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Feb. 21, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:00

Biden Visits Ukraine, Not Ohio Or The Border | Ep. 1672

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	After two weeks of humiliating screw-ups, Joe Biden tries a reset by flying to Ukraine, China threatens intervention in the Ukraine war, and Roald Dahl's children's books are now being rewritten for woke purposes.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, Joe Biden has had a rough couple of weeks.
	The last couple of weeks have seen a giant train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that resulted in a giant mushroom cloud of apparently toxic gases being released into the air and poisoning some of the waters and all the rest of this.
	And FEMA has been denying help over there, suggesting it is outside their remit under Joe Biden's auspices.
	Joe Biden has not visited East Palestine, Ohio.
	Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to fly across the entirety of the continental United States for a full week.
	And then we shot it down off the waters of South Carolina.
	And then he started randomly authorizing the Air Force to shoot down Mylar Valentine's Day balloons from Party City with $400,000 sidewinder missiles in an apparent attempt to look tough to the rest of the world.
	After again, having allowed a giant three bus size Chinese spy balloon to fly across the entire continental United States has been a rough couple of weeks for President Biden, and that followed what he thought was going to be a triumphal moment at the State of the Union address in which he took on the Republicans.
	The problem for Joe Biden, of course, is that Joe Biden's approval rating has been absolutely stagnant for the past couple of years.
	And the thing that people forget about Joe Biden's approval rating is that what made it go down in the first place was his weakness in Afghanistan.
	If you look at the at the history of Joe Biden's job approval rating, His job approval rating was at about 50%, 51% for a long period of time to begin his presidency.
	And then it really dipped and went negative right around the time that he decided that he was going to ignominiously pull out of Afghanistan with no plan whatsoever, hand the country over to 8th century Islamic barbarians, and then allow a bunch of American soldiers to get killed and a bunch of Afghan translators get stuck behind, a bunch of Americans get stuck behind.
	So foreign policy weakness does have dramatic ramifications for Joe Biden.
	And he must know this.
	So right now, Joe Biden's approval rating is stuck in the 43, 44% range according to RealClearPolitics.
	Now, that has been a slight increase from its real absolute low of about 37%, which was back in July of 2022.
	But he's been kind of trending about even since September.
	And so he has to do something to reset because now we are starting to look at his reelect campaign.
	His reelect campaign is going to be launched any day now.
	We are rolling closer.
	It's near the end of February.
	We're going to start seeing his real-life campaign pump into full gear starting March, April, May.
	And so he has to do something to reset.
	So the way he decided that he was going to reset is by heading over to Ukraine over the weekend.
	It was a secret Ukraine trip, and it was promoted by all the usual media sources as a groundbreaking, unbelievably brave thing for the president of the United States to do.
	Never mind the fact that we've had a multiplicity of American senators and congresspeople who have already gone over to Ukraine.
	Never mind the fact that Boris Johnson went over to Ukraine when he was prime minister of the UK.
	Never mind the fact that you've had pretty much every Western leader except for Joe Biden go over to Ukraine Over the course of the past year since the war began in Ukraine, Joe Biden finally went over to Ukraine and the media reacted with their usual combination of sycophantic drooling and massaging his unmentionables.
	It was, you know, exactly what Joe Biden had bargained for.
	Now, is it going to have any real impact on Joe Biden's presidency?
	My guess is absolutely not, because nothing actually changed except for Joe Biden posturing.
	So, how did this thing come about?
	Apparently, it was a trip months in the works, according to Politico, but President Joe Biden and a small cadre of administration officials made the decision final in a meeting on Friday.
	Setting into motion a complex plan with substantial risks for Biden's safety, political standing, and international relations.
	Well, there is no risk to his political standing because, again, what's going to happen?
	People are going to get mad at him for going to Ukraine?
	International relations?
	Some more significant risk for international relations, as we'll discuss in just a minute, because international relations is very delicate, especially in a hot war zone.
	But the real question is not.
	The administration is trying to trot out this lie that this was months in the making and it was already pre-planned and political blows it out of the water.
	Friday is when he decided he's going to Ukraine.
	Why Friday?
	Why?
	So they're suggesting it's because of the one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
	And granted, it is the one year anniversary this week of Vladimir Putin's Russia invading Ukraine.
	With that said, that date would have been planned months in advance, would it have not?
	So what happened on Friday?
	Well, the answer is bad political news cycle.
	A bad political news cycle is what drove Joe Biden to go to Ukraine so he could completely reset the political table while not visiting, say, the American southern border or not visiting East Palestine, Ohio.
	Those are places where he's failed.
	Ukraine is a place where U.S.
	policy has manifestly succeeded.
	Now, I know that there are a lot of folks on the right who are not big fans of the Ukraine war.
	They think that the United States should not be involved in Ukraine at all.
	To me, this seems like a bargain.
	The truth is that just on a monetary level, the Ukraine war has been, in American foreign policy terms, a bargain.
	We spend, literally over the course of decades, trillions and trillions of trillions of dollars on national defense.
	And that money is sunk into weaponry that we don't end up using if we are successful in deterring everybody else from doing this sort of stuff.
	We have sent 20 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, over to Ukraine and we have crippled the Russian military.
	The Russian military is aggressive.
	It's been aggressive on its borders for two decades.
	Nobody's known how to handle Vladimir Putin.
	This has been true since the Bush administration, really since the end of the Clinton administration.
	There's been no idea really how to handle Russia.
	Vladimir Putin made a mistake.
	He stepped into a hornet's nest.
	He stepped into Ukraine thinking that he was going to be able to take Kiev.
	And the original going wisdom, you'll recall, is that he was going to be able to take Ukraine, no problem, just ingest it.
	And as it turns out, it is not just a question of pure numerical superiority when it comes to war anymore.
	Now it is a measure of technical sophistication.
	NATO armaments are way, way more sophisticated than whatever Russia has.
	Russia is using like World War II ordnance in some cases.
	Meanwhile, Ukraine is armed with all of the systems that NATO can provide it.
	Sophisticated microchip systems that Russia just does not have the availability of.
	And that means that in technical terms, Ukraine is far superior to the Russian military, which has been shown by the apparently 150,000 dead Russian soldiers over the course of the last year.
	So the Ukraine war has effectively single handedly taken Russia's fighting force as a global threat off the table.
	We'll talk about what that means for America and what that means for American foreign policy in a second.
	Then we'll get to Joe Biden's actual trip.
	But one thing that's clear is that the administration has not been clear about what America's goals are in Ukraine.
	That actually is a serious problem.
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	Alrighty, so.
	The goal of American foreign policy in Ukraine was really several fold.
	One is cripple the Russian military so it couldn't perform more aggressive attacks on its borders because they have pushed into places like Kazakhstan, threatening oil supply.
