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March 11, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:44

Jussie Smollett To Be Imprisoned With His Attacker | Ep. 1451

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	Finds himself sentenced to jail but rails against the system.
	Russia continues to escalate in the body count in Ukraine as the West begins to blink and inflation hits a four decade high as the Biden administration tells us that everything is fine.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Well, in the day's shocker yesterday, Jussie Smollett, hero of his own story, Jussie Smollett, was actually sentenced to some jail time for lying to the cops.
	It's kind of a rarity because typically when you lie to the cops, you get probation.
	But Jussie was actually sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months of felony probation.
	He was ordered to pay restitution Let me tell you, Mr. Smollett, I know that there is nothing that I will do here today that can come close to the damage you've already done to your own life.
	that he was the victim of a hate crime in January of 2019.
	The sentencing was amusing.
	Here was the judge reading the sentencing yesterday.
	Let me tell you, Mr. Smollett, I know that there is nothing that I will do here today that can come close to the damage you've already done to your own life.
	You've turned your life upside down by your misconduct and shenanigans.
	You've destroyed your life as you knew it.
	And there's nothing that any sentencing judge could do to you that can compare to the damage you've already caused yourself.
	you This is a good point.
	And then he sentenced him to a little bit of jail time, in which, as you see, now faces the prospect of having to share a cell with his attacker, which has to be horrifying.
	Every morning, he just looks in that mirror, and there he is!
	Right there in the mirror, his attacker.
	It's a scary situation.
	They put him in solitary, he's still in there with his attacker.
	In any case, Juicy responded, with all of the grace and humility you would expect from a man who's been abjectly humiliated on the world stage for having faked a hate crime in which he, you know, actually claimed that he had been attacked by a bunch of MAGA-headed white racists at 2 a.m.
	on a Chicago morning in the middle of a polar vortex.
	And that they had looped a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him while shouting that he was an F word and an N word.
	And then it turned out that he had hired two Africans to actually do that to him.
	And then he had gone home and he had lied to the cops.
	Never letting go of his Subway sandwich the entire time, because that's just how good that Subway sandwich was to Jussie Smollett.
	Well, you know, after it turns out that you are humiliated as one of the world's worst liars, taking advantage of America's woke moment in order to forward your own career.
	Because if you claim to be a victim in American society, this makes you a hero in American society.
	And if you claim to be a victim of both homophobia and racism, that's like the hero gold crown.
	That's like victim hero gold crown, a number one automatic election to the presidency stuff.
	Jussie Smollett took advantage of that and then it turns out it was all bullcrap.
	So now he's going to jail.
	Well, he looked very humbled and he looked very contrite.
	Or alternatively, he didn't look like any of that.
	Here was Jussie in court yesterday.
	I am not suicidal!
	I am not suicidal!
	And I am innocent!
	I could have said that I was guilty a long time ago!
	I'm not suicidal, as he raises the black power fist.
	So I assume that he could only be talking to one person there, Hillary Clinton, because Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
	But I'm not sure why he's saying he's not.
	Is the implication that the racist white system is now going to actually?
	Who's going to do this?
	I mean, he's been victimized before by him.
	So now he's saying, I won't victimize me anymore.
	Is that what we are going for?
	Here, his family came out in his defense as well.
	And listen, props to the family for family solidarity here.
	And really, you love your sibling enough to actually defend this kind of action on behalf of your sibling.
	I'll give them family points.
	Here's his sister and his brother reacting to Jussie Smollett's sentence.
	He'll be spending time in jail and he'll have to pay a little bit of a fine here.
	My brother, Jesse, is innocent.
	This should not be a controversial statement because it is the absolute truth.
	What should be controversial is the entire miscarriage of justice this whole ordeal has been.
	I watched my brother go from being a complete victim, which he still is.
	He was attacked.
	And he is now going to jail for being attacked.
	I saw my brother get locked up within two weeks for being attacked.
	Do you know how crazy that is?
	They want to stay in that court and say that he's the reason why folks aren't going to report hate crimes?
	They're the reason why folks aren't going to report hate crimes!
	Um, well, I mean, the reason that folks aren't going, I mean, I would hope that people don't report hate crimes that didn't happen is what I would hope right there.
	Now, here's the thing.
	There is every possibility that Jussie Smollett, if he hadn't been a moron, would have gotten away with this.
	If he hadn't done the stupidest possible, like, let's say that he had just walked home, not in the area with cameras.
	And let's say that he had not called the people that he allegedly, well, now apparently, not allegedly, hired to, to beat him up.
	Let's say that he had not signed them a personal check.
	Let's say that he had not called them from his cell phone and then refused to turn his cell phone over to the police.
	Let's say that his story had not been so unbelievably implausible that he'd been able to get away with it.
	The entire nation would still be going on about this.
	Remember, the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris.
	You know, remember that she actually tweeted out that Jussie was one of the greatest people she knew and she stood with him.
	So did the entire Democratic Party.
	The entire Democratic Party spent like a couple of days talking about how Jussie was just another emblem of racial injustice in America, particularly under Trump.
	So if he had not been a person of low IQ, Jussie Smollett, then he could have easily gotten away with this.
	Because we see these hate crime hoaxes on a fairly regular basis in the United States, which says something.
	It does.
	When you have a trend of people who are faking crimes against themselves, you have to ask, what's the incentive structure that is creating a rationale for doing this sort of stuff?
	Like, I don't go around trying to fake hate crimes against myself because I have no incentive to do so.
	What exactly would I get out of it?
	But for Juicy, the answer was probably millions of dollars.
	And if he'd gotten away with this, he gets cast in movies.
	He gets cast in more TV shows.
	He is made into a national hero.
	Which says there's something deeply wrong with our country that goes much deeper than Jussie Smollett faking a hate crime against himself.
	It's that we've set up an incentive structure where if you back the woke lie that America is generally racist and that black people are invariably the victims of that racism.
	No matter how wealthy they are, like Jussie Smollett, or how prominent they are, like Jussie Smollett.
	No matter what, America victimizes you.
	That narrative, if you play into it, you make money, you get famous, you get power.
	And so people are going to continue to do this sort of stuff.
	That is why it was actually quite important that Jussi spend a little bit of time in jail with himself.
	Because, after all, people should be dissuaded from faking hate crimes.
	But the underlying ill, the underlying malady is not going away here.
	And it is an underlying malady.
	Jussi, for his part, as he left, he said, Your Honor, I respect you and I respect the jury, but I did not do this.
	He did not specify what the this was.
	Did he not beat himself up?
	Was he not victim?
	Like, what exactly was the this?
	The judge said, there's a side of you that has this arrogance, selfishness, narcissism that's just disgraceful.
	You're not a victim of a hate crime.
	You're not a victim of a homophobic hate crime.
	You're a charlatan pretending to be a victim of a hate crime.
	That is shameful.
	That, of course, is correct.
	Sommelier's attorneys argued he should be given a more lenient punishment, such as probation.
