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Feb. 23, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:58
Biden Sanctions Putin…But Will It Work? | Ep. 1439
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Joe Biden calls Putin's incursion into Ukraine an invasion and announces a slate of sanctions.
Canada's Parliament Greenlights just introduced continued Emergencies Act invocation.
And Nancy Pelosi is monitoring American truckers headed for Washington, D.C.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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All righty, folks, we'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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Alrighty, so there's a lot of movement on the Ukraine front.
The big move yesterday is that Joe Biden, the President of the United States, announced a new slate of sanctions against the Russian regime, including against some of the oligarchs who are in Russia, against Vladimir Putin personally.
Now, does Vladimir Putin care very much about that?
Not really, considering he has some $200 billion worth of stuff just hanging out.
He's got it in Russia, he's got it in Switzerland, he's got it pretty much everywhere.
So Vladimir Putin isn't going to be On the unemployment line anytime soon.
But the question is whether this slate of sanctions is actually going to do anything because here is the simple fact.
The West has spent the last several decades basically attempting to shift away from natural gas and oil based energy to its own discredit.
That move toward green energy has basically made Europe extraordinarily dependent on Russian natural gas and oil.
And this means that they can't keep up these sanctions for very long.
And this is what the Russian regime knows.
So when Joe Biden goes out there and he says he's going to levy these sanctions in a wide way, the real question that Putin is asking himself is not whether there are going to be a slate of sanctions that arrive at a moment's notice and that are quite broad.
I think he's assuming that there will be some of that.
The question is, how long can they hold on to this before they sort of let go?
And Putin believes, based on prior experience, that it won't be all that long.
After all, there was talk of sanctions after Putin invaded Georgia in 2008.
There was talk of sanctions after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014.
And none of it lasted more than about 37 seconds because Vladimir Putin was in control of the natural gas flow into Europe.
And so when we look at what Joe Biden had to say yesterday, the question is not really what Joe Biden is doing in the here and now.
The question is, how long is that going to last?
How solid is the front going to be?
Okay, so yesterday, Joe Biden gave a speech.
He was some 85 minutes late to his own speech.
He's made this a habit, which again, is bad optics.
Put aside the scheduling of all of it, Joe Biden is routinely late to his own speeches and it looks really bad.
And he looks really old.
And Vladimir Putin does have that on his mind.
He believes that Joe Biden is a weak horse.
He believes that Joe Biden is not somebody who actually is capable of standing up to him.
Whether that is right or wrong remains to be seen.
Although, of course, when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States under Barack Obama, he and Barack Obama didn't do anything to stand up to Putin.
Anyway, Joe Biden gets up yesterday and he makes this big speech.
He says that Putin has now announced that he is carving a chunk out of Ukraine.
Yesterday, Vladimir Putin recognized two regions of Ukraine as independent states.
And he bizarrely asserted that these regions are no longer part of Ukraine and their sovereign territory.
To put it simply, Russia just announced that it is carving out a big chunk of Ukraine.
Okay, and this isn't incorrect.
I mean, essentially, Russia had announced that it was carving out a big chunk of Ukraine a while ago when it allowed pro-Russian separatists to start wars in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Biden continued, this is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Now, this is the first time that Biden has used the term invasion to refer Do Russian troops crossing the border between Russia and Ukraine?
There have been a serious question as to whether it would just be called a sort of minor incursion in the way that Joe Biden had suggested a few weeks ago would not be punishable under international law.
And the reason that that was questionable is because the separatist regions of Ukraine, which again are sort of run as proxy forces by Russia, again, that's what they are.
I mean, they are just proxy states for Russia.
So Russian troops entering those regions is sort of a Reinforcement of the facts already on the ground.
But Joe Biden did the right thing yesterday.
He did say that this was an invasion because it is.
It turns out that when the troops of one country cross the border of another sovereign country, that is called an invasion by the dictionary definition.
Last night, Putin authorized Russian forces to deploy into the region, these regions.
Today, he asserted that these regions are actually extend deeper than the two areas he recognized, claiming large areas currently under the jurisdiction of the Ukraine government.
He's setting up a rationale to take more territory by force, in my view.
And if we listened to his speech last night, and many of you did, I know, he's setting up a rationale to go much further.
This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he indicated and asked permission to be able to do from his Duma.
Okay, then Joe Biden announced that the United States and its allies were going to begin He said, if they'll go further, then we will ratchet it up.
So he's not going to hit him with the full slate.
So this was always the question, was whether there was going to be some sort of trigger.
Putin was going to cross that border.
And then the West was going to say, okay, well, now you guys are going to get cut off at the knees because here's the reality.
The Russian economy is extraordinarily weak.
There's been this sort of clever saying going around for a while that Russia is essentially the upper Volga with nuclear weapons.
And that's correct.
I mean, Russia is not a strong economy.
All they have is natural gas and oil.
And if, again, Europe had not been stupid enough to cut itself off from its own energy supply, then they would not be reliant on Russian natural gas and oil.
Russia has an economy about the size of South Korea's.
Russia's GDP per capita is extremely low.
This is not a powerful country.
