JD Vance
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Summary
J.D. Vance: Ukraine cannot win its war against Russia and won't be able to expel the Russian military from parts of eastern Ukraine . The U.S. Senate proposed under Mitch McConnell, a plan to send another $60 billion to Ukraine . Vance: It's abetting the killing of an entire generation of Ukrainians .
Transcript
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It became very clear to anyone paying attention several months ago that Ukraine cannot win its
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war against Russia. The Ukrainian military will not be able, even with Western backing,
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hundreds of billions of dollars of it, to expel the Russian military from parts of eastern Ukraine.
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Ukraine doesn't have the industrial capacity, neither does NATO or the United States,
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and it doesn't have the people. Russia has 100 million more in population than Ukraine does.
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And that means that further support from the West for the Ukrainian military only means more dead
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Ukrainians and a further degraded Western economy in the US and in Germany particularly. So it's not
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simply a fool's errand. It's self-destruction. It's insane. It's cruel. It's abetting the killing
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of an entire generation of Ukrainians. This is very obvious. No honest person at this point
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will deny it. And yet somehow the United States Senate, which is always several years behind
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reality in its perceptions just a few weeks ago, decided to send another $60 billion to the Ukrainian
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government, which is both corrupt and authoritarian. They've canceled elections. They banned an entire
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Christian denomination. And then they killed an American journalist for noting any of this.
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And yet the United States Senate proposed under Mitch McConnell, a plan to send another $60 billion
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to Ukraine. Well, imagine the surprise of all rational people around the world to wake up this
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morning and discover this could actually happen. And so with that in mind, we thought it'd be worth
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talking to one of the very few Republican senators who's bothered to make the counter case.
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And that would be J.D. Vance of Ohio, who joins us now from the United States.
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Senator, thanks so much for coming on. If you wouldn't mind telling us where
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this legislation is right now, what you expect to happen and what you think should happen.
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Yeah, Tucker. So there are two big things that will happen here. So tonight we will clear a major
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procedural vote or we won't. So this is really the best opportunity tonight to kill this legislation.
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Encourage everybody to do everything that they can. Contact everyone they can to ensure that we
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actually do kill the legislation. It is very close. The Democrats have banded together with
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17 Republicans. We only need eight of those Republicans to flip their vote to kill this
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thing. And I think that we'll get at least one who will in fact flip their vote. So that's where
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it sits in the Senate. The second thing, and frankly, the best opportunity we have to kill this
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is in the House. And that's part of what I'm trying to do is notify people about how bad this
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legislation is so that after it clears the Senate, if it does, then it goes to the House and the House
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has a real opportunity to at least make it better, but hopefully kill it. And I want to say just a
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couple of things here, Tucker, that are extremely important to know about this legislation. Number
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one is that it sends $61 billion to Ukraine to fund, as you said, a hopeless war in Eastern Europe
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that will decimate the Ukrainian population even more than it's already been decimated. So it's a
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terrible, terrible piece of legislation on the policy. The second thing I want to say, Tucker,
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though, is that it doesn't just fund Ukraine in 2024. And this is the most important point. It
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actually funds Ukraine in 25 and 26. Now, what's the problem with that? Say, for example, that we
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have a new president in 2025, that president would be handcuffed by the promises that we are making in
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law to Ukraine today. If you go back to 2019, Tucker, to try to give you a sense of why this matters,
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in 2019, the U.S. House impeached then-President Donald Trump on the theory that they had appropriated
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money to Ukraine and Donald Trump refused to send it to Ukraine. So if Trump is elected president
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again and become president on January of 2025, he will conduct diplomacy. And if that diplomacy does
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not include sending additional billions to Ukraine, there is a theoretical argument, a predicate,
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if you will, for impeaching Donald Trump because they have tried to tie his hands. And the final
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point I'll make on this, Tucker, is that the Washington Post has already said, based on leaks
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from inside the intel community, the purpose of this legislation is to tie a future President Trump's
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hands. We're not just sending billions to Ukraine in 2024. We're trying to make it impossible for the
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next president to conduct diplomacy on his terms. It's anti-democratic, and it will lead to endless
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So the political calculation behind this seems incredibly dark. So does the humanitarian effect.
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I noticed that no one on Capitol Hill seems interested in finding out how many have died in
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this war. Reliable estimates in the area, these are not partisan, are that about 400,000 Ukrainians have
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died. That's about as many Americans as died in the entire Second World War over the entire duration.
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And it's, of course, a much smaller country. So how do senators, Republican senators,
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get away with saying, we're doing this on behalf of the Ukrainian people, on behalf of democracy,
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when it's destroying an entire generation and it's not a democracy? Like, what's the thinking here?
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Well, Tucker, they bought into the propaganda that what is in the best interest of Ukraine
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is to prolong this war. And so Zelensky comes to Washington. You know, he's tougher than a lot of
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them are. And I think they get, you know, a little bit of excitement from that. And Zelensky tells them
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a story that his war is in the best interest of the whole of Ukraine. Now, never mind that there
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are people within Ukraine protesting the draft. Never mind that the average age of a soldier there
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is pushing 45 years old. And never mind that the 650,000 wealthiest Ukrainians left the country at
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the beginning of the war. They didn't stay and fight. So the idea that this is unanimously supported
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by the Ukrainian population is, of course, preposterous and absurd. No one believes it.
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But here's the really crazy, and I think ultimately the very cynical thing that's going on, Tucker,
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is that everyone knows that this war will lead to the destruction of Ukraine. I've had conversations
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with Democratic colleagues where they get this sort of dark look in their eyes and they say,
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effectively, that they want to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian drop of blood. I think if you
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really ask these guys, they recognize that this is not in the best interest of Ukraine.
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This is fundamentally in the interest of military contractors and people who think
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that America's most pressing challenge is to defeat the Russians. Of course,
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that's not a preoccupation that I share. I don't think Russia should have invaded,
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Tucker, but I also think that we've got to be much more focused on more pressing problems,
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like the demographic collapse of the United States, like the open borders, and like what's going on
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East Asia. So it's a massive campaign, Tucker, to distract people from the real problems in the
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world and the real problems that exist in this country. And underlying it all, as you just said,
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is an impulse that's indefensible and I think deeply immoral. So I'm so grateful for you having
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the courage to talk about this in public, and I hope common sense in your position prevails.