Megan and Clay are joined by former Ambassador Rick Grinnell to talk about the latest on Russia and Ukraine, Joe Biden's Supreme Court pick, and whether or not Tom Brady is really leaving the NFL in a minute. Plus, a look at how the left is trying to delegitimize science.
00:15:54.500One with Dr. Peter McCullough and one with Dr. Robert Malone.
00:15:59.080Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist,
00:16:01.240and he is the most published physician in his field in history.
00:16:06.100Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines.
00:16:19.060Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that's different from the mainstream narrative.
00:16:28.400I wanted to hear what their opinion is.
00:16:30.420The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.
00:16:40.220Like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID, you would be removed from social media.
00:16:50.580They would they would ban you from certain platforms.
00:17:29.380He does really great interviews and has really great conversations.
00:17:32.480But I have watched some of his interviews, in particular of some of these guys, and thought he should be pressing them with the with other facts.
00:18:06.440That doesn't mean he gets deplatformed.
00:18:08.680We generally in this country, we leave it up to the audience to figure out how trustworthy a source is and to compile the information they feel they need to make decisions on these issues.
00:18:19.820And Megan, to your point, what I like about the conversations and the conversation that we're having right now is you're not editing it and I'm not editing it.
00:18:30.500And, you know, this having done a lot of network news interviews back in the day, you can talk to somebody for two hours and use eight minutes of that two hour conversation.
00:18:40.820I've always said I would rather read the transcript.
00:18:44.480And this is maybe the lawyer in me, too.
00:18:46.260But when somebody is is talking, I'm always like, well, is there a transcript attached?
00:18:51.440I started doing this with with sports when I would cover sports because I wanted to know I didn't trust that the right stories got taken out of a press conference with a coach or with a player.
00:19:01.100And they would publish the transcript and I would go in and I would look and I would say, OK, what's the most interesting part of this overall conversation?
00:19:07.300And lots of times, Megan, I found that the way the media covered it was not representative and also not reflective of even the most interesting thing that people were saying.
00:19:15.780And so the fact that he has these relatively unedited long form conversations to me is part and parcel of being as honest with your audience as you can be, because if you listen to somebody talk for an hour, that's one of the last legacy audio.
00:19:31.660It's one of the real advantages. I know there's video versions, too, but time, the ability to see somebody in context in full allows that authenticity to come through in a way that, frankly, I do not believe exists in much of modern media where a minute or two is all you get.
00:19:48.680Right. And so, yes, is he of criticism? No, of course, not everybody is worthy that has a big audience is worthy of being analyzed and you can like or dislike something.
00:19:58.180But the marketplace is responding in a very favorable way because what he is providing is something that is not being provided enough.
00:20:05.360Right. That ultimately the marketplace, I'm a big believer in business based market based capitalism.
00:20:11.700And I think Joe Rogan is serving his audience well.
00:20:14.580That's exactly right. And as his willingness to do that demonstrates, there is a market for it and his power grows.
00:20:22.620And that's that's what drives the left insane.
00:20:25.220Just to note, Chelsea Clinton also tried to have me fired after I interviewed Alex Jones while I was at NBC.
00:20:34.320And it was a very tough interview and it didn't go particularly well for Alex Jones.
00:20:39.240But she wanted me fired just for just for having the interview and for NBC.
00:20:45.240But, of course, Chelsea Clinton, her little stint at NBC didn't work out so well because she's talentless.
00:20:50.700But I did think it was amazing because I told the story before, but Brian Stelter of CNN came up to me at an event shortly thereafter in the midst of it all and said,
00:20:58.580Chelsea Clinton, she's pushing for you. She doesn't want any guests to go on your show ever again.
00:21:03.100And he's like, do you do you think you'll be able to get her? Do you think you'll be able to interview Chelsea Clinton?
00:21:08.060And I said, Brian, I said, I have never once asked to interview Chelsea Clinton and I do not intend to spoil my perfect record.