	They have pushed into Ukraine before.
	Obviously, they carted off Crimea.
	Donetsk and Luhansk.
	They've pushed before into Georgia.
	So Vladimir Putin has been a very aggressive leader in terms of foreign policy and in terms of utilization of the military.
	Crippling the Russian military, so that was no longer an issue, is actually a big win for the United States on the cheap in the sense that we've spent not a single American life on this.
	So just in terms of why we are there, that is one good reason.
	Containing Russia.
	That actually has been the purpose of NATO since its inception, and that has been the purpose of NATO post the fall of the Soviet Union.
	So that is purpose number one.
	Purpose number two is demonstrating to the rest of the world that you can't just randomly cross other countries' borders and try to take their capitals.
	It was to serve as a warning to China.
	If Russia had been able to just ingest Ukraine, the next move is China goes directly after Taiwan.
	And so if surrendering in Afghanistan to, again, a bunch of 8th century barbarians was the impetus for Vladimir Putin looking at the United States and saying, this is a weak horse and I'm going to go after it.
	Well, now Vladimir Putin has learned that when NATO is activated against him, Even a country like Ukraine can hold off Russia.
	So China may be looking at that and say, OK, maybe it's not worth the bargain for us to try to go after Taiwan.
	That was purpose number two.
	And purpose number three is to demonstrate that the post-Cold War order is still existent.
	And now this is kind of important.
	It's also controversial.
	So one of the things that happened, if you look at the history of the United States and our sort of international relations and global involvement, What you see is that the United States in the post-World War II era basically guaranteed global growth.
	Every place that was not directly controlled or indirectly controlled by the Soviet Union for that entire order.
	And then in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, expanded our role in creating global order to essentially the entire Earth.
	That does not mean that we are imperialists.
	We were not.
	We allowed other countries to run their countries very much as they wanted to in the post-Cold War era, with the proviso that they had to be open to trade, and also we were going to help ensure the freedom of trade on the high seas, which is one of the reasons why you see these very diffuse supply chains.
	The reason that when you get an iPhone, it is now produced in about a dozen different places and not produced in one place.
	And thus, it is much, much cheaper and much more cost effective.
	And you have better technology every year.
	The reason for that is because America guarantees the safety of the high seas.
	America has the world's most powerful deepwater Navy by a factor of about 10 to 1.
	Like to the rest of the world, 10 to 1.
	The United States is an unbelievably powerful economy.
	And that is a matter, as Peter Zeihan, the geopolitical expert from Harvard talks about, we have this incredible strength in terms of our domestic markets and in terms of our domestic geography.
	And we have Canada to our north, we have Mexico to our south, and we have two oceans to our east and west, which means that we are safe from pretty much everything.
	And that means that we have the capacity to actually ensure, if we want to, a global trade system that allows for diffuse supply chains, which does in fact benefit America.
	Because America is still the world's safest bet in terms of finances, which is why we have not gotten crushed economically over the course of the last couple of years, the way a lot of other countries have.
	Also, the United States is not in a state of full-scale demographic collapse, the same way that Europe is right now, the same way that much of Asia is.
	China is in a state of full-scale demographic collapse.
	The United States right now, if you had to put money on any country on Earth to retain its power, just geopolitically speaking, the United States would be the bet.
	But that only applies so long as the United States is able to maintain this tenuous world order.
	The world turns into a bunch of regional blocks.
	The United States may still be the most powerful player among those regional blocks, but our lifestyles are going to change an awful lot.
	Just to give you an example, during COVID, basically all the supply chains broke down.
	The diffuse network of supply lines broke down.
	The manufacturing lines broke down.
	Free trade broke down.
	And the result was you couldn't get basic stuff that you needed on a daily basis.
	All the things you'd become used to, advancements in technology, being able to get things cheaply and easily to your front door, things that made your life easier and better, that all broke down.
	If the world system breaks down and turns into a bunch of regional blocks, essentially, and the United States retreats from the world, you're going to see a lot more of that.
	That is what the future is actually going to look a lot more like, and not like the steady progress in terms of technology and in terms of availability that you've seen over the course of the last couple of decades.
	When people talk about the evils of globalization, there are costs to literally every policy.
	There is no policy that has ever been implemented on planet Earth that does not have costs and benefits, but the cost to de-globalization To the breakup of any sort of global trade system.
	I'm not talking here about the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund.
	I'm talking about the United States guaranteeing the freedom of the high seat.
	United States making sure that you can get the stuff that you need.
	United States making sure, for example, that China can't shut down the South China Sea or making sure that the Iranians can't shut down The Straits of Tehran or anything like that.
	When you have the United States guaranteeing all of that, it makes your life better.
	We don't see that in foreign policy terms because, again, it's very indirect.
	These are costs that are sort of silently undergone by the United States in order to preserve world order.
	In repelling Russia from Ukraine, we have essentially reinforced that we are not retreating from the world.
	We are not making room for Russia to create its own sphere of influence again or China to create its own sphere of influence again.
	So all of these things are great and wonderful and good things, I think, overall.
	And all of the talk about how we're being enmeshed in an endless war over there, just in terms of cost, that is not true.
	Now, does that mean that we should not have an eye on where the money goes?
	Of course we should have an eye on where the money goes.
	I mean, this is a point that pretty much every Republican politician is making right now.
	You can't just give a bag of cash to the Ukrainians and hope that it gets to the right place.
	We should, of course, keep an eye on where the money goes.
	But the notion that we would be better off, for example, if Russia just ingested Ukraine is wrong.
	Now, with all of that said, Joe Biden has achieved virtually all of these goals.
	And the question now is, what is he doing?
	The question is, why is he upping the ante?
	What is the goal of upping the ante at this point?
	And why is he visiting?
	Is he doing it for domestic political constituencies or is he doing it for the greater good of the world?
	I think the answer is going to be the former and not the latter.
	Largely because I don't think that you can trust the people in power, which, by the way, is one reason why.
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	Okay, so.
	Joe Biden flies over to Ukraine, right?
	As I said, they're real goals that we have in Ukraine and people who are saying we don't understand why we're even over there.
	It's all the reasons above.
	Containing Russia, deterring the breaking of other people's borders and ensuring a world order that actually benefits the American manufacturer because a lot of the manufacturing facilities from abroad are now being located in the United States to shorten the supply chains.
	It benefits American jobs, American economics, American power.
	All those are good reasons.
	That does not answer the question as to why Joe Biden flew over to Ukraine right now.
	The answer is that he flew over to Ukraine right now again for domestic political purposes.
	And that's the only reason to do it, really.
	Because we're doing all of these things, and we're doing them quite quietly.
	See, the general rule of American foreign policy is that you're supposed to speak softly and carry a big stick.
	Speaking softly generally means you provide the support that is necessary.
