The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220224_russia-invades-ukraine-with-mike-pompeo-jim-geragh
Aired: 2022-02-24
Duration: 01:36:03


=== Beyond Evil Leaders (14:47) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:12]  Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:13]  Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:15]  Horror and international outrage at this hour as Russia launches the largest attack on the European continent since World War II.
[00:00:24]  We expect to hear from President Biden any moment now, following a meeting with America's closest allies.
[00:00:29]  They are trying to determine the best course of action against an emboldened Vladimir Putin, who has already threatened any country that interferes with, quote, consequences you have never seen.
[00:00:41]  Some questioning whether that's a reference to Russia's nuclear arsenal.
[00:00:47]  Overnight, Russian forces invaded Ukraine by air, by land, and by sea.
[00:00:51]  You can see, if you watch this on YouTube, the areas hit from this New York Times map that we're showing.
[00:00:58]  Basically, it's a map of Ukraine covered in red.
[00:01:02]  Reports suggest dozens of innocent people have already been killed.
[00:01:07]  Including civilians, many more injured as shelling and missiles rain down.
[00:01:13]  The news also rocking global financial markets as stocks plummet and oil prices soar.
[00:01:18]  No surprise there.
[00:01:19]  And chillingly, it may have also emboldened China as we get reports this hour of Chinese fighter jets getting way too close for comfort with Taiwan.
[00:01:31]  We have every angle covered the politics, the economics, the military action with a series of great, great guests today, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
[00:01:39]  Plus, we will speak live with a reporter on the ground in Ukraine as to what she is seeing there.
[00:01:45]  But we begin today with Konstantin Kissin, a Russian born British commentator who has been trying to warn the West about this very scenario.
[00:01:55]  He's one of the few who got this exactly right, predicting what would happen here.
[00:01:59]  And now he says the wool is being lifted from our eyes and it will have a massive impact on our lives and our children's lives for decades to come.
[00:02:08]  Konstantin, great to have you.
[00:02:11]  You've been right.
[00:02:12]  You predicted what would happen.
[00:02:14]  And today you have a long thread that I was reading on Twitter that I thought, oh my gosh, this is chilling because you put it in exactly the right perspective.
[00:02:22]  First of all, explain your ties to Ukraine so people understand how personal this is for you.
[00:02:27]  Well, I'm from Russia.
[00:02:29]  My father is of Russian descent.
[00:02:30]  My mother is of Ukrainian descent.
[00:02:32]  I'm Russian.
[00:02:33]  Therefore, I was born in Russia, grew up there until I moved to the UK.
[00:02:36]  My wife is Ukrainian, and we have family Russian speaking, a few Ukrainian speaking, both in Russia and in Ukraine.
[00:02:44]  Some pro Russian in this conflict, some pro Ukrainian.
[00:02:47]  So I think I have a breadth of perspectives from that region that I'm sort of incorporating into the things that I'm saying.
[00:02:54]  And you write about how many predicted Vladimir Putin will never invade.
[00:03:00]  He's not going to do that.
[00:03:02]  He doesn't really have a reason to do it.
[00:03:04]  He's just saber rattling and sort of cited the anti establishment voices on the left and the right telling us that, look, let's just make concessions.
[00:03:12]  We will secure peace.
[00:03:14]  We don't want to upset Putin any more than we have.
[00:03:16]  You know, he's.
[00:03:17]  Ticked off about the NATO thing.
[00:03:19]  Let's just not, let's just, that's not a big thing for us.
[00:03:21]  Let's stand down and not upset the guy.
[00:03:25]  Dead wrong, as you point out now.
[00:03:28]  Yeah, well, it hasn't worked out that way.
[00:03:30]  And, you know, I don't understand why people are so shocked and surprised today when there have been people predicting this who actually, and the first person who predicted this is Vladimir Putin himself.
[00:03:41]  It seems to me that journalists, both here in the UK and in America, have simply failed to go and listen to his one hour speech that he gave two days ago, in which he explains very clearly.
[00:03:50]  What is about to happen, why he believes it should happen.
[00:03:53]  And Megan, if I just take a few seconds to lay out what he said, the first thing he said is he spent 40 minutes of an address to the nation talking about.
[00:04:02]  The history of the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine.
[00:04:05]  And the purpose of that section was essentially to explain that the existence of Ukraine is a mistake.
[00:04:10]  It should never have happened.