This is a country that is a second rate power with nuclear weapons.
Which isn't to say they're not a threat because secondary power with nuclear weapons is still a threat.
But the question was going to be whether the West was going to hit Putin with harsh sanctions or whether they were going to sort of dip their toe in the water.
It seems like the Biden administration is doing the dip the toe in the water routine.
So let's begin to.
So I'm going to begin to impose sanctions in response far beyond the steps we and our allies and partners implemented in 2014.
And if Russia goes further with this invasion, we stand prepared to go further as with sanctions.
Okay, so what exactly will those sanctions be?
Biden announced a variety of sanctions yesterday in this speech.
We're implementing full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and their military bank.
We're implementing comprehensive sanctions on Russian sovereign debt.
That means we've cut off Russia's government from Western financing.
It can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either.
Starting tomorrow and continuing in the days ahead, we'll also impose sanctions on Russia's elites and their family members.
They share in the corrupt gains of the Kremlin policies and should share in the pain as well.
Because of Russia's actions, we've worked with Germany to ensure Nord Stream 2 will not, as I promised, will not move forward.
We'll get further into Joe Biden's speech, in which he gets a little dramatic, but not really, because he can't do that anymore.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so these are the slate of sanctions.
In a second, we'll discuss how far these sanctions actually go, because the answer is not all that far.
He sounds like he's talking a bigger game than he actually is, which is why, by the way, the Russian ruble actually strengthened against the dollar yesterday after the announcement of the sanctions, because people who are watching the markets are like, well, this isn't as bad as we sort of thought it was going to be.
Biden finished with a flourish.
He suggested that there was no reason why Putin thought that he had the right to who Who in the Lord's name does Putin think gives him the right?
And the answer, of course, is that Putin doesn't care who quote unquote gives him the right.
He doesn't think that anybody gives him the right.
He just does as much as he can until somebody stops him, because this is the history of Russian leadership.
Who in the Lord's name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belong to his neighbors?
This is a flagrant violation of international law and demands a firm response from the international community.
Over the last few months, we've coordinated closely with our NATO allies and partners in Europe and around the world to prepare that response.
We've said all along, and I've told Putin to his face more than a month ago, that we would act together.
And the moment Russia moved against Ukraine, Russia has now undeniably moved against Ukraine by declaring these independent states.
So what exactly are the sanctions that the United States and its allies are levying against Putin and Russia?
The answer is they're pretty darn weak.
And you heard Biden said that this is the beginning.
He's going to start with this.
So he's going to pursue a policy of what we used to call graduated escalation.
Graduated escalation is a very, very stupid policy.
We tried it in Vietnam.
It was the LBJ War policy.
The basic idea was if we gradually increase the amount of pressure that we are exerting against the North Vietnamese, eventually they will realize that we can do this indefinitely, and then they will stop what they are doing.
And of course, instead, what they took this to mean is, okay, well, they're not overwhelming us, so I guess we can continue to up the ante, and they will lose their will before we do.
And Putin believes the same thing, that if this is just graduated Escalation, graduated equilibrium, is the other thing I used to call it.
If that's what this is, then I can survive this.
The actual way that you want to fight a war or impose sanctions is with shock and awe.
You want to go in, full scale, with as harsh a regime as you can muster, and demonstrate that they cannot last under this sort of pressure.
Not that you can keep ratcheting up the pressure if they go further, but that what they've done is already a violation so grave that you will essentially sanction them into the Stone Age.
But that's not what Biden is doing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden said the U.S.
will impose full blocking sanctions on a Russian military bank and VEB, the State Development Corporation.
It's also cutting off Moscow from Western financing through sanctions on Russia's sovereign debt.
But the fine print in the Treasury announcement on Tuesday says that the ban only applies to debt issued by Russia after March 1.
You may have noticed that today is not March 1.
So in other words, Russia can continue to sell its sovereign debt for the next couple of weeks.
And previously issued debt can still trade in secondary markets.
All Russian financial institutions deserve to be cut off from the outside world, says the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Their dollar transactions restricted until Russia withdraws from Ukrainian territory.
The new sanctions on Russian elites look weak in targeting Putin cronies already on the sanctions list.
So when he says we're going to target all of these Russian oligarchs, many of them have already been targeted.
The Europeans also settled for tough talk but weak sanctions.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced sanctions on five Russian banks and three wealthy Russian oligarchs.
But those oligarchs and four of the five institutions had already been targeted by the U.S.
Treasury.
Johnson says these are only the first tranche, the first barrage.
But every name on the Navalny 35, a list of Russian elites compiled by a dissident Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization, ought to face sanctions.
Germany said it was halting the certification for Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
But Russia immediately responded by saying, OK, fine, well, then get ready for your prices to go up.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian foreign minister and a person to whom Barack Obama once pledged actual flexibility, he tweeted out, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Well, welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay two euros for one cubic meters of natural gas.
So he's basically just saying, OK, well, you know, we can handle it.
Can you handle it?
And the answer is probably not.
I mean, the fact is that.
The sanctions could hurt Russia's economy, but Moscow has taken steps to buffer itself against exactly these sorts of sanctions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The bulk of Russia's export revenue comes from mineral products such as oil, natural gas and coal.