00:21:17.560Well, by the way, Megan, because this happened to us with with the radio show.
00:21:23.860I interviewed Buck and I did Senator Senator Rand Paul and we talked to him.
00:21:32.460Yeah. And YouTube refused to allow our interview to be posted.
00:21:37.040Now, to me, I think this is significant. I don't think this gets enough attention.
00:21:41.920We interviewed him. We did not say the answers to his questions.
00:21:47.100Right. He is a sitting senator. He is a doctor.
00:21:49.980He is running for reelection right now in Kentucky. And the same thing, by the way, with your point with Alex Jones or with Joe Rogan in the interviews that he is doing.
00:21:59.900Why are you responsible as an interviewer for what your interviewee says?
00:22:07.760Right. Like that is, to me, next level.
00:22:10.700Now, you can say, oh, push back whatever arguments you want to have.
00:22:14.200But the conversation to me, we're expanding the scope of cancel culture when we're saying not only are you responsible, which I understand.
00:22:23.660If I say something that people don't like and they want to write about it from this interview, that's my words.
00:22:28.520They can use them as they see fit. Right.
00:22:30.960But attacking someone for having a conversation with someone else expands the scope of what is cancelable.
00:22:40.540And if I'm running YouTube, the guy is Rand Paul, a senator running for reelection and also the whole purpose of the marketplace of ideas is voters should be able to see all of the opinions of elected officials to better understand whether they want to support them or not.
00:23:00.120So to me, YouTube is doing a disservice for the Kentucky Senate election.
00:23:05.240When he comes on our show for 15 minutes, we put up all of his comments and all of his opinions and voters are not able to see it.
00:23:12.920Not just Kentucky voters, by the way, Megan.
00:23:15.400Somebody might decide whether or not they want to donate money to him or donate money to his opponent.
00:23:21.260We should have more opportunity to hear the all of the opinions of our elected officials.
00:24:26.680The pictures of the pictures of just the blue, I mean, across the sidewalks in New York, you couldn't there wasn't a space of sidewalk that you could see from the overheads.
00:24:38.920It was incredibly moving and the messaging from the NYPD standing in solidarity, keeping the watch in the wake of his death.
00:24:48.040I mean, if you guys go look at this on YouTube later, you'll see these pictures we're showing where it just looks it almost just looks like a forest of trees where you can't see any ground.
00:25:07.600And there's so much that has led up to the death of Jason Rivera and his partner, a 22 year old, a 26 year old guy who went to effect an arrest on the call of this suspect's mother.
00:25:21.360They went into the house, the apartment.
00:25:23.000They walked down the hall with a third guy who was a rookie and the suspect came out shooting, killing two of them.
00:25:28.940And the rookie wound up shooting the suspect in the head, killing him to the suspect.
00:25:33.240That is these two young cops were killed.
00:25:35.820And the widow, the young widow of Jason Rivera, she spoke at the funeral.
00:25:43.940And keep in mind the D.A., Alvin Bragg, the new soft on crime D.A., who has removed, among other things, the death penalty for people who kill police officers in New York.
00:25:52.300With a with a swoop, a swoop of his pen, just he's made himself the new Congress, the new governor of New York.
00:26:00.700He's decided that's no longer a thing, was sitting there.
00:26:04.480And here is what the widow, Dominique Luzuriaga, had to say.
00:26:10.900You have the whole nation on gridlock.
00:26:52.920And I believe if you look at Joe Biden's overall approval ratings, Megan, and you look at the numbers of murders that are occurring all over this nation.
00:27:04.860What you learn is being concerned that you are too hard on criminals is a luxury of a low crime environment.
00:27:15.880And we are not in a low crime environment right now.
00:27:18.380And moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and so many people out there are worried about the safety of their families.
00:27:26.300And if you look at the data, the people who have overwhelmingly been bearing the brunt of the anti-police movement, the defund the police movement, have been poor and minority people in inner city neighborhoods.
