Media Liberals Scold Americans for Insufficient Gratitude for 'Bidenomics' PLUS: Ukraine Threatens War Opponents and Critics; AND: Talking Musk/Ukraine on TV
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, polling data about Joe Biden continues to alarm Democratic operatives, and that's putting it mildly, as they not only show large majorities of Americans do not want Biden to be the next president, but also show, perhaps even worse, that they regard the economy as bad and getting worse.
That voters' perceptions of the economy play a vital role, perhaps the vital role, in presidential elections is hardly some sophisticated insight.
Clinton advisers became widely celebrated in the 90s for pointing out, quote, it's the economy, stupid.
And that tends to be conventional wisdom, that the economy determines election outcomes, except in times of war, meaning the United States involved in a direct war.
And all the chatter about January 6th, and Vladimir Putin, and insurrections, and democracy, and indictments appear unlikely to change that.
As a result, Democrats have been adopting a strategy that they have continuously employed, yet which seems, recognizing that I'm not a political strategist, highly unlikely to succeed.
They keep sending out the richest, wealthiest, and most condescending media elites to chide Americans, to lecture them, to berate and hector them for failing to appreciate how good they have it.
For refusing to give Joe Biden the credit and even gratitude that he deserves and to essentially insist that their views that their economic situation is precarious is due to their own stupidity.
Not their perception or valid perception of reality.
We were treated last night to one of the most extreme examples of this yet, courtesy of Christiane Amanpour, the CNN host, and New York Times pundit and economist Paul Krugman.
And we'll take a look about what this reveals about media and liberal elites, as well as the economy heading into the 2024 election.
As President Zelensky perceives accurately that war support is eroding both in the U.S.
and in the West, he is becoming increasingly brazen and even unhinged in some of the threats he is issuing toward the West about what will happen if Western cash stops flowing to Kiev.
At the same time, Ukraine is using some extremely odd and disturbing spokespeople to issue similar threats, even more unhinged ones.
Including ones that seem to promise death or life in prison for critics of Zelensky or that war.
We'll take a look at that as well.
And then finally, last night I was on a program on NewsNation, the relatively new cable network that's designed to compete primarily with CNN and MSNBC.
And the discussion I had about Elon Musk and whether he had a duty to obey orders from the Ukrainian military, one that we covered on Monday Night Show, is a topic I discussed about, and I think it's really worth reviewing what happened in this interview.
As a few programming notes, because I will be appearing on the 8 o'clock Eastern Fox Program with Jesse Waters immediately following this program.
We have to be a little bit more disciplined with our time management than we normally are.
Not that we're not extremely disciplined ordinarily, but we're going to be even more disciplined tonight because we have to finish the show right about exactly 8 o'clock p.m.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Nothing makes political discourse in the United States more shrill and more intense than an upcoming election, particularly a presidential election, And we're basically at that point where the election is about a year away, just a little bit more than a year, that will determine whether
Presumably Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is re-elected, or whether the Republican nominee that at the moment looks to be Donald Trump, but could be someone else, is elected instead.
And if, as usually is the case, the numbers for the incumbent president are solid, even if they're not great, then his party tends to be confident heading into the election because incumbents in the United States have a very good re-election chance, just historically.
The numbers for Joe Biden, though, are nothing short of awful in terms of how Americans perceive him, the concerns they have over his age and the obvious degradation of his capacities that we all see right in front of us that anyone in honest admits that's only going to get worse, obviously, with the passage of time, but particularly with the perceptions that Americans have about his handling of the economy.
And in particular, poll after poll after poll shows That the perception of the overwhelming majority of American citizens is that the economy is poor, it's likely to get worse, and they blame Joe Biden for the mishandling of that economy.
And once that perception emerges, it's extremely difficult to reverse, especially within just a one-year time period, because it's very unlikely something dramatic will happen that will change that.
And that is what I think is responsible, more than anything else, for the obvious panic that the liberal establishment, the Democratic Party, all of their media allies, all of their allies in Washington have, that they're looking at all these indictments they brought against President Trump.
It doesn't seem to be harming his numbers at all.
If anything, in the Republican primary, it's strengthening them.
At the same time, the concerns over Joe Biden's age and simultaneously his inability to produce economic prosperity in a way that gives people confidence about their future is weakening almost every month.
Here is one of the polls that has caused a lot of panic.
It is reported by Associated Press on August 17th last month.
The headline, Biden's approval rating on the economy stagnates despite slowing inflation.
AP NORC poll shows quote, President Joe Biden has devoted the past several weeks to promoting the positive impacts of his policy, but his efforts have yet to meaningfully register with the public.
Only 36% of US adults approve of Biden's handling of the economy, slightly lower than the 42% who approve of his overall performance, according to the new poll.
Both figures are close to where Biden's approval numbers have stood for about the past year and a half, including just two months ago.
Signs of an improving economic outlook have done little to sway how people feel about the Democratic president.
Do you see how every news article is written to strongly imply, if not outright state, that the perceptions that the ordinary American has about the economy Are misguided and invalid.
Every time they constantly bombard people with the message the economy is doing well and it's getting better, you just haven't caught up with reality yet.
So they say, quote, it has done little to sway how people feel about the Democratic president as he gears up for a 2024 re-election campaign that could pit him against his predecessor 2020 opponent Republican Donald Trump.