	Citing his lack of criminal history and the community service he has performed, they read several letters which attested to that part of his life.
	Before announcing the sentence, the judge also spoke of the leading figures in social justice circles that asked for a lenient sentence for Smollett.
	The judge said, you do have quite a record of real community service and quite a record of attaching with people. I'm mindful of pleas of mercy, particularly from people that are in that arena. But ultimately, the judge said this act showed Smollett's dark side. So Black Lives Matter, by the way, did in fact write a letter on Smollett's behalf that was then read out loud by the defense at the sentencing hearing.
	It's a good thing.
	It's just demonstrative, once again, of the fact that the underlying racial dynamics in the country are really, really unhealthy right now.
	And unless we get a handle on that, this sort of stuff is going to be promulgated on a fairly routine basis for as long as we can possibly imagine.
	Again, Jussie Smollett, this is more about Jussie Smollett being an idiot than it is about the fact that Jussie Smollett Did something wrong.
	When I say did something wrong, I mean that every incentive structure drives people to do this sort of stuff.
	There's a reason that Rachel Dolezal pretended to be a black woman.
	There's a reason Jussie Smollett faked a hate crime against himself.
	People don't do this sort of stuff when there are healthy racial dynamics in play in the United States.
	Okay, meanwhile, over in Ukraine, in much more important world matters, you know, talk of nuclear war and such, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Russia has ramped up its attacks in Ukraine in an effort to seize strategically key port cities.
	Now, they are doing this presumably because at some point, Russia will have exhausted its military arsenal.
	That doesn't mean that they can't do this ad infinitum.
	They can do this for a very long time.
	However, they are drawing down forces from pretty much everywhere else in Russia to make this happen.
	They have 150,000 to 200,000 troops inside the country right now and extraordinary amounts of materiel.
	Now, Russia has relied for a very long time on the fact that it is bordered by countries that are much more militarily weak than Russia is.
	But as Russia pours more and more resources in, it's actually weakening itself both internally and externally with regard to its other borders.
	And so they can't actually do this indefinitely.
	They could if it was just a question of can they continue to pound.
	Ukraine here.
	They could do that.
	But again, there are other costs that are associated, which means that over the course of the next few weeks, you would imagine they're going to have to do some sort of troop drawdown in Ukraine if they can't achieve some sort of victory, which means maybe there's a ramp for de-escalation here, which we'll get to in just a moment.
	But for the moment, the idea is that Moscow has to ratchet up the pressure.
	They must ratchet up the pressure because if they actually start to lose, then the terms of negotiation are going to be very bad for them.
	So this is why they are upping the ante in terms of human rights violation.
	They understand that raw power is all that matters once you are in the war.
	Once the war has begun, all that matters is raw power.
	Because to make it stop, people will make all sorts of concessions to Vladimir Putin, which is what he is gambling on.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart on Thursday, said that the hospital, there was a maternity hospital that was bombed by the Russians.
	He said the hospital was a legitimate target because it was held by local radical militias, though Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters we don't have clear information about the incident.
	Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko said it's a total lie.
	Everything that was said, each word was absolutely not true.
	Lavrov's meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kulebo in Antalya, Turkey, Was the highest level contact between the two countries since the start of the war, but the diplomats failed to reach a ceasefire agreement or any deal to protect civilians caught up in the hostilities.
	Ukrainian authorities raised the casualty counts of Wednesday's hospital bombing in Mariupol to three dead and 17 wounded.
	U.S.
	Vice President Kamala Harris during a visit to Poland on Thursday called for a war crimes investigation we'll get to.
	Kamala Harris's atrocious visit to Poland in just one moment.
	Russia has been accused before of targeting hospitals.
	Of course, in Syria, Russia attacked a number of hospitals along with the Assad regime.
	The daily bombardment of Mariupol has left the city of more than 400,000 without food, clean water or electricity.
	By the way, there are now 2.5 million refugees inside Ukraine or who have left Ukraine at this point.
	Video footage of parts of Mariupol has begun to resemble cities flattened by Russia and other conflicts like Grozny in Chechnya and Idlib in Syria.
	Boychenko said this week children in the city have started to die from dehydration.
	Shelling on Thursday killed 36 civilians, wounded many others in the city.
	According to a spokesman for a local defense regiment, the Mariupol mayor's office said more than 1,200 civilians had been killed since the beginning of the siege.
	And that, of course, is just in Mariupol, not countrywide.
	Meanwhile, It looks as though the Russians are launching major attacks around Kiev.
	They're making a renewed push around Kiev.
	They've mobilized pretty much all forces in all directions there.
	And it is unclear what the endgame is going to be in Ukraine at this point.
	And that's what this is all about.
	How does this end?
	Right?
	We know what's happening.
	We know it's bad.
	The question is, how does this end?
	According to the Washington Post, When Russia first invaded Ukraine two weeks ago, the near-unanimous global assumption was that it would score a quick and easy military victory over its neighbor to the West.
	But now, with the Ukrainians waging a fierce resistance, and Russian forces bogged down outside nearly every major city, the Biden administration and its allies say they see no clear end to the military phase of the conflict, according to interviews with 17 administration officials, diplomats, policymakers, and experts.
	The situation seems destined to result in an even deadlier and more protracted slog, wreaking devastation in Ukraine, causing a massive humanitarian crisis.
	As the war enters its third week, President Biden and his team are also entering a murkier, more difficult stage of the conflict, where the new challenge is how to control the largely uncontrollable, Vladimir Putin and his endgame, whatever that may be.
	The Biden administration has successfully encouraged NATO and other Western allies to use nearly every available lever of power to punish Putin.
	Those efforts so far have had little discernible influence over the Russian president, who has only escalated his military offensive on cities and towns across Ukraine.
	Any outcome represents a lose-lose proposition, as even an eventual Russian defeat is likely to leave Ukraine decimated and its European neighbors bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis.
	So far, the UN Human Rights Office reports 516 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since February 24th, adding the actual total is probably much higher.
	A senior U.S.
	military official said yesterday that at least 4,000 Russian troops may have died at this point as well.
	A European diplomat said the longer this goes on, the likelier it will be that Russia ends up being defeated, but also more likely that more people will die.
	Jim Townsend, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, said right now everyone is kind of feeling their way forward.
	He said the endgame is going to be pretty complicated.
	The endgame is going to have to deal with Putin as he is.
	It's also going to have to deal with Ukraine getting back on its feet and deal with what to do with those sanctions.
	The current U.S.
	strategy is to ensure the economic costs for Russia are severe and sustainable, as well as to continue supporting Ukraine militarily in its effort to inflict as many defeats on Russia as possible.
	But U.S.
	military assistance remains limited.
	And herein lies the problem.
	If the idea is you ratchet up the pressure so that Putin knows that this is basically a lost war and it's going nowhere.
	So come to the table and let's hammer something out.