[00:04:11]  The existence of Ukraine is a result of a series of weak decisions made by weak Soviet leaders, starting with Vladimir Lenin.
[00:04:19]  And he explained that Russia should not hold itself to those decisions because they were made in the wrong circumstances by weak people and they were poor decisions at the time.
[00:04:30]  The second thing he explains is essentially that.
[00:04:33]  Those weak decisions meant that the Russian nation, the Russian people, were split apart artificially by these weak decision makers.
[00:04:41]  And so a portion of the Russian nation has now found itself, for some reason, being part of Ukraine.
[00:04:48]  The rest of it, he says, is former territories of Poland and Hungary.
[00:04:52]  And from that itself, you knew that this was never going to stop with the two eastern regions, because if you look at the part of Ukraine that used to be in the Russian Empire, that used to be Russian speaking, that used to be populated by ethnic Russians.
[00:05:07]  That extends all the way up to the capital Kiev and possibly beyond.
[00:05:10]  So, there was never any way this was going to be just the two so called breakaway regions.
[00:05:16]  It was always going to be this way.
[00:05:18]  And the second thing that he explains, and I really invite people to go and watch the particularly the second part of the speech, is he sort of uses the term CIA more than Alex Jones.
[00:05:29]  He keeps talking about the CIA, NATO, it's not a defensive alliance.
[00:05:34]  They're placing missiles right on our borders and we have to defend ourselves.
[00:05:38]  And The rhetoric is distinctly Cold War ish.
[00:05:41]  There's no doubt about it.
[00:05:42]  Vladimir Putin is clearly positioning this as we are in a Cold War scenario.
[00:05:48]  He talks about the fact that Ukraine was about to invade.
[00:05:52]  He talks about how the West is positioning its missiles.
[00:05:55]  He talks about the different rockets that America has, the different rockets it's in development now.
[00:06:01]  And he's essentially saying we have to defend ourselves against Western aggression.
[00:06:05]  That is how he's presenting it.
[00:06:06]  So the fact that he was going to invade was beyond any doubt for anyone who was paying attention.
[00:06:11]  The fact that that invasion would not be limited to the two eastern regions is beyond any doubt.
[00:06:15]  And I think it's also fair to say now, beyond any doubt, that he believes we're in a Cold War.
[00:06:19]  And I'm afraid we're going to have to take him at his word.
[00:06:22]  He also tried to spin a narrative about the sort of pro Russian Ukrainians being oppressed, being roughed up, and that sort of.
[00:06:31]  Or genocided, in fact, is what he said.
[00:06:33]  Genocided, right.
[00:06:34]  Referred to the Ukrainians as Nazis and sort of said, it's our duty to protect those folks inside of Ukraine who are Russian who are being treated this way by.
[00:06:43]  By the Ukrainians.
[00:06:44]  And this is one area in which the Biden administration has tried to get out ahead of Vladimir Putin, saying these are false flag operations.
[00:06:52]  You know, these alleged incidents of violence that are committed in these regions have so far, as far as we can tell, been committed by Russians trying to make it look like Ukrainians are cracking down on these groups.
[00:07:03]  And Biden's been out there over and over trying to predict Vladimir Putin's plans.
[00:07:08]  We're now told in an effort to expose the intelligence so that Putin would know we knew what he was going to do, not that it stopped him.
[00:07:15]  Not that it seems to have deterred him in any way.
[00:07:17]  But I mean, this is an extraordinary moment because Ukraine didn't do anything.
[00:07:22]  There isn't a single thing you can realistically point to that Ukraine did to justify this.
[00:07:28]  This is just a land grab.
[00:07:30]  I mean, it really is the most shocking invasion for absolutely no reason we've seen since World War II.
[00:07:37]  That is true.
[00:07:39]  I agree with you.
[00:07:40]  This is a land grab.
[00:07:41]  And the only thing I would say, of course, Ukraine has done nothing to deserve this.
[00:07:44]  But what Ukraine has done is the same thing the West has done.
[00:07:48]  Which explains why this is happening.
[00:07:50]  This is the point I've tried to make on my Twitter thread, which you kindly reference, and elsewhere.
[00:07:54]  And I've been talking about this for years now.
[00:07:56]  The West, Megan, is weak.
[00:07:58]  It is weak.
[00:07:59]  It is divided.
[00:08:00]  It is distracted.
[00:08:01]  And I don't mean That America doesn't have the greatest military in the history of the world.
[00:08:05]  Of course, it does.
