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March 28, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:03
Will Smith’s Big Slap, And Joe Biden’s Big Slip | Ep. 1461
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Will Smith smacks Chris Rock upside the head at the Oscars, President Biden visits Europe where he proceeds to gaffe all over himself, and Russia shifts strategy as their offensive stalls out.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Slash Ben will get to all the slap happy news in just one moment.
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Alrighty, so.
The Oscars, it's a time when a bunch of preening morons get together and pat themselves on the back, give each other awards, give each other thousands of dollars in swag bags, fly in on their private jets, lecture about climate change, and then tell us why they ought to be the moral guides for the rest of us.
People wonder why the Oscars have been sliding for years and years and years, and sure, it's the quality of the films, and sure, it's the fact that the theater experience has been watered down by streaming, And it's been watered down by the fact that there's so much good TV.
And sure, it's the fact that fewer people watch each of these best picture nominees than they did back in, say, 2000, 2001.
However, there's another problem.
And this is something that the Oscars simply cannot get over and they will never get over.
And this is why the Oscars are never coming back.
The problem is people in Hollywood have always thought of themselves as America's moral betters.
And they just are not.
And that gap between Hollywood and the rest of America becomes clearer every single year.
And this year was just Excellent par excellence, more like chef's kiss example of why these people should never run anything about your life, why people associated with them should never run anything about your life, why they are a bunch of low IQ idiots with no moral compass, and why when they stand there and lecture you about your moral code, And how Hollywood is supposed to be America's representative to the world?
We should really be looking for another representative to the world because my goodness, my goodness.
The only reason to talk about the Oscars, of course, is no one watched them.
More people will hear about them on the show than probably watched the Oscars in its entirety last night.
The only reason to talk about this is because the Oscars used to be a sort of cultural totem for the United States.
It was our chief export abroad.
Hollywood was the exporter of American ideas and American ideology and the American vision to the rest of the world.
This is true in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
And now, Hollywood has largely become an afterthought in the sort of global cultural milieu.
And if people do think of Hollywood, it's only how do we ban the Hollywood movies so it doesn't corrupt the youth, right?
That seems to be the way that authoritarian countries approach Hollywood movies.
And yet here in the United States, the media treat the Oscars as though it is a gathering of great luminaries, intellectual luminaries, moral luminaries, who are going to come together in a sort of conclave to figure out the moral code By which we must all live.
So it began last night.
The Oscars began last night with a small controversy over whether the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was going to appear on the Oscars.
Now, I have to say, I'm not sure why Volodymyr Zelensky should appear on the Oscars.
Every time there's an international conflagration, should that person appear on the Oscars?
Seems like a weird take.
But Sean Penn was very hot and bothered about the idea that Wladimir Zelensky would not appear on the Oscars.
Because after all, Wladimir Zelensky is a Hollywood star in one of the best picture nominees.
Or alternatively, he's the leader of a country at war.
And in any case, Sean Penn was very upset about all of this.
If presenters have elected not to pursue the leadership in Ukraine who are taking bullets and bombs for us, along with the Ukrainian children that they are trying to protect, then I think every single one of those people And every bit of that decision will have been the most obscene moment in all of Hollywood history, and I hope that's not what's happening.
If it turns out to be what's happening, I would encourage everyone involved to know that though it may be their moment, and I understand that, to celebrate their films, it is so much more importantly their moment to shine and to protest and to boycott that Academy Awards.
And I myself, if it comes back to it, When I return, I will smelt mine in public.
He publicly smelt his Oscar down to do what now?
That'll end the war, Sean.
By the way, I would be remiss if I did not note that Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sean Penn seem to be becoming the same person slowly.
It's very interesting.
Now listen, what Sean Penn is doing in documenting what's going on with Zelensky in Ukraine, that's fine, that's good.
But the point here, which is that Sean Penn and the rest of Hollywood do think of themselves as the moral imprimatur for the rest of the universe, It's silly.
And the silliness is on full display.
So, right before the Oscars, Jamie Lee Curtis gets up.
She's on the red carpet.
And there she is, smiling, posing for the cameras, and wearing, that's right, a ribbon.
A blue ribbon for Ukraine.
Bravery.
Fearless heroism from Jamie Lee Curtis.
Wearing the ribbon.
This is the point where they beat the living crap out of Kramer because he won't wear the AIDS ribbon.
But yeah, they're wearing ribbons, guys, and that's what the Oscars are all about.