	You need to not be scared of shipping in the military materiel necessary in order to fight the Russians to a standoff.
	The Biden administration is not doing this.
	U.S.
	officials right there, right now, say there are no rush to directly engage Putin.
	Antony Blinken told reporters it's important to remember throughout this crisis created by Putin, we've sought to provide possible off-ramps to Putin.
	He's the only one who can decide whether or not to take them.
	So far, every time there's been an opportunity to do just that, he's pressed the accelerator and continued down this horrific road that he has been pursuing.
	Blinken added the Biden administration ultimately expects a strategic defeat of Putin and Russia, despite any short-term tactical gains it may make in Ukraine.
	And Blinken said, we will accomplish this by backing Ukrainians in their fight, by remaining united and holding Russia accountable.
	He said, we've already seen Russia's failed at its chief objectives.
	It's not able to hold Ukraine.
	It's not going to be able to hold Ukraine in the long term, no matter what tactical victories they achieve in the near term.
	A senior State Department official said there are few indications the Russians are in any mood for serious diplomacy at this point.
	But some analysts warn that the Biden administration doesn't have the luxury of sitting back and allowing others to negotiate with Moscow.
	Jeremy Shapiro, no relation, Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says the Russians aren't going to make concessions when they sit across the table from French, Turks, Israelis, or Ukrainians.
	Shapiro said the advantage a negotiated peace has is that it can limit the violence.
	So right now the question is what Ukraine thinks.
	Is Ukraine going to keep this going indefinitely in the hopes that Russia just pulls out or are they likely to negotiate some sort of exit strategy?
	Here's the thing.
	The Western position is the longer this goes on, the worse it is for Russia.
	But the longer this goes on, the worse it is for NATO.
	If Putin senses cracks in NATO, if Putin senses that there is no long term plan here and that he actually has the whip hand with regard to, for example, European energy in the long term.
	If he senses that the West is so scared of his nuclear threats that we will not do what we need to do in order to rearm Ukraine, then he's just going to keep going with this.
	The only way this stops is if he feels that the West can do this indefinitely and he cannot.
	Right now, that's the question.
	And the opposite may in fact be true.
	So for example, the German ambassador yesterday, Emily Haber, she said, it's possible to function like today, but it's not going to be possible to function without Russian oil and natural gas, maybe even a couple of weeks from now.
	Is it possible for Europe to function without Russian oil and gas?
	It is.
	At great costs, that will not be containable.
	And it will be possible to function, but not today and not tomorrow.
	Okay, so, for the moment, it's very difficult, in other words.
	So, probably, at some point, they are going to have to readmit Russia, just that they get their natural gas and oil.
	So, once again, thanks to Greta Thunberg and all of the idiots in the Green Revolution who have decided that it's very, very important to get off of natural gas and oil by importing natural gas and oil from the world's worst human being.
	And again, the West is...
	The incentive structure that has now been created for Ukraine is to make concessions to Putin just to end this thing on terms that the West isn't particularly going to like.
	It's very easy for the West to sit there and let Ukraine fight the war and Ukrainian bodies pile up in the streets without us undertaking any real sacrifice and, by the way, cutting off Ukraine when it comes to some of the resources that they need.
	And the West is making no overt overtures toward Ukraine at this point in terms of trying to integrate it into the West.
	So we're basically asking Ukraine, stay independent from Russia and keep up on the possibility of joining the EU and NATO.
	But we're not sure we actually want you to join the EU and NATO.
	So why would Zelensky at this point not just say, OK, well, you know what?
	You don't want us in the EU and NATO.
	You're not going to take us anyway.
	So I'm just going to tell I'm going to tell Putin that maybe he goes away.
	According to French President Emmanuel Macron, he said on Thursday it would be unfair for the EU to close the membership door for Ukraine, but warned that the bloc could not open an accession process with a country at war.
	Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia each formally applied for EU membership last week, seeking to deepen their ties with the West.
	But EU membership negotiations usually take a decade or more.
	Macron said, we need to send a strong signal in this period to Ukraine and Ukrainians.
	At the same time, we need to be vigilant.
	Can we open a membership procedure with a country at war?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Thursday, EU accession for Ukraine is something for the long term, if at all.
	So again, what is the incentive for Zelensky not to come to some sort of agreement with the Russians that the West doesn't particularly like in which the Russians carve off large swaths of Ukraine and Ukraine formally identifies as non-aligned with the West?
	What exactly is the obstacle to that deal?
	The only obstacle right now is that Putin probably wants even more than that.
	But that seems like the baseline minimum that Putin is going to get out of this, which is frankly not a major loss for him.
	That's a fairly large win for him in terms of actual policy.
	And it seems like that is the direction that this is moving.
	Again, specifically because the West is not doing all that it can to prop up Ukraine.
	The most obvious example being the unwillingness to allow Poland to ship MiGs into Ukraine.
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	So as it turns out, the Biden administration, it was Joe Biden who personally, personally decided that we would not be able to allow Poland to ship jets into Ukraine flown by Ukrainian pilots.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House is now confirming the decision went directly to President Biden, who vetoed the jet delivery lest it provoke Vladimir Putin and risk escalating the war.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the logic seems to be that sending lethal anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons won't provoke the Russians, but 28 fixed-wing aircraft would.
	That distinction is hard to parse, especially when the Pentagon is also saying the Ukrainians don't need the jets because their other weapons are more effective.
	So sending less lethal aircraft will lead to World War III, but not arms that are really deadly?
	Yes, this is sort of a puzzle.
	There was the State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, saying just that yesterday.
	He's saying, you know, Ukraine asked for warplanes, but they don't actually need the warplanes.
	Which is weird, since they are asking for them.
	The Department of Defense has concluded that what Ukraine needs to take on, the Russian assets that are causing such destruction, the missiles, the rockets, the artillery, are not planes, but these are surface-to-air systems.
	And these are systems that we have provided Ukraine, and we are looking at options to provide even more.
	Meanwhile, Kamala Harris over in Poland demonstrating weakness.
	So literally the same day that the Biden administration announced that they would not allow Poland to ship planes to Ukraine, she stood next to the president of Poland and said that we are united.
	No, we're not.
	And everyone can see it.
	And I'm sorry, she is so bad.
	She's so absolutely awful at this.
	Vladimir Putin must be looking at her and thinking, my God, I can take these people to the cleaners.
	Really, I may have underestimated how easily the war in Ukraine would go, but don't worry, I can always count on the Biden administration to pull my chestnuts out of the fire.
	Here's Kamala Harris making a fool of herself yesterday.
	The United States and Poland are united in what we have done and are prepared to do to help Ukraine and the people of Ukraine.
	Full stop.
	Okay, first of all, you always know that she's unsure of what she's saying when her voice inflection goes up.
	What we are prepared to do to help Ukraine and the people of Ukraine.
	I mean, honestly, I'm not even great at poker, but playing poker against this lady would be the easiest thing in the entire world.