00:27:41.760There are thousands of people today who are dead because of the defund the police movement, because in the wake of George Floyd, and I think I'm speaking same for you, Megan, that, look, when police officers commit crimes, they should be put in front of juries and they should be held accountable.
00:28:01.180But the idea that what Derek Chauvin did was representative of what the vast majority of police do on any given day, I think, is one of the colossal failures of the media.
00:28:15.680They took a viral video that was an outlier of police behavior on a daily basis and used it to tar and feather police officers all over the country.
00:28:27.260And as a result, the police were unable to do their job.
00:28:32.320They pulled back from being able to aggressively protect and serve the people in their communities.
00:28:38.140And we are reaping the whirlwind of what I believe is the single most disastrous political argument of the 21st century, which is defund the police.
00:28:48.500And I believe that any politician who argued in favor of defund the police, first of all, should be held accountable for it, because now what you see is everybody is running as fast as they can and arguing.
00:28:59.120Oh, I never said defund the police, but I don't believe you should be able to represent people in this country if you were dumb enough to argue in favor of defund the police.
00:29:09.340And so my hope is that we are going to quickly spin.
00:29:13.460Remember, Megan, they took cops off television.
00:29:17.080They talked about whether or not the Paw Patrol character that is a police officer should continue to be allowed to be a police officer.
00:29:25.760And I think what's going to happen is you saw that police officer funeral on and you saw Fifth Avenue filled up with police officers is we're going to quickly spin back to police officers are heroic.
00:29:38.960They are protecting us in a time of great danger.
00:29:41.580We need to enable them to do their job more in order to protect more of us and combat what is surging crime rates.
00:29:48.920I mean, we had cities all over America, Megan, in twenty twenty one, hitting all time crime rates, Philadelphia, I believe, Austin, Texas.
00:29:56.820I don't want to name them off the top of my head, but I remember those two record number of homicides in Chicago, which has not been short on homicides over the past 20 years.
00:30:34.800It's the narrative that all cops are bad.
00:30:37.000It's this belief by some that they're out there executing, looking for for young black men to execute unfairly.
00:30:42.960Meanwhile, The Washington Post database, they keep track of the killings by police officers of unarmed people, black, white, male, female, et cetera.
00:47:00.800Like that's just I'm so much more troubled by a leader saying what is and what is not acceptable for purposes of public debate
00:47:10.100than I am by any opinions that might exist for a citizen group, right?
00:47:15.180Like, again, I'm old school in that I believe in the First Amendment and the marketplace of ideas.
00:47:20.240And when you are telling me that a marketplace is not willing to accept an argument, by the way, of whether or not that this vaccine should be mandatory,
00:47:29.600that's the very essence of what the marketplace of ideas, Megan, should exist for.
00:47:35.500We should be aggressively debating this instead of trying to artificially constrict the sphere of debate in that country or in our country or around the world.
00:48:15.120I think he wants to control the way that he leaves.
00:48:18.900And he wasn't happy that that information leaked.
00:48:21.560To me, this week would be perfect because you've got a week off before the Super Bowl week.
00:48:26.680And so you respect a lot of times it's kind of a quiet week as we get ready for the frenzy that will be next week for the biggest sporting event of the year.
00:48:34.280And so he's been so great on social media, so great with videos and sharing his life, particularly since he left the Patriots and joined the Tampa Bay bucket of years down in Florida, that I believe he wants to control the messaging.
00:48:48.240I don't know if you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or not, but there's an entire season where Larry David got mad at the coffee shop and decided to open this fight coffee shop next door.
00:48:57.860Brady seems like the kind of guy who could decide to play another year just to spite people over the way that came out about how he might retire.
00:49:08.060I hope that's true because it's fun to watch him.
00:49:11.220My other favorite observation was immediately people blame Giselle.
00:49:14.540Of course, the woman's always got to be thrown under the bus.
00:49:17.800If he decides to go, I'm sure it'll be his own decision.
