've been so disconnected from how things are made, how things are powered.

00:19:33.480 And I think it's a wake up call in that sense.

00:19:35.980 You still see some of that these kind of petulant demands that somehow we're going to do.

00:19:39.160 I mean, we saw Kamala Harris yesterday. 0.98

00:19:41.480 I mean, I thought one of the most interesting things was like literally the same day that Kamala Harris says we have all the electric vehicle technology we need.

00:19:48.540 We can just use it now.

00:19:49.640 And it's like, hey, it's just not true on so many levels.

00:19:52.520 We don't even have the electricity to power all those electric vehicles.

00:19:55.720 And it was Elon Musk who makes not just the greatest electric vehicle ever made, but maybe one of the greatest cars that's ever been made, who goes on to Twitter and is like, we need to produce more oil and gas.

00:20:06.960 Like you can't just scale up.

00:20:08.300 You can't.

00:20:08.580 I mean, Tesla is producing a lot of amazing cars, but nothing close to the you can't just and you can't turn that stuff around overnight in time to deal with a cutoff of oil from Russia.

00:20:17.740 So I think people will look back on this time as I wake up to the limits of renewables, to the dangers of not having sufficient nuclear, to the dangers of not having significant oil and gas production.

00:20:30.860 You know, it's going to take us a while just to convert our refineries to be able to refine the petroleum from American shales.

00:20:37.280 It's going to take a while to build the pipelines and the LNG facilities, which, by the way, the climate activists here blocked.

00:20:43.340 Yeah. That's one of the first things Biden did was he got Keystone shut down and he opened up Nord Stream 2.

00:20:49.980 So we're less energy independent and so was Germany.

00:20:55.280 But you know who was doing really well?

00:20:57.200 Russia getting stronger by the day.

00:20:59.340 Let me ask you a quick question about another piece of the Biden plan.

00:21:02.500 He was he was touting the other day the fact that he we and our partners had released 60 million barrels from the world's strategic petroleum reserves.

00:21:13.380 30 million came from ours.

00:21:14.960 The other 30 million came from other partners.

00:21:18.300 I like what I understand is that just here in America, we consume 20 million barrels, the equivalent of 20 million barrels a day.

00:21:25.920 So like that's a few days worth of oil.

00:21:29.240 I'm not sure that does that do anything?

00:21:31.460 Am I looking at that the wrong way?

00:21:33.120 No, you're looking at the right way.

00:21:35.460 Unfortunately, these are all these symbolic.

00:21:37.640 I mean, people there's like sort of two worlds, you know, like if you go into like energy analysts like on Twitter, like serious people who like, you know, the industries need to pay attention to.

00:21:49.220 They're just like this is I mean, the idea that there's some quick fix to this dependence on Russian energy is just considered absurd.

00:21:57.340 And then there's like the political realm where the politicians want to seem to be demonstrating their care for the Ukrainians.

00:22:04.240 And I want to demonstrate my care for the Ukrainians, too, and and will and do, you know.

00:22:09.060 But it's also like we're not being really honest with people about what the situation is here.

00:22:16.040 So, I mean, I just think, you know, part of it is like, yeah, like, you know, I think what's crazy is that Joe Biden is in Texas today.

00:22:21.880 He's not meeting with the oil and gas guys like the Biden administration keeps saying, well, we have all these open leases and the oil and gas industry won't use them.

00:22:30.460 Well, part of it from my interviews is that they are, yeah, first of all, looking to make money after they lost money for a long period of time.

00:22:37.720 You know, they were punished.

00:22:40.120 You look at the last few years, you should have seen oil and gas production ramping up, increasing over the last several years.

00:22:46.420 It didn't.

00:22:47.660 Part of it was there were some companies that tried to raise money on the stock market by expanding oil and gas production, and they were punished for it, in part because of these climate concerns.

00:22:57.800 I've had people say, no, it was also just the cyclical nature of oil and gas development.

00:23:02.200 That's true, but there's now a pretty big consensus, including the New York Times main oil reporter, oil and gas reporter, reported on the same thing, which is that you just haven't seen the production coming from the oil and gas industry because they've been sent the message,

00:23:16.100 even before Biden, really from the banking community, but also from lawmakers and the public, that we just don't want more oil and gas.

00:23:24.460 We would all just rather use solar panels and electric cars.

00:23:27.600 And I think the message here from, you know, obviously the crisis in Russia, but now we're hearing it directly from Elon Musk, is that that's just not something you can, you can't just, you know, turn, you know, flip a switch and suddenly, you know, turn over the entire machinery that powers your society overnight.

00:23:44.520 That makes perfect sense. This is a, this is particularly on point because there was a contentious exchange.

00:23:50.880 I think it was between Fox and Jen Psaki the other day at the, of the administration saying, you know, what's the deal?

00:23:57.340 And she was saying, look, there are 900 leases that have yet to be out for oil and gas development that have yet to be, or licenses that have yet to be used.

00:24:07.600 So understand, you know, it's not us, it's not our policies that are stopping domestic oil production.

00:24:12.740 And your point is, no, but you are the ones who created an environment in which they thought there would be absolutely no market for this.

00:24:18.360 They get shamed for doing the very thing that they were created to do.

00:24:22.660 And we get patted on the head by Greta Thunberg, or not really, because she doesn't really praise anyone.

00:24:29.300 But that's our goal, as opposed to becoming energy independent, like we were during the Trump years, frankly, a lot, a lot closer to it than we are right now.

00:24:39.520 Yeah, I mean, look, I think what's missing is leadership.

00:24:41.520 Once again, I mean, I see it at all levels of society.

00:24:44.000 Frankly, Frank, it's kind of terrifying to some extent.

00:24:48.240 You know, the president, really, we should be seriously with a serious strategy to increase oil and gas production immediately.

00:24:55.160 I mean, you're seeing this from Elon Musk.

00:24:57.380 You're seeing it from Mark Andreessen, one of the co-creators of Netscape and a well-known venture capitalist.

00:25:03.040 You know, you're seeing it from people like me who, you know, a longtime advocate of renewables, a longtime advocate of nuclear.

00:25:09.160 But, you know, this is a crisis situation.

00:25:12.560 You know, you're talking, again, about not just, you know, $7, you know, potentially a gallon of gasoline in the United States, but a global recession, global food shortages.

00:25:22.420 I mean, this is urgent.

00:25:23.760 You know, it may be that there's a reshuffling of blocks, that, you know, Russia and China are going to get closer after this, which is not great.

00:25:31.680 We see sort of the United States going a separate way from Europe on this, which is, you know, that we're going to ban Russian oil, but the Germans are still going to, you know, the Germans and the Europeans are still going to use it.

00:25:41.140 So the West is divided, has no strategy.

00:25:45.000 The president of the United States has no strategy to increase energy production to bring down prices.

00:25:50.120 We're not seeing anything.

00:25:51.600 We're seeing from the European Union call for more unreliable renewables imported from China.

00:25:56.080 And now you're seeing the consequence of these sanctions pushing Putin into China's hands, where China is going to get a great deal buying, you know, discounted, you know, Russian energy and food potentially.

00:26:08.560 So I think, you know, we're at the end of an era.

00:26:12.760 I mean, I think the post it's not just the end of the post Cold War era from the last 30 years, but really it's the end of the post war era that's been around for the last, you know, 47 years.

00:26:22.460 It's it's a changing of the and I don't think we've got leadership in place that is really describing the challenge honestly to the American people and describing what it's going to take to become energy independent and to deal with these.

00:26:36.220 You know, there's there are real world tradeoffs.

00:26:37.800 I think, on the other hand, one of the things I think is important is to do actually what Putin did, which is to build a lot of nuclear plants so that your natural gas reserves can be exported.

00:26:48.580 That way we can export our gas to Europe and reduce its reliance on Russia over the long term.

00:26:53.340 But again, Megan, these are things that are going to take, you know, years, not days.

00:26:58.120 And we need a president who's demonstrates the leadership to be able to explain this to the American people, explain what the sacrifices are that people would be willing to make.

00:27:05.960 Because I do think Americans do feel compassionate for the Ukrainians.

00:27:10.340 I think we do want a solution and we do want to contribute to a better outcome, including less reliance on the Russians. 0.89

00:27:15.800 But that means being really honest about what the you know, what's going to solve this and that some temporary sanctions, you know, or permanent sanctions even on Russian oil imports is not going to cut it.

00:27:26.960 That there needs to be a significant expansion of nuclear power, natural gas and oil production at home so that we, in part, we can export some of it to our allies abroad.