	She doesn't even know where she is.
	We're not talking about Joe Biden, who's senile.
	We're talking about the vice president who's not senile.
	She's just terrible at this job and not particularly bright.
	So here she was today, yesterday, not knowing where she was in Poland.
	Remember, This is the same woman who once said that she went down to the southern border and then was corrected that she had not been there and then admitted that she had not been there.
	She's great at this.
	I am here, standing here on the northern flank, on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies and what is at stake at this very moment.
	Yeah, she's terrible at this.
	The clip that went viral yesterday, of course, was Kamala Harris laughing hysterically when asked about Ukrainian refugees.
	Now, to be somewhat fair to her, there was some confusion about who was supposed to answer this question, but her reaction is so outsized.
	It's just this clip prompted a former aide to Zelensky to say, I hope this woman never becomes president.
	She then deleted it because, after all, wouldn't want to piss off the Biden administration.
	But yeah, I think we all hope that Kamala Harris never becomes president.
	Is the United States willing to make a specific allocation for Ukrainian refugees?
	And for President Duda, I wanted to know if you think and if you asked the United States to specifically accept more refugees.
	Okay.
	A friend in need is a friend indeed.
	Okay, so this time...
	Hilarious stuff.
	It's like being at a Louis C.K.
	show or something.
	My God, these people are great at that.
	That's some funny stuff.
	Nothing as funny as talk about Ukrainian refugees.
	In the meantime, is there movement on the sort of negotiation front?
	I mean, at this point, there really should be, because again, I think that the stakes have become pretty clear here for Ukraine.
	The stakes are that the West is going to supply you with just enough weaponry that a lot of Ukrainians will die in this war, but not enough weaponry that you can actually fully beat back the attack and have the confidence of knowing that eventually you will win.
	And then we will ask that you maintain your posture that you would like to join the EU and NATO, but we will never let you into the EU and NATO.
	And meanwhile, we're going to cut off Russian natural gas and oil to hurt Putin.
	And also we know that within a couple of weeks, Germany needs the gas back on.
	So if you're Vladimir Putin, why aren't you going to go for broke?
	Really?
	I mean, well, you have to game this out as though the people involved are rational.
	You do.
	I'm very tired of people saying that Vladimir Putin is insane.
	He's not insane.
	He made a rational miscalculation.
	It was a calculation.
	It turned out to be a miscalculation about the invasion of Ukraine.
	But now he looks at the set of factors that are on the table and he figures, I have two choices.
	If I pull out, it's an abject loss for me.
	My administration loses face.
	Maybe I get cooed.
	It's a real disaster for me.
	If I stay in, and if I keep ratcheting up the pressure and the human rights violations, if I keep killing as many Ukrainians as possible, maybe Zelensky gets tired of listening to the West's promises and says, I will give you something so you can save face, and also I achieve most of my strategic objectives without actually having to change the administration in Ukraine.
	Because that really is the sticking point at this point, is what Zelensky does.
	Putin would just like to kill Zelensky and have it be done with, and then put another puppet back in place in Ukraine.
	But if you can't kill Zelensky, getting them to enshrine in their constitution that they are not aligned with the West, and getting it through the Ukrainian head, that the West doesn't care that much about them, that would be a win for Putin as well.
	And that is his game here.
	That is the strategic game.
	Meanwhile, allying himself more tightly with China and saving his economy, because the minute that a peace agreement is signed, one of the provisions of that peace agreement is going to have to be that Western sanctions are relieved.
	Ukraine will end up going and begging on behalf of the Russians that the sanctions be relieved just so they can get to some sort of peace deal.
	And that is in the Russians' interest, because if you're Russia, you actually don't want China buying up all of your assets at bargain-basement prices, which is what is happening inside the Russian economy right now.
	So according to the Wall Street Journal, the top diplomats of Russia and Ukraine failed to reach a ceasefire agreement or any deal to protect civilians caught up in hostilities during talks on Thursday.
	However, there are high-level contacts between the warring neighbors.
	Several rounds of talks between lower-ranking representatives had similarly failed to gain traction, but there were signs that Russia's position could be shifting, as its forces have met fierce resistance.
	Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, Russia would halt its offensive if Ukraine enshrined a neutrality in its constitution, acknowledged that Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, was Russian territory, and recognized the independence of two Russian-backed breakaway regions.
	Now, remember, I thought that that was originally going to be Putin's plan, is that he actually was not going to invade, that he was going to pour troops across the border in a quote-unquote minor incursion.
	He wasn't going to invade full scale into Kiev.
	He was just going to stay in that Donbass region and in Crimea and just arm those up and dare the West to do something bad.
	I thought that was his original move.
	And then he went for broke.
	Peskov's comments made in an interview with Reuters suggested the Kremlin could be open to achieving some of its aims, such as preventing Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO through negotiations rather than by toppling Kiev's government.
	Dmitry Suslov, an international relations specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow said, Putin is expecting victory.
	His whole legacy depends on this.
	Russia is placing a bet on diplomacy.
	I don't see changes in the goals Russia wants to achieve in Ukraine, but I see a certain change in instrument." Alexander Bonov, senior fellow at Carnegie Moscow Center, said, Putin is expecting victory.
	His whole legacy depends on this.
	He's very reactive, but he's not flexible.
	When Putin announced that he was launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said the goals of the military campaign were to demilitarize Ukraine and remove its government.
	Putin has not backed down from his goals in the days since, but he's added diplomatic efforts to his arsenal.
	The shift has been gleamed through changing rhetoric by lower-level officials.
	Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday Russia's military goals don't include, quote, either the occupation of Ukraine or the destruction of its statehood or the overthrow of the current government, which is a shift in the rhetoric.
	Russian foreign policy analysts concede signals don't actually reveal the Kremlin's true intentions.
	Suslov says the decisions are still being held by one person.
	The foreign ministry doesn't actually play a role in making the decisions.
	And in Turkey on Thursday, Kuleba said that Lavrov appeared to lack authorization from Kremlin to make decisions on critical matters.
	But it does seem like there is some movement happening.
	There's still a vast gulf between the Ukrainian and Russian diplomats.
	Lavrov said the issue of a ceasefire should instead be discussed in a separate series of talks taking place in Belarus.
	The Russian foreign minister denied that Russia had even invaded Ukraine in a news conference following that meeting.
	Lavrov said we have no plans to invade other countries.
	We didn't invade Ukraine, which is always a good starting point for, you know, a negotiation over the invasion of Ukraine.
	But what this comes down to, when it comes to the West's perspective on all of this, is how do we create an incentive where we get what we want?
	And right now, it seems like all the incentive structures are for Putin to continue going and for him to get basically what he wants here.
	The more cracks we show, the less solidarity we show.
	The more weakness we show, the more Putin is going to push.
	That is the pattern throughout, and that pattern does not change today.
	Meanwhile, the White House is now warning that Russia could use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
	They're warning us because Russia has ramped up all of its talk about bioweapons facilities in Ukraine.