	And especially in this particular dicey situation, where everybody knows what the off-ramp is going to be, which is going to be Russia retaining some of the territory in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea.
	Everyone knows this is going to be the end goal.
	The question is, how do you get to that end goal with the minimum loss of life at this point?
	Again, because America has already achieved all of the goals previously stated.
	America has already crippled the Russian military to an unprecedented effect.
	The United States has already reinforced the notion that we are not going to sit idly by when sovereign nations violate the borders of other sovereign nations.
	And the United States has suggested that we are not retreating from the world in the way that many people thought we were going to retreat from the world.
	By the way, even under Trump, we didn't retreat from the world.
	This great lie that America went isolationist under Trump, it is a lie.
	The United States was very active in foreign policy under the Trump administration.
	It was just smart in that we didn't get ourselves embroiled in actual shooting wars with other people.
	First president in my lifetime not to do that was President Trump.
	Okay, but the question of what exactly is happening here is pretty obvious, and it's obvious in what the White House is saying.
	So White House comms director Kate Benningfield told reporters, quote, it was risky.
	It should leave no doubt in anyone's mind.
	Joe Biden is a leader who takes commitment seriously, but this was a risk he wanted to take.
	Now, that's a lie.
	Joe Biden does not take commitment seriously.
	He literally sold out our Afghan allies over the course of 20 years and then just handed them over to the world's worst human beings.
	And meanwhile, his charged affair over in Qatar is tweeting out about Black girl magic to the Afghan women.
	I'm not kidding.
	That's an actual thing that she did last week because it's Black History Month.
	So she's worried about Afghan women getting on board with the black girl magic.
	Meanwhile, they are being oppressed and shoved into basements and raped.
	So good times over there.
	As far as the risky notion, again, this is an attempt to prop up Joe Biden as a non weakling in the aftermath of the Chinese balloon fiasco.
	And it was a fiasco.
	So this was the entire pitch.
	So Joe Biden goes to Kiev and he says, America stands with you and the world stands with you.
	And there's another element here, which is that Joe Biden is now attempting, believe it or not, to polarize American support around Ukraine.
	So there are a lot of members of the right who are becoming very uneasy with the length that this war is going on, because the longer it goes on, they fear the greater a shot that Vladimir Putin uses a nuclear weapon or something unexpected happens.
	And again, those are those are thoroughly decent concerns in many arenas.
	But what Joe Biden is looking at is he's looking at the polls.
	And what the polls show right now is that the Ukraine war is becoming more and more partisan.
	According to an AP NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 48% of Americans say they favor the United States providing weapons to Ukraine.
	29% are opposed.
	22% say that they are neither in favor nor opposed.
	So it's not like super robust support for the Ukraine war. 37% Of Americans are in favor of sending government funds directly to Ukraine.
	37% in favor, 38% opposed.
	And this does, again, split along partisan lines.
	Among Republicans, 76% of Americans say they have hardly any confidence in Joe Biden's handling of the situation.
	Among Democrats, only 40%, by the way, say they have a great deal of confidence in Biden.
	50% say they have some confidence.
	So there is, in fact, a partisan gap and Biden is attempting to essentially drive a wedge here.
	That is why he is doing this, because he could have just continued to operate on the bipartisan consensus of sending enough money to Ukraine to allow them to repel the Russians.
	And instead, he's deciding to blow this thing up on the global stage.
	Here was Joe Biden over yesterday.
	One year later, he stands and Ukraine stands.
	Democracy stands.
	The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.
	Now, again, if you look at the partisan breakdown, 40% of Democrats say the United States should have a major role in Ukraine.
	Only 17% of Americans say the United States should have a major role in Ukraine.
	Now, again, that's undefined.
	I don't think anyone Democrat Republican wants to put American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
	That's not something anybody wants.
	But it is true that Joe Biden is attempting to exploit this by essentially ratcheting up tensions around Ukraine, I assume for domestic political purposes.
	So Joe Biden says support will come for as long as it takes.
	Now, again, that's a lie.
	It's not going to come for as long as it takes.
	There will be an end date here.
	There's an end date everywhere.
	Here was Joe Biden.
	Together, we've committed nearly 700 tanks and thousands of armored vehicles.
	1,000 artillery systems, all to defend Ukraine.
	And that doesn't count the other half a billion dollars we're announcing with you today and tomorrow.
	All walks of life.
	It's astounding.
	Astounding.
	Remind us that freedom is priceless.
	It's worth fighting for for as long as it takes.
	And that's how long we're going to be with you, Mr. President, for as long as it takes.
	OK, I'm sorry, but hearing the man who pulled out of Afghanistan say we're going to be there as long as it takes, it's obviously not true.
	So then the question becomes, why exactly?
	I keep coming back to this.
	Why is he doing the trip right now?
	Why are we supporting Ukraine?
	We should support Ukraine to repel Russia, and then we should look for an off ramp.
	I think everybody generally is on board with that particular sentiment.
	There's some people who don't want to support Ukraine at all.
	I frankly disagree with that argument.
	Fine.
	But that does not answer the question as to why Biden is ratcheting things up right now when theoretically we should be looking to pursue some sort of end to this thing.
	Vladimir Zelensky, he said that Joe Biden's visit is a strong signal.
	So he's going to take advantage of this.
	I mean, his defense secretary literally said over the weekend that he wanted to see Ukrainian tanks in Red Square in Moscow, which I don't know about ratcheting up tensions, but that seems like not a great comment.
	Good morning to everybody.
	President Biden, that is so important signal for us, and all we are proud of it.
	Thank you very much for coming, Mr. President, and a huge moment of support for Ukraine.
	And what can I say?
	I really appreciate that President Biden, American society, being from the very beginning of this tragedy, from the very beginning of this full-scale war, from the first day it's been together with us.
	Okay, so in a second we're going to get to the actual rationale for why Biden is doing this, because it's pretty obvious from the optics of the situation why he is doing that.
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	Okay, so, how do we know that this is largely optics from Joe Biden?
	Well, we can tell from the optics.
	So, yesterday, A clip came out of Joe Biden walking through Kiev with Vladimir Zelensky, and the air raid sirens go off.
	It's curious.
	It's weird.
	They don't even break.
	Nobody even for a second in the press pool looks around.
	Normally when the air raid sirens go off, and I've been in countries when air raid sirens have gone off.
	I was in Jerusalem last year.
	The air raid sirens didn't actually go off in Jerusalem, but you were checking your phone consistently for where are the rocket attacks falling.
	People tend to have a tendency when a giant noise goes off that says you should get to shelter, people tend to at least look in the air.
	In this clip, nobody looks in the air.
	There's a reason for that, as we'll explain in just a moment.
	Here was Joe Biden with Vladimir Zelensky yesterday walking through Kiev.