00:27:36.400 It's an all hands on deck situation here and we have the means to do it.

00:27:41.200 We're just not using them.

00:27:43.400 We, too.

00:27:44.000 It's not just Germany shutting down its nuclear power plants.

00:27:46.620 We're doing it as well.

00:27:48.280 And if you're like I used to be and think, oh, well, those are dangerous and they leak bad things into the environment.

00:27:54.820 I don't want to drink water that has nuclear waste in it or have my kid growing up next to a nuclear power plant.

00:28:00.880 But think again, go back and listen to Episode 94 that we had with Michael or just read his book, Apocalypse Never, or look at his TED Talks, which have gazillions of millions of views for very good reasons.

00:28:15.280 He's an honest broker.

00:28:16.260 He's taken a hard look at all the options and nuclear is the way.

00:28:21.200 And yet we're not we're not listening.

00:28:23.260 Will we now?

00:28:24.280 Always a pleasure.

00:28:25.140 Michael Schellenberger, thank you so much for being here.

00:28:27.540 Thanks for having me on, Megan.

00:28:28.340 So one of the things that we didn't talk about with Michael was the fact that the United States is now saying that since we're shutting off 8 percent of our oil imports, we are going to talk to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia about backfilling those numbers.

00:28:45.760 Saudi Arabia, the country that Joe Biden, then candidate Joe Biden, promised to make a pariah when he was on the campaign trail.

00:28:52.360 Or or we'll just increase our business with them.

00:28:55.020 Venezuela, who we effectively ostracized over the past 10 years.

00:28:59.340 No, let's with a handshake, replace Russia for Venezuela. 0.85

00:29:04.640 See how that goes.

00:29:05.820 Ambassador Rick Grinnell is with us next, and he's going to have some thoughts on that.

00:29:10.000 The civilian death toll in Ukraine is rising as the U.N. says some two million refugees.

00:29:22.760 Wow, that's big.

00:29:23.960 Have now fled due to war.

00:29:26.100 Ukraine is a country of about 44 million people.

00:29:28.800 And Europe's now dealing with that influx of refugees to other countries. 0.98

00:29:33.260 Poland is said to be considering sending fighter jets to Ukraine.

00:29:36.820 That would be a significant escalation.

00:29:40.140 I'm joined now by former acting director of national intelligence and former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Rick Grinnell.

00:29:47.560 So, so glad to have you here today, Rick.

00:29:49.460 So can we start there?

00:29:51.000 If Poland steps in to create its own no-fly zone of sorts, what do we do with that?

00:29:59.500 Well, first of all, thanks for having me.

00:30:00.680 It's good to be here.

00:30:01.320 This is trying times, and it's really hard to have thoughtful conversations.

00:30:05.640 So thank you for having long-form, thoughtful conversations on what's happening.

00:30:10.500 Look, I think that the Polish stepping up is a real sign for Europe. 0.99

00:30:16.480 Look, Americans have been very frustrated with the European responses over the last decade.

00:30:23.580 I have a lot of thoughts on Merkel.

00:30:25.920 We should probably do a whole show on the mistakes of Chancellor Merkel.

00:30:31.440 And I think that there is a beginning, I see it in the German media now, a real concentration on Merkelism, probably worse than socialism.

00:30:41.800 And what we need to be able to do is be really honest about what's been happening over the last years to look at the Polish decision.

00:30:49.380 Poland is stepping up to lead in Europe.

00:30:52.400 And this is a European problem.

00:30:54.780 And I think that what we're seeing is the ability to step away from NATO in Europe and say, this is our neighborhood.

00:31:02.180 This is not just a NATO response where we include the Americans.

00:31:05.800 But now this is an EU-European response.

00:31:09.360 And by the way, Megan, it's exactly what Trump wanted, which was to get our allies to do more.

00:31:16.260 America first is not just bringing our troops home and putting America first.

00:31:19.820 But it's getting the allies to do more.

00:31:22.320 And that's a good thing.

00:31:24.260 You know, it's so crazy is like and I know, you know, this is a lot of people. 0.99

00:31:26.920 But as we were all focused on stupid, fake Russiagate, right? 1.00

00:31:31.580 We the American media and on stupid tweets. 1.00

00:31:35.780 Right. 1.00

00:31:36.220 Those were real, but but also led to so much distraction here in the country, in the media and so on.

00:31:45.140 Trump was out there saying things like Germany needs to spend more of its money on its own domestic military buildup.

00:31:52.980 Germany needs to pay its fair share with respect to NATO.

00:31:55.520 Germany is too dependent on Russia for its energy supplies.

00:32:01.820 There was a tweet in 2018.

00:32:04.240 This is Trump saying Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of its energy from Russia.

00:32:13.940 And Angela Merkel, who everybody loved, is because they called her the last serious leader in the West.

00:32:20.020 Schellenberger was writing about this.

00:32:21.840 She came out and said, our country can make our own policies and make our own decisions.

00:32:27.160 That was the adult in the room.

00:32:29.100 Where's she now? 0.99

00:32:30.200 Why doesn't she come out and try to take responsibility and speak to the position she's left her country and Europe in? 1.00

00:32:36.460 Oh, where to begin?

00:32:39.580 That was fantastic there.

00:32:41.520 First of all, the conversation with Schellenberger was amazing.

00:32:45.060 I have to go back and re-listen to it.

00:32:47.500 I know, me too.

00:32:48.180 There's a lot of great stuff in there.

00:32:50.960 One thing to point out about Merkelism is that, you know, it's a very elite-centric movement.

00:32:59.580 And the elites in Berlin will defend what she did to the end.

00:33:05.280 I've been a part of a lot of conversations between President Trump and Chancellor Merkel.

00:33:10.120 And, you know, you can look at even the picture book from President Trump where he describes Chancellor Merkel.

00:33:17.620 There's incredible respect.

00:33:19.160 First of all, I've been in the room where he says, look, Chancellor, I don't blame you for wanting to get the best deal for Germany.

00:33:26.220 And by the way, you've outsmarted a lot of presidents before me.

00:33:28.920 You've got 50,000 American troops, if you count the rotational troops, and you yet don't have a serious military.

00:33:38.800 You're not paying your fair share, but you have a budget surplus.

00:33:41.540 We know all of these arguments.

00:33:42.780 But for President Trump to kind of hit Chancellor Merkel hard on it, her only response is, well, Donald, you know, I have the Bundestag, and I have to deal with multiple parties, to which President Trump would say, you think dealing with Congress is easy?

00:33:58.960 We have the same issues here.

00:34:28.960 The 80 turnaround from Olaf Scholz is a monumental movement in Germany to reject Merkelism, to reject the CDU at a time when the Germans just don't do that.

00:34:45.140 They are very judicious and slow.

00:34:47.800 They don't make big decisions.

00:34:49.980 But faced with this bloody war, this admittance to pay the 2% immediately and to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, both absolute policies of Merkel, to change on a dime like that is an admittance that Merkel literally brought them to the place where Germany and Europe are less secure, and people couldn't no longer face that reality.

00:35:16.640 They had to make a change in policy.

00:35:18.000 It's a huge moment.

00:35:19.680 It's huge.

00:35:20.980 But, you know, back on the subject of Poland, before we leave that, though, so Poland is in NATO.

00:35:26.020 So if Poland sends jets to create just to help or to create a no-fly zone and then finds itself embattled in a war with Russia, right, if Russia starts bombing Poland or doing something militarily to Poland, then we do have to get involved.

00:35:42.300 I mean, like, this is fraught if Poland – I know you say they're stepping it up, but we have to watch that very carefully, do we not?

00:35:48.980 For sure.

00:35:49.580 Every day we recommit our obligation to go in and step in if Putin and a NATO country get into it.

00:35:57.160 Yeah.

00:35:57.540 Look, I have a lot of thoughts here.

00:36:00.060 First of all, I think that you're right.

00:36:02.460 Although Poland is acting as a member of Europe, maybe not even the EU, but just as a member of Europe, and they're defending European land and sovereignty, they also have a dual hat as a NATO member.

00:36:22.400 And the slippery slope of them getting entangled in something with the Russians would trigger Article 5. 0.69

00:36:30.620 Now, I'm an ambassador and a diplomat and try not to talk about the military aspect because I actually believe that our diplomats should be really tough in utilizing all the tools and that we should be there until there's absolutely no more help left.

00:36:46.620 And I'm all for tough diplomacy.

00:36:49.880 That's what's been so frustrating with the Biden administration is that we haven't utilized all the tools that we should have had been using from the beginning.