It's demonstrating solidarity with our favorite causes.
So yeah, the virtual signaling had just begun with Jamie Lee Curtis and her ribbon wearing and all the rest.
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If Hollywood has one cause above all other causes, it is the LGBTQ cause.
It's the only thing Hollywood cares about these days.
It is the grand difference between Hollywood and the rest of you rubes.
You believe that men are men and women are women.
You believe that kids should not be taught sex in schools.
This is because you are a bigot.
And here to tell you all about your bigotry are three extraordinarily unfunny people.
Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall.
Now, I will admit to you, I've not seen a thing that one of these people is in for years.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie with Regina Hall.
Amy Schumer's material, I will run from like the Black Death.
And Wanda Sykes may have been funny 15 years ago, but I'm not sure, like, did they dredge these people up out of the bay?
Who at the Oscars is like, you know what the audience is clamoring for?
They are clamoring for three women who have been in a combined total of zero hits for a while.
That's what the audience is desperate for.
Bring back Amy Schumer.
The campaign was just, it was in full swing.
And how could the Oscars deny it?
So they let off, as you knew they would, right?
If I had had to make my Oscar prediction, I didn't care about who's going to win best picture because frankly, I've seen some of them, but nothing has really blown me away But the one prediction I would have made is that they would have opened with the Florida stuff.
Like, absolutely, because they can't help themselves.
The only cause that matters to Hollywood is LGBTQ causes.
That's all that matters.
All the rest of it is window dressing.
Ukraine does not matter to them.
Suffering abroad does not matter to them.
Climate change does not matter to them.
This is the only thing that matters to them.
And the reason it's the only thing that matters to them is because their alternative moral code is the only thing that matters to them, and it's what a lot of them believe ought to be indoctrinated into kids, which is why they're very upset with this Florida bill.
So this Florida bill, obviously, which has become the cause celeb in Hollywood for no reason whatsoever, considering that what the bill says is you don't get to indoctrinate small children into sexual orientation and gender identity.
And all of Hollywood is very, very upset about this.
I knew for a fact that they would be chanting gay within the first five minutes of the Oscars.
For sure.
And then they wonder why the Oscar ratings are go down.
Maybe it's because if I like when I was a kid, I was like 10, 11 years old.
My mom really liked watching the Oscars.
And so, we, like a lot of other families, we'd get together in the den, and we'd all watch the Oscars, and my dad would fume at the annoyance of it, and we'd get through the nine-hour show together, and it was sort of a family bonding event.
You'd mock the Oscars and all of that.
Hey, there is no way in hell I would put my children in front of a screen with these morons on it.
There's just no way I would do it.
Would you?
I mean, their overt attempt here is to indoctrinate your kids into ridiculous values, like why small kindergartners should know about Homosexuality and gender identity and transgender theory.
So I knew for a fact within the first five minutes they would be smacking you over the head with the mallet of the Florida parental protection bill.
So here they were last night, our great comedic minds all together combined, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall, who may together be able to tell a joke, maybe.
Here is Wanda Sykes.
It's so funny, guys.
So much humor happening right here.
We're going to have a great night tonight, and for you people in Florida, we're going to have a gay night.
Gay!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Gay!
And then the music comes up and the lights come up in the background.
Oh, oh, the heroism of a bunch of people who all agree that small children should be indoctrinated into the joys of of homosexuality and gender identity.
What's it?
Yes.
Yes, Hollywood.
Yes.
OK.
And then they're all.
Meg Ryan-ing it from When Harry Met Sally to the to the chants of these three very, very unfunny people saying gay over and over.
Okay, so it begins with this and these are your moral betters.
And then we get Amy Schumer, again, who I don't know when people thought Amy Schumer was funny, but she has not been funny for a very, very long time.
She made a pay gap joke because that one's not tired.
And her joke was that the Oscars hired these three women because it was cheaper than hiring one man.
This year, the Academy hired three women to host because it's cheaper than hiring one man.
Well, I mean, one man... Actually, any man would have been funnier than those three women.
You could have hired a janitor off the street and he would have been funnier than those three women.
As one of my producers noted, Chris Rock provided more humor in one moment this evening than all three of those women did across the combined 27 hours of this Oscar telecast.
So yeah, that's three women cheaper than hiring.
Honestly, I wonder how much money each of these women made last year.
I have a feeling none of them are poor, even though they're really not good at their job.