And there you see his approval rating, which is 42% in terms of his overall performance.
But then on the economy, it's 36%.
It's often been as low as 30% or close to 30%.
And so it's gone straight down since he's been inaugurated.
And then it's just kind of stagnated.
It's just not getting better.
36% is a very low number.
The strategy that Democrats have adopted, and again, I'm not a political strategist, I don't talk a lot about political strategy, it doesn't interest me, it's not my field of expertise, but I have eyes and common sense, and the strategy they're adopting seems extremely odd to me, which is not trying to tell Americans that they understand the fears they have, that they empathize with them,
That they're doing their best to address them, promising that things are going to get better.
That's not their strategy at all.
Their strategy is basically to attack the validity of their perceptions.
To tell them that they might wake up and think the economy is doing poorly for them in their own lives, but they don't understand their own lives.
They're misguided about their own views of their experiences every day.
And in order to deliver that message, they're not selecting Ordinary Americans, they're selecting extremely affluent, wealthy, multi-millionaires who are Democratic Party loyalists in the media to come forward and say, I don't know what you're complaining about.
Things are looking good here.
I'm sitting on top of this gigantic pile of cash from Comcast.
I have a multi-million dollar a year contract to host a cable program.
The economy looks very good to me.
What's wrong with you people for not seeing this?
And that really is the message that they are disseminating and the people with whom they're choosing to partner in order to tell people that they just need to be more grateful, to appreciate how good they have it.
They just don't see it, they're being told.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes has repeatedly on his show and on social media expressed a version of this message.
Here on June 2nd, he said, I said this to someone, this guest on his show, if we come out of the post-pandemic economy with a soft landing, inflation comes down, labor market stays strong, real wages increase, and there's no recession, it will be a legendary bit of economic management for all involved.
Legendary!
This includes the president, his economic team, and the Fed.
That's some good state TV there.
Saying that this economy isn't just great, it's so great it's historically a miracle.
The President, his economic team, and the Fed are legendary in their amazing salvation of this economy.
Last night they sent out Christiane Amanpour, the longtime CNN anchor, with many millions of dollars each year deposited by CNN's corporate parent into her bank account, along with Paul Krugman, the economist who is a pundit for the New York Times and has sat on the board of many companies such as Enron.
You may remember Enron, the huge corporate fraud that went under around the turn of the century in 2000.
Paul Krugman was sitting on their board making something like $50,000, I think, a year, a month.
I don't remember the exact figure, but it was a a decent amount, he's constantly With his tro into the corporate mud pile sucking up money.
And obviously he's making a lot of money with his books and with his New York Times column and with pretty much everything else, his relationship to academia.
And so these two very rich people got together last night on CNN to scorn Americans for their crazy belief that the economy isn't great.
Listen to them do this.
The striking thing, if you look at it, it's not just, you know, the economic data have been surreally good.
I mean, even optimists are... Surreally good.
Surreally good.
Even optimists are shocked at how great things are going, he says.
That's how he starts off this, this tribute to President Obama and his greatness.
Just stunned by how quickly and how painlessly inflation has come down.
We're, you know, no hint of a recession, at least so far.
Never know, but so far, inflation, Not too far from the target of 2% and under 3% by most measures.
And all of that just achieved painlessly.
So this is great.
This is a Goldilocks economy.
People say it's a terrible economy.
This is a Goldilocks economy.
So it's not too much of this.
It's not too much of that.
It's actually perfect.
This economy is perfect.
Even the optimists are stunned.
What a gift President Biden has given us in terms of this amazing economy we have.
So what's the problem?
Say it's a terrible economy.
But what's really odd is that people don't behave as if it's a terrible economy.
We can talk about surveys in which people seem to be relatively happy with their own financial situation.
Or we can just look at behavior.
People are out there with a lot of discretionary consumer spending.
Travel, hotels, restaurants, all of that is booming.
So people are acting as if they're in good shape financially.
And yet they say, wow, this is a disastrous economy.
Somebody must be disastrous for somebody, but not for me.
And, you know, we don't really understand.
I mean, think about how patronizing that is.
He is apparently trying to say, first of all, who are these people who are spending so much money on travel and dining?
I'm sure there are some.
The question is, if you have tens of millions of people who can't afford that or who perceive that they can't, as polls are showing they perceive, then the fact that some people are doing well doesn't mean that polling data is going to say that large majorities are doing well and that's exactly what's happening.
But beyond that, The fact that people feel like they can have a decent meal or take a trip with their kids, which Paul Krugman seems to be thinking people ought to be grateful for having that, when obviously Paul Krugman can do that every night and go on whatever trips he wants.
Is setting the bar so low for what ordinary Americans should expect from the economy, from being in the richest country on the planet?
Oh, they get to go out and dine out sometimes.
They get to travel a little bit.
Obviously, huge numbers aren't able to do that.
He doesn't see those people.
He doesn't interact with them, except for the ones who work in his home or drive him to the CNN green room.
But they're out there, and the polls reflect that.
And so instead of trying to understand What those problems are and how to address it.
They're basically sitting here saying, I'm looking at the data and these people are mystifying to me.
What do they want, these people?
We're getting them an economy where they get to take their kids out to dinner once in a while.
They want more than that?