00:36:58.660 We waited for a bloody war despite the fact that the intelligence clearly showed Joe Biden that a bloody war was coming on Wednesday.

00:37:05.300 And he kept saying a bloody war is coming on Wednesday but failed to really act in a diplomatic way.

00:37:11.360 I think Poland is frustrated.

00:37:13.120 I think the Eastern Europeans are frustrated.

00:37:15.060 I just got back from the Balkans and I can tell you there's a lot of fear in the Balkans as to what this means.

00:37:21.640 This is a slippery slope.

00:37:23.460 This war-torn area is desperate for leadership, diplomatic leadership.

00:37:30.320 They want to avoid war at all costs.

00:37:32.580 And I think Putin sees that and is taking advantage of that.

00:37:35.820 Mm-hmm.

00:37:37.260 The, just back home for a second because the number of people who are now pushing, like in Congress, and we've talked in the first hour about how these Democrats in the House, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer over in the Senate, Dick Durbin in the Senate, they're rushing to back the effort to sanction Russia even further and shut down the oil imports.

00:37:56.640 And apparently Joe Biden, according to, again, Fox News and the New York Times, rushed out this morning to try to, you know, say we're doing that because the Democrats were getting ready to look tough without him.

00:38:07.180 And I guess he personally even called Nancy Pelosi to say, please don't do this.

00:38:11.820 And she was like, we're doing it.

00:38:13.800 So there's, people are getting worried now about, do we look weak?

00:38:18.300 Are we doing all we can?

00:38:19.800 And you have been jumping up and down saying, could you just please spare me this whole act?

00:38:25.760 Because you guys are the ones who refused to shut down Nord Stream 2.

00:38:32.180 It was shut down under Trump with you when you were there.

00:38:36.060 One of the first things they did was to fire it back up and re-empower Putin in that way.

00:38:41.040 And now when asked about that by a couple of reporters here or there, the Democrats, the White House, what they say is we needed to re-establish the diplomatic ties to Europe and Germany that Trump had so badly frayed, i.e. refer back to comments like you need to pay your fair share, right?

00:39:01.920 Like this cyclical argument, right?

00:39:04.380 Like he tried to call him out.

00:39:06.860 The Democrats said that was terrible what he did.

00:39:08.780 He tried to shut down the Nord Stream 2.

00:39:11.300 The Democrats fired it up saying we had to make nice nice with him because you upset them.

00:39:15.480 Now the Germans themselves have admitted both of those policies Trump didn't like were wrong.

00:39:20.120 Bingo.

00:39:20.640 They reversed themselves on it.

00:39:22.620 And now the Democrats are running to sanction the very insane and they want credit.

00:39:28.000 They want political credit for it, Rick.

00:39:30.820 They started a fire.

00:39:32.080 They called the fire department and now they want credit.

00:39:33.820 Look, you cannot talk about this issue without really getting philosophical on the difference between Trump and Biden.

00:39:45.540 And I thought long and hard.

00:39:47.300 I've written long pieces on this.

00:39:49.080 The opposite of America first is consensus with the Europeans. 0.74

00:39:52.300 And Joe Biden told us that he valued applause and and gratitude from the Europeans, this unity with the Europeans and fit.

00:40:03.360 You know, diplomacy is back.

00:40:05.300 Remember that?

00:40:05.840 All of these discussions were a way to say, you know, America first is not good for our allies.

00:40:12.800 We need to have consensus.

00:40:15.060 And as soon as that as soon as that was uttered, the Germans under Chancellor Merkel jumped to say, yeah, Joe, let's have consensus.

00:40:23.640 Let's drop the sanctions on Nord Stream 2.

00:40:25.840 And so they did that because the Germans successfully watered down our U.S. policy. 0.94

00:40:32.980 The German government lobbied Senate Democrats.

00:40:36.940 The German ambassador, Emily Haber, went to Capitol Hill to talk to Democratic senators.

00:40:42.820 You have Democratic senators like Chris Murphy who said, you know, we have to drop these sanctions because we need unity.

00:40:52.280 The spin was we don't want to make Putin mad by having this these sanctions on him.

00:41:01.040 So the strategy was to please the Germans. 0.85

00:41:04.260 They dropped the the sanctions.

00:41:07.720 Now, they've missed two things.

00:41:09.600 The Democrats are defining Europe by Berlin and Paris.

00:41:14.120 And as you can see from Warsaw and from some other countries, you cannot do that.

00:41:18.900 The EU is a different entity today than it was even five years ago.

00:41:25.420 Remember, Brexit happened because Chancellor Merkel refused to enforce immigration laws, allowed Syrian and Libyan refugees to come in without rules. 1.00

00:41:36.960 And the British were like, wait a minute, we can't have that. 1.00

00:41:40.080 So the Brexit happened because of Merkel's policies.

00:41:44.000 This is where we get into Merkelism again.

00:41:45.720 Then what you have is when Merkel was done with office and Olaf Scholz came in and the socialists, they flipped the script on Nord Stream 2 sanctions and and defense spending.

00:42:02.240 But our Democrat friends here in America didn't see the change.

00:42:08.300 They're still with the Merkel way.

00:42:10.060 They're still trying to pretend like they were tough.

00:42:12.900 But as you point out, they dropped the sanctions.

00:42:16.320 They created this mess.

00:42:17.740 And I think that when Putin saw Merkel being done, he had great relations with Merkel.

00:42:24.420 And when he saw Merkel done and then he saw an opening of like, well, now I can take advantage of the socialists and the Democrats in Washington are with me.

00:42:34.560 That empowered him to move.

00:42:36.260 But what he missed is the incredible, I think we all missed, the incredible flip flop that the Germans did so fast. 0.98

00:42:43.440 Putin missed it and Senate Democrats missed it.

00:42:46.600 But now I think Biden is scrambling.

00:42:49.900 He's abandoning consensus with the Europeans because the Europeans have said, we're not going along with you to stop buying Russian oil.

00:42:58.820 We're not ready.

00:42:59.620 We still are under the Merkel policies of getting rid, just as Schellenberg was saying, getting rid of nuclear energy, getting rid of coal.

00:43:08.000 And by the way, Merkel did all of that because she was beginning to lose power to the Green Party.

00:43:15.260 Now, the Green Party in Germany is different than what we would think a Green Party would be in America.

00:43:20.360 Think of the Green Party as soccer moms from Frankfurt, wealthy individuals who really care about quality of life issues.

00:43:29.680 And so the Green Party was rising and they were taking votes from Merkel and she was about ready to do something about it.

00:43:37.400 All right, let me I got to get this in.

00:43:39.620 Now we're going to fix it.

00:43:40.960 We're going to fix the 7 percent loss of oil imports by going to Saudi Arabia, by going to Venezuela.

00:43:47.380 Your thoughts on that?

00:43:48.480 Yeah, look, just the basic supply and demand issue is that we have to supply.

00:43:54.480 We can't go get the supply from somebody else.

00:43:56.840 We have the ability to do it.

00:43:58.560 Donald Trump showed us that we can be an energy exporter, a dramatic turnaround, a dominance in the energy field.

00:44:07.560 We have to go back and do that.

00:44:08.940 I don't understand why the environmentalists in America are taking that off the table because they clearly are.

00:44:15.240 And somehow they don't look at Venezuela, Iran, Russian oil as something that's dirty.

00:44:22.460 They just look at ours as dirty.

00:44:24.980 Yes.

00:44:25.160 Right.

00:44:25.420 That's exactly it.

00:44:26.520 I got 20 seconds left.

00:44:28.040 Can I just get a quick thought on the Iran deal and how that plays into all of this?

00:44:31.980 And I'll give you 30.

00:44:32.880 I got 30 seconds.

00:44:33.460 We're trusting the Russians.

00:44:34.980 We're cutting a deal.

00:44:36.040 One of the reasons we haven't been tough on the Russians, tough enough in Ukraine is because we need them in Iran. 1.00

00:44:41.720 They're cutting the deal.

00:44:43.760 By the way, the Russians are leading in Syria on this policy.

00:44:47.300 When you think about diplomacy, you're you're giving in one area and getting in another.

00:44:53.100 And all of these issues together, the Russian hand is strong against the Biden administration.

00:44:58.600 It's crazy how we're still dealing with them.

00:45:00.180 You know, we're still buying their oil and we're still dealing with them on this Iran deal.

00:45:03.640 Meanwhile, we were trying to look tough on the world stage by saying, OK, you know, we're going to cut off whatever and we're going to cut this off.

00:45:09.540 We're going to stop the seven percent oil imports.