00:49:24.820And we'll listen to you later today on the Clay and Buck Show.
00:49:27.620Up next, Rick Grinnell on the potential threat from Russia and the Supreme Court and Joe Biden's plan for naming the Breyer replacement.
00:49:38.060The U.N. Security Council is meeting today to discuss the Russian troop buildup along Ukraine's border.
00:49:46.540Russia has denied that it is planning to invade, but Western nations remain on edge, threatening sanctions and more if Russia makes one false move.
00:49:55.620Rick Grinnell is the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, intimately involved in all of this.
00:50:01.680He served as acting director of national intelligence as well and was a special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.
00:50:59.860Why is Russia on Ukraine's border right now?
00:51:03.340Why does it have 100000 troops sitting there in a threatening way and has captured the attention of the world?
00:51:12.400I think really the basic answer is that they want to break up NATO.
00:51:15.380They don't like NATO, which, as you know, was literally created and designed to keep Russia from entering into Europe and to not rolling over Eastern Europe.
00:51:28.720And so what's been happening under the Trump administration is that we've been strengthening NATO.
00:51:33.620You know, it's so crazy, Megan, because the narrative from the media was that Donald Trump was undermining NATO.
00:51:39.900And I would really argue and I could go toe to toe with anyone to say, if you care about an organization that is adrift, do you ignore it and let it be adrift?
00:51:52.220Or do you actually go in, talk about the problems and try to fix it?
00:51:56.940Let's let's give the analogy of a marriage.
00:51:58.940If your marriage is not going well, do you try to fix it or do you ignore it and eventually say, you know what, this is over?
00:52:08.720I actually believe that we're in that relationship right now with the U.N., for instance.
00:52:46.780And that has been scaring the Russians.
00:52:49.600The Russians then see Joe Biden take over.
00:52:51.880They see, and I think this is an incredibly important point, a disastrous Afghanistan pullout, which signaled to the world that we were really in terrible leadership positions here in the United States.
00:53:07.920We had a weak leadership team at the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House, the NSC.
00:53:13.700And so like Putin did under the Obama-Biden regime, when he grabbed parts of the Ukraine, this area called Crimea, just went in and grabbed it and it was over quickly.
00:53:26.800By the way, he did that right after the Olympics.
00:53:28.820Now what we're seeing is the Russians' saber rattling.
00:53:37.220And now they're all around the Ukraine border threatening to take over or, you know, cause some sort of conflict destabilization campaign inside Ukraine.
00:53:50.420I think it's all signaling from a weak Biden administration.
00:53:54.860There is no possible way Putin would be doing this under a Donald Trump administration.
00:54:00.900They do not, the Russians, want Ukraine to become a part of NATO.
00:54:06.040And right now we've sort of given them a special status.
00:54:08.780It's like you're our little special friend.
00:54:10.340You're NATO adjacent, but you're not in NATO.
00:54:12.640But they really want us to say explicitly they're not in NATO and they will never be in NATO.
00:54:18.220And then they want us to make all sorts of promises about not expanding NATO further and not having certain military installations or certain weapons around Russia or, you know, in these European countries.
00:54:32.740You know, Putin, in response to our demands of, you know, what are you looking for, has given us the kitchen sink of Russia's wish list.
00:54:39.160And we're basically saying, yeah, you're not getting all of that.
00:54:42.280But is it all about the fact that Ukraine had been getting closer and closer to Western countries and getting more and more NATO adjacent than it even had been?
00:54:51.320And Putin's fear, because he sees NATO as really an extension.
00:54:54.300I mean, he sees Ukraine as an extension of Russia.
00:54:56.840And is this really about just stopping at bottom Ukraine from becoming part of NATO?
00:55:02.280Well, first of all, I have to say, can I start using NATO adjacent?
00:55:11.620Look, I think it's all about NATO strength.