This dependent makes energy exports an attractive target for sanctions.
But the EU is reliant on Russia for more than one third of its natural gas imports.
As of January, the US and Europe weren't weighing sanctions against Russian exports of oil and natural gas directly, given the concern that doing so could already increase the high energy costs in Europe.
Also, Russia has started diversifying its trade efforts with China.
Those efforts include opening a major gas pipeline to the country in 2019.
To this point, that is still not a huge percentage of the oil and natural gas that it is exporting.
Most of that oil and natural gas, or a huge chunk of that, goes to Germany.
But the question is, how long can Germany actually last with those high oil and natural gas prices?
That is the serious question here.
So in a second, we will get to the fact that Joe Biden is targeting some Russian assets for sanctions, but not really the ones that count.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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As has been made clear, by the way, the West has been studiously avoiding actually cracking down on the oil and natural gas.
Again, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration will take steps to ensure its sanctions against Russia over Ukraine don't lead to a jump in energy prices and will act to lower prices if they do, according to a senior State Department official.
The U.S.
sanctions stop short of measures that could curtail oil and gas exports out of Russia, the official said, as the U.S.
seeks to dent the Russian economy while avoiding collateral damage to the U.S.
The official said the sanctions that are being imposed today and that could be imposed in the near future are not targeting and will not target oil flows and natural gas flows.
What do you think Russia's chief export is?
They're not exporting iPhones.
They don't make anything over there except for natural gas and oil.
The official said doing anything that affects or halts energy transactions would have a great impact on the United States, American citizens, and our allies.
So our intention here is to impose the hardest sanctions we can while trying to safeguard the American public and the rest of the world from those measures.
So Putin knows this game.
Putin's like, okay, so you're going to do all this for show, and then you're going to take all of the natural gas that we have to sell.
Because you can't afford it.
And we can.
Because we are a petro-oligarchy.
And you guys decided that you were going to shut down all of your nuclear reactors in Europe and build a bunch of windmills.
Well done, everyone.
U.S.
officials are working closely with other countries to ensure more supply gets on the market if prices do rise.
That could include releasing government-owned oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but that won't happen as long as prices stay stable.
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries have told U.S.
officials they understand the need to keep markets stable considering the ongoing international crisis.
The question is how much they're going to follow through the longer this lasts.
So again, these sanctions don't really look like they are strong enough to force Russia into doing anything at this point.
Biden, for his part, says that, yeah, I understand the oil and natural gas prices are going to go up.
He says defending freedom will have its costs.
As we respond, my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the pump.
As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well and here at home.
We need to be honest about that.
But as we do this, I'm going to take robust action to make sure the paying of our sanctions is targeted at the Russian economy, not ours.
Right, so he's saying right there, I'm going to avoid doing the things that actually will hurt the Russian economy in any serious way.
Meanwhile, Gensaki is out there saying, yeah, we should probably expect some higher energy prices.
Now, here's the thing.
Last year, they had their Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, going around talking about why high gas prices were a good thing.
They were material good because they would encourage people to get off of natural gas and oil.
And then the price of gas at the pump rose.
And then this administration decided they were going to consider lowering the gas tax.
They decided that they were going to consider some sort of strategic petroleum reserve release. And now they're saying, okay, well, you know, we'll do sanctions on Russia, just not the ones that actually will work. So here is Jen Psaki saying we should probably expect some higher energy prices.
You mean specifically Americans should expect higher gasoline?
Yeah, energy prices. Exactly. That's that's what we want the American public to be aware is a possibility. Now, hilariously enough, hilariously enough, this administration also says that they've never been a fan of Nord Stream 2.
That's the Russian pipeline into Germany that made Germany more dependent in the future on Russian natural gas and oil.
Russia knows that's not going to be shut down indefinitely.
Because again, there is only one cost effective measure for garnering energy in Europe and that is listening to the Russians.
They know this.
So now, I love that this administration is trying to backfill the history and trying to rewrite it in real time.
Oh, we never liked Nord Stream 2, really, because the first thing you did when you entered office was you greenlit Nord Stream 2 and you shut down Keystone XL.
So theoretically, you could reopen Keystone XL, but they're not going to do that.
They're not going to increase domestic natural gas and oil production, because that would cut against their green base.
Here's Jen Psaki trying to pretend that this administration has never been a fan of Nord Stream 2, despite, by the way, the fact that a few weeks ago, the Republicans Foreseeing that the Russians were probably going to invade Ukraine, started talking about putting sanctions on Nord Stream 2, and this administration killed that effort.
Here is Jen Psaki trying to rewrite history.
The president has never been a supporter of Nord Stream 2.
We've always criticized it as a project that we didn't support. We took a range of steps and sanctions, including sanctions, to make that very clear. What the announcement made by the German chancellor today was not by accident.
It was at the conclusion of a range of diplomatic engagement and efforts by the president and members of our national security team and unity from the Europeans about the fact that this could could not move forward.
Okay, well, here's the thing.
For how long?
Again, I keep saying for how long, because Putin, China, America's enemies, they have long-range vision.