	According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration warned on Wednesday Russia could use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine as it rejected Russia's claims that U.S.
	biological weapons labs are operating in the war-torn country.
	White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday called Russia's claim preposterous and warned of disinformation campaigns.
	She said, we took note of Russia's false claims about alleged U.S.
	biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine.
	We've also seen Chinese officials echo these conspiracy theories.
	And she said, Russia has a history of inventing outright lies about this particular matter.
	Now, this claim that the United States has been fostering biological and chemical weapons labs in Ukraine for the purpose of developing these weapons for deploying against enemies of Ukraine or enemies of the United States, that theory has gained an enormous amount of credence in sort of weird parts of the online right.
	Jennifer Griffin was on Fox News yesterday rejecting those claims.
	Here's what Jennifer Griffin had to say.
	Remember the Nunn-Lugar bill and trying to deal with proliferation when the Soviet Union ended?
	That is part of this effort to try and clean up those Soviet-era labs and make sure that nothing escapes from those labs.
	And so the U.S.
	has been very open about its involvement there with that, but what Russia does is they take that information, distort it, turn it around, and turn it into disinformation.
	So, in the aftermath of about 2005, there was a national agreement and it was pushed by Republican and Democratic senators for the United States to get involved in taking over Soviet-era biolabs and attempting to essentially demilitarize them.
	According to CNN, there are no U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
	Sorry, there are U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, that's true, but they're not building bioweapons, they're actually trying to take apart the bioweapons or figure out ways to counter-program things like anthrax.
	And by the way, during the Trump administration, This is not like a partisan CNN says it so it's not true kind of thing.
	During the Trump administration, U.S.
	Embassy in Ukraine put out a statement decrying Russian disinformation about the labs, noting that the Pentagon's program works with Ukraine to secure pathogens and toxins in those facilities while allowing for peaceful research and vaccine development.
	So listen, Russia is now playing on suspicions about the fact that the United States was in fact funding, through a series of cutouts, the development of change of Change of function research in places like Wuhan.
	And so now they're extending that logic to Ukraine, suggesting that the United States is funding the development of bioweapons in Ukraine.
	The evidence that that is the case for offensive use, for example, is extraordinarily scanty or non-existent.
	That's not just the United States saying that, that's the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying that.
	Here he was yesterday.
	They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans, and so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a sort of a maskirovka, a fake story ready to go.
	And you've seen it in Syria.
	You saw it even in the UK when... This is what you expect next then?
	Look, I just note that that is what they're already doing.
	So, we should always take what the Russians say about bioweapons labs with a grain of salt because everyone has an incentive to lie during war, but this sort of peculiar lie, this sort of bringing up an ancillary issue, as the Russians are shelling places around Chernobyl and nuclear facilities, Russians are not trustworthy on this sort of matter.
	The Russian government and Russian agencies and Russian cutouts, they're not trustworthy on these sorts of matter.
	So our economy is on the rocks pretty clearly.
	I mean, there's a lot of chaos out there in this Biden administration.
	Policy is really, really bad.
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	And now, all people talk about is politics all the time.
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	You were in chem lab together.
	And now you have to talk about who's on the Supreme Court?
	That's, I think, what is tearing America apart.
	Because there's a million things you could talk about that aren't political, and you find out, oh, this person is not that different from me.
	It's one of the best episodes of Sunday Special we've ever done.
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	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So meanwhile, we have the new inflation statistics and yeah, they're bad.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, rising energy, food, and services prices pushed already elevated U.S.
	inflation to a 7.9% annual rate last month, another four-decade high.
	Remember, that's year over year, meaning, like, From February of Joe Biden's administration to February of Joe Biden's administration.
	That's another four-decade high.
	Oil and commodity markets disruptions from the Ukraine crisis are expected to add more cost pressures as well.
	The Consumer Price Index, measuring the cost of goods and services across the economy, hasn't been this high since it was 8.4% in January 1982 when the nation was in recession and trying to tame what had been double-digit inflation.
	Higher energy prices, including gas, helped push the inflation reading up.
	But there are also cost gains for groceries, restaurant food, transportation services, and apparel, according to the Labor Department.
	So, again, we have supply chain crisis.
	We have massive overspending into the economy.
	And let's talk about that for just a moment, because that spending is not coming down.
	We just continue to spend in this country $4, $5, $6 trillion a year, depending on just how stupid our legislators are.
	And it's a both parties problem.
	Neither party seems willing or able to cut down the spending in this country in any serious way because, again, in the prisoner's dilemma, in which you're in the worst case situation, when you say cut and the other guy says grow, then everybody just grows.
	Everybody just says, okay, well, we'll grow.
	I mean, why not?
	We'll just take out some more debt.
	That's what happened yesterday when the House passed a $1.5 trillion, 2,727-page bill to fund the government this year.
	Hey, this is wild.
	Republicans and Democrats agreed to $730 billion, not million, billion dollars in discretionary spending.
	That is a 6.7% increase over last year.
	Now remember, last year we were supposedly still recovering from the pandemic.
	That's a 6.7% increase over last year.
	$782 billion for defense, a 5.6% increase.
	At least you understand the defense increase, given the fact that the world has become massively less safe under Joe Biden.
	The bill includes $13.6 billion in humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine and pretty much no dollars for the southern border, as many on the right have pointed out.
	This agreement is still better than the budget that Joe Biden was proposing.
	He sought a 17% increase for non-defense programs and 2% more for defense.
	Mercifully, according to the Wall Street Journal, the bill does not include $40 billion for the restaurant industry or an extension of the pandemic employee retention tax credit, which members of both parties wanted.
	Another short-term funding bill would have restrained spending, but at the cost of long-term defense planning, the good news is the Omnibus provides $145 billion for military procurement, which is a little bit more than Biden requested, including money for 13 Battle Force ships and money for F-35s and for KC-46 tankers.
	But in order to get that, Republicans also had to concede to a massive amount of domestic spending, including the IRS receiving a 5.6% raise because they do an amazing job every year.
	So why wouldn't we give a raise to the people who steal your money every year?
	Democrats also scored more climate spending.
	$3.2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy subsidies.
	$3.1 billion for Pete Buttigieg's feckless Department of Transportation.
	$1.5 billion for climate diplomacy.
	I have a question.
	What is climate diplomacy and why do you need $1.5 billion for it?
	What does that involve?
	What is climate diplomacy?
	Is that so John Kerry can fly around the world talking like this?
	Apparently we have a hundred million bucks that we just spent for environmental justice.
	Which is so we can hire a Captain Planet to go beat up the bad guys.
	A hundred million dollars for environmental justice.
	Earmarks made a big comeback as well.
	Richard Shelby, Alabama's ranking member retiring after this year, gave himself a retirement gift with $60 million for the University of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile, $32 million for dredging in Mobile Harbor, $100 million for Mobile Downtown Airport.