00:45:11.280 But again, through the back door, it's a very different looking relationship.

00:45:14.980 Feeding the beast.

00:45:15.640 Yeah. And there's who knows whether that can even be undone, given how close we've you know, we've been with China, with Russia all over all these years.

00:45:24.420 Rick Grinnell, no one better than you.

00:45:26.160 Thank you so much for being on today with your insights.

00:45:28.880 Always fun.

00:45:29.700 Thanks, Megan.

00:45:30.960 All right.

00:45:31.540 So we're going to talk about the difference, right?

00:45:33.640 Like what helped turn Germany around, as Rick was saying?

00:45:36.420 Well, one of the factors is absolutely Zelensky.

00:45:39.120 And the huge, huge role he's had in changing public sentiment about Ukraine and its abilities with respect to this battle, win or lose.

00:45:50.400 He's won the hearts of a lot of people around the globe.

00:45:52.620 We'll dig into that in just a little bit.

00:45:55.180 Don't go away.

00:46:02.140 Well, apparently one of the things that Joe Biden said this morning when addressing this crisis was not to worry because he's going to be sending the vice president to Poland and Romania.

00:46:10.960 So she's going to solve this problem, I guess, the way she solved the southern border immigration problem.

00:46:17.320 In case you don't think she's up to the job, you just listen to her addressing the subject of energy and how that is affecting us today.

00:46:26.460 Imagine a future.

00:46:28.840 The freight trucks that deliver bread and milk to our grocery store shelves and the buses that take children to school and parents to work.

00:46:37.720 Imagine all the heavy-duty vehicles that keep our supply lines strong and allow our economy to grow.

00:46:45.440 Imagine that they produced zero emissions.

00:46:51.880 Well, you all imagined it.

00:46:54.280 That's why we're here today.

00:46:55.880 We are also announcing funding for, yes, one of my favorite topics, electric school buses.

00:47:04.280 Okay.

00:47:05.380 So I feel better.

00:47:06.300 I don't know about you, but we're going to focus on those electric school buses.

00:47:10.440 This is yesterday.

00:47:11.220 She was addressing some green energy group.

00:47:14.320 That's where our focus is.

00:47:15.380 Green energy.

00:47:16.440 Greta Thunberg.

00:47:17.680 Renewables.

00:47:18.480 To the exclusion of all else.

00:47:20.400 Our own energy independence.

00:47:21.760 Our own very rich oil and natural gas reserves.

00:47:25.140 The fracking that we can do.

00:47:26.820 The pumping that we can do.

00:47:28.280 We don't want to do it.

00:47:29.820 We'd rather buy from Venezuela.

00:47:31.800 We'd rather buy from the Saudis. 1.00

00:47:33.400 Remember all that shit Phil Mickelson got? 1.00

00:47:35.100 Oh, I swore again. 1.00

00:47:36.680 Crap he got for wanting to join the Saudi Golf League. 0.99

00:47:41.060 Well, what about us? 0.99

00:47:41.760 We want to join the Saudi Oil League even more than we have.

00:47:45.840 We're going to come back with John Daniel Davidson.

00:47:48.280 He's from the Federalist.

00:47:49.560 He's been doing great work on this.

00:47:51.100 Has a different perspective.

00:47:52.660 And we'll dig into that in just a minute.

00:47:54.380 Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

00:48:02.040 Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show.

00:48:08.600 The date, June 12th, 1987.

00:48:11.600 Then President Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany, delivering that famous demand to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

00:48:19.380 Today, some 800 miles away, we see another actor turned politician taking on Russia, fighting to save his own country.

00:48:29.340 Late yesterday, a defiant President Zelensky posted a video on social media giving his exact location.

00:48:36.760 He showed off the darkened streets of Kiev saying, quote, not hiding.

00:48:40.900 I'm not afraid of anyone.

00:48:41.900 Then he sat down at the desk in his presidential office to deliver what are becoming trademark messages to the world.

00:48:50.940 He's just 44 years old, and Volodymyr Volensky has captivated hearts and minds across the globe with these messages.

00:48:58.100 So who is he?

00:48:59.560 Well, he was born to Jewish parents in southern Ukraine.

00:49:02.340 Zelensky's first language was actually Russian, though he is fluent in Ukrainian, too.

00:49:07.100 A stint in university led to law school, but a legal career was not meant to be for him.

00:49:13.980 Instead, he became involved in theater, in comedy, later co-founding Ukraine's most successful entertainment studio.

00:49:22.500 In 2006, he would compete on the Ukrainian version of Dancing with the Stars, and he was amazing.

00:49:28.620 He actually won.

00:49:29.560 Watch some of this.

00:49:30.160 Okay, and for those of you listening and not watching this, he was in a completely hot pink suit, moving the hips like Elvis Presley would have been proud.

00:49:48.600 Just recently, British actor Hugh Bonneville outed Zelensky as the familiar voice behind the Peruvian bear in the Ukrainian versions of Paddington and Paddington 2.

00:50:01.280 Listen.

00:50:01.540 Now you kind of know his voice, right?

00:50:13.600 Now that sounds familiar.

00:50:15.300 But the closest he came to politics before actually becoming a politician was on a show called Servant of the People, a comedy series he starred in, hugely successful, about a teacher who becomes president after a video of him ranting about politics.

00:50:31.520 The name of that show is actually what Zelensky later decided to name his real political party when he ran for president of Ukraine, in a way, not unlike Trump, just out of nowhere when it comes to politics, at least, going from civilian to, but celebrity to politician overnight, seemingly.

00:50:52.320 On April 21st, 2019, he was elected in a landslide victory over the incumbent Petro Poroshenko.

00:50:58.580 And in September of that same year, he found himself at the center of an international scandal when a whistleblower, quote unquote, whistleblower, complained that President Trump had, among other things, asked Zelensky to look into the Biden family's ties to a Ukrainian energy conglomerate.

00:51:17.160 You remember that, Trump?

00:51:18.260 It was a perfect phone call, a perfect phone call.

00:51:20.500 This guy was on the other end of it.

00:51:22.400 That call served as the basis for the House impeachment of then President Trump.

00:51:27.660 But that was the first impeachment.

00:51:30.040 The second impeachment came after January.

00:51:31.740 So they can't keep track of the number of times they tried to get Trump.

00:51:34.820 But that was the first one.

00:51:36.380 In the years that followed, Zelensky would frequently sit down with world leaders and advocate on behalf of his people.

00:51:41.860 Now he is facing the biggest challenge of his life, as are his countrymen.

00:51:46.520 He remains steadfast in his resolve.

00:51:49.120 He frequently posts uplifting messages to his people.

00:51:52.760 He refuses efforts to save himself, famously telling the United States, I need ammunition, not a ride.

00:52:00.660 There was a question about whether that actually happened.

00:52:02.700 That's been confirmed since by Zelensky himself.

00:52:05.740 His wife of nearly 20 years, the mother of his young children, echoing the same sentiment, writing on her own Instagram,

00:52:14.220 I will not panic and cry.

00:52:15.800 I will be calm and confident.

00:52:17.960 My children are watching me.

00:52:19.840 I will be next to them and next to my husband and with you.

00:52:23.900 I love you.

00:52:25.200 I love Ukraine.

00:52:26.180 Joining me now, John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at The Federalist, and somebody I've been listening to in coverage of this for a different perspective.

00:52:37.160 And that's what we try to bring here.

00:52:38.640 There's no point of view that's right on this.

00:52:41.960 We're still trying to figure out how to process what's happening in Ukraine and what it means for us, never mind the free world. 0.75

00:52:48.100 John, thanks so much for being here.

00:52:50.000 Thanks for having me.

00:52:50.660 You know, Zelensky has proven to be an inspiring figure.

00:52:55.900 That's for sure.

00:52:56.560 You know, the guy won't back down.

00:52:58.360 Everybody thought he would cut tail and run.

00:53:00.560 I mean, that's sort of what these leaders do in these weaker countries.

00:53:03.580 When a bigger country like Russia comes in, they tuck tail and they run. 1.00

00:53:07.580 They save their own skin.

00:53:09.000 And the fact that this guy hasn't done that, I do think, has changed this war.

00:53:14.760 It doesn't necessarily mean Ukraine wins it, but it's certainly changed what's happening globally right now.

00:53:19.720 Don't you think?

00:53:20.660 Yeah, the Russian battle plan was sort of predicated on the assumption that Zelensky and his government would sort of run, flee the country, that the apparatus of the Ukrainian state would sort of dissolve within 48 hours.