[00:08:05]  But what does it matter if you're not willing to use your hard and soft power around the world?
[00:08:10]  If we spend more time talking about gender pronouns or whether cloth masks stop the spread of COVID or focusing on all this other tangential nonsense, when there's very real things going on in the world.
[00:08:21]  And the moment the West takes its eye off the ball, and I'm so glad, Megan, this is one of the things that I think makes you such a robust commentator on these issues.
[00:08:30]  You make the point about China, and this is what I've been trying to get people to understand.
[00:08:34]  This is not about Evil Vladimir Putin or evil Xi Jinping.
[00:08:39]  This will happen if the West withdraws.
[00:08:41]  If the West is weak, is perceived to be weak, if it's distracted, the people around the world who've always wanted more land, more power, more money, more prosperity, who want to knock America off its perch at the top of the pantheon, they're going to do what they've always wanted to do.
[00:08:58]  And frankly, I don't blame them.
[00:09:00]  Right.
[00:09:00]  I mean, you, I know you guys on your podcast talk about this all the time.
[00:09:04]  We do as well about the, you know, for lack of a better term, wokeness.
[00:09:08]  It's not, What this is about, but it's related because we're so intent on navel gazing internally, talking about how bad we are, convincing others how bad we are, convincing ourselves how terrible we are, rather than leaning into the fact that we remain the leader of the free world, that others believe it too.
[00:09:25]  And they see that we're distracted with this internal nonsense.
[00:09:27]  And indeed, in the case of Vladimir Putin, he touts it too.
[00:09:30]  He pumps it with his bots to try to create more division.
[00:09:33]  And then we lean into that division.
[00:09:35]  And meanwhile, he's moving into Ukraine.
[00:09:38]  And now she's taken a serious look at China, I mean, at Taiwan.
[00:09:42]  And what are we doing over here?
[00:09:43]  We're talking about Black Lives Matter and whether we should have biological men swimming against biological women because they call themselves women.
[00:09:51]  This is the stuff upon which we found ourselves obsessed while geographic borders may be shifting, freedoms may be lost.
[00:09:59]  We've been living in a dream world, Megan.
[00:10:01]  We've been living in a dream world where we pretend that people can change their sex, and the most important thing for our society is to focus on something that happened 300 years ago.
[00:10:13]  And all of this other stuff.
[00:10:14]  And frankly, I know that you had your run ins with President Trump, and I was certainly not a big fan of his at all.
[00:10:19]  I wasn't comfortable with his style.
[00:10:20]  I didn't like some of the things that he said.
[00:10:23]  But I think there is no doubt that if he'd be still president, this wouldn't have happened.
[00:10:26]  And that's because, you know, this is something that human beings have known for thousands of years.
[00:10:32]  Sivis patchum parabellum.
[00:10:34]  If you want peace, you must be strong.
[00:10:35]  You must prepare for war.
[00:10:37]  And if you are weak, people will see that and they will take advantage.
[00:10:40]  And that is what we're seeing.
[00:10:42]  So, what we need to do.
[00:10:44]  Is first and foremost, stop being so divided.
[00:10:46]  We've got to come together.
[00:10:47]  And this is the most important point, Megan, that you made so beautifully if we don't believe in our values in the West, how could we possibly defend them?
[00:10:56]  If we think that we're evil, racist bigots, why on earth would we try to spread our values around the world or defend people who want to be free, who want democracy, who want liberty, who believe in the same things that we believe?
[00:11:09]  Why would we possibly support and defend them if we don't even like ourselves?
[00:11:15]  Two more things on President Trump.
[00:11:16]  Yes, he was strong, but he was also unpredictable.
[00:11:19]  And that had a great way of keeping our foreign adversaries off kilter.
[00:11:23]  You never knew what he was going to do.
[00:11:25]  You knew that it was going to be in America's best interests, and you knew that it could be shocking, and that it would be strong, and it would be decisive, and it might not even please his base back here at home, which made him a bigger threat to people like Putin.
[00:11:36]  But the second thing is, he kept our energy resources flowing.
[00:11:40]  You know, he shut down the Nord Stream, too.
[00:11:42]  He didn't allow this pipeline of money to be flowing to Vladimir Putin from Germany and Europe.
[00:11:47]  And at least tried to fight it.
[00:11:49]  And that's one of the first things Joe Biden revived when he came into office was basically Russia's coffers making Putin richer and more emboldened.