	So everybody's just going to spend and spend and spend and spend.
	The House plans to vote next week on another standalone COVID spending bill that excludes the $7 billion in state offsets.
	It's unclear whether the Senate will agree.
	So they are just going to continue spending.
	So we're in the middle of an inflationary cycle.
	Tremendous insecurity.
	A lot of worries about the possibility of recession.
	There are some analysts who now say there's a better than 50% chance that we end up in a recession here.
	And we are just going to continue spending up the wazoo.
	Meanwhile, Janet Yellen assures you that everything is fine.
	Everything is fine for Janet Yellen.
	So here's Janet Yellen explaining everything is just fine.
	And if you have a problem with this, it's because, you know, you don't understand your own interests.
	We really protected most Americans from severe financial consequences of the pandemic so that they're, by and large, in good financial shape.
	Everybody's great, guys.
	What are you so worried about?
	I mean, yeah, everybody seems really worried.
	Yeah, inflation is now charting 8% year-on-year pretty much every month now.
	But what are you worried about?
	You worried about those interest rate increases that might actually undercut the economy in a moment when we have a foreign crisis that is ratcheting up the price?
	Are you worried about stagflation?
	Don't worry.
	Everything is fine.
	In fact, Jen Psaki says inflation is temporary.
	We're back to this talking point.
	Remember, we went from inflation is temporary to inflation is good, because it means that you're spending a lot of money, to inflation is caused by Vladimir Putin.
	And now it seems like from time to time we're back to inflation is temporary.
	So that's exciting.
	Here's Jen Psaki from the White House yesterday.
	You said this is temporary.
	You've noted before that inflation is going to wane or is expected to wane by the end of the year.
	Is that still your belief?
	That continues to be the projection of the Federal Reserve, of outside economists, and we really rely on them for their projections.
	But there is also no question that inflation may be higher for the next few months than it would have been without President Putin and Russia's further invasion into Ukraine.
	So yeah, the administration keeps claiming this is all about Vladimir Putin.
	President Biden claims high inflation rates on Russian sanctions and the costs we are imposing on Putin and his cronies are far more devastating than the costs we are facing.
	And Stephen Ratner responded by saying, well, no, these are February numbers and only include small Russia effect.
	This is Biden's inflation.
	He needs to own it.
	But he's not going to own it.
	He's never going to own it.
	And the pain is about to get worse because the thing is that a lot of the things that are being done right now on the international front are actually going to be permanent in their impact.
	So let's talk about oil for a second because that is temporary and that will be alleviated.
	But when it comes to the generalized breakup of globalization, that's going to have a major impact on your pocketbook.
	If you like inflation, then get ready for some, because there are gonna be real supply chain problems from here on out, as the world separates into spheres of influence.
	And you don't miss American hegemony until it's gone.
	When everybody perceives that America is the biggest bully on the block, everybody seems a little bit more willing to trade with one another and have globalization and to have supply chains that are located in 10 different countries.
	And that means cheaper products for you.
	It means, because they're cheaper products, more money in your pocket and all the rest.
	I know a lot of people oppose globalization, but let me just tell you, there's a lot less stuff available to you at a lot more expensive prices, and a lot crappier, before globalization.
	Globalization is a very, very good thing economically, yes, for you.
	And all the talk about us shipping jobs overseas, the reality is that most of the jobs that we've shipped overseas are low-level jobs making t-shirts in Vietnam.
	Engineering jobs are not being shipped overseas.
	Trucking jobs cannot be shipped overseas because we still need truckers in the United States because we have to get things from point A to point B. And the fact is that we now have more jobs in this country that are being filled than at any time in American history.
	So for all the talk about how globalization was really bad, yeah, autarky is way worse economically speaking, but...
	Let's talk about the oil prices for a second.
	So the oil prices continue to skyrocket.
	That, of course, is no shock because, of course, the Biden administration has made very, very clear what its priorities are.
	And this is pressed forward by the left.
	The New York Times has a piece today titled As War Rages, A Struggle to Balance Energy Crunch and Climate Crisis.
	Or, alternatively, you could make clear that all of the measures that you guys have taken with regard to the quote-unquote climate crisis have been almost completely useless all the way through.
	The only thing that is going to help here is adaptation by human beings.
	Mitigation is only going to occur when you develop technologies that are superior to carbon-based energy.
	And that all of the pouring money that you've done, all the restrictions that you've created, have only emboldened states that actually provide us under the table the cheap energy.
	Again, all the West is, with regard to environmentalism, is the rich Hollywood starlet who says that they want to pay everybody a $15 minimum wage and then hires an illegal immigrant under the table for $7 an hour to do the gardening.
	That's all the West is when it comes to environmentalism.
	It's like, yes, carbon emissions must be cut.
	Also, can you bring in some of that cheap Russian oil?
	Can we have some of that?
	Please, please, please.
	It's all been, not only for naught, it's actually just shifted the mode of production outside of areas that are more environmentally friendly into areas that are way less environmentally friendly.
	And that's leaving aside the fact that as we shift over to things like electric vehicles, you need lithium for that.
	Who owns all the lithium?
	Places like Russia, places like China, rare earth's minerals are largely controlled by some of the worst people on earth.
	In any case, the New York Times is saying we still have to balance climate change.
	Don't forget about climate change.
	Don't forget about the incrementally rising temperature over the course of the next century, while 2.5 million Ukrainians try to flee for their lives.
	According to the New York Times, as the world reels from spikes in oil and gas prices, the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine has laid bare a dilemma.
	Nations remain extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels and are struggling to shore up supplies precisely at a moment when scientists say the world must slash its use of oil, gas, and coal to avert irrevocable damage to the planet.
	While countries could greatly reduce their vulnerability to wild swings in oil and gas markets by shifting to cleaner sources of energy like wind or solar and electric vehicles, that transition will take years.
	Okay, so first of all, if you think Europe didn't try this, they did.
	And they are more vulnerable to swings because it turns out that these sources of energy are not reliable.
	Wind is not reliable.
	This is what Texas found out during the Great Freeze, when it turned out they needed to ramp up oil and natural gas and coal production in order to make up for the fact that wind and solar were not reliable.
	According to the New York Times, many governments are more urgently focused on alleviating near-term energy shocks aiming to boost global oil production to replace the millions of barrels per day Russia has historically exported.
	But the two goals aren't necessarily at odds, say officials in the United States and Europe.
	They say instead, no, maybe the high oil prices will drive the green energy revolution.
	So the pain is the plan.
	In other words, the pain is the issue.
	The New York Times, for its part, is trying to simultaneously say that we need to cut energy production in the West for environmental purposes.
	And also, it's not our fault if the prices go up, which is why you have a fact check from The New York Times claiming that Republicans are wrongly blaming Biden for rising gas prices, although he...
	He has nothing to do with it.
	It's just magic that's been doing it.
	Yes, there are external forces that Biden is not in control of.