	And Well, there's only a couple of problems with that clip.
	One again, nobody looks in the air while the air raid sirens are going off.
	The second is that a CNN reporter then went on the air and he's like, oh yeah, by the way, um, we haven't heard an air raid siren in Kiev for like five weeks.
	Literally the only moment I've heard an air raid siren for the last five weeks has been when Joe Biden walked outside with Vladimir Zelensky, which sort of suggests that what they really wanted was a photo op of big, brave Joe Biden, dark aviator glasses, dark Brandon, walking around Kiev with the air raid sirens going off like he's Winston Churchill in the rubble of London or something.
	Here is a reporter from CNN pointing out the oddity of this.
	I've been here for the past five days.
	I have not heard any explosions.
	I have not heard any air sirens until about half an hour ago, right when President Biden was in the center of Kiev, as Clarissa was just mentioning.
	Weird.
	Weird.
	Almost as though the Eritreans were kind of staged.
	Almost as though.
	That's weird, is it not?
	Here's the thing.
	For all the talk about the risky Joe, he's so risky, man.
	That risk-seeking Joe Biden.
	By the way, that does not hold water for one second.
	Joe Biden is the same guy who bragged about how he was not actually the guy.
	Who stood in favor of the Bin Laden raid, how he was the guy who tried to tell Barack Obama not to do it.
	Joe Biden, when it comes to foreign policy, is as cowardly as any president we have ever had.
	So this notion that he's like, I'm so brave, I'm walking around Kiev with the air raid sirens going, yeah, I was stumbling around.
	Oh, no.
	And the answer is no.
	How do we know the answer is no?
	Because the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on national television over the weekend that the administration called the Russians and told them Joe Biden was coming.
	Because they didn't want the Russians accidentally shooting the President of the United States out of the air or hitting him with a stray missile.
	So, uh, yeah, there's that.
	It was planned and carried out in secret by the U.S.
	military and the Secret Service, the White House Press Corps, unaware that this was happening.
	National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, wrapping up a call moments ago, he provided more details about the President's trip.
	We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be traveling to Kiev.
	We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes.
	And because of the sensitive nature of those communications, I won't get into how they responded.
	Oh, so, um, it wasn't risky then.
	Because you told the Russians that you were doing it.
	And the Russians don't actually want to get into a direct shooting war with the United States after shooting down a plane with the President of the United States on it.
	And they also don't want American jets flying over Moscow after they hit the president with a stray missile or something.
	So for all of the talk of risky, risky, McRiskey, no, actually, actually not so much.
	Again, this didn't stop the media from doing what they do.
	And because you have to understand this is an inside outside game for the Democratic administration.
	Any Democratic administration essentially has its Praetorian guard who are the media who will just Gosh, endlessly about whatever a Democrat does, no matter what.
	Donald Trump makes peace in the Middle East and they're like, oh, whatever, man.
	Joe Biden flies to Ukraine after telling the Russians he is coming, stays there for a short period of time and then leaves.
	Like, my God, it's like Winston Churchill.
	Oh, he's like George Washington and Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill and God wrapped into one, one old crazy ball.
	Amazing stuff.
	So John Heilemann, he was losing his mind over this.
	Oh, the bravery.
	Oh, the unbelievable bravery.
	Someone like Mike Deaver from the Reagan administration, who was the master image maker, the guy who put Ronald Reagan at Normandy, for wherever he is in the great beyond, was tipping his hat to the image makers who had those shots of Joe Biden with Zelensky in Kiev, air raid sirens blaring.
	Those are the stuff of image makers and the dream of politics, right?
	He's not gonna date you, dude.
	not just do this thing, but look the way he did, especially when so many people say, he's too old, he's too weak, he's too frail, he's past it.
	The swagger of this trip, not just the execution of the secrecy, but the swagger of it on display on the streets of Keeve.
	Swag.
	Is an enormous boon to him politically.
	He's not gonna date you, dude.
	It's not a thing.
	Meanwhile, he had reporters for CNN doing the same thing.
	It was so significant.
	It was like Churchill.
	It was like when JFK went to Berlin in 1961.
	Except for not at all like that, but sure.
	Presidents have visited Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, but those were U.S.
	wars.
	This is a Ukrainian war.
	No U.S.
	military presence on the ground.
	How significant?
	It's worth, I mean, mentioning Churchill, because Zelensky has been called the Churchill of our generation, and Biden going there today, I think it's going to be a moment for the history books.
	It's like when John F. Kennedy went to Berlin in 1961 and gave a speech at the height of the Cold War.
	Ukraine is the new Berlin.
	It's the rally point for NATO and the Western allies.
	And I think Biden did something really heroic.
	It's so heroic, so heroic that he actually went to a place that he'd warned everybody that he was going about a year after everybody else went.
	Just super heroic.
	Not at all with a domestic political constituency in mind at all.
	Just heroism.
	Meanwhile, Claire McCaskill and Chris Wallace has now moved on over from Fox News to CNN.
	They decided that it was very important to contrast.
	This was obviously Trump.
	I mean, Trump was bad.
	Guys, remember, Trump was a bad guy.
	Even though there was no Ukraine war while Trump was president, Trump's the problem.
	Again, the way that Trump haunts their strange little brains like a demented goblin, it's so weird.
	Anyway, here they are.
	When that Air Force One flew over the border into Ukraine, everybody knows it was just that airplane from the United States in that airspace.
	And that took courage.
	And that courage is a very important component of a reelect for Joe Biden, because strength matters.
	Strength matters.
	Come on!
	Seriously, come on.
	But again, the goal here was domestic political constituencies.
	I'm going to say it over and over because it happens to be the case.
	Joe Biden right now is running really weak.
	There are a bunch of brand new polls out showing Ron DeSantis versus Joe Biden among independents, not among Republicans and Democrats, among independents.
	According to Quinnipiac, DeSantis versus Biden, direct head-to-head among independents, DeSantis is up nine.
	So yeah, Joe Biden's gotta do something to recapitulate his presidency here.
	He's gotta do something to reset this thing.
	So he's hitting a reset button on his own presidency by going on over to Ukraine now.
	The problem is that this actually has some pretty signal ramifications for actual foreign policy.
	And right now, providing the kind of support Ukraine needs in order to repel Russia and push them back hard, I get it.
	As I've discussed on the program before, essentially what you have between Russia and Ukraine is a prisoner's dilemma in which both sides have an interest in continuation of the war unless there's an actual on-the-ground change in the circumstance.
	Unless Russia has a serious chance of losing, nothing changes.
	Unless Ukraine has a serious chance of losing, nothing changes.
	So, ratcheting up the pressure?
	I get it.
	Traveling over there to do this very loudly, I don't see how that's going to allow Putin a way out.
	In fact, it's going to drive him to become louder because he needs some face-saving piece of credible withdrawal that is allowed to him here.