00:55:14.720The Russians have always hated NATO, although they do have an office there in Brussels and trying to coordinate because we want to make sure that we don't just all of a sudden miscommunicate and end up in war.
00:55:35.480I think it is all about NATO membership.
00:55:37.180Certainly, we have other countries that have talked about joining NATO, who are NATO adjacent, and they've wanted to move into the status, like Finland.
00:55:47.720And suddenly there is an uproar from the Russians.
00:55:54.100They certainly don't like their former satellite countries or areas becoming closer to NATO.
00:56:01.840They don't like NATO on their doorstep.
00:56:04.360And so I do believe that this is a signal and a negotiations tactic to say, look what we can do if you start talking more about putting Ukraine into NATO.
00:56:14.880Now, we have said, apparently, that that's a nonstarter.
00:56:19.120We've repeatedly said that any guarantees that Ukraine will never be a part of NATO is a nonstarter, not negotiable.
00:56:25.240And the Russians are saying, you know, too bad.
00:56:29.660They also want here's a list of what the Kremlin had reportedly.
00:56:34.540Apparently, Putin apparently had a conversation with Macron in France and said, I'm mad because so far no one's taking account of key Russian concerns like the one we just discussed, Ukraine.
00:56:46.860Also, we just don't want NATO expansion at all and we want the non-deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders and we want NATO to return its military potential and infrastructure in Europe to positions existing in 1997.
00:57:05.420Again, we've called all of those things nonstarters.
00:57:07.400But can you explain points two and three, non-deployment of strike weapon systems near Russian borders and then returning NATO's military potential and infrastructure back to what it was in 97?
00:57:19.360So, first of all, let's start from the fact that I'm going to say something that immediately everybody's going to jump on and say, oh, my God, he's pro-Putin.
00:57:34.960And I think it was so brilliant when Donald Trump would say, you know, we're going to put tough sanctions, we're going to try to change the behavior, we're going to shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but I want to get along with Russia.
00:57:45.760And the left would go crazy to say, why are you saying that?
00:57:48.540And I think that it's important to say up front, especially as a diplomat.
00:57:52.580I've been at the State Department for 11 years.
00:57:54.340We don't want to not get along with any country.
00:57:57.660We should look to try to find ways, but we should have absolutes.
00:58:02.420But I do believe that the demands of Russia to not put any hardware, and what they're really saying is don't move strike force capability, don't move mobile missile launchers, don't move people, don't make it look like you're threatening us on our borders.
00:58:23.560So don't move it closer to us through your NATO countries or through countries in Central or Eastern Europe.
00:58:31.880And, you know, the Russian point of view is don't threaten us by moving weaponry closer to us.
00:59:20.520And I think that it's really important when we boil this down that the audience understands we did not have this problem when Donald Trump was saying we have sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,
00:59:34.840which is a huge, not only moneymaker for Russia, but it is a pipeline of influence into Europe.
00:59:44.280And when we had sanctions and when we talked about shutting down that pipeline, it never came online.
00:59:49.280And technically, it's still not online.
00:59:51.320We could do the diplomatic thing and say we're shutting down this pipeline.
00:59:55.840And I think Russian behavior would change.
00:59:58.000But this would have never happened if we had a president who didn't back down and give a pipeline to the Germans and immediately the Russians smell weakness.
01:00:08.720I mean, I could go on and there's other parts of the world.
01:00:41.740Everyone around the world is smelling weakness with Joe Biden.
01:00:44.880So let's talk about the pipeline, because that's a big part of this.
01:00:49.240Joe Biden had a different view of it, as you point out, than Donald Trump did.
01:00:53.100And this is a critical pipeline for Russia, because not only does it allow them to fuel countries like Germany, which got rid of its nuclear power plants, which we're starting to do in more and more states here in the U.S., even though it's an incredibly efficient, clean way of manufacturing energy.
01:01:12.700So they got rid of their nukes, their power plants, and now they're dependent on other countries for their energy because their little renewables aren't quite cutting it.