	The recovery from the pandemic means more people traveling more.
	That is true.
	The fact that there was a pandemic and that shut down large swaths of the oil sector means that there is less production.
	But that stuff could come online faster if people knew that to borrow money to reopen a refinery or to borrow money to open up new drilling would not be regulated heavily by the administration in the near future.
	If I'm going to invest in a stock, I do so because I think that in 10 years that stock is going to be worth more than it is today.
	I'm not going to invest in a stock I think will be worth less.
	The Biden administration is overtly saying we don't want to produce energy over the course of the next 10 years.
	And if we do so right now, it's only temporary.
	Why would you sink money into that if you're an investor?
	Why would you sink money into that if you're a natural oil and gas producer?
	Why would you do any of that?
	And this is the whole point.
	The Biden administration is driving this.
	Jen Psaki yesterday said that Biden has no plans to meet with anyone from the U.S.
	oil industry.
	No plans.
	We're in the middle of an energy shortage and he has no plans.
	President Biden has hosted electric vehicle stakeholders here at the White House.
	Would he host oil and gas producers, the people who are the most affected by the Putin price hike?
	Well, the oil and gas, I have nothing to preview or predict for you in terms of him hosting oil company executives.
	And then she just continued to lie and say oil companies have what they need.
	Which is weird because every oil executive in America is clamoring for less regulation, cutting of red tape, faster granting of permits, more pipelines.
	But she's saying you have everything you need, you're fine.
	It's just like Janet Yellen telling you during inflation everything is fine.
	Jen Psaki is telling the oil industry everything is fine.
	And yet then calling the oil industry greedy.
	Here we go.
	The president has been clear that he believes they have the tools they need, 9,000 unused permits, they have the capacity they need to go get more oil here in the United States, and he'd encourage them to do that.
	Oh, well, they do, do they?
	Because they are saying that they do not.
	Because they don't.
	And then she was asked about the high gas prices.
	She says, don't worry, those will be temporary too.
	Whenever these people say something will be temporary, you should hold your wallet.
	Here is Jen Psaki saying, high gas prices will be temporary, not long lasting.
	Weird, because the high gas prices preceded Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
	We do anticipate that gas prices and energy prices will go up.
	That is something that the president has conveyed very clearly to the American public.
	We also believe it will be temporary and not long-lasting.
	And she says, of course, the gas prices are all Putin.
	The line right now is everything is Putin.
	Everything bad that happens is Putin.
	Which I guess has been their pattern since Donald Trump was elected.
	It's all Putin's fault.
	You may have noticed this week that your gas prices have gone up.
	I want to talk to you a little bit about why.
	A lot of it has to do with Vladimir Putin.
	The reality is that Russia is one of the three largest oil producers in the world.
	And the fact that they have started this conflict, invaded a foreign country, and they are such a big producer of oil in the world, is the reason why the global oil markets are disturbed right now and why your gas prices are going up.
	Yes, but why were you dependent on Russian oil in the first place?
	Hmm, hmm, question, question.
	So Peter Doocy yesterday, he asked Jen Psaki, is your plan just to blame Putin for everything?
	Is that what you guys do here professionally?
	Inflation goes up today.
	The president's statement blames the Putin price hike.
	Are you guys just going to start blaming Putin for everything until the midterms?
	Well, we've seen the price of gas go up at least 75 cents since President Putin lined up troops on the border of Ukraine.
	Last month, the statement didn't mention the Putin price hike.
	It mentioned inflation because of the pandemic.
	Why is that?
	Well, Peter, last year, last two years, there was a global pandemic.
	Everyone who's a global economist have all agreed that that has been the biggest contributor to date of inflation because of the impact on the supply chain.
	So it's always everybody else to blame.
	No problem is ever their problem.
	CNN's MJ Lee even was pressing Psaki on Biden saying, well, you guys keep saying that you're doing everything you can, but then you also say you can't do anything.
	The president said yesterday, I'm going to do everything I can to minimize Putin's price hike here at home.
	And then hours later, as he was getting off Air Force One, he said, I can't do much about that right now.
	Can't do much right now, was the exact words from the president.
	For anyone that might have been confused seeing the two statements from the president within a couple of hours, what would be your explanation?
	Does the president believe there is action that he can take to address gas prices, or does he believe there's not much that can be done?
	Well, I would say that the short gaggles when the president is getting off the plane and getting into a car are not always super comprehensive.
	Oh, they're not?
	Okay.
	So really, don't listen to what the president has to say because he doesn't speak English anymore.
	The best moment of yesterday's press conference with Jen Psaki who, again, being press secretary for Joe Biden is a terrible job.
	Being press secretary for Trump was a bad job.
	Being press secretary for Biden is even worse because you're expected to be serious.
	In any case, Jen Psaki was asked whether Joe Biden, you guys have all been encouraging everybody to get an electric car.
	Does Joe Biden have an electric car?
	Because we've seen video of him driving around and like, You guys are pushing electric vehicles today.
	This is a president who always talks about the power of our example.
	Does he own an electric vehicle?
	because he might lose control of the car and drive into a crowd of people because he's not with us anymore.
	She can't say that part. So here she is about electric vehicles.
	You guys are pushing electric vehicles today.
	This is a president who always talks about the power of our example.
	Does he own an electric vehicle?
	Presidents of the United States don't do a lot of driving.
	He's posted videos where he's revving the engine of his Corvette in Wilmington.
	He owns cars.
	And he also has driven electric vehicles as president as to give a model to the rest of the country.
	Does he own one?
	I think the president's record on this is clear, Peter.
	Presidents of the United States current and when they are no longer typically are not doing a lot of driving.
	Yeah, bad answer right there.
	Again, there are long-term impacts to everything that is happening right now.
	So when they say it's temporary, the answer is it really is not temporary.
	The reason it's not temporary is because, again, World Trade, which has made you a lot richer.
	It has.
	It has made everybody a lot richer.
	Like, across the world, it turns out that comparative advantage is one of the great benefits of free markets.
	And the more people engaged in comparative advantage, the better the products, the more competition, the lower the prices, the new services that are created, the innovation.
	All of that is good.
	When you break all of that up, bad things happen.
	The Wall Street Journal points out that that vision is coming to an end.
	Quote, the U.S.-led effort to expel Russia from the international commerce community Marks another fracture in the free trade vision that guided American policy for nearly 30 years, signaling a future where nations and companies shift away from trading with adversaries and focus on more like-minded partners.
	Now, as a security matter, that's not a bad thing.
	But this is the whole point, is that more people wish to be drawn into your camp when you are the strongest bully on the block, when you have the military that's willing to guarantee free trade, when you have a military that is willing to fight battles on behalf of your citizens who do have an interest in free markets.
	When you're willing to do that, it turns out that people get better stuff.
	When you're not willing to do that, it turns out that people form their own spheres of influence.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the actions taken by the U.S.
	and Western European allies since Russia invaded Ukraine have been swift and punishing.