Then, Wanda Sykes.
She's back for more.
She's here to make a Mitch McConnell joke because there's nothing the public likes better than a joke about the Senate Minority Leader.
Now, last I checked, the Senate Majority Leader is Chuck Schumer, who is related to Amy.
And the President of the United States is a doddering old fool named Joe Biden.
Don't worry, we'll get to him.
And the Vice President of the United States is Kamala Harris, who's from California, where this event took place.
And the Speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi, who's a Democrat from California.
But they found a way to make a joke about Mitch McConnell and toxic masculinity.
That just, I mean, this must have gone over gangbusters in that writer's room.
They were probably bouncing off the walls.
They were laughing so hard, slapping people, falling on the ground, just spastically screaming in hilarity because of this joke.
Man, here we go, Wanda Sykes.
Have you ever heard a bad Mitch McConnell joke?
I mean, there's no such thing.
You know, this year we saw a frightening display of how toxic masculinity turns into cruelty towards women and children.
Damn that Mitch McConnell.
I know.
I know.
So Mitch McConnell jokes, right?
They are the best.
And let me tell you, a lot of people were trying to fall asleep right after watching that Oscar telecast or during it.
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All of this was prelude to the greatest moments maybe in Oscar history.
So, again, we have heard from our moral betters.
Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.
We have heard from our moral betters about ribbons for Ukraine.
We've heard from our moral betters about the pay gap as they receive their thousands of dollars in swag.
We've heard Mitch McConnell jokes, but all of this led up to Chris Rock making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.
Now Jada Pinkett Smith has alopecia, which means that she has lost some hair, which means that she cut her hair really close.
Apparently, Chris Rock did not know that.
And you make some sort of joke about how she looks like she should star in G.I.
Jane 2.
Okay, that's pretty light stuff.
As someone who gets roasted regularly on the internet, there are more than a few Ben Shapiro jokes out there, okay, guys?
And I find most of them actually pretty funny.
And by the way, there are a bunch of jokes out there about my wife, because I'm a public figure.
And my wife honestly finds them pretty funny most of the time.
But even if we don't find them funny, who cares?
That's called being a public figure.
And this is like the mildest joke anyone has ever told about Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, considering they have an open marriage and it is well known that Will Smith, let's just say that other dudes and Jada Pinkett has been a thing for a very long time within this marriage, like very publicly so.
So this is the mildest joke anyone has ever told about Jada Pinkett Smith.
On the list of jokes about Jada Pinkett Smith, this one is like, this ranks like 1,292.
And what's funny about this, actually, is that, as you will see, after Chris Rock tells this joke, they cut to Will Smith, he's laughing, and then he looks over at Jada Pinkett, and she's mad.
And then, the unthinkable occurs.
Jada, I love you, G.I.
Jane too, can't wait to see it, alright?
See, he's laughing, he's laughing, and then, and then, she's mad.
She's mad, you can see she's mad.
That was a nice one, okay.
I'm out here.
Uh-oh.
Richard.
Uh-oh.
And he thinks he's going to come up there and stage something with him.
Oh, wow.
And instead, Will Smith just launches into him and just cracks him across the face.
Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.
Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.
Wow, dude.
Yes.
It was a GI Jane joke.
Keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.
I'm going to, okay?
That was the greatest night in the history of television.
Okay.
So first of all, Chris Rock is more of a man for taking that slap than Will Smith is for throwing it.
You're on stage in front of several million people and somebody smacks you upside the head and you just take it like that?
First of all, Will Smith's a fairly big dude.
And he kind of launches into him right there, like the full Batman and Robin meme right there.
And I will say that the Lupita Nyong'o who's sitting behind him, Will Smith, there, her face is kind of everything in this.
She's like, I can't believe I'm at the same table with what's happening right now.
But the kind of, first of all, I just have to say this.
He gets into one little fight and now they need to send Will Smith to his auntie and uncle out in Bel Air.
That's what needs to happen here.
The moral standards of Hollywood are weird.
Will Smith is fine with other dudes and his wife having sex.
He is not fine with someone making a joke about his wife at the Oscars.
They've been public figures for about as long as I've been alive.
So that's, that was a weird, strange, now what was even weirder, and I won't say it's weird because it actually does say something about where we are in the country.
A huge number of people on Twitter came out from the left and were defending Will Smith.
Because after all, it was a bad joke.
It was a mean joke.