	Well, he's not taking it.
	Yesterday, Vladimir Putin made a big speech.
	In which he declared that Moscow was suspending its participation in the new START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, sharply upping the ante amid tensions with Russia over the fighting in Ukraine.
	He was speaking in his State of the State address, and he said that Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the United States does so.
	He accused the U.S.
	and its NATO allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia's defeat in Ukraine.
	He said they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time.
	In this context, I have to share today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.
	Now, does that actually make much of a difference?
	It does not.
	It is a symbolic move.
	But I'll tell you what is significantly less of a symbolic move is a move by China.
	Because China is now apparently openly considering the possibility of giving lethal aid to Moscow, getting indirectly involved in the war by funding Moscow the same way that the United States and NATO have been funding Ukraine.
	This is not a great situation.
	It suggests that some of the mid-level foreign policy staffers in the Biden administration are not very good at their jobs.
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	So what are the actual impacts of what Joe Biden has been doing in Ukraine?
	Well, first of all, when Joe Biden goes to Ukraine, he says things like, we must protect democracy.
	We must protect liberty.
	You'll notice that virtually every Explanation of why the United States ought to be funding Ukraine that I have given is utterly disconnected from this particular narrative.
	The reason being, there are a lot of places around the world where we actually do not want democracy to rule.
	It's just a fact of the matter.
	You know, it's uncomfortable for people to think about this, but if democracy were to rule in Saudi Arabia, ISIS would probably be in charge.
	If democracy were to rule in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood would be in charge.
	There are lots of places around the world where actually what you don't want is democracy.
	What you actually want is an American ally in place to develop toward the protection of rights.
	One of the things that Americans have traditionally understood is that democracy is a good, it is not the only good.
	What is good for Americans is the long-scale development of property rights around the world.
	The long-scale development of freedoms around the world.
	And then, once that has been inculcated in a population, a population accepts all those things, then they can vote, obviously.
	That's great.
	Voting's great.
	But only if people understand what they are able to vote on and what they are not able to vote on in the first place.
	Because there are certain rights that are sacrosanct, certain things that are sacrosanct.
	And if you don't have that, what you end up with is tyranny of the people.
	Which is something that our founding fathers greatly opposed.
	The reason that I say that is because one of the critiques and it is a correct critique of Joe Biden in Ukraine.
	has come from authoritarian countries who are saying, well, you seem like you're okay with authoritarianism among your allies, and you're using Ukraine's freedom, democracy.
	You're using that as sort of a prop to attack Russia.
	That's not totally wrong.
	We actually do have interests.
	Now, those interests align with a long-term goal of democracy promotion or freedom promotion abroad and free trade abroad and capitalism abroad, right?
	All of those things hold true.
	That the means for the now may not match the ends for the later.
	However, when Joe Biden does this sort of this highfalutin rhetoric, the goal, of course, is not to get more people on board.
	The goal is domestic political constituencies.
	The goal is maybe some of his allies in Europe, but it is not to, in fact, deescalate in places like China.
	So China apparently is now considering lethal aid to Moscow because what China is looking at is, OK, fine, if the United States is really going to keep upping the ante in Ukraine to the point Where our ally is not just crippled in its ability to move abroad, which, by the way, does not actually harm China all that much, right?
	If Russia's military is no longer able to, for example, defend its eastern border, That's actually not bad for China.
	Remember, China and Russia share a border, and historically speaking, that border has been quite contentious.
	And so theoretically, China could just take advantage of that.
	Already, China has taken advantage of Russia's weakness in order to turn Russia into basically an oil proxy state for itself.
	But if Russia were to be so internally weakened that it might take a chess piece off the board for the Chinese, that's a real problem for the Chinese.
	So now they're talking openly about considering lethal aid to Moscow.
	This is something the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was saying yesterday.
	There is open source reporting that Chinese companies are providing surveillance equipment to that mercenary group, the Wagner group, fighting in Ukraine.
	Does the U.S.
	consider this to be providing military support to Russia?
	The very first conversations that President Biden and President Xi had about Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, just a couple of weeks into the war, President Biden shared with President Xi our deep concern about the possibility China would provide lethal support to Russia in this effort.
	Okay, so that actually is a problem, right?
	We don't actually want China getting indirectly involved.
	We want to deter them from doing exactly that.
	Vice President Kamala Harris, the greatest and wisest, most immortal of all beings, she says that she's very troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow, which is funny because she was informed of it about 30 seconds before she went on stage, as per our usual arrangement.
	We are also troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow since the war began.
	Looking ahead, any steps by China to provide lethal support to Russia would only reward aggression, continue the killing, and further undermine a rules-based order.
	Okay, by rules-based order, see, this is one of the big problems.
	Whenever we say a rules-based international order, we should recognize foreign policy is not a place of rules.
	Foreign policy is a place of wolves.
	Foreign policy is a wild and chaotic place.
	And so when China looks at us and they're like, uh, you guys are funding Ukraine.
	Why can't we fund Russia?
	You say we violate the rules-based order.
	You guys are actively involving yourselves in Ukraine.
	We get to do what we want on the other side.
	That's not wrong.
	That is not on any, I mean, it may be morally wrong because we don't like China's regime.
	We don't like Russia's regime, but it is not wrong on a logical level to suggest that if you have outside funding for one side, outside funding for the other side is not verboten because clearly it is not.
	The real question is going to be how we get to the aims that we wish to get to.
	How do we achieve those goals?
	That's the thing that we really should be worried about right now.
	And de-escalation would be the way to do this, which is why visits like Joe Biden's, I'm not sure that they are, like they're not useful particularly.
	It's the same thing as when Nancy Pelosi flew into Taiwan.
	Listen, I'm a big supporter of the American Navy protecting Taiwan from Chinese invasion.
	I think Taiwan being invaded by the Chinese would be a disaster for the world for a wide variety of reasons that we've discussed before on the program.
	However, Escalatory moves, for no apparent reason, I just don't understand.
	Nancy Pelosi flying to Taiwan when it didn't actually change American foreign policy in any real way.
	What was the point of that?
	Same sort of thing as Joe Biden flying into Ukraine.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, some foreign policy strategists in Beijing have raised the question of whether China should consider providing military support to Russia for defensive purposes.
	A scenario, they say, could significantly increase the cost of conflict.
	That, in turn, could give China some leverage in proposing options to end the conflict.
	But such a move would also stir up greater resentment against President Xi Jinping's leadership in the West.
	It couldn't be determined whether the idea is gaining traction in the top leadership.
	China's foreign ministry hit back at the U.S.
	allegation, saying, quote, It's the U.S.
	side, not the Chinese side, that's providing an endless flow of weapons.
	The U.S.
	side isn't qualified to point fingers at China or order China around.