	The West has also moved to oust Russian banks from international financial networks, while a bipartisan coalition of U.S.
	lawmakers has introduced legislation calling on the U.S.
	to press for Russia's suspension from the WTO.
	Jennifer Hillman, trade lawyer, former jurist on the WTO's trade court, says the trading system as we've known it, with the World Trade Organization at its core, with the basic set of rules everyone traded under, is coming apart.
	The concept of globalization, nations trading with few barriers, focused on the industries and services they do best, has been under pressure for years.
	Driven by economic rivalries, this would be like China cheating, stealing intellectual property, factory closings in wealthy countries, and those who say open commercial borders aren't in the best national interest, particularly in times of emergency.
	But here is the problem.
	America's post-Cold War dominance of the globe allowed for a lot of great stuff to be created.
	And when that dominance wanes, what you end up with is competition.
	And when you end up with open military competition, and people attempting to essentially create spheres of autarky in which they trade just with their friends, life gets worse for all those people.
	Now, you may need to do that on a security level, but the problem is, why do you need to do that on a security level?
	Do you need to do that on a security level because that threat was going to eventuate anyway?
	Or do you need to do that on a security level because your own stupid and feckless policy gave credence to places like China, gave credence to places like Russia, and then when you cut it off, it's extremely painful.
	In other words, things are about to get more expensive for the long term.
	This is not a temporary problem.
	This is now part of the permanent.
	And that is the fault of bad American foreign policy over the course of the last 30 years, and bad American foreign policy in the now, where we continue to, on the one hand, play footsie with some of the world's worst regimes, and on the other hand, when it turns out those world's worst regimes are then emboldened to take actions antithetical to those of American interest, then we don't do enough to stop them.
	American strength is the solution to a lot of problems, and when it is not demonstrated, things get a lot worse on pretty much every front.
	Well, folks, as you know, we have a very special relationship with our friends over at Birchgold.
	It's hard to think of a time where it has been better to talk about investing in precious metals than right now.
	We have global chaos, massive inflation, basically the conditions under which you definitely should have diversified into precious metals.
	Joining us online to discuss is Philip Patrick.
	He's a precious metal specialist over with Birchgold.
	Philip, thanks so much for joining the show.
	Great to talk to you.
	Thank you very much for having me.
	So let's talk about the impact on gold and precious metals with regard to the Russia-Ukraine war that is now broken out.
	Oil obviously is running out of control, inflation is running out of control.
	So how does this war impact the price of gold?
	Yeah, you're absolutely spot on.
	I think the biggest effect is it's created is increasing the inflationary pressures here in the United States.
	Things were already bad enough.
	They are now getting much, much worse.
	In fact, the latest inflation report came out yesterday.
	Official inflation here in the United States is officially now at 7.9%, so rising consistently.
	I think sanctions on Russia, what they've achieved is created a massive supply shock.
	Let's not forget Russia are the largest producers of oil and natural gas in the world.
	They provide 25% of the world's wheat as well as other commodities.
	As you mentioned, there is now a huge push to ban Russian oil purchases and rising energy costs are highly inflationary.
	Banks are now predicting oil potentially hitting $200 a barrel by the end of the year.
	That's bad news, of course, for everyone here in the United States.
	But there's worse news.
	The inflation, as well as questionable political moves, I think have accelerated the decline of the dollar as a global reserve currency.
	That's dangerous longer term.
	Let's talk about the dollar's reserve status.
	So one of the things that keeps the value of the dollar holding steady is the fact that so many countries, so many banks all over the world hold all of their savings in denominated dollars because, of course, it's a stable currency.
	But one of the things that the West did in its attempt to fight Russia here was they basically froze dollar currency and dollar assets for the Russians, which is going to make a lot of countries think twice about investing in dollars rather than investing in, say, precious metals.
	I mean, you hit the nail on the head.
	I think what that does is it leaves every central banker in the world questioning what is money, right?
	If the U.S.
	can unilaterally decide to essentially financially cancel Russia, couldn't they do the same to any other nation at any time, right?
	As you mentioned, central banks have dollar reserves to facilitate international trade.
	They don't have bank accounts like citizens.
	They have money on deposit with the U.S.
	Treasury.
	I think central bankers now will start to look at a pile of IOUs from the U.S.
	government as liabilities rather than assets.
	And if they want to take some risk off the table, sorry, I think it makes sense for them to protect themselves by diversifying outside of dollars.
	And that, of course, starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	It's dangerous for us here in the U.S.
	So what are central banks doing right now to protect against a decline in the dollar?
	Look, I think the process has already started to some degree.
	At the end of last year, Global Central Bank's dollar holdings are now at 25-year lows.
	This is what happens when the Federal Reserve goes on a money printing spree.
	World central bankers, at the end of the day, they're smart.
	They understand that every single dollar bill being printed devalues or reduces the value of every other dollar bill in existence.
	So they're slowly now tiptoeing towards the exit.
	And it's happened before, right?
	In the 1970s, high inflation caused the world to doubt the dollar's future.
	That was until Reagan and Volcker stepped in and essentially saved the American economy.
	The problem is I don't see that happening anytime soon here.
	We just don't have those types of leaders in office.
	So, you know, we've got some tough times to weather and we'll see how things end up in terms of global reserve longer term.
	Now, the fact that we are now breaking down in terms of the global order into a variety of sort of spheres of interest and the fact that you have non-aligned countries that are trying to figure out their own policies.
	We have supply chains that have been broken.
	We have rapid inflation.
	Obviously, I mean, it's self-serving, but now is a good time for you to diversify at least a little bit into precious metals.
	It certainly is, and it applies to individuals, right?
	The inflation we're hearing, feeling here in the United States, you know, issues we're seeing in the stock market.
	Gold is a very good way to protect.
	It also applies to central banks, right?
	What have they been doing shorter term to protect?
	They've been buying gold.
	In fact, central bank gold holdings are now at a 31-year high.
	I thought the president of the National Bank of Poland summarized why very well.
	He said, look, gold is not directly linked to any nation's economy, and it can withstand global unrest in financial markets.
	In other words, it's a safe haven for nations as well as individuals in uncertain times.
	It's the only financial asset that isn't somebody else's liability.
	It's not an IOU.
	It's not a promise to pay.
	It's an asset that's always held its value throughout history.
	That's why central banks are buying it today.
	It protects against inflation and currency decline.
	It's very conducive for the issues that we have.
	Well, folks, as you know, I've been trusting Birch Gold with my own precious metals investing for years.
	At this point, you should give folks like Philip Patrick a call over at Birch Gold.
	Philip, thanks so much for your time.
	Thank you for having me.
	If everything you just heard there has you skeptical about the U.S.
	dollar, text BEN to 989898 for your free, no-obligation information kit on diversifying into gold and silver.
	Birch gold makes it super easy to transition an IRA or 401k into precious metals.
	Text BEN to 989898 to get started today.
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