How dare he tell a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith?
She has alopecia.
He shouldn't tell that joke.
Okay, you might not like the joke.
You might think that the joke is bad.
We have a general rule in this country that when somebody makes a joke you don't like, you don't get to smack them upside the head.
I don't find this particularly shocking.
Truth be told.
That so much of the left is willing to defend this kind of stuff.
Because after all, the left has been willing to defend the idea that violence should be the response to quote-unquote microaggressions for years and years and years and years.
You know, I was on national television on CNN Headline News in, like, 2013, 2014, and a transgender woman, meaning a biological male, was sitting next to me, and I called him, sir.
And he threatened me on national TV while putting his hand on the back of my neck.
And the rest of us was like, well, you had that coming.
Assault is a decent response to you being labeled by your biological... Like, this is the way the left thinks now, which is that if I'm offended, I do get to smack you upside the head.
The only question is whether he's justified in smacking Chris Rock upside the head.
But it was definitely a weird moment.
Remember, these are all the people you should listen to.
These are the people who, when they chant gay, you should probably let your kids be educated by them.
They should set the standards for how you educate your kindergartner.
They literally can't keep other men's hands off their wife or their hands off other men who make fun of their wives, but they should definitely educate your kids.
Very, very important.
This is the crap.
By the way, one second later, Will Smith won the Oscar for King Richard, and he received a standing ovation from the crowd.
This is like within minutes of him smacking a dude upside the head on national TV for telling a joke he didn't like, or a joke he did like, but then didn't like.
Because, I will say this, for all the whipped men out there, the part where you're laughing at a joke about your spouse, and then you look over and your spouse is unhappy, and then you realize it.
That's happened to a lot of dudes.
The part where you get up and smack the dude, that's a different thing.
So, here is the crowd giving Will Smith a standing O. Wild cheering.
Yes!
Yes!
Get up there and smack somebody, Will!
Woo!
Oh, isn't that nice?
Okay, then Will Smith makes the typical Hollywood apology, which is, I'm sorry for just being too good a dude.
So here's Will Smith saying he is very, very sorry for being the most passionate lover in all the land.
Here we go.
I want to apologize to the Academy.
me. I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment, and I'm not crying for winning an award.
It's not about winning an award for me, it's about being able to shine light on all of the people, Tim and Trevor and Zach and Saniya and Demi and Anjanew and the entire cast and crew of King Richard and Venus and Serena, the
entire Williams family.
Art imitates life.
I look like the crazy father, just like they said.
I look like crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams.
But love will make you do crazy things.
Love will make you do.
Crazy things.
There's something else in this speech that I think, again, goes to what Hollywood thinks of itself.
Hollywood believes that it is indeed, that this is what it's there to do.
It's there to shine a light.
There's a great old movie called Sullivan's Travels with Joel McRae, and it's a Preston Sturgess film.
The basic film, it's from the 40s, and the basic film is a man who has been making comedies for years.
And he decides that he is tired of making comedies that people actually like to watch.
Instead, he's going to make a film about the plight of the poor in the United States.
And so he goes on this journey across the United States.
It's a great movie.
And he ends up on a chain gang and he ends up suffering and he ends up as like a tramp and all of this kind of stuff.
And at the end of the movie, he realizes that his actual role is to make people laugh.
And he goes back to making comedies because this is what Hollywood is for.
Hollywood is to entertain us.
When Hollywood mixes it up, you can never make that movie today because that's all of Hollywood.
All of Hollywood has decided they're not there to entertain us.
They are there to act as models for us.
They're not our models.
They're a bunch of preening idiots.
They're a bunch of people who are very good at one thing and very bad at many, many other things.
Among those other things, thinking and acting morally.
Those are among the other things in Hollywood.
And so when they lecture you, or when they suggest that your values are somehow bereft, while their values are the ones you should listen to, you should just think of the Oscars.
So I'm glad the Oscars is out.
There's an object lesson in what the world looks like when these idiots rule it.
Because it's not exactly a pretty sight.
Okay.
Entertainment isn't real news, and we will get into the real news of the day in just one moment.
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In actual, more important news, let's get to what happened overseas.
So Joe Biden, our not all there president, went over to Europe over the weekend.
He was in Brussels and then he went over to Poland.
And while he was there, he just made a series of gaps.
As it turns out, having a man who verges on senility at the head of your country in the middle of a proxy war with the most armed nuclear power on planet Earth is not an ideal situation.