01:01:22.720So Russia, enter Russia, was like, we got you.
01:01:25.360We got tons of natural resources here.
01:01:37.540And not only does that put Germany now in the position of not really being able to be in solidarity with the other NATO countries on shutting down Russia's behavior, but it emboldens Russia because they make a ton of money off of this.
01:01:51.620Right. And that's kind of what Joe Biden was saying.
01:01:53.780He was like, well, Russia's not going to do anything with Ukraine because they can't have additional sanctions.
01:02:20.760It's like Russia won't do it because I'd be cutting off the nose to spite the face.
01:02:25.160OK, so your general thoughts on on the pipeline and how important that is and how how important Joe Biden's policies are with respect to it.
01:02:32.280Well, first of all, let's talk about why America and the rest of the European Union doesn't want the Russian gas energy into Germany.
01:02:43.220You know, I think most people would say, well, let them trade.
01:02:45.940Who cares? Let them trade the the policy of America.
01:02:49.580And it's been a bipartisan policy for decades.
01:02:52.060And the policy of the European Union is that no country that's an ally of ours or within the EU should get too much of their energy from one place because then, you know, you can be bribed.
01:03:04.400It's a real problem if one country, especially Russia, if you're a member of NATO, is giving you too much energy.
01:03:10.720It's important to note that Nord Stream 1, we believe the United States policy is Nord Stream 1, should be a part of the overall diversification of energy.
01:12:56.940I don't want to see diplomats talking about true presence and war.
01:13:02.280You can talk about the possibility that the Pentagon will come in if we fail, but I don't believe that a diplomat should be there saying, you know, war, war, war.
01:13:11.740And we have too many diplomats, even on our side of the aisle, that talk about war instead of it being a backstop.
01:13:19.380It just seems to me that they keep using it as a tool.
01:13:22.480And I want to see diplomats that go in, get creative, and who are there until the end so that we don't have war, so that we can avoid it.
01:13:30.440But you've got to be tough if you're going to do that.
01:13:32.360The current crop of diplomats that we have, honestly, too many of them are not cutting it.
01:15:16.820And Joe Biden went out and said, hey, we got 90 percent of the people out, which was real terrible because it was an admittance that the United States was going to leave 10 percent behind.
01:15:26.740That was literally a earth shattering moment for our allies to understand maybe we can't rely on the United States.
01:15:35.140Maybe this is the United States that's moving in a different direction that it was really groundbreaking.
01:15:41.280I actually believe we've I said this before about the Houthis, but I actually believe that moment the Houthis thought, well, now's the time that we can start attacking others in this region.
01:15:51.500They were taken off the terrorist list by Biden.
01:15:57.420And so then you come back to this press conference and you have the minor incursion, really a delineation between how much can Russia go in and take over a country that was heard very loudly by Ukraine.
01:16:13.220And look, this last phone call that Joe Biden had with President Zelensky was also not a very good phone call because what what my sources are telling me and I trust my sources.
01:16:27.240I can tell you they're they're absolute that Zelensky was told President Zelensky was told by President Biden that Ukraine should expect no more hardware, no more military help from the United States and no more sanctions unless Russia goes in.
01:16:47.120To which President Zelensky was very upset and he said, this is the worst of both worlds for us, Mr.
01:17:47.920Let me just tell you the way embassies work with no ambassador there.
01:17:51.580Everybody is a foreign service officer beholden to Washington to get a promotion and to get a good report on their annual employment survey.
01:18:00.460No one is going to do anything unless Wendy Sherman and Anthony Blinken tell them to do this.
01:18:08.640And so this decision was a Washington based decision.
01:19:19.520Yeah, that's such a great question, because my only reaction to that and I've gotten that question a lot of like, oh, it doesn't mean no matter what you what you really did.
01:19:27.840You are going to always be criticized.
01:19:31.320We have to be able to use intelligence to inform our decisions.
01:19:37.060We cannot let emotion or misinformation get involved in our decisions.