But, you know, and I can come up with multiple stories, but it is, I think, important to point out that there is a really profound and peculiar disconnect going on.
I'm going to ask you what the impact of that might be, but first I just want to reiterate your point by using a graph that's just published in the Wall Street Journal, which is not necessarily a liberal progressive rag, is it?
I mean, it's the Bible of the financial world, mostly slightly conservative, tilting.
And the Wall Street Journal's graph is very interesting with a breakdown by party of how voters rate the strength of the US economy.
And you can see after a dip where there was that, you know, 2020 hard time or whatever it was, there's a dip there between 20... Whatever it was, whatever that thing was that made people uncomfortable, that thing where like the whole economy was locked down, businesses went out, a business they closed, there was a gigantic wealth transfer.
From the middle class to the four or five or six or 10 wealthiest people in the country.
Amazon and Facebook and all those pharmaceutical giants gobbled up profits while everybody else suffered.
It's like, yeah, there was a little drop, whatever you want to call that.
The only people who seem happy with the economy here are Democrats.
Independents, less than 40%, and Republicans, less than 15%, give the economy a positive rating.
And even among Democrats, 35% or more think the economy is not doing well.
And obviously they're inclined to say it is because they want to support Joe Biden.
So you're talking about hundreds of millions of people, not just tens of millions of people, at least a hundred million people, if not more, who are suffering economically.
And these two are looking down their noses, acting like they're ingrates.
Like they should all be on their feet applauding.
Let's listen to the rest of this.
...22 and 2023, but now it's going up amongst both Democrats and Independents.
Steadily up, but not, it's flatlined, really it's just been flatlined amongst the Republican, and those leaning Republican.
So, so, do you think this is all about narrative and politics, or is it really that certain parts of the population feel Okay.
I don't think that there are people, uh, I mean, there are people who are hurting, but they tend not to be the, uh, the, it's not what the polls are capturing.
We've just seen a big jump in child poverty because some of the pandemic aid programs have been withdrawn, but that's not, you know, that's real suffering, but that's not what these numbers are capturing.
Um, a very large part of it is partisanship and it just, It's actually from a modern perspective.
If that's true, if the only people who are dissatisfied with the economy are hardcore partisan Republicans, they wouldn't be worried about it.
Those people are going to vote for Trump no matter what.
The economy could be doing great, the economy could be doing poorly, they're going to vote for Trump or whoever the GOP nominee is.
Even in the poll they're celebrating, 35% Of Democrats and over half of independents, in fact 60%, think the economy is doing poorly.
These are people they just want to write off as just what partisan liars who are willing to say that they think the economy is doing poorly even though it's doing great because they want to harm Joe Biden.
These people are so unbelievably out of touch.
And this is really what they think.
They believe that when Americans Don't conclude what they are told to conclude by people like this.
It's because either they're ill-intentioned, they're malicious, or they're being misled because they're stupid.
That's really what they believe.
They don't see any other explanation for why people see the world differently than they see it.
I should also point out that polling data makes unbelievably clear That the working class of the United States has moved very aggressively toward the Republican Party.
We went over those numbers late last week.
The white working class has been streaming toward Republicans for a long time, but now the multiracial working class, the multiracial prongs of the working class, are migrating away from the Democratic Party.
Many of them are going to Trump or to the Republicans, and others are just not wanting to vote or going to third parties.
And if you see the economy through the lens of the professional managerial class, the upper middle class, affluent suburbanites, which is what the Democratic Party now represents, of course those people are always going to think the economy is doing well because the economy and economic improvements are designed and catered to those people.
Those are the policies of the Democratic Party.
That's why this migration is taking place.
So instead of saying, oh, these Republicans are just a bunch of losers who are partisan, who are willing to lie to hurt Joe Biden, maybe it's worth wondering what the demographic composition of these people are, what the socioeconomic profile of them are.
The 80% of Republicans who say the economy is doing poorly, the 60% of independents, the 35% or 40% of Democrats, instead of just writing them off as a bunch of liars and idiots.
It's astonishing to go back to economic surveys from the 1980s when we all seem to be living in the same country, when Republicans and Democrats had basically similar assessments of the economy.
These days, Republicans Okay, I mean, I also am incessantly amazed at how willing they are to rewrite history.
There's always this glorious past when everybody in the country put aside partisan differences.
Okay, I mean, I also am incessantly amazed at how willing they are to rewrite history.
There's always this, like, glorious past when everybody in the country put aside partisan differences.
I remember the Reagan era.
I was extremely young.
Extremely young.
So don't get confused about that.
But I did.
I was alive for it.
And I've gone back and looked at it as well.
Do you think liberal pundits like Paul Krugman were giving credit to Ronald Reagan at the time for having a wonderful and evenly distributed economy?
They were calling him a fascist and an oligarch.
Someone who didn't care about the poor, who wanted to see them burn, who only cared about the rich, who acted only for the benefit of the rich, and now he goes back And rewrites history like they always do, the same way they did for the Bush administration.
Oh, George Bush, I may not have agreed with him, but he was a wonderful, decent man who was a patriot.
Go back and look what they were saying about George Bush at the time.
Very similar to what they're now saying about Donald Trump.