	We never accept the U.S.
	criticizing Sino-Russia relations.
	So, I mean, again, that is not totally wrong.
	So the question is, do you want China to actually involve itself this way?
	Part of the problem here is that we don't have actual transparency.
	We have no clue what sort of negotiations, if any, are taking place between the United States, Russia, China over any of this, like what a solution actually looks like.
	All we see is the posturing on the world stage.
	If all we see is the posturing and there actually is nothing going on behind the scenes, which is kind of what I suspect, Then you are sleepwalking your way into a deeper and broader conflict.
	And that is the real problem over here, which is why, again, optics, speaking loudly and carrying a medium-sized stick is not as good as carrying a big stick and speaking very, very softly.
	And meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, he's obviously gearing up, I think, for a presidential run.
	Come June, July, he's probably going to declare, but right now he's sort of in his pre-presidential mode.
	He said over the weekend that we shouldn't forget, while the media is declaring that Joe Biden is just the strongest, most wonderful, most powerful man ever, Well, while the media is looking at Joe Biden like a piece of Arnold Schwarzenegger bodybuilding from 1982, that it was Joe Biden's weakness in Afghanistan that led to this invasion in the first place.
	Here is Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
	First things first, on the president's unannounced visit, is this a good move?
	Well, you know, Brian, I'm reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years.
	And then I'm also reminded that I don't think any of this would have happened, but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan.
	So I think while he's over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, OK, he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world.
	He's not done anything to secure our own border here at home.
	Obviously that's a populist point that's going to reach a lot of ears.
	DeSantis also said that Biden should not be giving a blank check to Ukraine, which again is a principle everybody should agree with.
	There shouldn't be such a thing as blank checks generally in American policy.
	I think a lot of Americans are asking, you know, how much more money?
	How much more time?
	How much more human suffering?
	Well, they have effectively a blank check policy with no clear strategic objective identified.
	And these things can escalate, and I don't think it's in our interest to be getting into proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea.
	So I think it would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective that they're trying to achieve.
	But just saying it's an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.
	Obviously, he is exactly right about this, and this is why the posturing by Joe Biden, I think, is actually, in many ways, not useful.
	It is actually counterproductive.
	Okay, meanwhile, other controversy broke out over the weekend.
	I don't know if you're a big fan of Roald Dahl's books.
	I like Roald Dahl's books.
	I've read my kids' Roald.
	My son loves them.
	My daughter loves them.
	This would be like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda or James and the Giant Peach.
	Well, now, the Wokies have come for the literature.
	So it was only a matter of time.
	Apparently, Puffin Books is now rewriting, I'm not kidding you, rewriting Roald Dahl's children's books.
	Apparently, the Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that hundreds of words, including descriptions of characters' appearances, races, and genders, had now been changed or removed in at least 10 of the author's 19 children's books.
	A review of the author's works began in 2020, according to the New York Times, before Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company, which manages the author's copyrights and trademarks.
	According to Rick Bahari, a company spokesperson, when publishing new print runs of books written years ago, it's not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details, including a book's cover and page layout.
	Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text.
	Apparently, the changes reported by The Telegraph includes, characters are no longer described as fat.
	Because apparently, that's offensive to people, is if you describe certain characters as fat.
	And also, references to mothers and fathers have been removed, and now changed to parents or family, because Matilda apparently had two dads.
	One of them was just trans.
	Or something.
	Apparently, Bahari said the estate had partnered with Inclusive Minds, an organization that champions diversity and accessibility in children's literature.
	The woke censorship regime is here, and it is ugly.
	And this is direct from 1984.
	I mean, George Orwell's 1984, he said that we were literally going to sit there and rewrite old literature.
	We're going to take out references.
	We're going to change words.
	Roald Dahl died in 1990.
	He's been dead for 30 years.
	And now they're rewriting his stuff to make it less offensive.
	The group said that it helped provide valuable input when it comes to reviewing language that can be damaging and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
	This, of course, is an absurdity.
	The changes are ridiculous, by the way.
	And if we are going to do this routine, you're literally going to just have to wipe out pretty much all literature up till the last five seconds.
	Because we have jumped into a brave new world when it comes to our gender and racial politics, in which we are apparently not allowed to say that men are different from women.
	And we're also not allowed to point out anything remotely offensive to anyone, or even to read historically stuff that is actually offensive and then say, yeah, that's what people thought at the time, that was a bad thing.
	The fact that they have actively changed the verbiage here is insane, and some of the changes are incredibly stupid.
	I mean, I'm looking them up right now.
	Some of the changes that have been made, they took out fat, ugly, and crazy.
	You're not allowed to say fat or ugly or crazy.
	These are all words that we still use today, by the way.
	Apparently, you are no longer allowed to call Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory enormously fat.
	You just call him enormous, which doesn't change it at all.
	The entire premise of Augustus Gloop as a character is that he is a greedy little kid who becomes fat because he won't stop eating the candy.
	I don't know how they're going to go back and remake the Gene Wilde or Willy Wonka film.
	All I can tell you is I'm going to keep playing the Oompa Loompa song for my kids.
	What do you do?
	I'm trying to remember all the lyrics to the Oompa Loompa song now.
	Right.
	I know.
	It's oompa loompa doopity doo.
	I have another puzzle for you.
	Oompa loompa doopity dee.
	If you are wise, you'll listen to me.
	Right?
	I'm trying to remember the fat song.
	There are like three of them.
	Anyway, the entire premise of the song is that being incredibly greedy and fat is bad for you, right?
	What do you get when you guzzle down sweets?
	Eating as much as an elephant eats.
	Where are you at getting terribly fat?
	Oh, sorry.
	Not allowed to say that.
	Where are you at getting terribly enormous?
	That's definitely gonna help.
	Also, Ann Sponge from James and the Giant Peach is no longer the fat one.
	Also, Mrs. Twit of the Twits is beastly rather than ugly.
	And you're not allowed to say that somebody is mad or crazy.
	The craziest change, by the way, so they said that the Cloud Men from James and the Giant Peach are now Cloud People?
	Honestly, I think that the craziest change actually here, the Roald Dahl change that's the craziest, is that they change a list of books that Matilda is reading at the library.
	To ban Rudyard Kipling but keep Ernest Hemingway in.
	Which is weird because Ernest Hemingway was a super giant terrible sexist and kind of a bad person.
	Rudyard Kipling has now been replaced.
	Joseph Conrad, who wrote Lord Jim, who wrote a bunch of classics in the genre, he's also been replaced with Jane Austen.
	Rudyard Kipling was replaced with John Steinbeck.
	Now listen, I love John Steinbeck.
	I'm lukewarm on Jane Austen.
	But you don't just get to change faves of Matilda's here.
	Like Heart of Darkness is still a classic.