01:19:42.680Our decisions should not be political.
01:19:45.580I actually believe that because of the criticism in Afghanistan, the disaster that we had in leaving people behind, Jake Sullivan and the entire NSC apparatus became political.
01:19:57.720And they said, we got to lean forward and remove our people proactively because of Afghanistan.
01:20:04.080Let's be emotional about Ukraine and let's get our people out.
01:20:36.060We're not going to meet Putin's demands.
01:20:38.040And indeed, you know, analysts are saying he's being intentionally, you know, he's asking for the moon intentionally, knowing that we're never going to meet these demands.
01:20:56.420He's wanted to scare member states and NATO to not expand.
01:21:01.340We're going to have a reluctance to talk about expansion.
01:21:04.580And by the way, let me just say, separate from this, you know, people are going to quote me in years to come on this next statement.
01:21:12.360But separate from all of the drama that's happening, I don't believe that we should be adding members to NATO until everybody is paying their bill and everybody is doing 2% and doing everything that they're obligated to do.
01:21:30.040Why are we talking about making the membership bigger when the current membership are not pulling their weight?
01:21:38.800But the reality is, is that what the Russians and what Putin specifically want is no more discussions about NATO expansion and certainly no more, you know, aggressive NATO, a successful NATO.
01:21:55.300He wants us trapped into talking about obligations and pay and back pay and, you know, all sorts of misinformation about the strategy that we're going to do on cyber, which is what, you know, NATO is trapped in right now of where are we going to go and how active are we going to be with cyber attacks?
01:22:14.860So the reality is, is with Putin winning and getting us to get off our game on a unified NATO, and I blame the Germans largely.
01:22:26.460Their move towards Switzerland foreign policy is so evident.
01:22:30.800They want to sell cars to everybody and they don't want to make tough decisions.
01:23:21.180So what about can I just ask you, is there a lot of people who are I don't know?
01:23:25.860I don't know how I describe them, but who criticize the expansion of NATO anyway, who say NATO was something we came up with after World War Two to prevent aggression from Russia.
01:23:38.400And here we are, you know, 80 years after that.
01:23:41.460Like, do we really need the expansion?
01:23:44.120Why are we expanding this organization that was formed to counter a threat that it's still there, but it's not exactly what it used to be?
01:23:52.500You're hitting on all the right questions, and we need to really rethink NATO.
01:23:57.040And I would argue, Megan, that Donald Trump really, even though he boiled it down to, you know, pay your fair share, Germany is not paying its fair share.
01:24:07.040I have been in lots of discussions with him about NATO.
01:24:10.500And his frustration is that NATO is not up to date in terms of what the current threats are.
01:24:43.000What I am suggesting is that we need to have a more thoughtful strategy about why are they in NATO,
01:24:48.640what they can do to help, what are the current threats.
01:24:52.320We can't just think of the threats as, you know, Russia taking over Ukraine.
01:24:56.860So we've got to roll tanks into Eastern Europe.
01:24:59.400I do believe that if we had a assessment of what are today's threats, we would have a much better strategy of what it's going to take to be a NATO member and how to make NATO current membership stronger.
01:25:16.320Hmm. OK, this is a good transition soundbite.
01:25:21.620So it's not going particularly well for Joe Biden domestically or abroad from Afghanistan to this debacle where you can see he's not that well respected on the world stage.
01:25:30.680And we, we, more importantly, the United States is not that well respected at the moment.
01:25:39.420Here was my old pal Donna Brazile, who cheated at a presidential debate and then made the mistake of sitting for an interview with me and denied it.
01:26:01.200And now this week she was on the Sunday shows.
01:26:04.420And this is how she described Joe Biden's current position.
01:26:08.800You know, Joe Biden's number one priority is the health, safety and well-being of the American people, which means crime prevention, which means jobs creation, which means making sure that we can go home to safe neighborhoods and have clean drinking water.