It's not great.
Now, Russia's military efforts have basically stalled out at this point.
Russia is now relegating its own desires back toward what I thought the original war aims were going to be, namely the splitting off Luhansk and Donetsk and the consolidation of power in Crimea.
They don't have the ability at this point to completely overthrow the government of Vladimir Zelensky, barring the use of some sort of weapons of mass destruction or barring some massive new conscription.
They don't have the ability to topple that government.
They don't have the ability to hold the country, even if they do topple the government.
This has become very clear to the Russians.
That does not mean that Vladimir Putin can afford to lose outright.
If he loses outright, there's a good shot that his regime is over.
And what this means is that now is a time for the West, as I've been saying for a while, to be looking, and Zelensky has been looking apparently, for an off-ramp here.
Because if there is no off-ramp, then the chances that Vladimir Putin gets more and more erratic as he is boxed in more and more grow.
According to Naftali Bennett, who's been sort of acting as a go-between between Ukraine and Russia, he said that the advances that the Russians are no longer trying to depose Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and fully demilitarize Ukraine in the negotiations.
Those advances are in the negotiations.
They're not insisting Zelensky go.
They're not trying to demilitarize Ukraine.
Ukraine is back down from trying to join NATO.
Now there's a territorial dispute.
Well, that is some pretty major movement from Russia right here.
And so it seems as though a space is at least beginning to open for an off-ramp.
In order for that off-ramp to be taken, however, the West cannot say things like Joe Biden said over the weekend.
So Joe Biden, he went off script three separate times over the course of the last four days.
All three were a mess.
All three were a real problem for Joe Biden, and for NATO, and for the West.
Because the entire idea here from the West is, you made a move, Vladimir Putin, and now we are boxing you in.
We're going to bring all pressure to bear to box you in, to stop you from making territorially aggressive moves, but we are not going to get into a shooting war with you.
And that's what everybody is in agreement on.
Contain Putin.
Do not let him advance his borders.
Do not allow him to take over Ukraine.
Do not allow him to fire off Okay, so all of this began on Friday, when Joe Biden dropped some language that he must think is clever, but his synapses are no longer firing properly, and even when they were firing properly, they weren't firing properly.
Joe Biden was never a great shakes.
When Joe Biden says that he has experience in foreign policy, it is akin to Amy Schumer saying she has experience in comedy.
Yes, you've been doing it for a while, but have you really been doing it?
Are you really any good at it?
So Joe Biden has never been right on a single major foreign policy issue of his entire lifetime.
Like never, ever, ever, ever.
So on Friday, he was talking about Putin using chemical weapons in Ukraine.
And instead of him either explaining precisely what would happen or making a vague threat, instead he used language that suggests the United States was going to use chemical weapons in response.
If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO?
It would trigger a response in kind whether or not you're asking whether NATO would cross, but we'd make that decision at the time.
He thinks he's being smart because he's doing the I'm Joe Biden and I think I'm smart face, which is the.
But he's actually not being particularly smart.
He's not being particularly smart because when you use the word in kind, what you mean is I'm going to respond exactly the same way.
So if Chris Rock had responded in kind to Will Smith, he would have smacked him upside the head, right?
So then the White House had to walk that back.
Oh, no, no, we're not going to use chemical.
Well, thank you.
OK, then on Saturday, Joe Biden met with American troops in Brussels, and he proceeded to explain to American troops that they will be in Ukraine.
You're gonna see when you're there.
Some of you have been there.
You're gonna see.
are not going to enter Ukraine because we don't want to be in an actual shooting war with the Russians.
So, yeah, here's your doddering president.
I don't know.
You know when you're in Ukraine?
I don't imagine.
Okay, so then, the White House had to walk that one back.
Because, oh no, you're not going to Ukraine.
Why does he keep saying these things?
Now, the reason this is a problem, guys, is because Vladimir Putin's entire Predicate for this war.
What he said publicly was NATO is attempting to expand its eastward borders.
It is attempting to overthrow my regime and the movement of Ukraine toward the West threatens my regime.
And Joe Biden kept saying that's not true.
This is a purely defensive arrangement, which is true, right?
That is true.
NATO is a defensive arrangement.
It was not interested in spreading its tentacles into Russia per se.
Well, then Joe Biden just keeps upping the ante here and basically admitting what Putin wants him to say.