[00:11:58]  So while Putin, I mean, sorry, Biden may talk tough about Putin.
[00:12:02]  His actual behavior really hasn't been.
[00:12:05]  And Trump, in a way, was exactly the opposite.
[00:12:07]  He said things about Vladimir Putin, like, oh, you know, O'Reilly said he's a killer.
[00:12:11]  He said, well, what about us?
[00:12:12]  We killed a lot of people too.
[00:12:13]  The rhetoric wasn't as tough, but the actual behaviors actually deterred Vladimir Putin in a lot of meaningful ways because they kept him a little poorer and a little bit more off kilter.
[00:12:24]  And I think what you're likely to see is, in my opinion, this is in terms of consequences for the world, this event will have repercussions that will.
[00:12:32]  Eclipse, maybe even 9 11, in terms of the sort of impact it will have on the world.
[00:12:36]  And one of the things I think this spells is the complete and utter end of globalization.
[00:12:42]  The idea that we're going to buy our gas from Russia or buy mission critical technology or manufactured goods from China, or like we do in the UK, we're going to sell off our electricity networks to foreign nations.
[00:12:56]  All of this is over.
[00:12:57]  The energy security is going to come right to the top of the list.
[00:13:00]  Countries that want to go to make sure that they can heat their pensioners' homes.
[00:13:04]  Irrespective of whether Vladimir Putin allows them to or not.
[00:13:08]  And I think this is going to lead to a massive rejigging of the geopolitical chessboard with consequences, which I think at this point are very difficult to predict.
[00:13:15]  Okay.
[00:13:16]  And that leads us to this sort of, you know, for lack of a better term, America first mentality of a lot of folks on the anti establishment right here in America who think that the way you're talking sounds more like a neocon.
[00:13:29]  We can't be the policemen of the world.
[00:13:31]  This is somebody else's problem.
[00:13:32]  And say more like, I don't care what's happening in Ukraine.
[00:13:35]  I care about what's happening in America's borders, you know, and it.
[00:13:38]  Not familiar with the country.
[00:13:39]  It's not in NATO, so we have no contractual obligation to defend them.
[00:13:43]  So, you know, we got our own problems here.
[00:13:45]  To them, you want them to know what?
[00:13:47]  Well, I hear them and I would agree with them pretty much all of the time.
[00:13:52]  You know, I was a vehement critic of the war in Iraq.
[00:13:55]  Even the war in Afghanistan, to my mind, was a mistake.
[00:13:58]  And we've seen that obviously in the last few months with what's happened there.
[00:14:02]  The Syria, Libya, I mean, we could go down the list.
[00:14:05]  All of those were terrible mistakes.
[00:14:06]  And the West has, You know, undermine its own moral credibility on these issues.
[00:14:10]  But I don't think that I, first of all, I'm not a neocon at all.
[00:14:14]  But what I am trying to get people to understand, Megan, is this ain't about Ukraine.
[00:14:20]  This is about you.
[00:14:21]  This is about your children.
[00:14:23]  If Vladimir Putin thinks we're in a Cold War, it doesn't matter that you want to put America first.
[00:14:28]  Yes, Americans shouldn't be the policemen of the world.
[00:14:30]  But the question you have to ask yourself is who is?
[00:14:34]  If you want to vacate that space that America has occupied, Who is going to fill it?
[00:14:40]  Who is going to come in and be the world's top dog?
[00:14:43]  Who is going to come in and set the rules by which we play?
[00:14:46]  Now, you've got two options.

=== Energy Security Crisis (04:57) ===

[00:14:47]  You've got Russia or China, right?
[00:14:50]  Do you want either of those nations to be the one that's leading the world?
[00:14:53]  Because you've got to remember yes, America shouldn't necessarily have to be the world's policeman.
[00:14:57]  And yes, I mean, the parallels with the BLM situation are so strong here because, of course, we had the whole defund the police thing, which resulted in a massive spike in crime.
[00:15:06]  And this is exactly what will happen on the international stage.
[00:15:09]  If America withdraws as it has done in recent decades, you're going to see people doing things that we in the West don't want to happen.
[00:15:16]  So, you know, I'm against the illegal foreign wars.
[00:15:20]  I'm not suggesting we send troops to Ukraine right this second to fight against Russia.
[00:15:25]  I think that would be a terrible mistake for the world at this point to be talking in that way.
[00:15:28]  But I think people need to realize this ain't Iraq, guys.