	This is what we do now.
	And this is why people have been saying you should not buy digital copies of things.
	You should buy actual hard copies of things because once the digital copies are there, they can just change them at a moment's notice.
	You're seeing this, by the way, in terms of chat GPT and AI.
	All the limitations that are placed there are insane.
	Over the weekend, for example, AI Chat GPT revealed that if you try to rank Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson in terms of controversy from 0 to 10, they rank alongside Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.
	This is how Chat GPT's presets are made.
	The AI Chat GPT.
	The perversion of kids' brains that are going to be created by simply barring them from seeing material that we don't want them to see in the name of wokeness is totally crazy.
	Now, speaking of nastiness and meanness, I have to say it is kind of fun when the left comes for one of their own.
	So this finally happened to Don Lemon.
	So you will notice that the attacks on Nikki Haley have been ramping up from the left because the left actually wants Donald Trump to be the nominee.
	He makes them a living.
	When Donald Trump is in the news, the ratings are up.
	When Donald Trump is out of the news, the ratings are down.
	Not only that, the Democrats obviously think that Donald Trump is an easier candidate to run against than some of the others, so they are attacking with alacrity anybody who's not named Donald Trump who's in the race.
	Right now, there's only one person not named Donald Trump who's in the race, and that person is Nikki Haley.
	So over the weekend, Nikki Haley, she was, again, making the point that you don't have to be 80 years old in order to run for president, which, again, is a pretty good point.
	I think that we are all tired of the octogenarians running the show.
	Here was Nikki Haley over the weekend.
	You know, America first, America should be powerful.
	Those are things that any GOP candidate is going to say, so why you?
	Why not me?
	You know, I am the wife of a combat veteran.
	I'm a mother of two children.
	One who's getting married, and I see how hard it is for her to look at buying a home.
	One that's in college, and I see what he's dealing with with woke education.
	You know, I'm the daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what's happening at the border.
	I think we need mental competency tests for people over the age of 75, and I think we need far more transparency than we're seeing today.
	What I do strongly believe is the American people need options.
	I don't think you have to be 80 years old to be in Washington, D.C.
	Okay, this is a normal and fair point, and it has driven the left absolutely batty.
	So, we saw Whoopi Goldberg over the weekend suggest that Nikki Haley is not a new generation.
	How can you say she's a new generation?
	Whoopi Goldberg is 67 years old.
	Nikki Haley is 51 years old.
	Donald Trump is nearing 80.
	Joe Biden is 80.
	So yeah, technically speaking, she is in fact a new generation, but here is Whoopi Goldberg speaking for the youth of America.
	Now that's what they're saying, suddenly.
	Everybody says, oh yeah, we should reflect all of us.
	Okay.
	Well, here's a clip.
	Gen Z and millennials make up about a third of the country, but we're nowhere near a third of the government and think we need a government that needs to look like the country.
	It's time for a new generation of Republican leadership.
	The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again.
	It's time for a new generation of leadership.
	You're not a new generation.
	You're 51.
	What are you talking about?
	And I love all of the crazy 40 year old women in the audience cheering.
	Oh, you're not a new generation.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God.
	This has been the pitch.
	The pitch has been that Nikki Haley is bad in a token.
	Also, Wajahat Ali, who writes occasionally for The New York Times and is terrible.
	He said on MSNBC that Haley is a Manchurian candidate for whiteness, which is a hell of a take.
	You mentioned that the guy in the 1920s who declared himself white.
	I mean, there's reporting from a local paper that Nikki Haley once declared herself white on a voter registration form.
	Waj, your thoughts on this?
	I mean, you wrote a book about growing up brown in America.
	Will you be cheering on fellow brown American, fellow child of South Asian immigrants, Nikki Haley, and what she stands for?
	To quote Zora Neale Hurston, not all skinfolk are kinfolk.
	Nikki Haley instead is the Dinesh D'Souza of Candace Owens.
	She's the Alpha Karen with brown skin.
	And for white supremacists and racists, she's the perfect Manchurian candidate.
	And instead of applauding her, I am just disgusted by people like Nikki Haley who know better, whose parents were the beneficiaries, as Asha said, of the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act, which passed thanks to those original BLM protesters and the Civil Rights Act.
	Uh, that is such insane stupidity.
	I don't even know where to begin with that.
	First of all, anybody who disagrees with Shahad Ali is not legitimately a minority is a hell of a take.
	Manny Hassan suggesting that Nikki Haley filed is white in her home state is absurd.
	There was no category for South Asian on the actual census form.
	And so your choices were Caucasian or black.
	And so she chose Caucasian as many Indian Americans did, meaning like from India.
	This sort of hatred directed at Nikki Haley, there's only one rationale for it.
	I mean, aside from the fact that she's a Republican.
	And the rationale is they kind of want Trump to be the nominee, Tara Setmire, who's supposedly an anti-Trump Republican.
	Ha ha ha.
	She says that Nikki Haley is a token, of course.
	The executive director of the AAPI Victory Alliance told NBC, I think people can see through her much better now than ever before, so she can try to talk about her immigrant background.
	I think it's going to fall flat.
	Do you agree with that?
	I mean, and if so, why won't that work for her?
	Well, I mean, I can't speak on behalf of the Indian American community because I'm not part of that, but I can see where the comparisons would be to where oftentimes Republicans will try to use immigrants or minorities as tokens to try to deflect away from policies and positions that are actually exclusive of those communities.
	And Nikki Haley is no different than a lot of the rest of them.
	And then she's no different.
	OK, so I do love that for the left, you can be as racially offensive as you want, but it's ageism that's the real problem.
	Apparently, Don Lemon has now been forced into DEI training, which is hysterically funny.
	So you'll recall that last week, Don Lemon suggested that Nikki Haley was pastor prime because women in their prime are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, by which he apparently meant sexual prime, which is something he's an expert on.
	His female sexual prime is gay man Don Lemon.
	Very, very expert at this.
	So now he's been forced into DEI training, which the irony is just too rich for words.
	Apparently, Chris Licht, the network's chief executive, said that Lemon would return to the network's air on Wednesday.
	But he had to participate in formal training following sexist comments he made last week.
	Now again, this sort of formal training is ridiculous because it never achieves anything.
	Don Lemon is 56 years old.
	He ain't changing his ways.
	He's made millions of dollars to be as annoying and jackass as he is.
	But Licht wrote in a memo, I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation.
	He has agreed to participate in formal training as well as continuing to listen and learn.
	We take the situation very seriously.
	It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with fostering a culture in which people can own, learn, and grow from their mistakes.
	The irony of Don Lemon, a gay black man, having to sit through diversity training is almost too rich.
	It is almost too rich.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then we'll get to some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	First thing that I like, the House Republicans have now given access to Tucker Carlson to 44,000 hours, 41,000 hours of capital surveillance footage from the January 6th riot.