00:53:35.540 And we know that from some of these articles that were accidentally published in Russian that were dated the 26th of February, talking about sort of the post-war Russian vision for Ukraine.

00:53:51.200 And as we know, that was 48 hours after the invasion.

00:53:56.020 So I think a lot of the Russian tactical assumptions were that the Ukrainian state wasn't really robust.

00:54:05.360 It wasn't really real, in a sense, and that it would evaporate as soon as Russian forces crossed the border.

00:54:14.940 And I think that's something that Putin was sort of banking on.

00:54:18.980 It hasn't happened.

00:54:20.320 Not only has the state not evaporated, but the Russian or the Ukrainian armed forces have proven a lot more capable and a lot tougher of an opponent than I think Moscow thought they would be.

00:54:34.020 Yeah, they have the resolve.

00:54:36.520 We have the weaponry, which we've been sending to them, we among other countries in Europe, and they're making the most out of it.

00:54:42.780 But, you know, the civilian death toll being what it is, the two million people fleeing the country and who could who could blame them? 1.00

00:54:48.780 I mean, you know, these women and children trying to get out of there, save their lives.

00:54:51.480 And Putin's forces are killing Ukrainians pretty indiscriminately.

00:54:57.200 Now, you do have to be careful of the propaganda war in anything like this.

00:55:00.980 But, you know, we've got independent New York Times, you know, reporters out there photographing the murder of civilians by Putin's troops.

00:55:08.380 It's it's definitely happening.

00:55:09.640 And even Putin's own countrymen back at home to the extent they can get information because he's shut down all non-state run media inside Russia.

00:55:19.800 I mean, if you're getting your info from inside Russia, you're getting Putin's messaging.

00:55:23.700 But still, we're seeing thousands of Russians take to the street, get arrested for protesting, which you're not allowed to do there.

00:55:30.520 And, you know, those who aren't doing that may be under the spell of, oh, he's fighting Nazism inside Ukraine, which is apparently what indeed you'll see some uncertain blogs that have been posted by the Russians.

00:55:42.620 You know, they're buying his the ones who aren't protesting are buying his narrative that he's got to oust the Nazis from Ukraine, including Zelensky, who himself is a Jewish guy.

00:55:52.180 But OK. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we've seen compared to Russia's kind of disinformation propaganda effort in this war, Ukraine is winning the propaganda and information war hands down.

00:56:05.820 They've they've shown themselves to be very sophisticated, really, in information warfare.

00:56:11.380 And, you know, that's not to say that that we should just uncritically accept everything that we hear from the Ukrainian government or or hear from Ukrainian media.

00:56:24.460 Certainly early on, there were several stories, kind of these hero just so stories about, you know, the the soldiers on Snake Island saying F you to the Russians before they were all killed.

00:56:37.220 And that turned out not to be quite true or that the goes to Kiev, who the pilot who had shot down half a dozen Russian MiGs.

00:56:44.160 That turned out not not to quite be true either.

00:56:46.400 But certainly Ukraine has shown itself robust on all these different fronts.

00:56:51.420 Right. The the resiliency of the state in the president, Zelensky, the toughness of the armed forces and the sort of just the battlefield capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces.

00:57:02.700 And then also the disinformation and sort of information and propaganda warfare aspect of the of Ukraine has it's like Russia's not even trying on that front there.

00:57:13.240 There there you know, there was a speech from Putin saying we're going to denazify Ukraine, which is sort of, you know, an obvious and kind of a laughable line.

00:57:23.380 That's that's a it's a pretext. It's not it's not really why they're doing this.

00:57:27.200 But on every measure, Ukraine has shown this resilience and this toughness, I think, that a lot of people, especially in the West, did not expect.

00:57:36.880 And for good reason, Ukraine is famously corrupt, you know, just like Russia is famously corrupt and famously corrupt nations tend not to be resilient in situations like this.

00:57:49.200 Well, that's how Zelensky got elected. I mean, he ran a platform of anti-corruption.

00:57:54.120 He's like, I'm just a damn actor. Put me in there. I'll I'll try to clean it up. 0.99

00:57:58.540 And so there's an appetite for doing that amongst the populace in Ukraine.

00:58:02.920 Once again, you know, the regular citizens get screwed and the people at the top, the politicians who got Ukraine, you know, into this sort of relationship where they're they are corrupt and they've been a little too cozy with the wrong people.

00:58:14.200 Well, they won't be held to account. But OK, so let's shift gears and ask about what you think got us here.

00:58:21.860 Like what? And again, I just want to reiterate, being honest about what got us here doesn't mean blaming anybody other than Russia.

00:58:27.900 We all know who invaded Ukraine. We all know it was wrong, morally wrong and should be condemned. 0.99

00:58:33.620 And we all pray it stops as soon as humanly possible.

00:58:37.300 Yeah. But we should be honest about what led up to this and what lessons can we glean?

00:58:42.780 Yeah, you're absolutely right. We have to get beyond the, you know, Putin is a bad guy.

00:58:47.980 Ukraine is the good guy. We have we have to get beyond that. 0.99

00:58:50.740 And by the way, you know, the online environment for this has been terrible.

00:58:56.580 It's it's as though if you if you assign or if you conduct any analysis that goes back more than, you know, a few weeks about what caused this crisis,

00:59:05.060 you get accused of being a Putin apologist or a Putin sympathizer, which is just not true at all.

00:59:09.780 There's a long history of what led us to this point.

00:59:13.500 And I think if you go back and you look at the United States and its European allies and the steps that have been taken going back to the 90s,

00:59:22.360 you know, Ukraine was a kind of time bomb waiting to explode ever since the creation of Ukraine. 0.99

00:59:29.900 In the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been a problem, sort of a geopolitical problem with Ukraine having the borders.

00:59:41.480 It does having the territory. It does positioned as it is between Eastern Europe and Russia.

00:59:46.280 Russia. It's a kind of buffer state. And it's not it's not a situation that that ever was going to be stable in the long term.

00:59:54.720 A lot of people don't realize, like the situation with the Crimea.

00:59:58.560 Why is Crimea important to Russia? That's the location of their Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol.

01:00:04.640 That's the access, the one access point that Russia has to the Black Sea and through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean.

01:00:10.020 It's a vitally important geostrategic location. Any regime in Moscow, Putin or anyone else would see a vital strategic interest in holding on to Crimea.

01:00:20.120 But the idea that the settlement in the mid 1990s, whereby Ukraine would lease Sevastopol to Russia for like 20 year increments,

01:00:31.460 was never like a durable long term solution, especially if Ukraine ever turned strategically and economically toward Europe, toward Western Europe.

01:00:42.120 That's not something Russia was ever going to allow to happen because of how Russia perceives its core interests.

01:00:46.980 Now, this is the point usually where people say, well, you know, why are you making excuses for Russia?

01:00:52.480 It's not making excuses for Russia to try to understand Russian motivations and what Russia sees as its core interests.

01:00:58.860 It's obvious. You know, it's like people just have their agendas. I'm fascinated by this. I do want to understand.

01:01:04.440 I mean, how are we ever going to avoid these sort of diplomatic atrocities in the future if we don't figure out, did we underestimate him?

01:01:12.380 Did we not take his saber rattling seriously? Did we do anything provocative?

01:01:17.460 And if so, maybe we did. But I mean, maybe that's just that's that's that's life.

01:01:21.360 You know, I mean, right. Us existing is provocative to Putin as well.

01:01:25.620 You know, it's provocative. Yeah. To Putin. Right.

01:01:29.900 OK, so keep going. So so that was never going to exist in Ukraine.

01:01:32.780 It's not it's not America. It's not it's not this big free country with a bunch of with a very strong GDP and oceans on the left and the right and sort of doesn't have to worry as much about its neighbors.

01:01:44.720 That's right. And in fact, its current territorial configuration was created by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 as a way for the Soviet Union to have more states, you know, at the UN that were part of the Warsaw Pact.

01:01:59.140 So there is a kind of historical iterative process that has that that has created modern day Ukraine with these borders that are not quite tenable.

01:02:11.820 They don't make sense. Right. It doesn't make sense that Crimea would be part of Ukraine.

01:02:16.740 And yet through the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism, that's what happened.

01:02:23.900 That's what's going to need to be adjudicated or settled at some point.

01:02:28.080 And one of the ways that we have ignored that and not taken it seriously is is by encouraging the Ukrainian government to maintain this claim on Crimea.

01:02:40.580 I think a responsible U.S. leadership would have a long time ago during the Obama administration in 2014, after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea would have gone to the Ukrainian leadership and said, look, we need to figure this out.