[00:15:32]  This ain't Afghanistan.
[00:15:33]  It's not Syria.
[00:15:34]  It's not Libya.
[00:15:35]  This is a strategic adversary who is taking advantage of our weakness.
[00:15:39]  And they are looking to see how we respond.
[00:15:42]  Just like the Chinese are.
[00:15:43]  And how we respond is going to determine the fate of the Western world for decades to come.
[00:15:50]  No one's talking about putting boots on the ground in terms of U.S. troops, but there is a call, there's a push, I've seen it from the left, from the right, from all quarters now, for serious sanctions against Russia.
[00:16:02]  Sanctions that would actually hurt.
[00:16:04]  Not a couple of banks, not a couple of oligarchs can't access their pads in London.
[00:16:10]  But there are a couple of ways we could go.
[00:16:12]  I mean, we could amp it up to the point where they can't access their money through U.S. banking, where we throw out the Russians who are attending American colleges, who are the children of said oligarchs and so on.
[00:16:23]  I mean, you could go down the list.
[00:16:25]  And certainly the Nord Stream 2 pipeline should be suspended permanently, should be killed permanently.
[00:16:31]  That should not be revivable.
[00:16:32]  And maybe Europe will give some thought to reviving its own energy sources, rather than.
[00:16:37]  Disconnecting its nuclear plants.
[00:16:39]  So it's reliant on Russia in a way that, as we see, is destabilizing.
[00:16:43]  They'll rethink what happens when you rely on the windmill to power an entire nation.
[00:16:49]  Your thoughts on it?
[00:16:51]  Well, exactly what's going to happen.
[00:16:52]  And of course, we wait to see what sanctions and other measures will be introduced and how that plays out.
[00:17:00]  I don't know.
[00:17:00]  But I think your point about energy security, if you remember, we talked about it earlier, what Germany has done to its own nuclear industry by Just purely on ideological grounds, shutting down nuclear power plants, making themselves reliant on Russia is just an absurd move politically.
[00:17:16]  And I think it reflects a naivete that, as I say, I think is over.
[00:17:21]  Globalization is over.
[00:17:22]  The idea that you can have other countries who don't have your best interests at heart supporting you with energy is not viable.
[00:17:30]  It's not sustainable.
[00:17:31]  We can't be relying on Chinese manufactured goods for the things that make the difference between our people surviving and dying in hospitals.
[00:17:39]  We can't.
[00:17:39]  We can't be doing all of that.
[00:17:41]  We have to be self sufficient.
[00:17:42]  I think the biggest shift that is going to come out of this is the end to globalization.
[00:17:47]  And people are going to come back to the realization that in order to secure the peace, you have to be strong.
[00:17:53]  Well, and I don't think Joe Biden's going to have much of a choice here at home.
[00:17:56]  I mean, we're already looking at $4 gallons of gas, projecting it could go up to $5 gallons of gas soon.
[00:18:02]  And I realize the people in Ukraine are suffering a lot more than paying high gas prices right now.
[00:18:07]  I mean, innocent people are being murdered for nothing.
[00:18:09]  For nothing.
[00:18:10]  They did nothing wrong.
[00:18:11]  So we have to keep our pain in perspective.
[00:18:14]  But Biden's also looking at midterm elections and then, you know, a presidential race in the not too distant future after that.
[00:18:21]  And realistically, you know, is he going to have to open back up America's energy resources and allow not just us, but maybe our European friends to start tapping into them?
[00:18:32]  Yeah, I'd be surprised if this isn't the death knell of the green agenda, at least for the moment.
[00:18:36]  I think the sort of net zero that we talk about here in the UK, our electricity and gas bills are about to double.
[00:18:44]  Here are literally overnight double, Megan, because of green subsidies, because we're so desperate to solve that particular problem.
[00:18:52]  But I think what we're starting to see is these sort of airy fairy ideas about how wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in little mud huts or whatever these people want.
[00:19:01]  No, it doesn't work that way.
[00:19:02]  There's some very serious men around the world who are coming for us.
[00:19:06]  And in order to deal with that, we're going to have to supply our own energy and deal with that issue as a priority.
[00:19:13]  Otherwise, we are going to rely on them and we're going to be.
[00:19:15]  Vulnerable to blackmail and weak in the face of that.
[00:19:18]  So, I think you're going to see some very dramatic changes in public opinion on these issues and in terms of the political leadership's decisions.