So I don't know who they think this is going to help, putting Paul Krugman and I almost said Marie Antoinette, I don't know why, I honestly wasn't planning on that, but it almost came out, but it's Christiane Lamanpour, who, to get those two together and just scorn These people who refuse to give Joe Biden the credit that he's due.
Now, just one last example.
I realize this is kind of extreme, but at the same time, it's very much what's in the liberal ether.
This was from what I would think, if you put a gun to my head and I had to pick, is the single most hideous program on television, The View.
I hate this show so much.
Obviously, I don't watch it.
It comes across my radar periodically when people post clips of it.
And so here, just take a look at this.
This whole notion that the economy is in bad shape, it's not.
That's not true.
And we are helping Ukraine.
No, but that's a headline you made.
The right wing in this country doesn't want to help Ukraine.
I mean, I've never seen such a lack of patriotism in my life.
What's his name?
Because the last guy.
I think it's important to note though, perception matters with the economy.
Alright, so here's a woman who has been on this ABC News program for 15 years, Joy Behar.
She has a Disney contract that's worth millions of dollars a year.
She lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
And she has no conception at all that perhaps her perspective of the economy might be different than the vast majority of Americans.
And so they're all sitting there at this table on television figuring out why it is that Americans are angry about the economy when the economy is doing so well for these people here.
Like consumer prices have been up 15% over the last two years.
If people go to the store... In the world!
In the world!
We have overcome inflation better than any country in Europe since the pandemic.
I'm just saying, I think for people who are like struggling to afford to make ends meet, it's not good to just go out and say, oh the economy is good, look at how much better it is.
But then don't blame somebody who shouldn't be getting the blame.
I mean, you know, that last person who spoke was a Republican.
She was one of the people who got a TV contract.
She turned against Trump.
That's the immediate pathway to getting on TV, obviously, is to turn against Trump.
So she occasionally does interject like a sort of, almost like in a very apologetic way, the slightest amount of dissent.
And you see how she gets berated and piled on the minute that she does so.
They're talking about the poor there, and they're talking with anger.
They're saying, how dare they blame Joe Biden?
They should be grateful for this.
Everybody in the world's suffering.
Why do they keep chattering about this?
I've been around these people for my whole life, at least not my whole life when I was growing up, but I wasn't around them then.
But when I was an adult, I went to school in Washington.
I went to law school in New York.
I lived in New York for the 15 or 12 years after that.
I've worked with these people the last 15 years.
This is absolutely how they think.
I can't express it enough.
That's why the Hillary Clinton comment in the 2016 election that resonated the most was when she called Trump supporters deplorables.
Because everybody knows that is how liberal elites think about the rest of the country.
Now, in terms of data, there's all kinds of reasons Why millions of people would think this economy is awful.
Here from the United States Census.
This is from the government itself.
Income poverty and health insurance statistics.
The SPM rate, the Supplemental Poverty Measure, in 2022 was 12.4%, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021.
The SPM rate for children was 12.4% in 2022, an increase of 7.2 percentage points from 2021.
from 2021.
The SPM rate for children was 12.4% in 2022, an increase of 7.2 percentage points from 2021.
Poverty is going up by large amounts.
That's just the government's own statistics.
Here from Bloomberg News, U.S.
household debt jumps the most since 2008, even as credit card rates surge.
Credit card balances see biggest rise in more than 20 years.
Auto loans above $1.5 trillion are on pace to surpass student debt.
U.S.
household debt climbed to the fastest annual pace since 2008 in the third quarter, with credit card balances surging, even as the interest rates that lenders charge to consumers hit a multi-decade high.
Households added $351 billion in overall debt last quarter, taking the total to $16.5 trillion, according to data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Tuesday.
That's an increase of 8.3% from a year earlier, the most since the 9.1% jump in the first quarter of 2008.
Credit card debt also increased by the most in 20 years, with balances rising by 15% from a year earlier.
Now, I guess Paul Krugman was trying to say that this is a good sign, that this means that people are willing to spend money, but when you have poverty increasing, poverty increases in the rate of poverty and increases in the rate of child poverty at very significant rates from 2021 to 2022, and you have people being buried more and more with debt, Is it any wonder that they're angry about the economy and worried about their economic future?
Again, if you're Paul Kirkman or Joy Behar or Christiane Amanpour or Chris Hayes, of course you're not.
They're worried about their mortgage on their third home.
But, and maybe there is an argument to try and bring to the American people about why things are better than they perceive.
Try finding somebody other than multi-millionaire liberals in the media who have obvious scorn for everybody else to try and deliver that message.
The BBC, the U.S.
inflation ticks higher in July on housing costs.
Prices continued to rise in the U.S.
last month, despite a sharp increase in interest rates to stamp out inflation.
The rate of inflation was 3.2% over the year to July, driven by higher housing, car insurance and food costs, the Labor Department said.
That was up from 3% in June, which was the lowest rate in more than two years.
The U.S.
Central Bank has raised its benchmark interest rate to more than 5.25%, the highest level in 22 years, in a bid to cool the economy and ease the pressure of pushing up prices.
Inflation in the U.S.
hit a peak of 9.1% last year, far above the U.S.
Federal Reserve's 2% target.
However, it has eased significantly as the shock to food and energy prices from the war in Ukraine has faded.
Many analysts are expecting costs for housing, which is weighted heavily in U.S.
inflation calculations, to start to ease in coming months, pointing to independent reports showing a slowdown in the growth in rental rates.