01:02:57.860 So the the the continued claim of Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea is a recipe for a war.

01:03:06.680 And so we need to figure out a negotiated settlement so that we solve this problem before it turns into what we have now.

01:03:12.300 The Obama administration didn't do it. Trump administration didn't do it.

01:03:15.940 The Biden administration didn't do it. And now we're at war.

01:03:19.600 And it's a war that anyone who looked at a map and understood the history could see was coming sooner or later.

01:03:25.160 OK, so what what do you think about the notion that that would not have appeased him?

01:03:31.880 You know, that you the hungry fox is not sated by one chicken and that really what he wants is Ukraine to be part of Russia.

01:03:44.020 He he wants to eat it. He wants to swallow it.

01:03:46.740 And what he's angry about is that Ukraine, which is an independent country, doesn't want that.

01:03:52.040 They actually have grown closer to the West. They they're a they're pro-democracy and they've found the Western way of life to be appealing.

01:03:59.900 And they've kind of turned the cold shoulder to him, leaving him.

01:04:04.560 Forgive my pedestrian analogies, but he's sort of like the boyfriend who got dumped.

01:04:09.060 He's like, but I still want to be with you. And Ukraine's looking over at us like, well, I kind of like this one now. 0.98

01:04:14.760 This is actually more attractive to me. And he's behaving badly to take it down to the very basic analogy one can do.

01:04:21.020 Sure. No, absolutely. You're absolutely right. But even there, what you just described, you start start to see the outlines of a possible negotiated settlement just because, you know, Putin doesn't get everything that he wants.

01:04:33.440 Maybe he gets what he needs and some of what he wants. And maybe Ukraine gets what they need and some of what they want.

01:04:39.760 Nobody is going to be happy. But by entering into a negotiation, a serious negotiation process long before we got to this point, we may have there may have been an outline of a settlement where Ukraine got political independence and it was free to turn toward Europe and to make trade deals with the EU.

01:04:58.040 But it sacrificed some of its territory to do that. And there was an exchange there and a back and forth.

01:05:06.680 And look, we can be tough with Putin and we could have been tough with Putin about this and said, look, you'll get Crimea and maybe you'll get these like these areas in eastern Ukraine as well.

01:05:16.440 And in exchange for that, you relinquish any claim to sort of, you know, have influence over Ukraine or keep Ukraine in your orbit and they are free to go their way.

01:05:25.700 The outlines of a settlement, you can see if anyone in the West had taken that seriously and had anyone had taken seriously Russia's view of the situation.

01:05:37.440 And I don't think they did, which instead you've got this sort of feckless and inconsistent U.S. policy where, you know, the Obama administration wouldn't arm the Ukrainians and the Trump administration did.

01:05:50.120 And then the Biden administration, you know, eased up sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

01:05:55.700 We've had had a strategic mess in our approach to the situation and our approach to Russia over the past decades.

01:06:03.700 And I think all of that has contributed to the war now.

01:06:06.740 And again, that's not to say the United States is responsible for the war. Putin is. 0.70

01:06:10.840 But it is to say that the war represents a strategic failure on the part of the United States.

01:06:15.720 Mm hmm. What if we had done that, what would have stopped his ire once what was left of Ukraine, which would still be the bulk of Ukraine, said now we're going to join NATO.

01:06:27.280 Now we want to be part of the EU. We're going to join NATO.

01:06:31.360 Well, part of that negotiation in offering territory for independence could have been some security guarantee to Ukraine.

01:06:40.180 I doubt Ukraine would have agreed of their own volition to relinquish significant amounts of territory without some sort of security guarantees for the West.

01:06:48.720 And that could have been that could have been a part of it.

01:06:51.560 It's no use, though. You know, the Russia's concerns about NATO.

01:06:55.500 I often hear in response, you know, sort of from Western media, it's like, well, NATO is a defensive treaty.

01:07:01.100 We're not a threat to Russia. It's just a sort of propaganda that Putin is saying that NATO is a threat to Russia.

01:07:05.900 Putin does see NATO as a threat to Russia. Whether or not NATO really is a threat to Russia is almost beside the point.

01:07:14.800 And so we have to come up with with a diplomatic and strategic approach that takes that into account and and and tries to mitigate Russian fears about NATO.

01:07:25.060 And instead of saying, well, Putin is never going to accept a Ukraine that's oriented toward Europe.

01:07:32.200 We should have tried to find a way in which Russia could accept a Ukraine, a reduced Ukraine that may be oriented toward Europe in exchange for something very valuable that we would all agree Russia could keep forever. 0.76

01:07:47.460 Like Crimea in the Donbass and maybe some other areas.

01:07:51.200 But I don't think that these discussions or even this way of thinking ever entered into the calculus in Washington, because we don't have very serious people who are are in charge of U.S. foreign policy.

01:08:03.840 And we haven't for some time.

01:08:05.540 My God, that's true.

01:08:07.060 That's one of the saddest things of the past 10 years is just the but but also most important, just the unveiling of our leaders is as not having one clue what they're doing.

01:08:16.800 And really, I mean, you'll see that in the quieter moments if you get to know any of them, that they're just I mean, these politicians are just like you.

01:08:24.040 They're just like me.

01:08:24.940 They don't know what they're doing.

01:08:25.940 They're figuring it out as they go along.

01:08:27.620 And it's it's showing right.

01:08:30.140 The net effect of 10 years plus is showing in Ukraine.

01:08:35.320 All right.

01:08:35.860 So that still leaves us with where we are now and what to do now.

01:08:38.780 And I know you've been somewhat critical of the, quote, maximalist approach that we're taking.

01:08:43.820 And this has support inside our country for creating a no fly zone grows.

01:08:51.680 Depends on how you ask the question, John would say.

01:08:54.120 But we'll pick it up right there after squeezing in a quick break.

01:08:58.000 So, John, support grows, according to the polls within the United States, for the creation of a no fly zone over Ukraine, which is exactly what Zelensky has been begging NATO and the free world for so far.

01:09:17.820 Or other than Poland that I guess just today said, well, you know, maybe we should send some should we send some planes? 0.77

01:09:25.040 Should we they haven't committed?

01:09:26.560 But there was just a little bit of a waiver.

01:09:28.980 Everyone else has said that's not happening.

01:09:31.380 You've got some thoughts on whether people fully understand what a no fly zone means.

01:09:38.200 Yeah, I don't think they do.

01:09:39.040 I think that's reflected in the polling I mentioned on Twitter the other day, if the pollsters change the question from do you support the U.S. and NATO allies imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine to do you support the U.S. and NATO allies going to war with Russia using war planes?

01:09:56.440 I don't think you would see the same kind of support that the polls are showing now.

01:10:00.620 But that is what we're talking about when we talk about a no fly zone.

01:10:03.580 It means NATO war planes shooting, engaging and shooting down any Russian war planes they find in the skies over Ukraine.

01:10:12.880 That's what a no fly zone is.

01:10:14.500 And I think that we are the media, I should say, is doing a disservice to put out these these sort of misleading polls or these polls that if you if you drill into the polls, they're not doing a very good job of getting clear answers from the people that are being surveyed.

01:10:35.020 So I think we need to be clear about what a no fly zone is.

01:10:38.120 It means engaging Russian war planes and shooting them down. 0.73

01:10:41.580 And Russia, Putin has said that he'll consider, you know, anything like that.

01:10:50.020 He'll consider the country doing it to be to be a party to to the war, to be a belligerent and he'll respond.

01:10:57.200 I mean, up until this morning, we wouldn't even turn off the spigot of Russia, Russian oil.

01:11:03.100 So like what we're going to keep taking their oil, but we're going to send our guys up there in the fighter jets and risk their lives shooting down Russians. 1.00

01:11:11.740 I like where what is our policy?

01:11:14.240 Where do we stand?

01:11:15.320 You know, and the Europeans, too, they're so they're so dependent on Russia.

01:11:18.620 They're not going to send their fighter jets up there while they're getting 40 percent of their gas from Putin.

01:11:24.240 Yeah.

01:11:24.420 And what's the end game, right?

01:11:26.260 Like, how do we think this is going to end?

01:11:27.840 What happens when a U.S. pilot gets shot down over Ukraine by by a Russian fighter jet?

01:11:33.520 But again, going back to this is all very reactive.

01:11:37.860 It's all it's it's quite emotional.

01:11:40.220 The stuff that's coming from our leaders and the stuff that's coming from our media.

01:11:45.380 And I don't think it's it doesn't show that they really thought through these things like it like a no fly zone or or like an oil embargo or these these sanctions that are designed to basically just crater the Russian economy and turn Russia into sort of a international pariah on a permanent basis.