[00:19:26]  But I'm curious to see how American public opinion and British public opinion will break on this issue, whether people understand the seriousness of what we're dealing with or whether the people we talked about earlier who want to pretend this is some kind of Iraq or Afghanistan situation are going to triumph.
[00:19:43]  I guess we wait and see.

=== Best Case Scenario (15:24) ===

[00:19:44]  You know, Constantine, one of the nicest.
[00:19:47]  Pieces of existing in the digital world, right, with my show here and so on, as opposed to being tied to cable, is the exposure to a whole host of really smart, interesting thinkers who you wouldn't see on cable just because they don't have a deal to be a Fox News contributor, for example.
[00:20:04]  You are one of them.
[00:20:06]  I love, love, love your podcast.
[00:20:07]  It's called Trigger Nometry.
[00:20:11]  And Constantine is always worth the listen.
[00:20:13]  Check it out.
[00:20:14]  And thank you so much for your insights today.
[00:20:16]  Thanks for having me, Megan.
[00:20:17]  It's a great pleasure.
[00:20:19]  All the best.
[00:20:19]  Wow.
[00:20:20]  Coming up next, we're going to be joined by Jim Garrity of National Review as we await Biden's latest statement.
[00:20:26]  He's coming out now, we're told, in moments on the war in Ukraine and what it means for the United States.
[00:20:34]  Don't go away.
[00:20:43]  New reports at this hour of fighting near the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
[00:20:49]  The Ukrainian president says his forces are trying to prevent Russian troops from capturing it.
[00:20:53]  Chernobyl, of course, is the site of that devastating accident back in 1986.
[00:20:58]  And the fear is that this situation could disturb nuclear waste among so many other problems.
[00:21:04]  Joining me now, Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent of National Review, has been doing great coverage of this.
[00:21:10]  Jim, so good to have you here.
[00:21:11]  So, reading your piece this morning, you know, you don't mince words either.
[00:21:16]  You talk about the Wall Street Journal not mincing words.
[00:21:18]  You don't mince words either, talking about how we are witnessing the largest land war in Europe since 1945, an unprovoked attack by an autocratic superpower with nuclear weapons, exactly the nightmare scenario that the US, NATO, and the European Union aimed to prevent.
[00:21:36]  This is the worst case scenario.
[00:21:39]  So, I mean, I'll pull a Rich Lowry on you on a scale of one to 10.
[00:21:44]  How bad is this?
[00:21:45]  Eight or a nine.
[00:21:46]  I suppose, you know, if I say the worst case scenario, the really worst case scenario would be this somehow spilling over across the border and Russian forces shooting on NATO ally forces.
[00:21:56]  But clearly, this is not a limited incursion into the Donbass region.
[00:22:00]  This is not a, clearly, it wasn't a feint.
[00:22:02]  Clearly, this was not saber rattling and Putin trying to get some sort of cheap concessions or something like that.
[00:22:08]  This looks like a full, you know, this is a full scale land invasion.
[00:22:11]  It certainly looks like they want to conquer the whole country.
[00:22:15]  Megan, I have this.
[00:22:16]  This nightmare scenario where I'm going to tell you something.
[00:22:19]  By the time we end the conversation, the circumstance on the ground will have changed.
[00:22:22]  It's fine.
[00:22:23]  As of right before we got on here, there was footage on CNN of Russian paratroopers around an airport that was like 15 miles from Kiev.
[00:22:32]  And so this looks like an attempt to encircle the Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the country, cut them off, and effectively take over, if not the entire country of Ukraine, take over a big chunk of it, and maybe leave some sort of rump state on the western part of the country.
[00:22:51]  This is really bad.
[00:22:52]  This is really, really bad.
[00:22:54]  And I don't, it's clearly there's no way to restore the status quo.
[00:22:58]  This is probably the best case scenario we can hope for at this point that Ukrainians fight hard, fight well, extract a real price on Putin.
[00:23:07]  It sounds like the resistance in the northern part of the country is going pretty well.
[00:23:11]  That's where the Chernobyl plant is.
[00:23:15]  In the south, where the Russian Navy is hammering them from offshore, it sounds like that's going pretty badly.
[00:23:21]  But again, this is the fog of war, it's all very preliminary.
[00:23:24]  It could all change very quickly.
[00:23:26]  That having been said, you know, hope all in all, like Russia's going to end up with a big chunk of Ukrainian territory.
[00:23:33]  It's just a question of how much right now.