So he keeps escalating the rhetoric, which actually is not particularly helpful when you're seeking the off-ramp, right?
Putin has to have an off-ramp.
Magnanimity and victory is typically the way that you win wars.
So Joe Biden says he's a butcher.
That's true.
Vladimir Putin is a butcher.
The question is, is it useful for Joe Biden to be saying that Vladimir Putin is a butcher?
You're dealing every day with Vladimir Putin.
Look at what he's done to these people.
What does it make you think?
He's a butcher.
He's a butcher.
Okay.
And then he continues along these lines and he gave a speech in Poland and the speech was fine until it wasn't.
So he started off by talking about how he was confident that Putin wanted to divide NATO.
This is actually at a presser right before the speech.
This is when he was meeting with the Polish president Andrzej Duda.
I'm confident that Vladimir Putin was counting on being able to divide NATO, to be able to separate the eastern flank from the west, be able to separate nations based on past histories.
But he hadn't been able to do it.
We've all stayed together.
Okay, and then he continued along these lines.
He said, Europe has to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
This is in his big speech in Warsaw.
Right now, it was fine, the speech was okay, and as I say, until it wasn't.
First of all, it's very easy for him to say that Europe has to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
You know what would've been nice there is if America had ramped up its production so that Europe had not been dependent on Russian fossil fuels.
Instead, they decided to outsource their energy policy to a small Swedish child who does not know anything.
But Greta's disappointed in you.
And so they're like, okay, fine, we'll outsource our entire energy production to Vladimir Putin.
That worked out great.
Here is Joe Biden.
Europe must end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
And we, the United States, will help.
It's a matter of economic security and national security for the survivability of the planet.
We all need to move as quickly as possible to clean renewable energy.
And we'll work together to help get that done.
Let us remember that the test of this moment is the test of all time.
A criminal wants to portray NATO enlargement as an imperial project aimed at destabilizing Russia.
gap yet. Okay, so he continues and then he says it's a lie that we want to expand NATO imperially. That's not what we're looking for.
Let us remember that the test of this moment is the test of all time.
A criminal wants to portray NATO enlargement as an imperial project aimed at destabilizing Russia. Nothing is further from the truth.
NATO is a defensive alliance.
It has never sought the demise of Russia.
Okay.
Fine.
True.
NATO is a defensive alliance.
It's not seeking the demise of Russia.
They're not seeking to overturn the regime in Russia.
Five seconds later, Joe Biden calls Putin a murderer.
And then, off of the teleprompter, because this man should never be allowed to stray from teleprompter, he immediately says that Putin has to go.
And this is the only headline that comes out of his trip to Europe, basically.
We will have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities.
For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.
For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.
So, he then calls for regime change.
He says, NATO is a defensive alliance, also regime change.
Okay, so now you've granted Putin his premise, which is that the entire purpose of this conflict was the West ceding the Ukrainian situation in order to overthrow Putin somehow.
Putin can't remain in power.
Does that sound like an off-ramp to you?
Now imagine you're Putin for a second.
Imagine that you are a territorially aggressive dictator sitting atop a crumbling empire with no economy to speak of.
And now you're engaged in a war that you miscalculated and you're losing.
And the person across the table from you says, you have to leave.
You need to go.
Are you more or less likely to use some sort of weapon of mass destruction?
Are you more or less likely to start bombing the living hell out of civilians in order to ratchet up the tensions?
Which is more likely?
So this is a major boo-boo by Biden.
When Ronald Reagan went to Brandenburg Gate, And said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
A couple of things.
One, he didn't actually say, Mr. Gorbachev, the entire Soviet Union needs to fall and you need to be replaced.
He didn't say that because that would have been bad politics.
He said that you should release this country from the grip of your tyranny.
And Biden has said that about Ukraine.
Also, that was all scripted and the media went nuts about it.
Well, as we'll see, the media were so happy with Joe Biden for this ad lib.
They were so happy until they weren't.
Because as it turns out, the White House has to keep making... They're the night nurse.
The White House and the media are the night nurse for this administration.
Joe Biden craps the bed, everybody comes in at night, and they clean the bedpan, and they take away the sheets, and they replace them.
And they have to make sure that the mattress is covered in plastic every single night.
Because this guy craps the bed on the regular.
And it is ugly and it has real ramifications for foreign policy.
So the media reacted with just joy and wonder at Joe Biden's announcement that Vladimir Putin had to go.
There's only one problem, Joe Biden did not mean that.