01:12:06.240 I don't see anything like strategy behind the decisions that are being made or even the discussions that are that that U.S. and the allies are having in public.

01:12:16.420 And and, you know, that's that's evidenced by the what you just mentioned, Biden's decision today to, you know, sanction Russian oil imports, which he had resisted up until, you know, five minutes ago.

01:12:30.360 Mm hmm.

01:12:31.400 What about that?

01:12:32.400 Because I know what happened with Visa and MasterCard.

01:12:35.920 Are they no longer doing business in Russia?

01:12:38.240 Because I know you had something where you were saying this, this be careful before you start cheering for this kind of thing.

01:12:45.280 Why explain that?

01:12:46.280 Because I do think the knee jerk instinct was is, you know, when the bully picks on the weak kid on the playground, let's all alienate the bully.

01:12:54.260 The bully will have no friends.

01:12:55.500 The bully will sit by himself until he learns not to be a bully anymore.

01:12:58.800 I think we need to be we should be careful about cheering on these multinational corporations that decide that they are going to cut off parts of the world or cut off certain kinds of people.

01:13:11.400 From their services, you know, whether it's Russians like the entire Russian people, because, you know, decisions that their leaders have made about invading Ukraine.

01:13:24.060 It's easy to see what the next step is.

01:13:27.180 Right.

01:13:27.840 And we already right before the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion.

01:13:31.480 We saw Canada take extraordinary steps to financially punish protesters who held views that Justin Trudeau thought were unacceptable.

01:13:41.660 So it's very easy to see a future in which multinational, very powerful corporations like Visa and MasterCard or Google decide that there are certain people whose opinions render them, you know, outcasts and that they are going to cut off services.

01:14:02.040 Like if the behavior is bad enough.

01:14:03.220 If the behavior is bad enough, we have a corporate responsibility to step in and cut them off.

01:14:07.760 And not to compare domestic protests to what Vladimir Putin is doing, but you're doing the slippery slope argument.

01:14:15.140 Well, yes, because these corporations do wield an enormous amount of power and we've seen them willing to engage in sort of what the Supreme Court would call viewpoint discrimination.

01:14:26.780 Right. Not just with respect to Russia, but but I mean, imagine the 2024 presidential election.

01:14:34.200 Donald Trump decides to run.

01:14:35.740 Let's say he loses.

01:14:36.580 Let's say he then says some crazy stuff about why he lost.

01:14:40.900 And let's say you have a Facebook account or Twitter account and you, you know, like or retweet something crazy that Trump said.

01:14:48.940 And all of a sudden you go to access your bank account and Wells Fargo or Visa has frozen your account because you've expressed unacceptable views.

01:14:57.880 That's not hard to imagine at all in the world that we live in right now.

01:15:01.600 And it should terrify everybody.

01:15:03.100 Mm hmm.

01:15:04.160 Well, didn't didn't something again where we're down a lane here, but who banned Michelle Malkin just recently from from renting? 1.00

01:15:13.200 It wasn't wasn't wasn't Airbnb Airbnb banned Michelle Malkin from renting. 1.00

01:15:21.520 So she says she and I guess her husband because she has an association with this guy who they say is a white supremacist.

01:15:30.760 And she says he's not but the group has been labeled one, but she's got an association they don't like.

01:15:38.200 And so she's not allowed to rent with Airbnb.

01:15:42.180 Now, I realize it's a free country and you can do business with whomever you want.

01:15:46.400 But it's starting to happen.

01:15:48.540 I mean, that's an extraordinary move for a private company to just ban a public figure from ever using their their product, essentially, because of her views.

01:15:57.340 I think we need to get away from this idea that these are private companies.

01:16:01.200 These especially when we're talking about big tech, these are much more than private companies.

01:16:05.400 These are companies that are more powerful, I think, than anything we could have imagined even a generation ago.

01:16:11.720 And the idea that we, you know, it's just like, well, you know, if you don't like it, you know, build your own Twitter.

01:16:16.760 Well, look what happened to Parler when they tried to build your own Twitter.

01:16:20.620 So our lawmakers in Washington have got to get real about what we're facing with these multinational, extremely powerful corporations,

01:16:31.960 especially our tech corporations and our financial tech corporations,

01:16:36.180 and come up with ways to regulate their behavior and get strict with them so that they can't go around policing and imposing these sort of ideological tests

01:16:47.360 on who they're going to give services to and who they're not going to give services to.

01:16:52.040 It's time to get real about this stuff because it's happening fast and we're way behind the curve.

01:16:56.720 Well, we also need to be careful about like I'm all in favor of going after the oligarchs.

01:17:01.580 I really I have no real I couldn't really care less.

01:17:05.300 But things that are actually going to hurt the Russian people, you know, the citizenry, that bothers me.

01:17:10.520 I don't think the Russian people are for this war at all.

01:17:13.580 I've been there quite a bit over the past couple of years.

01:17:16.320 And the average Russian you meet on the street loves America. 0.53

01:17:19.760 They and they say, oh, our leaders, you know, they mean ours and theirs.

01:17:24.620 You know, they're excited about America.

01:17:26.020 They like to they like American, you know, whatever fashion and they like movies and so on.

01:17:30.320 And they don't have hatred in their hearts for America, for the most part.

01:17:34.200 You know, of course, there's always a pocket here or there.

01:17:36.860 And I don't think that they have hatred for Ukraine.

01:17:39.280 And I don't think that they want to see this battle.

01:17:41.700 In fact, most of them have family in Ukraine.

01:17:43.360 The two countries are very close.

01:17:45.560 So I worry about creating a new generation of enemies over there by absolutely devastating the country. 1.00

01:17:51.420 And so the longer this goes on, John, right, the the more danger we're in of doing that and the more we're really going to be faced with some tough questions about how long we're willing to do this.

01:18:04.980 Yeah.

01:18:05.320 It's not like the people of Russia voted for this war or voted for their leaders.

01:18:09.420 To your point, really, yeah, we we do need to have an end state, a realistic end state of and figure out, you know, what is an end state that is acceptable to the United States and its allies?

01:18:21.640 And what is an end state that might be acceptable to Ukraine and Russia?

01:18:25.960 And what are the steps we need to take right now to start moving toward it?

01:18:30.080 Because the idea that, you know, we're just going to impose sanctions on Russia and we're going to, like, you know, destroy the ruble and we're going to destroy the Russian economy.

01:18:39.640 And, you know, we just have to wait a couple months for that to happen.

01:18:43.220 Well, sorry.

01:18:44.260 But in a couple months, Ukraine is going to be reduced to rubble.

01:18:47.240 So is that our strategy?

01:18:48.860 We're just going to let Russia reduce Ukraine to rubble and wait for the sanctions to, like, hurt the Russian economy and, you know, foment discontent among the Russian people for their leaders?

01:19:00.340 That doesn't sound like a strategy, a very serious strategy, and it doesn't sound like a successful one either.

01:19:06.060 I think that we need to be thinking on a more constricted time horizon.

01:19:10.440 We have a short amount of time to stop the fighting and enter into negotiations before we see horrific civilian casualties and the mass destruction of civilian population centers in Ukraine.

01:19:25.600 And it seems like our leaders are just, like, living in a fantasy land.

01:19:29.260 It's a good point, because the question is, to what end are all the sanctions?

01:19:35.220 You know, we're trying to amp up the pressure on Putin so that he folds.

01:19:40.180 That's what we want.

01:19:41.180 We want him to fold.

01:19:42.180 We want him to reevaluate this.

01:19:43.540 We want him to believe that it's unsustainable.

01:19:45.700 And there is a real question about whether we're are we underestimating Vladimir Putin?

01:19:49.680 Do we do we understand he's not likely to do that anytime soon, especially if he's getting backdoor support from the Chinese and possibly from India with respect to his oil exports and so on?

01:20:02.380 It's not like he's cut off from all money.

01:20:05.180 So what is the end game?

01:20:06.560 Right.

01:20:06.740 Is we can go over here, John, and we can change our little Twitter icons to Ukrainian flags. 1.00

01:20:11.200 And these morons can dump their Dostoyevsky into the garbage can and think that that does something stupid, stupid as virtue signaling at every turn. 1.00

01:20:20.580 But what is the what is the plan? 1.00

01:20:24.120 Yeah.

01:20:24.360 Well, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said recently and I don't think that he was speaking, you know, in terms of like this is the well-considered official policy of the United States government.

01:20:37.560 But he did say this, nevertheless, and I think it does reflect the thinking at the State Department and in the White House.