01:28:08.900If you're listening to this podcast and you're about to vote in an election in your state for senator or congressman, look at the person you've never heard of and look at their background.
01:28:20.280Because the whole idea of sending somebody new means you haven't heard of them before.
01:28:27.280If you've heard of these people, it's because they've run for office three or four times.
01:28:31.500Don't just vote for the name because you're comfortable hearing the name.
01:28:35.260Look at the outsider, look at the person you've never heard of and look at their background.
01:28:40.340We want business people, people from all walks of life, the Jeffersonian principle to go to Washington, make the laws while they're there and then leave the place, come home and live under those laws.
01:28:53.460I get the whole idea of term limits are not good in theory because you deny my ability to vote for who I want.
01:30:54.260OK, now let's talk about the Supreme Court, because that's another area in which there seems to be a divide between the this administration and the American people.
01:31:03.700Joe Biden has has come out and made very clear that he's got really just two criteria, two main criteria for who's going to be the Supreme Court justice.
01:31:15.080I've made no decision except one person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity.
01:31:28.260And that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.
01:31:34.840OK, so there was a poll, ABC News, Ipsos over the last couple of days, and 76 percent of the American people do not want this.
01:31:42.640They it's not that they have anything against a black woman as a Supreme Court justice.
01:31:46.560They just want him to consider all possible nominees.
01:31:49.420They don't want identity politics controlling the next Supreme Court pick.
01:31:53.640Only 23 percent believe he should consider exclusively black women for the nomination.
01:32:31.640This is, you know, look, Joe Biden voted against the first the second black person of the the first black conservative to sit on the Supreme Court.
01:32:44.280Now he's making this outrageous demand that the only people he are the only people he's going to consider are black women.
01:32:56.180I don't even think black women are going to go along with this because the reality is whoever gets the nomination is going to have an asterisk next to their name.
01:33:07.080They weren't in a pool of being considered as the best.
01:33:11.400And that's sad because there are a lot of black women who are very qualified, who should be considered in the larger pool.
01:33:23.340Why didn't he just give us a list of everybody he's going to consider and do what he does best, which is, you know, you put somebody handicapped on there, you put a gay on there, you put a Hispanic and an Asian and and then you pick.
01:33:37.060And he could have picked whoever he wanted.
01:33:38.640And and I I think that what he has done is really undermined the Supreme Court and this specific nominee to always be the one that wasn't considered with everyone else.
01:33:53.020The same as he did to Kamala Harris, the same thing, just just handicapped them a little going into the next phase in a way that's totally unnecessary.
01:34:02.040But he wanted the bounce in the polls that came from saying, I'm going to find a black running mate, or in this case, I'm going to find a black woman.
01:34:10.160He got the bounce from the Washington, D.C. newsrooms.
01:34:13.380He didn't get the bounce from the American people.
01:34:15.720The American people look at this and they say, oh, gosh, I hate this.
01:35:10.440The Democrats always send out press releases when they hire a gay person.
01:35:13.800And I think it's just it's not good for the nominee or the person that you pick to somehow make an irrelevant characteristic as the reason they're getting the job.
01:35:26.940Look, as somebody who's had to fight within the Republican Party to actually even get an interview for the job.
01:35:47.060And I think that's what we want in America is people who get their job on merit, not on skin color, not on gender, not on sexual orientation.
01:36:00.140You know, it would be amazing if one of the women, let's say he whatever, I don't know who he's going to choose, but let's say he chooses this one woman on the D.C. Court of Appeals.
01:36:09.240If she publicly says, I decline because I will not be an affirmative action appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, you get back to me or some other future president, get back to me when what you're looking for is the most talented jurist.
01:36:24.400Then I'll consider you consider me in the larger pool of everyone.
01:36:36.100It's just you're going to have the love of the American people and remove all the doubts he has created about you before we even know who you are.
01:36:44.400Rick, it's not good for the Supreme Court pick as somebody who's broken a lot of barriers.