For American politicians, because we switch presidents every four years, or maybe every eight years, and because we switch Congress people every two years, and switch senators every six years in this country, because there's an enormous amount of turnover, people's long-term vision really does not exist.
Instead, people attempt to move the ball forward incrementally.
When it comes to foreign policy, you have to have long-term vision, otherwise you lose.
Putin has long-term vision because he's dictator for life.
Xi Jinping has long-term vision because he's dictator for life.
This is not an advocacy of dictatorship for life.
I'm not Thomas Friedman praising the Chinese system because you can get things done.
The only point that I'm making is that it requires politicians to say the hard things and then do the hard things for long periods of time on foreign policy in order to effectuate change.
Putin looks at the West and feels that that's not going to happen.
And he is likely correct.
Hey, Jen Psaki was asked by Peter Ducey.
So here's the thing, Jen.
You guys are talking sanctions.
Sanctions have never actually accomplished what they have sought to accomplish.
So what's your actual plan here?
And she really does not have a good answer.
Sanctions can be a powerful tool.
They have been in a lot of moments throughout history, and that what happens with sanctions is they work over time.
They're not an end.
They're not intended to max out at the beginning.
They're long lasting and sustainable, and they're intended to squeeze.
They're intended to squeeze.
OK, yeah, but here's the problem.
If you're not squeezing, you may not export.
Then what exactly are you squeezing?
The answer here is really not much.
So the real question in all of this is, is this going to accomplish its goal?
Now, I'm not saying that the Biden administration is making all the wrong moves here.
I'm just saying that if you're going to hit with sanctions, you hit with all of them.
If you're going to go after the Russian economy, you go after the Russian economy.
Because Putin, living in a country with a $10,000 GDP per person per capita income, Living in a country where he is a full-scale dictator, he's not particularly vulnerable to these sorts of threats.
He's living in his palatial estates, not really caring.
We care.
The Europeans care about their prices rising.
So it's not that the Biden administration is making all the wrong moves.
It's that the moves they are making are not actually calibrated to get Putin to do anything.
And I think Putin knows that.
I'd be very surprised if these sanctions are effective in achieving their desired result.
All righty, coming up, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has now canceled his meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister over in Russia.
But does that really matter?
We'll get to that in a moment.
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Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he canceled his meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister over in Russia.
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Okay, meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he canceled his meeting with Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister over in Russia.
Here's what he had to say.
I agreed to meet Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov this week on February 24th to discuss our country's respective concerns about European security.
But only if Russia did not invade Ukraine.
Now that we see the invasion is beginning, and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time.
Okay, now again, just like with the sanctions, this sort of thing, it looks good, but the question is how practical is it really?
And the answer is not particularly practical, because simultaneously, according to Politico, foreign ministers are likely to meet in Vienna in the coming days with the hopes of sealing a return to an Iran nuclear deal, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
The two people said the meeting may involve the Iranian foreign minister and foreign ministers from three European countries involved in the talks, Britain, Germany, and France.
Those officials are seeking to resurrect a 2015 deal that would limit Tehran's nuclear ambitions in exchange for broad sanctions relief.
The foreign ministers from China and Russia could possibly join online.
Well, isn't that weird?
So we're saying, you know, we're not actually going to talk with the Russians because we have nothing to say to them.
They're terrible.
Also, if Russia could join us here at this table where we're about to make a bunch of concessions to the Iranians who are backed by Russia, that'd be great.
So your diplomatic freeze isn't actually a diplomatic freeze, is it?
Diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, China, and the United States have been negotiating in the Austrian capital since last April.
The negotiations are mediated and coordinated by the European Union.
U.S., European, and Russian negotiators have warned in recent months Iran is only weeks away from having enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon, arguing time is running out.
So, in other words, while we are saying publicly that we are cutting off relations with the Russians, we're in the back room here trying to cut a deal with the Russians to hand money to the Iranians.
So why exactly would Putin be scared at this point?
Why would he think that this is going to last in any way?
The perspective of this administration on Russia is completely discombobulated.
On the one hand, we definitely have to sanction them.
How dare they go into Ukraine?
On the other hand, well, you know, we don't want the gas prices to rise.
And I mean, that would be kind of a problem.
On the one hand, we need to cut off relations with the Russians.
No meetings with the Russians.
On the other, I will see you tomorrow at the bar where we will be discussing how we can back your favorite proxy in the Middle East, Iran.
I mean, if you're Vladimir Putin, you gotta be laughing into your sleeve at this point.
Because you know that the West does not have a unified response, and you know that they don't even have a unified response even when they do have a unified response.
They may be unified in being upset about Ukraine, but they're not unified around a broad range of other issues where they seem to want your help.
China knows the same thing, by the way.
This is why I'm sending our climate envoy, John Kerry, to China.
While we're simultaneously trying to crack down on China over the Wuhan virus, over the Olympics, over their human rights violations, over the threats to Taiwan, meanwhile, you got John Kerry over there going, well, you know what?
If they're holding a million Muslims in Shenzhen in abject servitude, that's okay.
I mean, we do have to work with them on climate change.