01:20:43.860 He said that their their goal is for Russian forces to leave Ukraine.

01:20:50.400 All Russian forces leave Ukraine for Ukraine to be free and independent with its territory intact and that we are committed to that outcome. 0.92

01:21:00.200 And and we're committed to that as long as it takes.

01:21:02.980 Now, that, as you mentioned earlier, that is a maximalist policy that posits an end state for this conflict that ends in total humiliating and crushing defeat for Russia and the Russian forces in Ukraine.

01:21:15.500 And if you think that Putin is going to accept that without escalating this in ways that are unimaginable, by which I mean possibly involving a nuclear exchange, then you're not being real.

01:21:32.300 And I don't know if Secretary of State Blinken is just saying that because it feels good to say it, you know, and it's sort of an emotional statement that, you know, we're going to we're going to stick with Ukraine.

01:21:42.860 And so every Russian troop is out of Ukraine and and we turn return to the status quo, Antony.

01:21:48.460 I don't know if he really believes it, but saying it is a very reckless thing to do, because what what it's what it is positing and what it is inviting is a very dangerous escalation on the part of Moscow.

01:21:59.380 Because we do not believe, as brave as the Ukrainians have been in fighting these troops, you know, coming into their land, that they are going to prevail. 0.87

01:22:08.360 I mean, maybe they'll surprise us.

01:22:10.320 I hate to rule it out and say no.

01:22:13.120 And the Russian troops have not been nearly as impressive as we would have expected.

01:22:17.080 I think we can at least say that.

01:22:19.420 But we're not really expecting the Ukrainians to prevail.

01:22:23.200 And so without NATO planes and NATO troops.

01:22:26.560 That's right. That's the thing that without and as many as many weapons as we want to send, as many CIA operatives as we want to sneak in there without Western military going into Ukraine.

01:22:39.140 Ukraine's not likely to win this battle.

01:22:41.140 And we don't know when this battle will end.

01:22:43.200 It could be years, you know, insurgencies basically on the streets of Ukraine, which was, you know, not long ago, a beautiful country with living, you know, the citizenry living their life the same way we live our lives.

01:22:54.800 Right. Like going to school and going to their jobs and walking in the streets and hanging out in the town square in the plazas.

01:23:00.720 Now it's going to turn into something like Iraq, potentially, if if this is all we do and Vladimir Putin doesn't fold.

01:23:07.680 So what what do you think we should do?

01:23:11.980 You're not in favor of no fly zone.

01:23:13.420 No, I'm not. And let me just say one more thing on that previous point.

01:23:17.400 The Biden administration seems to think that it can go right up to the line of belligerence without being considered a belligerent by Russia in the belief that their opinion about what constitutes a belligerent in this conflict is the only one that matters.

01:23:33.180 Well, Moscow has a say in what constitutes a belligerent actor as well, and we have to take that into account.

01:23:41.660 And if we take actions that are belligerent, that are acts of war, you know, whether that is establishing a no fly zone, whether that is funneling arms and volunteers into Ukraine, whether that's economic warfare of the kind that we're that it's now taking shape.

01:23:59.860 So any one of those things or all of them together, at some point, Moscow could decide, you know, the West is at war with Russia and we're going to treat treat the West as being at war with Russia.

01:24:09.260 So I just want to say, you know, we're not the only ones who get a vote about that on the question of the no fly zone.

01:24:16.060 No, I don't support a no fly zone for the simple reason that I don't support the United States and NATO going to war with Russia over Ukraine.

01:24:22.280 It's as simple as that. And that's what a no fly zone would mean. It would mean going to war. 0.81

01:24:26.120 So what I mean, do you what do you see here? Is it hypocritical of us to be praising Zelensky, not us as in you and me sitting here, but like our government to be singing this swan song and praising him and how talking in The New York Times every day, how inspirational and so on, when we're not really doing anything that will solve the problem.

01:24:49.340 Yeah, the U.S. corporate media is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, apparently. 0.97

01:24:57.160 And there are other interested parties in the United States and in the West that would very much like to see us continue to funnel arms and materials into Ukraine and who would actually like to see us get involved more deeply militarily as well for their own reasons.

01:25:13.980 I do think it's hypocritical, though, to sort of encourage Ukraine. And this goes back to before the war started. We encouraged Ukraine in a vain hope that we would somehow come to their assistance or implied that we would somehow come to their assistance.

01:25:36.500 I think we got them to denuclear their country, denucify. 1.00

01:25:40.080 Yeah, but I mean, even more recently, you know, after 2014 and sort of led them down a garden path that that is going that is now leading to the destruction of the country because we're not actually going to save Ukraine.

01:25:53.640 And so it is hypocritical of us and it has been hypocritical of us to to sort of foster that hope on the part of the Ukrainians when there are no warplanes coming from the West.

01:26:04.780 There are no troops coming from the West. There are no tanks coming from the West. And we should be realistic with them about that. And that and that maybe gets to the next part.

01:26:14.440 We need to be honest with Ukraine's leaders that we're not going to help in that way. And if they don't think that they can defeat Russia, then we need to start talking about how to get to a negotiated settlement to end the fighting.

01:26:24.980 I mean, we have said it. Joe Biden has said it explicitly that there will be no no fly zone. We're not we're not sending American troops over there.

01:26:33.760 We're trying to handle it in a more behind the scenes way, but we're being open about what we're doing. You know, this is the number of weapons that we've sent. This is the kind of weapons that we've sent. Clearly, we do have people on the ground there.

01:26:45.700 You know, we have special ops or we have CIA operatives because we don't. I'm not a military expert, but my understanding is we don't just ship in the arms and say, like, to the good people of Ukraine.

01:26:57.120 Like, there's a way we get them in. There's a process. Yeah. So we're there to some extent. Putin knows that. And he also has strategic reasons not to treat our escalating sanctions as more than sanctions.

01:27:13.120 He doesn't want a war with the United States. He understands what that looks like or with NATO. He doesn't actually want that. But right now, the off ramp is not obvious. And we're not playing a particular role either.

01:27:23.980 I mean, it's like these some guys from Ukraine you never heard of and some guys from Russia you might once have heard of, but not like Putin having negotiations that continue to fail, like three of them that have gone nowhere.

01:27:36.080 We haven't articulated what the off ramp might be, in part because I don't think we've thought very deeply about what the off ramp might be for Russia.

01:27:43.560 You know, the problem is, as this escalates, and if the war begins to go poorly for Moscow, there is a real risk that Putin will escalate, especially if he feels that his regime itself and sort of the Russian state itself face existential threat.

01:28:00.980 Then there's no telling what he might do and how he might escalate to widen the war, to use tactical nuclear weapons.

01:28:10.480 So we need to be thinking about this, and we need to be articulating what the off ramps are, and communicating that to all the parties involved, to try to see if we can deescalate the situation and prevent the worst case scenario.

01:28:28.740 And right now, there's just not any evidence of that.

01:28:30.740 There's plenty of evidence that this is just an emotional-driven thing, that there's no vision, there's no strategic vision or plan in the White House.

01:28:39.940 And, I mean, look at the people involved.

01:28:41.980 You know, Biden is just completely out of it.

01:28:45.800 You know, this is the worst possible scenario for the United States facing a war in Europe to have the group of people in Washington that we have in charge right now.

01:28:55.600 Yeah, we're not even, we won't even, you know, push for our own domestic energy production.

01:29:00.300 It's like, okay, let's ramp up what we already buy from the Saudis. 0.87

01:29:03.180 Let's go to Venezuela.

01:29:04.260 That's Venezuela.

01:29:05.400 Whoever thinks Venezuela is the solution, that's the, when you're there, that's a red alarm fire situation.

01:29:12.420 John, thank you so much for all the thoughtful pieces you've done on this.

01:29:16.360 I listened to you with Emily on The Federalist yesterday, and you've been an important voice in this whole discussion.

01:29:21.820 I admire you.

01:29:23.120 Well, thanks for having me on.

01:29:23.980 I really appreciate it.

01:29:24.880 Yeah, all the best.

01:29:26.140 We're going to have much more on this, and we're going to continue the discussions.

01:29:28.240 I'm grateful to all of you guys for being a part of it.

01:29:31.660 Don't forget to download the show, and we'll see you tomorrow.

01:29:35.560 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

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The Megyn Kelly Show - March 08, 2022

Biden Blocks Russian Oil and How Weak Leadership Led to Invasion, with Ric Grenell, Michael Shellenberger, and John Daniel Davidson ｜ Ep. 275

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