We'll get to more on that in just one moment.
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So Joe Biden makes this big boo-boo.
He makes this big gaffe.
Again, this is like his third gaffe of the weekend that he had to walk back.
There was the chemical weapons in kind gaffe, and then there was the American troops will be in Ukraine gaffe, which he had to walk back, and then there was the Putin has to go, and this was the headline.
It was like the chyron on CNN and all the rest.
Okay, so the original take, when they thought that it was scripted, was celebration.
So many people on the left just so happy about all of this.
So Paul Macero, for example, who is a foreign policy guy, works for one of these kind of left-wing foreign policy organizations.
He tweeted, for God's sake, this man cannot remain in power as Biden's Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.
Tara Setmire, a political voice of the left, President Biden may have just given his tear down this wall speech.
Wow.
Wow.
You have Adam Edelen.
Again, another blue checkmark.
Renewable energy developer.
Historic moral clarity that recalls Reagan's tear down this wall.
I'm proud of America leading from the front once again.
Proud of my president, Rick Wilson, who, his heel turn, his David Brock-like heel turn sans cocaine has been astonishing to watch.
Here's why the GOP is flailing on this.
Biden did tear down this wall for our era.
And many, not all, but many in the GOP would much rather have Putin in power than not.
Okay, first of all, that's not true.
I mean, I would much rather not have Putin in power.
I also recognize that he is in control of about 6,000 nuclear warheads.
Jennifer Rubin, who is just... Jennifer Rubin is beyond parody.
She's now a parody of Jennifer Rubin.
I also love the fact that Jennifer Rubin, it's not just that she loves Ukraine.
She loves Ukraine so much, she put the flag in her profile twice.
That's how much she loves Ukraine.
Not just once.
Two times.
She loves it twice as much as you do.
Or maybe infinity times if you don't have the Ukraine flag in your profile.
She tweeted, Biden makes a speech akin to those at the Brandenburg Gate by JFK and Reagan.
In a square with a crowd, his delivery is quite strong.
Okay, now there's only one problem.
The White House immediately walks this back.
Like, immediately.
Larry Sabato did the same thing, by the way, of University of Virginia politics.
He used to be kind of an interesting voice.
Now he's lost it.
Because watching Biden's Warsaw speech reminds me of JFK's Ich bin ein Berliner and Reagan's Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.
Masterful!
Now it gives Zelensky more of everything.
Okay, only one problem.
The White House, within minutes, was walking this back.
Within minutes.
According to Reuters, quote, U.S.
President Joe Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia when he said on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power, a White House official said.
Oh, really?
Because it sounded like he was calling for Vladimir Putin not to remain in power.
What they actually tried to say, I'm not kidding, what they actually tried to say that he meant was Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine.
He's not in power in Ukraine, guys.
Zelensky's in power in Ukraine.
So, no, you can't walk that one back and pretend you never said it.
So, it turns out that having a doddering old fool in charge of the United States in the middle of an international, possibly weapons-of-mass-destruction-oriented crisis is not exactly ideal.
It's not exactly ideal.
And, by the way, everybody else is noticing.
Other nations are noticing that this guy is just a buffoon.
I mean, they noticed it after he pulled out of Afghanistan and the British Parliament tried to censor him.
And they're noticing it now.
There are headlines in Europe talking about the chaos that Biden had left behind.
Emmanuel Macron, the leader of France, he said, I wouldn't use this type of wording.
I continue to hold discussions with President Putin.
We want to stop the war Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation.
That's the objective.
If this is what we want to do, we shouldn't escalate things, neither with words nor actions.
Even President Obama's former head of the CIA, Michael Morrell, he said, yeah, this was a rather large scale mistake.
I think his comment that Putin had to go was an unforced error.
It makes it, it strengthens Putin at home, makes it difficult for any domestic opposition to coalesce together.
And no Russian citizen, none, wants to be told by the leader of Russia's main enemy about what their leadership can look like and not.
I think framing it as democracy versus autocracy drives the Chinese closer to the Russians and makes it difficult for some of our own allies who are autocrats to stand with us.
He's not wrong about any of this, by the way.
And then NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith is the American ambassador to NATO.
She went on CNN and she's trying to defend Biden's activities.
And as soon as she's asked about Biden's regime change comment, she basically starts running.
There's now a Julianne Smith sized hole in the background.
She runs directly through the hole to get away from the question.