But a recent rise in fuel prices could mean it takes longer than hoped for for inflation to ease its grip on the economy.
Though the prices remained lower than a year ago, the average national price for regular gasoline in the U.S.
jumped above $3.80 per gallon earlier in August, up from about $3.50 a month earlier, according to the Motor Club Association AAA.
When do you think the last time it is that Paul Krugman, Christiane Amanpour, Joy Behar, or Chris Hayes pumped their own gas and cared about the price per gallon of gasoline?
Now, it is true that inflation has gone down from where it was a year ago.
It was at a crisis level a year ago from the fallout of COVID and the war in Ukraine and other reasons.
And by the way, is it worth this war in Ukraine to make Americans suffer economically this way?
I guess it is to the government in Washington.
But you see the ripple effects, the actual effect it has on real people's lives.
No, it is true that if you make a lot of money, you are going to be removed from the experiences of the ordinary American.
I'm not excluding myself there.
I'm conscious of that fact.
That's why I don't go around telling people that their perceptions of their own lives is misguided and wrong or a byproduct of them being stupid or poorly intentioned.
I listen to what people say about their own lives and I look at the data and I see that prices are going up still, even if they're not going up as sharply as they were.
Debt is going up, poverty is going up, and people are scared and angry about the economy.
And to try and just badger them out of that...
I don't think it's going to work, but I think more importantly to me, since I don't really care about those political punditry questions, is what it reveals about this liberal elite, how detached they are from reality, how much scorn they have for the American, average American, and how often they are willing to show it, especially when it comes to their growing desperation to ensure
That Joe Biden wins this election next year, and more importantly, that Donald Trump does not.
Shifting to a different topic, I want to talk a little bit about Ukraine.
You may recall that on Monday night, we examined an interview that President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine gave to The Economist.
And I focused on a part of that interview that I thought was very relevant to September 11th, which was on Monday when we did our show, namely that President Zelensky said that there's no third option in this war.
There's no neutral ground.
Either you want your government to fuel the war in Ukraine by giving Ukraine all the money in the arms that it needs, in which case you're pro-Ukrainian, or, he said, the only other alternative, you are pro-Russian.
And obviously that was very redolent of the notorious statement George W. Bush made in September of 2001, on September 20th, when he addressed the Joint House of Congress by saying to the world and to American citizens, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists, this kind of binary choice.
This is what neocons have been doing for decades.
saying you either support their war or you're pro-terrorist, you're pro-Al Qaeda, you're pro-Qadhafi, you're pro-Saddam, you're pro-Assad, and now you're pro-Putin, etc.
This framework that is rotted and deceitful, this is the one that President Zelensky has adopted.
And I think it was actually very valuable that he said that because we've been hearing a lot about pro-Russian propaganda, the need to censor it.
This is what the EU is now trying to do.
And the question always is, what is meant by pro-Russian propaganda?
And we've been hypothesizing for quite a long time and more than hypothesizing, emphatically insisting that the That when they say pro-Russian, what they mean is nothing more than, nothing less than, questioning or dissenting from the war policies of the United States government, NATO, that we should ply and lavish Kiev with all the money and all the weapons they want.
And if you even hesitate on that position, you're instantly, and by definition, pro-Russian.
And it was nice of President Zelensky to say that that is, in fact, exactly what he means by that term.
Either you are all in with helping Ukraine win that war, or you're pro-Russia.
No middle ground.
So apparently, as an American citizen, you're duty-bound to prioritize the interests and needs of Kiev if you don't want to stand accused publicly of being a Kremlin supporter.
And the audacity of that paragraph made me skip or omit, when I was reading this article, what probably is an even more Repulsive paragraph, but even more notable one.
Where I'm going to just read it to you.
I'm not going to tell you what I think of this ahead of time.
I just want you to hear what he said, and then we can talk about what he pretty clearly means by it.
So here is, first there's the title of the Economist headline, Donald Trump will never support Putin, said Vladimir Zelensky.
But Ukraine's president fears that some of his country's Western backers are losing faith.
And that is the context for all of this.
He's getting desperate.
And so this is what he said.
Quote.
Curtailing aid to Ukraine will only prolong the war, Mr. Zelensky argues, and it would create risks for the West in its own backyard.
Why would curtailing aid to Ukraine create risks for the West in its own backyard?
This is how he explained what he meant.
Quote, there is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned.
Ukrainians have generally, quote, behaved well and are, quote, very grateful to those who sheltered them.
They will not forget that generosity.
But it would not be a good story for Europe if it were to drive these people into a corner.
What does that mean, exactly?
What is he threatening there?
Now, you notice he didn't use the most flagrant, overt formulation for threats, which is either you do X, Y, and Z, or I will do A, B, and C to you.
Either you give me money, or I will kill you.
It was more the kind of extortionist formulation, like, oh, that's a really nice building that you have there.
It would be a shame if it got burned down by someone.
Which is always said when accompanied by demands for money.
And that sounds a lot to me like what he's saying, which is, oh, you know, thank you so much for accepting all these Ukrainians into your countries in the West.
It's very nice of you.
So far, they've been pretty appreciative.
They've behaved well.
But...
If you were to stop fueling our war, if you were to stop giving us all the money and all the weapons we are demanding, it doesn't seem like there'd be a good outcome for you.