That's not the way any of this works.
Nobody feels threatened by you if you spend all of your time trying to simultaneously chide and negotiate with these people.
You can't do that.
And I'll tell you that the biggest indicator to Vladimir Putin that the rest is not going to last on this is, again, the West's willingness to subsume its own foreign policy beliefs, to subsume its own values, to the green boondoggle.
Bjorn Longberg has a good piece over at the New York Post today talking about the costs of green energy policy, which, by the way, is the reason why energy is so unbelievably expensive in Europe.
The reason that the Europeans require the help of the Russians is because they decided they were going to take offline all of the things that allow them to produce energy.
It's not just over there.
It's also over here.
Bjorn Lomborg says, Energy costs are climbing out of control.
A gallon of gas cost nearly a buck more than a year ago.
Americans are experiencing sticker shock this winter on home heating costs.
Though part of this is due to the world restarting after the pandemic, climate policies are increasingly driving prices up.
We need a change of direction.
Fossil fuels still deliver the vast majority of energy.
The European Union puts climate at the top of its political agenda, yet more than 80% of its primary energy needs are met by fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency.
Despite endless environmental talk, solar and wind contribute only about 3% of Europe's total energy.
So, they've sunk billions and billions and billions of dollars into solar and wind, and it contributes 3% of Europe's total energy, and meanwhile, Russia's just shipping them gas.
So Putin looks at that and he goes, yeah, I mean, they're literally tweeting that out.
As I said before, they're literally tweeting out that you guys are not going to last the test of time because your gas is going to be too expensive.
As Bjorn Lomborg writes, making a transition from fossil fuels to green energy is costly.
Solar and wind can only deliver electricity, which accounts for less than a fifth of total energy consumption.
Moreover, as Europe is learning, leaning on unreliable sources like wind that leaves households vulnerable.
Wind speeds were unusually low for most of 2021, causing most of Europe's current energy pain.
When the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, prices rise quickly.
We have to revert to fossil fuels for backup.
Batteries are inadequate and expensive, easily quadrupling solar electricity costs and failing to provide much power.
In 2021, Europe had only battery capacity to backup less than one and a half minutes of its average electricity usage.
By 2030, with 10 times the stock of batteries and somewhat more usage needed, they will have enough for 12 minutes of coverage.
And as countries move to net zero carbon emissions, the target endorsed by Biden and the EU, costs will escalate much higher again.
And then the dirty little secret will be that Russia will continue to ship the actual power that is necessary for Europe to continue to function.
Research published in Nature Magazine finds that reducing emissions 80% will cost the United States $2.1 trillion every year from 2050, or more than $5,000 per person per year.
year from 2050 or more than $5,000 per person per year.
To get to 100%, that would be far higher.
To put that in context, the annual US.
cost of World War II is estimated at $1 trillion in today's money.
Every year by 2050, climate policy could cost Americans more than twice what they paid during the Second World War, and energy policy will turbocharge inflation.
Bank of America estimates it'll lead to an additional 3% of greenflation, which will reduce growth dramatically.
So, in other words, we decided to pursue goals that were impractical and expensive, And Russia, meanwhile, continued to be the dirty little secret in the other room, providing all sorts of energy to Europe.
No wonder they think they can outlast the West.
Because why would, again, what are the indicators they can't outlast the West?
They've done this twice before in the last 15 years alone.
Why would they think they can't outlast the West?
And what's the evidence that they won't?
That's why what Biden is doing here is pretty good evidence that he has no intent of outlasting Vladimir Putin on this.
So I suggested yesterday on the show that I think there's a good shot that Putin just consolidates his gains in eastern Ukraine and does nothing else.
And he's like, OK, I'll just sit here and then you guys will relent.
And I'll just get to keep these places as independent republics.
Whatever.
And I'll keep my Russian troops here in this part of Ukraine for the possibility of a future move.
Or, theoretically, he could decide to go whole hog and say, OK, I still don't think that you guys are going to crack down with the full force of sanctions beyond the next five minutes.
Who knows?
He could do any of those things.
Right now, Putin is indeed in the catbird seat.
And all the triumphalism that you are seeing from folks right now about Biden struck back Just wait.
I wish he had.
I mean, I want Putin to lose.
I think what Putin is doing here is evil.
I think Putin is a brutal thug dictator.
I want him to lose.
But I don't think that the moves the West is making right here are geared toward him losing.
Meanwhile, of course, the media is looking for some other scapegoat for the fact that the West is failing.
And so they've decided that the scapegoat is, of course, Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump was on Buck Sexton's radio show yesterday, and he was talking about Putin's incursion.
The headline that the left continued to print is that he called Putin's move genius and savvy.
Okay.
If you ignore all the context.
Yeah, sure.
What he actually said is that it was a politically genius and savvy move for Putin to do this because the West is not going to stand up to him.
And that's sad.
So if you ignore the last part of that, then sure, he's rooting for Putin, except for the part where he says that Biden is being weak and it's pathetic and sad.