Let's start with President Biden's comment yesterday that Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power.
The White House said quickly that he was not discussing Putin's power in Russia or regime change.
Was that comment a mistake?
In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day.
But no, as you've heard from Secretary Blinken and others, the U.S.
does not have a policy of regime change in Russia.
Full stop.
Whoops.
Okay, so that's a big boo-boo.
And again, it offers Putin a propaganda victory for his people back home, who he is now telling that they're trying to oust me.
They're trying to get rid of me.
That's what this is all about.
I've been telling you since the beginning we need to take Ukraine, because if we don't take Ukraine, they're going to try and topple the regime.
And then Joe Biden just said it right out.
Because Joe Biden is an idiot.
And Joe Biden always thinks he's more articulate than he is.
Because Joe Biden... He's your confidence guy on your basketball team.
He's the confidence guy.
The guy who... You bring him in off the bench, and he just sucks.
He's terrible.
But he chucks up a three.
Like, you throw him the ball, and it's just going toward the general direction of the basketball, but never in.
That is Joe Biden.
Irrational confidence guy.
Meanwhile, the situation in Ukraine for the Russians continues to be basically stalled out.
Russia has not grown closer to taking Kiev.
They probably don't even have the resources to take Kiev at this point.
According to the New York Times, Russian forces redoubled attacks on strategic targets across Ukraine on Sunday.
With fierce fighting reported around the capital, Kiev, amid signs the besieged city of Mariupol was close to falling.
As the conflict moved into its second month, Russian forces have largely failed in their first aim to take the larger cities and have narrowed immediate targets to the sieges of southern port city of Mariupol and the strategically placed city of Chernihiv in the north.
Air raid sirens rang out in Kiev during the day.
Otherwise, the city remained calm, lending some credence to the Russian Defense Ministry's recent assertion it was turning its focus away from Kiev to concentrate on the Eastern Front.
Some Russian units were withdrawing to Belarus in the north to regroup and re-equip.
According to the Ukrainian military, heavy Russian artillery attacks continued around the journey northeast of Kiev.
It would not be a surprise at this point, by the way, if some pretext was created for Belarus to get involved in the war and start shipping men and material across that border to the north of Ukraine.
Seven people, including two kids, died in artillery fire in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine as Russian forces tried to subdue the city near the border, the Ukrainian news media reported.
Missiles hit a fuel depot in western Ukraine as Russia continued to use airstrikes to disrupt supply lines to Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine's top military intel officer suggested Russia was actually changing its military focus to the south and the east and might be trying to divide Ukraine between occupied and non-occupied territories.
Brigadier General Kirill Obudinov, the head of the Intelligence Division of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, according to the New York Times, says, quote, In fact, this is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine.
And that's correct.
But the truth is, I'm not sure that there's going to be a lot of choice here, given the fact that Ukraine does not have the weaponry or materiel to actually expel Russia from Luhansk and Donetsk.
That is an ongoing war that's been happening since 2014, when the U.S.
succeeded to Vladimir Putin's original invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and Luhansk and Donetsk.
Those Russian forces are not going to be uprooted, not by Western power, not by Ukrainian power.
And so the best that you're going to end up with probably here is something akin to what I've been suggesting for weeks, which is some sort of territorial concessions by the Lenski administration in Ukraine simply to end this thing for now.
Now listen, no foreign policy settlement is final.
And maybe at some point in the future, those areas will be liberated again by Ukraine.
But they don't have the power to expel Russia from those areas.
Meanwhile, NATO can't even guarantee that they're going to give Zelensky what he wants.
So you got Joe Biden out there calling on Vladimir Putin to be thrown out of power.
And at the same time, the NATO ambassador is like, yeah, we're not even sure we're going to give Zelensky all the weaponry.
How do you how do you seek to accomplish what you say you seek to accomplish?
We've spoken with President Zelensky many times in recent weeks.
We've heard their requests for assistance.
In many cases, we've delivered those anti-aircraft, anti-armor capabilities.
We are assessing their air defense needs.
But the answer is no.
If you're asking about the Soviet-era jets, the United States has decided that the particular proposal put forward by Poland is untenable.
Okay, so just to get this straight.
According to the Biden administration, too scary and offensive to allow jets to be shipped to the Ukrainians so they can defend themselves.
Not offensive to call for full regime change in Russia that you then have to walk back because the president is senile.
That's a hell of a move right there.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
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