I would think that those Ukrainian refugees would start to have a much different view of their hosts in the West, and they would behave in the way that people behave when you, quote, drive them into a corner.
That sounds very much like a threat to me, that he's essentially saying I have basically, like, terror cells.
Embedded in your country, and if you give into your population's growing hesitance to keep sending all of this money to our war and keep enduring higher energy prices, and the risk of escalation of nuclear war, if you stop that, I'm not saying I would tell them to do it, but no telling what they might start to do to you, these millions of Ukrainian refugees that you now have embedded in your country.
At the very same time that President Zelensky delivered that message to The Economist, and The Economist has made clear that the context here is the eroding public support for the war in Ukraine, they decided to send forth this person who has been a social media star and spokesperson for the war in Ukraine ever since it began.
Their name is Sarah Ashton Cirillo.
The person is a trans woman, self-identifies as a trans woman, and they were, I don't know what pronouns they use, so I'll just use the they to be safe, but they used to walk around Syria and be involved over there before the transition.
They came back, they transitioned, and now they're in Ukraine, and I guess the Ukrainians think this is a good messenger to deliver the pro-war message to Ukraine.
This person has been in Ukraine since the start of the war.
At first I think they were claiming to be a journalist, a war journalist of some kind.
But now they also claim often to be in combat, embedded with combat units.
And there's no even pretense of being objective.
They're talking about being part of the... I think they identify here as Ukrainian TDF media.
So they're speaking for the Ukrainian government, for the Ukrainian military cause.
And this was a video that was posted today, or it was yesterday.
And the context for this video, even though this person didn't mention it, is that...
There is an American blogger and YouTuber named Gonzalo Lira who has been in Ukraine since the start of the war.
He has been critical of the Zelensky government.
He's been questioning the narrative about Ukraine and Russia.
He's been speaking out about the U.S.
role there, about the falsehoods being disseminated by the Ukrainians, by the agents of Ukraine in the media.
And he's twice been arrested.
The last time he was arrested was a few months ago.
The kind of SWAT team looking soldiers from the Ukrainian military came with guns and obviously meant very serious business and arrested him.
He hasn't been heard from since.
And there's a lot of fear for the outcome of his well-being because Ukraine is under martial law.
They've canceled elections.
They've outlawed dissent.
They've closed oppositional media outlets.
They've closed opposition parties.
Even before the Russian invasion in 2022, President Zelensky ordered opposition TV outlets closed.
This is the Ukrainian democracy for which we're so nobly fighting.
And I want you to take a listen to the person they've sent out to be their spokesperson, someone who they apparently think Is an effective and likable spokesperson among people in the West for the Ukrainian cause.
Russia hates the truth that their obsessive focus on a Ukrainian volunteer is simply allowing the light of the Ukrainian nation's honesty to shine brightly.
Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.
And this puppet of Putin is only the first.
Okay, so you notice they're not saying that somebody who helped the Russian military will pay for their crimes and gnash on the teeth of the devil.
They're threatening, specifically, a Russian propagandist.
What they're calling a Russian propagandist, which, as we know, from that quote I just referenced from President Zelensky and The Economist, means anybody who questions the war.
Anybody who questions the accuracy of the claims of the Ukrainian government, or who questions the war effort itself.
That's what they mean by that.
Listen to this deranged person make these threats in this way.
As the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.
And this puppet of Putin is only the first.
Russia's war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down.
And justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty, and complete liberation.
Okay, so... - Yeah.
I don't know if you find that to be compelling or inspiring or something that you want to go and applaud or if it attracts you to the Ukrainian cause.
What I find interesting is that the Ukrainian government, and you can see here, let's put that on the screen please, the video.
You can see, let me go back to this one, you can see here that the person is speaking next to a logo for the Territorial Defense Forces.
So this very much appears to be an official position of the Ukrainian government.
They have some sort of military garb or some kind of like official insignia.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some like neo-Nazi picture on the back that's typical for this, although I don't know if that's the case with this person.
But that is pretty deranged to me.
And the fact that they think that this individual appeals to the class, you know what?
Probably they're right in that calculation.
It also says TDF media in the top right.
Where is that?
I think that's here.
So let's take a look at another video from the same individual.
Is this a video or?
Yeah.
Let's...
So this morning I testified in the case of the Ukrainian authorities against Gonzalo Lira.
I can't say anything else beyond that based off of national security issues.
However, I will say that Mr. Lira was healthy.
He was engaged.
He, along with his attorney, was active in his defense, which included questioning me directly by both his attorney and Mr. Lear himself.
And ultimately, I have no doubt that the rule of law will be applied fairly.
And the court system is most definitely a strong point here in Ukrainian society.
Slavukranin.
Oh, yeah.
The rule of law is an incredible strong point in the Ukrainian society, which is why this person whose crimes consist of making YouTube videos and being on Twitter, criticizing the Zelensky government, government is now disappeared to the point where they have to send out this propagandist for the Ukrainian military to try and convince the world that he's safe and able to still speak.
Now, I don't know whether that first video where they're promising that some Russian propagandist is going to really feel the wrath of Ukrainian justice is the person is the same Gonzalo Lira.
I think it is.