Here is Donald Trump yesterday, the left, of course, looking for a headline to try and suggest that this is Trump's fault, when the simple fact of the matter is, and you don't have to be a historical revisionist to see this, Vladimir Putin invaded during George W. Bush's time in office, he invaded during Barack Obama's time in office, and he invaded during Joe Biden's time in office.
There's one president missing from that list.
Here was Trump yesterday.
I said, this is genius.
Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine.
Putin declares it as independent.
Oh, that's wonderful.
So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine.
I said, how smart is that?
And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper.
That's the strongest peace force.
We could use that on our southern border.
That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen.
There were more army tanks than I've ever seen.
They're going to keep peace all right.
No, but think of it.
Here's a guy who's very savvy.
I know him very well.
Very, very well.
By the way, this never would have happened with us had I been in office.
Not even thinkable.
This would never have happened.
But here's a guy that says, you know, I'm going to declare A big portion of Ukraine independent.
He used the word independent.
And we're going to go out and we're going to go in and we're going to help keep peace.
You got to say that's pretty savvy.
OK, so it never would have happened if I'm president.
Then he went on and he suggested that it was, quote unquote, very sad.
That Biden had allowed this to happen.
Naturally, this led to the White House jumping on this and suggesting, oh, well, you know, the real story here is that Trump is pro-Russia.
It's so tiresome, guys.
You're in charge.
You're in the White House.
Do something that matters.
But here's Jen Psaki focusing on, well, you know, we would never take advice from someone who praises Putin.
Really, wouldn't you?
Would you take advice from a former president who, let's say, had pledged Vladimir Putin flexibility and then allowed him to essentially take over all peacekeeping operations in, say, Syria and also invade Ukraine and take over Crimea?
Because that would be Barack Obama, a different form of president.
Here is Jen Psaki going after Trump, of course.
Does the White House have any reaction to former President Trump calling Putin's move yesterday genius and smart?
Well, as a matter of policy, we try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy, which I believe is what happened there, expresses an openness to lifting sanctions about the seizing of territory in Crimea, or at any point in time told leaders of the G7 that Crimea is a part of Russia, regardless if they are a former president.
Okay, so, you know, the real story here is that Trump was so kind to Russia.
Okay, guys, I noticed that he is invading Ukraine under your watch.
Under your watch.
Well, you know, no analysis of Ukraine and Russia would be complete without the simple fact that Cardi B sounded off on it.
Because, after all, we're a very serious country filled with very serious people.
Here is Cardi B sounding off on Ukraine and Russia.
And suffice it to say, she is a Shakespeare for our time.
She is just, as we all know from her massive hit, WAP, I did a better cover than she did, then we know that her thoughts on issues like this are vital.
And thank God Cardi B has now sounded off.
I'm really not on NATO side.
I'm really not in Russian side.
I'm actually in the citizen side because at the end of the day, the world is having a crisis right now.
There's inflation, not only in America, but everywhere in the world.
It's really hard to get, um, the economy back up.
There is so much shipments and embarkments backed up.
China's not really messing with us.
So a lot of things are behind.
A lot of goods are behind and this has made it way more complicated.
Indeed.
Indeed.
All right.
So in just a second, we'll get to continuing Emergencies Act invocation in Canada where there's no emergency.
We'll get to that in a moment.
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Alrighty, we'll get to what's going on in Canada in just one second.
First, I really believe there is no better place for a grand meeting of the minds than sitting down over a cup of coffee and letting the conversation just happen.
I've had so many of the most important conversations in my life over a cup of coffee with one of my closest friends.
And normally we don't put this sort of stuff on screen.
But now we are doing that.
In my new show, The Search, I will be taking you to my favorite local spots where you get to see the conversation that you normally don't get to see.
When I'm off camera with my friends, normally that's the stuff that we don't put on camera.
Now we're putting it on camera so that you can see what those conversations actually look and sound like.
The second episode of The Search features my very good friend, highly lauded historian, Neil Ferguson.
It's an excellent, fascinating conversation.
Neil is one of the most interesting minds around on everything from cryptocurrency to world history to war.
I cannot wait to share all of it with you.
It's a great conversation.
Neil's a fantastic guy.
The episode releases tomorrow, Thursday the 24th.
It will be exclusive to Daily Wire members.
So if you're not currently a member, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join today.
It's a wonderful show.
I think you'll enjoy it and find it.
Truly enlightening.
It's a bunch of people with 160 IQs sitting around and talking about life and history and all the important things within.
Go check it out, dailywire.com slash subscribe, so you can have access to it.
Also, The Daily Wire, we're way bigger than you think, and we are only getting bigger.
See for yourself with our binge-worthy new docuseries, The Enemy Within, featuring acclaimed journalist and expert in national threats, Lee Smith.
Smith uncovers a political coup orchestrated by America's ruling elites to generate their own wealth and power at the expense of the American people's safety and freedom.
The second episode goes deep into the Biden family's ties to Chinese business and how Joe Biden, his administration, and his family have used their positions of power for personal gain at the expense of American security.
Check out the trailer.
What if everything we think we know about our leaders, our society, and our relations with the rest of the world is wrong?
America is facing two major challenges.
One is the Chinese Communist Party.
However, the most significant threat comes from within.
You're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world.