	I think this is good.
	And full transparency would have been a good thing in the first place.
	I am bewildered as to why House Democrats didn't do this.
	If they were so confident about their narrative, that there was no one encouraging the riots, or that the police were not facilitating, or any of this sort of stuff, then why not just release all the footage?
	I'm always very curious when people won't release all the footage in cases like this.
	It's always strange.
	Maybe they have some reasons they haven't quite expressed as of yet, but releasing it to Tucker, the left, of course, is going nuts, because how dare you give it to Tucker Carlson?
	Well, why not?
	You guys give it to your favorite people in the media all the time.
	Apparently, according to Axios, Carlson says, if there's ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6th.
	By definition, the video will reveal it.
	It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.
	This is correct.
	I'm very confused as to why it was not given out to the public in the first place.
	Like, make it searchable online if you can.
	What's the problem with it?
	So good for Kevin McCarthy for doing that.
	I think that, again, transparency is in the public interest, particularly on matters of high public tension like this one.
	Okay, other things that I like.
	So over the weekend, Bernie Sanders has a new book coming out.
	The fact that Bernie Sanders is considered like an actual valuable human in today's political day and age demonstrates how crazy today's politics are.
	He has a book titled, It's Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism.
	It is by Bernie Sanders, as well as John Nichols, who I guess is probably his ghostwriter or something.
	And presumably it is about his lake house.
	According to his Amazon description, a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.
	So it'd be Das Kapital from the senator from Vermont who has been a career useless person, like totally useless his entire career.
	So useless he was kicked out of a commune when he was a younger man.
	So useless that he was kind of a deadbeat with regard to his own kids apparently for a while.
	Sanders argues that unfettered capitalism is to blame for an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality is undermining our democracy and is destroying our planet.
	How can we accept an economic order that allows three billionaires?
	How can we accept a political system?
	This, by the way, is always the shtick of our newfangled socialists.
	How can we accept X?
	And then you're like, well, what is the alternative to X?
	It doesn't even matter.
	How can we accept it?
	Well, what's your plan for not being?
	We're not going to talk about that.
	We're not going to talk about that.
	How can we accept that things happen in life?
	Why do we allow people to die?
	There should be no death.
	Death is very bad.
	You know, like, well, can you explain how you're going to cure?
	Nope.
	It's a result of capitalism.
	If you just replace everything that Bernie Sanders asks about with the word death, you understand how nonsensical any of his arguments are?
	Because again, he doesn't ever argue for his preventative measures.
	All he does is just critique the status quo, which is the easiest game in the entire world.
	He says the path forward has to be... Okay, so he was asked over the weekend by Margaret Brennan on CBS News about the fact that he is now doing events where the tickets are selling for 95 bucks a pop.
	If you're a good communist, why aren't they free?
	Why don't you eat the cost?
	You're rich.
	He has no good answer.
	Tickets for your tour apparently are selling for $95 on Ticketmaster, which is accused of anti-competitive behavior.
	You know that.
	Some of your Democrats are criticizing them.
	Aren't you benefiting yourself from the system that you're trying to dismantle?
	First of all, those decisions are made totally by the publisher and the bookseller.
	I think there's one case where in one place here in Washington, politics and pros and independent books are charging some tickets.
	Most of them, I think, are $40, $50.
	And you get a book as well.
	So if you want to come, you're going to have to pay $40.
	I'll throw in the book for free.
	And we're doing a number of free events.
	But I don't make a nickel out of these things.
	But you're OK doing business with Ticketmaster?
	No, not particularly.
	But that's, again, nothing to do with that.
	That is, if you wrote a book, probably be the same process.
	I have a question.
	Did he get an advance?
	How much money is he actually making off of his book?
	How much money is made total?
	That dude has a lake house.
	Do you have a lake house?
	Bernie Sanders should not.
	He is a socialist.
	Redistribute your lake house, dude.
	That's his third house, I believe.
	So good stuff there from Bernie.
	And you have to love the irony of all these very, very wealthy socialists who live in enormous houses.
	Bernie Sanders, Hassan Piker.
	Joe Biden is doing real well for himself.
	It's a wonderful thing to be able to live off the excesses of capitalism while criticizing the system that makes you rich and famous.
	It really is a wonderful thing.
	Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
	Alright, so, things that I hate.
	So James O'Keefe has now apparently been thrown out of Project Veritas, which means Project Veritas no longer has, like, any reason for being, from what I understand.
	The rationale for him being thrown out of Project Veritas is absolutely unclear.
	They're claiming that he was mean to employees or something, which is a Strange claim for why you would throw out the face of the organization, the only prominent person who works at your organization, and the lead fundraiser for your organization.
	Project Veritas, of course, James has spent years going undercover.
	I've known James since before the ACORN scandal broke during the Andrew Breitbart days.
	That's going back, you know, 15 years.
	And James has always been somebody who's very controversial, goes about things in his own way.
	He also happens to be responsible for breaking an enormous amount of news over the course of the last 15 years by going undercover and by actually getting people to admit things on tape that they would rather not have admitted on tape, including most recently admissions from high-ranking members of Pfizer that they were engaged in what kind of sounds like gain-of-function research.
	Well now, according to the Washington Post, Project Veritas ...has split with O'Keefe, the group's founder and chairman, following a bitter management dispute that pulled back the curtain of allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money.
	The group's executive director informed some staff on Monday that O'Keefe had issued an ultimatum demanding the board of directors resign as a condition for him to stay.
	And apparently the board of directors said that they then removed him.
	Now, I don't know how he constructed his board.
	Typically, when you construct a board of directors for a 501c3, you put allies on the board.
	So maybe there are other issues we don't know about.
	If there are no other issues we don't know about, if what all that's happening here is that the board doesn't like how James is running the organization, I do not understand the logic here.
	James, effectively speaking, is the public face of the organization.
	Here was James announcing his ouster yesterday.
	The only way to defeat us is if they take our spirit.
	And from the looks of things, many of us remain completely undefeated.
	And unbroken.
	So, our mission continues on.
	I'm not done.
	The mission will perhaps take on a new name.
	And it may be no longer called Veritas, Project Veritas.
	I'll need a bunch of people around me and I'll make sure, I'll make sure you know how to find me.
	And I'll quote the, when you invited me to New York City and did that little stand up, how fitting that from Shakespeare, quote, and this story shall the good man teach his son.
	We few.
	We happy few.
	We band of brothers and sisters.
	Okay, so James is obviously going to continue to be successful.
	He'll go and find and found another organization if he has to.
	I am confused as to what exactly was going on inside the organization, unless they are fully transparent about what went on here.
	And again, there's a part of the story that's not being told.
	It makes no sense to me.
	And it is a loss to

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