Clearly they were No, what I'm saying is I don't know if that first video where they swore that the Russian propaganda is going to feel the harsh weight of Ukrainian justice, if they were referring to Gonzalo Lira, it certainly appears that to be the case since this person has been involved directly in the Gonzalo Lira prosecution.
We don't know why Gonzalo Lira is disappeared, why he's not free, why the Ukrainians have detained him forcibly, why this Deranged person is threatening him publicly.
If Ukraine is such a country of the rule of law, why is it that they appear to know what the outcome is ahead of the verdict?
To the point where they feel comfortable going and threatening him in this very unhinged way.
But for those of you who aren't familiar with the story, here is the Helensky Times in May.
The headline is, Detaining Gonzalo Lira, Another Blow to the Freedom of Press in Ukraine.
Quote, the Ukrainian security service, SBU, arrested Gonzalo Lira, a U.S.
Chilean national residing in Kharkiv, on the suspicions of harboring pro-Russian sentiments.
This marks the second time Lyra has been apprehended by the SBU.
Lyra, an author and filmmaker who relocated to Kharkiv years ago and is married to a Ukrainian, was initially detained in April 2022 but was released after a week without charges.
He was subsequently instructed not to leave the city and prohibited from discussing his arrest.
As reported by Ukrainian media, the SBU's statement accuses Lera of publicly justifying Russia's armed aggression, denying or glorifying supposed Russian war crimes, and undermining Ukraine's top military and political leadership and defense forces, meaning he criticized President Zelensky.
On May 5th, the SBU website published a statement in Ukrainian titled, quote, SBU detained a foreign blogger in Kharkiv who denied the crimes of the Russian Federation and insulted Ukrainian defenders.
Do you understand?
This person is arrested and imprisoned.
He's an American citizen.
For exclusively things that he said.
In this glorious democracy that we're supposed to deplete our own military and send hundreds of billions of dollars in order to defend.
Quote, the statement alleges that Lera was among the first to support Russian invaders and glorify their war crimes.
It also accuses him of discrediting Ukraine's military, political leadership, and defense forces.
The SBU claims that Lera filmed provocative videos featuring Ukrainian defenders and insulted them.
In March 2022, Ukraine's parliament enacted 14 laws to counter Russian aggression, including two that modify legislation on information activity.
These laws prohibit mass media from justifying or legitimizing the denial of Russia's armed aggression in Ukraine and the occupation of its territories.
They also forbid the glorification of individuals involved in the aggression.
The Ukrainian Criminal Code now contains Article 435.1, which establishes liability for threatening or insulting military personnel and their families, and Article 436.2, which pertains to the justification or denial of Russian military aggression, the occupation of Ukrainian territories, and the glorification of those involved in the aggression or occupation.
Penalties for these offenses range from arrest for up to six months to imprisonment for up to eight years, depending on the circumstances.
Now, maybe someone is going to say, as I've heard people say to justify anything and everything that President Zelensky does, that when there's a war, there are no more rights.
But if that's true, this war is going to go on for a very long time.
What democracy are we defending there?
That was, remember, The excuse for the abuses and excesses of the war on terror carried out by the Bush-Cheney administration, by the Obama administration, assassinating people, spying on people with no warrants, en masse putting people in prison with no due process or any charges.
Oh, well, there's a war.
All bets are off.
That's not how things work in a democracy.
That's what the governor of New Mexico is currently trying to do in saying that a right that the Supreme Court established and recognized, whether you like it or not, under the Second Amendment, is now suspended simply because she decreed an emergency to the public safety.
And now she's saying in a time of emergency, all bets are off.
Whatever's going on in Ukraine, the threats that Zelensky is making, these prosecutions, this incredibly maniacal person, every time you look at who's defending Ukraine online, it's so clear, it's some kind of coordinated effort, it's always the most, just the most unhinged people possible.
Whatever is in Ukraine, it is anything but a democracy.
Now, we just have about nine minutes left before I have to go and do this Fox interview, so I just want to share with you quickly an interview I did last night on NewsNation.
It was my first time on this network.
It's a relatively new network.
It has people you might know, like Chris Cuomo hosting a show.
That's where he went after CNN booted him, and Dan Abrams, who's been around cable for a long time, and a couple other people on that network.
Anyway, this show is a 7 p.m.
show.
They asked me to come on to talk about Whether Elon Musk has committed treason or engaged in wrongdoing because he refused to allow his Starlink service to extend to Crimea and enabled the Ukrainians to attack the Russian ships at bay because of his fear, Elon Musk said that the Russians would escalate potentially with nuclear weapons if they did so and he didn't want to be compulsive to that.
We've covered this controversy for a long time.
Now, I assume when they invited me on, they knew my position about it.
I've been very vocal on it.
We devoted a show to it.
I've talked about it on social media.
And the producer even asked for talking points, which I gave.
In general, I hate when shows ask for talking points.
My team knows not even to ask me for it because they just won't give it.
We never ask for talking points when we invite a guest on.
We invite a guest on, they can say what they want and I'll respond then.
But a lot of shows do ask for it.
I think they like to prepare their on-screen graphics basically is the reason.
So my team did pass to them my basic points I've been making.
So they had to have known what I was saying and it seemed in this interview like he had never heard The other side of this debate before.
These are arguments that just never occurred to him.
So let me just show you a little bit about what happened.