Okay, Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about.
We've already seen evidence of how the elites want to run the United States.
They're modeling themselves after Chinese autocracy.
For over a decade, the People's Republic of China has stood publicly accused of acts of cruelty and wickedness that match the cruelty and wickedness of many evil torturers and executioners.
Diane Feinstein!
Had a Chinese spy as her driver for 20 years!
We're not talking about one person infiltrating senior levels at the CIA or the White House.
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My name is Lee Smith.
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This is the most astonishing espionage and infiltration operation in history.
What you're going to see in this series will shock you.
This is the Enemy Within.
It's really, really important and interesting stuff.
Lita's a great job.
All episodes of The Enemy Within are now streaming exclusively at The Daily Wire.
So if you're not a member, now is the time to change that.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join us today.
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Meanwhile, in our neighbor to the north, the Canadian parliament has now greenlit Justin Trudeau, who is definitely not, definitely not Fidel Castro's son.
Stop that.
You stop it right now.
Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act, according to the Washington Post.
Canada's House of Commons on Monday affirmed the use of never before used emergency powers invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Well done once again for the workers' parties, completely cracking down on the workers.
convoy demonstrators who blockaded several thoroughfares in the Canadian capital and affected US Canada trade.
Yay!
The motion passed 185 to 151.
And what Trudeau, who leads minority government, implied he could consider a confidence vote.
Several opposition parties criticized the use of the powers as overreach, but the left-leaning New Democratic Party reluctantly supported the motion, ensuring that it passed.
So well done once again for the workers' parties completely cracking down on the workers.
Yay, well done.
Because it's not like governments of the left have ever cracked down on workers before.
Ottawa was largely cleared this past weekend of the protests against the government and pandemic health restrictions that clogged the capital streets and frayed residents' nerves.
And blockades at major U.S.-Canada trade routes have been removed.
But speaking to reporters, Trudeau said he still required the powers because he said that he had real concerns over new demonstrations cropping up and the presence of demonstrators at several satellite hubs in rural towns outside of Ottawa.
Well, I mean, if they're rural towns outside of Ottawa, First of all, Ottawa is not exactly, you know, a thriving metropolis.
The total population of Ottawa is like... I don't know.
I'm gonna look it up now because now I'm curious.
The total population of Ottawa is one million.
Okay, that is not exactly like a huge major city.
It is by Canadian standards, but like the rural areas outside of Ottawa being a little clogged with traffic?
Come on.
Come on!
He needs the Emergencies Act for that?
For the first time in its history, passed in 1988.
And so, meanwhile, the Canadian protest leader who started all of this, a woman named Tamara Lich, she is now being held without bail.
A judge in Canada, according to the Associated Press, denied bail to Tamara Lyche.
Ontario Court Justice Julie Bourgeois denied the organizer bail, saying there was substantial reason to believe that Lyche would repeat her offenses, according to the Associated Press.
Lyche was a leader in the protest, which disrupted traffic in Ottawa for weeks.
On Thursday, Lyche, who is formerly a member of the far-right Maverick Party, which calls for the independence of Western Canada, was arrested and charged with counseling to commit mischief.
She had promised to return to Alberta and stop her support of the protest during a bail hearing.
By the way, I think that we should have a charge like that.
Counseling to commit mischief?
That's like my children.
It's like every morning at 7 o'clock.
They are counseling one another to commit mischief.
Counseling to commit the offense of disobeying a quarter and counseling to obstruct police.
By the way, I think that we should have a charge like that.
Counseling to commit mischief? That's like my children.
Like every morning at 7 o'clock, they are counseling one another to commit mischief.
What a charge that one is.
So, apparently the rule is, in the United States, throw a lady in front of a subway train or something.
Bail unnecessary.
Release to onto the streets.
Try to shoot a Jewish Democratic mayoral candidate in Louisville, Kentucky and miss.
$100,000 bail.
Counseling to commit mischief in Canada.
You will be locked up and the key will be thrown away.
Meanwhile, you have Justin Trudeau's own liberals making absurd charges.
This is, so much of the repression is based on making absurd charges.
Meanwhile, you have a liberal MP named Yara Sachs suggesting that the trucker slogan Honk Honk is actually a stand-in for Heil Hitler.
Because, of course, everyone who opposes me is a Nazi.
And, I don't know, I did not see that coming.
Anyway, here she goes.
How many donors from the capital riots, it's 1100 and counting, who have donated to these illegal blockades?
How many guns need to be seized?
How much vitriol do we have to see of Honk Honk, which is an acronym for Hail Hitler, do we need to see by these protesters on social media?
Yeah, they're all Mottis, guys.
So that's why it's probably okay for us to just, you know, completely freeze financial accounts for people who donated 50 bucks.
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Canada has told banks to unlock financial accounts belonging to individuals involved in weeks-long COVID-19 protests.
Isabel Jacques, a senior official in Canada's finance department, said they started Monday to unfreeze accounts.
The step marks a reversal for the Liberal government, which has argued that they needed sweeping power to freeze bank accounts.
That power became available a week ago when Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency measures.
A representative from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not respond Tuesday evening to a request for comment about why officials started unlocking financial accounts.
On Monday, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland defended the freezings, which some financial law experts warned could affect people unaffiliated with the protests.
She said the measures were put in place to disrupt illegal activity in Canada.
We were very clear we would be following the money.
that we would be using financial tools to disrupt illegal blockades and occupations.
The focus absolutely has been on leaders and on vehicles that were such an important part of the illegal blockades and occupations. The way to get your accounts unfrozen is to stop being a part of the blockade and occupation. The organizers of the Ottawa protest said in a statement that the freezing of bank accounts has shocked Canadians.
Quote, the more severe implication is that by using emergency powers as financial warfare, it will sow mistrust in both the banking system and the government, and the repercussions will be felt for years to come.
And that, of course, is correct.
If you think there's not going to be a rush to things like cryptocurrency and trying to find a way to shield your account from the government, think again.
Because even the notion that the government can shut down your bank account for giving 50 bucks to a protest is absolutely crazy.
And here in the United States, by the way, we had an organization called Black Lives Matter, you may have heard of them, that took in almost $100 million, and at no point were their accounts shut down, despite the fact that they're obviously a corrupt front organization.
I mean, that organization does not have any sort of executive board, apparently.
They just have this slush fund of cash.
And at no point did the banks shut down the actual accounts or freeze them.
It just kept taking in cash the entire time, and nobody who donated.
I mean, we're not even talking about the organizations.
We're talking about people who donated to the organizations.
It's total madness.
It therefore comes as a not particularly large shock that Chrystia Freeland has a side gig with the World Economic Forum.
According to the National Post, a columnist named Rupa Subramanya, the World Economic Forum, which has met at the Swiss ski resort of Davos every year since its creation in 1971 by German academic and entrepreneur Klaus Schwab, was forced to convert its annual Schmoozefest into a virtual event this past year due to COVID-19.
Of note on the main agenda was a stakeholder capitalism panel, including Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland.
The former journalist-turned-politician has been a fixture at the WEF for years.
Indeed, in her book, Freeland notes that an invitation to Davos marks an aspiring plutocrat's arrival on the international scene.
Indeed, the one-time critic has enjoyed an apotheosis of sorts and since 2019 has sat on the board of trustees of the WEF itself.
Now, understand that the WEF does push an agenda that they themselves, Klaus Schwab wrote a book called The Great Reset.
The basic idea is that these elites need to control how all economies work.
And those economies need to work on behalf of their favored, cherished left-wing causes.
And if they do not, then the economies need to be restructured.
Writing in the New York Times in 2011, Freeland described Schwab as a rather traditional European social democrat who aims to encourage among participants a kind of noblesse oblige, or its modern equivalent, stakeholder capitalism.
The political tradition Freeland is describing originated with the reaction of privileged liberal elites rebelling against Europe's feudal past, a world away from contemporary Canada.
Yet as a member of the board of trustees of Schwab's Outfit, Freeland is implicitly or explicitly committed to importing this brand of European social democracy into a Canadian ethos originally founded on individual rights and free market capitalism, which is in turn premised on maximizing shareholder value.
Not a particular surprise that the elites in our society have combined to use the powers granted to them, and emergency powers not granted to them, in order to reshape the world around them.
This is what they do.
Also not a particular surprise that according to polls, a majority of Democrats support Justin Trudeau cracking down on the protesters.
A survey from Trafalgar said, do you approve or disapprove of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's handling of the trucker protests in his country?
Overall, apparently according to Trafalgar, some 55% disapproved compared to 35% approving.
But 65.7% of Democrats approved of that sort of crackdown.
Again, not a gigantic shock.
Meanwhile, there is talk that Nancy Pelosi is very upset with a trucker convoy headed to Washington, D.C.
to protest coronavirus pandemic mandates.
Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hamill, said in a statement on Tuesday, quote, We are monitoring the situation closely, but we have deferred to the U.S.
Capitol Police, which is in charge of security.
That trucker convoy is slated to arrive in D.C.
ahead of Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 1.
Right by news reports, Kyle Sefchik, organizer and leader of the Freedom Convoy USA, told WUSA-CBS he is scheduled to leave LA on Friday and drive to DC.
The peaceful convoy will be composed of trucks and motorcycles and does not intend to gather at the Capitol.
Instead, they will protest near the White House and the National Mall with Christian bands and preachers.
Now listen, I'm not a fan of blocking off roads.
disrupt major corridors of greater Maryland and northern Virginia area and roads that serve as a commuting passageway and route for commercial deliveries into the district. Now listen, I'm not a fan of blocking off roads. I'm not a fan of violating the law.
But that is not a principle for the Democrats.
It only depends on what your cause is.
And Nancy Pelosi will monitor that one very, very quickly and very severely.
Of course, she would not monitor that if people were just blocking traffic to protest phantom systemic police racism.
All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out The Michael Molls Show that's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Russian troops land in Ukraine.
Kyle Rittenhouse launches a new organization to take down dishonest media companies.
And a new poll, a terrifying poll, shows that the majority of American Democrats support the brutal crackdown on political dissent in Canada on the Freedom Convoy.
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