I was treated very fairly.
I have no complaints about that.
It was a perfectly civil discussion.
I just found it so amazing what a closed information system, a lot of these people who do politics and journalism as their profession, are drowning in because of how little dissent there is in our mainstream discourse.
Listen to this.
Through time, the world's richest men were always subject to government control.
Emphasis on were.
That's not true anymore.
Elon Musk proved a single American, a single American company, now can set its own foreign policy and act unilaterally for, or perhaps against, American interests.
Musk's Starlink internet system provides communication services for the Ukrainian military.
And Musk reportedly personally scrubbed Ukraine's plan to attack a major Russian installation.
If I had agreed to their request, meaning the Ukrainians' request to turn on part of Starlink, then SpaceX, that owns Starlink, would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.
Musk's statement confirms he views himself as more powerful than some governments, even more powerful than the Pentagon, for example, in the war in Ukraine.
And he has no problem using his power to dictate foreign policy throughout the world.
Of course, he controls large investments in artificial intelligence, SpaceX, Tesla, and, of course, Starlink.
It would be as if Ford refused to build B-24 bombers during World War II out of fear of escalating the war.
The president of Ford, Henry Ford, Would have found himself in a world of hurt, if not in jail, had he done that.
Obviously, that's different for Elon Musk right now.
Joining us now, award-winning independent journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn, am I right to point out that we are in this uncharted territory of a private individual being able to have their own foreign policy?
I don't think so.
In fact, I've always understood that one's right as an American citizen or having a private company is that you don't have to put your company in servitude to the policy of the United States government.
You have every right to refuse, for example, to involve yourself in foreign wars.
Let's remember, the United States is not at war with Russia.
Ukraine is at war with Russia.
And I don't know where this idea comes from that when some foreign government in Kiev demands that you make your services available to their country for their war, You're duty-bound to do it, or you're somehow violating a law?
I don't understand the basis for that at all.
No, I'm not saying that in any way it's Elon Musk's responsibility, and I agree with you that as a private company you can do whatever you want.
I was more saying that this is sort of the first time we are seeing someone, an individual, control the tools of war in a way that a private company can have such a profound effect on foreign policy that's normally the purview of nation-states.
Yeah, I mean, I think that gets to a bigger problem, which is that the United States has now been outsourcing all kinds of functions that ought to be the government functions.
The intelligence community is largely run by Booz Allen Hamilton.
The Pentagon is run by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
And that, I think, is an important point that a lot of this research that these companies are profiteering on were actually research done by the U.S.
government in the first place.
And the American taxpayer is not benefiting from these foreign, these four private companies are.
And that does then lead to the question, well, if the U.S. government is so dependent on the private sector to carry out even things like warfighting, then you do get into a position where what happens when these companies don't want to serve your foreign policy, as is the right to do?
And that, I think, is a legitimate concern.
All right.
So where did things change?
You think about World War II, Ford and General Motors made tanks, they made planes, all sorts of things.
They completely retooled the American industrial system to be on a war footing.
Howard Hughes helped the CIA on a top secret mission to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine.
On and on and on and on.
If not required by law, there always seemed to be a sense of duty by American companies, either because they were being paid a lot of money, but also a sense of patriotism, to sort of go along with and support the interests of the United States government.
Elon Musk doesn't seem to have that.
He seems to have his own worldview that is different than that.
And I'm wondering if there isn't a little bit of a danger there.
I think it's dangerous to suggest that your patriotic duty requires you to make yourself available, give your assets over to a foreign government to fight a very dangerous war.
Elon Musk says, let's assume he's telling the truth, that he was concerned that attacking the Russian ships at bay could lead to nuclear escalation.
He was hearing that from the Russians.
Is it a patriotic duty to ignore those concerns?
Make yourself complicit in what could be the escalation of a very dangerous war.
Don't you have the right of conscience to dissent from your own government, especially when your government's not at war?
I think that's the issue.
All right, so that was very much the tenor of the interview.
You can watch the entire thing.
We uploaded it to the Rumble page.
As I said, it's not that I feel at all mistreated.
Quite the contrary.
He let me speak.
It was perfectly polite.
I just, what I found amazing about it is that you see how this works.
The minute this This revelation came from the new Walter Isaacson biography about Elon Musk.
And Walter Isaacson seemed to have gotten the story wrong.
He originally said Musk cut off services at the time that they were attacked to sabotage it, when in fact he simply refused to extend them to a different place so that Ukraine could attack the Russians.
But either way, this instantaneous united media narrative that Elon Musk committed treason or should have a Starlink services seized by the government because he refused to, on command, fulfill the...
Oh, no.
Obey the orders of the Ukrainian government and barely anybody stops said wait a minute What where is this coming from this idea now?
This is like Mussolini fascism that every corporation is duty-bound to always be an arm of the state That is not our system of government and I only found it notable that he seemed not to have thought about that point which to me seems so obvious and again, I think it's because Our media is now just a pack of herd animals.
I don't mean him, I mean the people he was listening to and it seems just like every time there's this conformity that instantly emerges where dissent is gone.
All right, it is 8 o'clock.
We're gonna have to wrap up the show for the reasons I said earlier at the top.
I'll be on Jesse Watters in just a couple minutes.
Thank you so much as always for watching.
We will see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