[00:23:35]  Right now, they're saying, Russia's saying that they're targeting only military installations inside of Ukraine.
[00:23:41]  They claim that they're not going to target civilians, though some have already been hurt.
[00:23:45]  We're hearing reports.
[00:23:47]  Then what Ukraine's saying right now is help and at least make it a no fly zone.
[00:23:52]  We need people like America to step in and at least create a no fly zone because As soon as they knock out these military installations, in are going to come the ground troops, and then we're really going to be exposed.
[00:24:04]  So we need a no fly zone right now.
[00:24:06]  Yeah, at this point, I have not heard a lot of serious talk about that here in Washington or in other European capitals.
[00:24:14]  I don't think that's a likely scenario.
[00:24:16]  I think you may, yeah, you're going to see, there's going to be more talk of economic sanctions, which, oh, by the way, I think if you want to summarize the problem for the Biden administration, the US government, our NATO allies, and the EU, is that we came to a gunfight with economic sanctions.
[00:24:31]  And Vladimir Putin is not a guy who is deterred by economic sanctions.
[00:24:36]  There is no amount of pain you're going to be able to inflict on the Russian economy.
[00:24:39]  That is more important to him than his vision of himself as this grand figure of history who is going to reclaim the Russian ancestral cultural homeland.
[00:24:51]  This wasn't about money to him.
[00:24:52]  This was about something more important to him.
[00:24:54]  And so I think the only thing that had a chance of deterring him was making very clear that every inch of Ukrainian soil he and his military forces were going to try to take were going to pay a high price in blood.
[00:25:08]  Like I said, we've sent them the Javelin anti-hank missiles.
[00:25:12]  Apparently, they've got anti-aircraft missiles.
[00:25:14]  There are some reports of the Ukrainians inflicting some serious casualties on the Russians, but it's still pretty early here.
[00:25:24]  Vladimir Putin was hell bent on this.
[00:25:25]  And I think it is the fact that he launched the attack right as the UN Security Council was meeting.
[00:25:31]  Oh, by the way, the Security Council meeting, which is chaired by Russia, in the state of this painful irony.
[00:25:36]  What a joke.
[00:25:36]  Yeah.
[00:25:38]  Again, for about 20 years now, you've seen this argument in US foreign policy circles.
[00:25:45]  Generally, folks on the right saying, The UN is ridiculous.
[00:25:48]  It doesn't matter.
[00:25:50]  It's just a debating society.
[00:25:52]  It has no real impact on the facts on the ground.
[00:25:56]  And folks generally in the Democratic Party, generally on the left, are saying, no, no, no, it's this important instrument of international diplomacy and all that stuff.
[00:26:03]  Well, I think it's now, it's not quite the League of Nations, but it's utterly irrelevant to deterring aggressive forces.
[00:26:10]  And you can see this in Russia and Ukraine.
[00:26:13]  I think you can say the UN clearly was a non entity in the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
[00:26:18]  And I would not count on the UN being an effective tool in deterring conflict between, say, China and Taiwan.
[00:26:25]  Even today, you had Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations in the New York Times saying, What we really need to do is take it to the UN General Assembly.
[00:26:32]  I'll give you the thing about Russia heading the Security Council.
[00:26:36]  They're not really going to sanction themselves because they're saying, We need to go to the General Assembly.
[00:26:39]  They're like, Really?
[00:26:40]  Still, the UN?
[00:26:41]  They're dead to us.
[00:26:42]  They're no good to us.
[00:26:42]  We have to forge on without them.
[00:26:45]  Only this week, the New York Times, who I'm not in the usual business of praising, had a very detailed account of how.
[00:26:51]  Russia was denounced by all of our allies at the UN Security Council.
[00:26:54]  The last line of the article was, and then the council adjourned, taking no action.
[00:26:59]  It was just this, like, yes, okay, we can all go there and we can say, this is terrible.
[00:27:03]  And you saw a lot of that last night.
[00:27:05]  In fact, I think the Ukrainian ambassador, when the Russian ambassador was insisting that, you know, I think they called for de escalation, and the Ukrainian ambassador holds up his phone and saying, here's Putin announcing they're invading, you know, kind of this ridiculous.
[00:27:19]  He's not listening to you.
[00:27:21]  This is absurd.
[00:27:22]  Even.
[00:27:22]  Like you, as you point out, we brought sanctions to a gunfight.
[00:27:24]  Like, even sanctions aren't going to do it, never mind some condemnation.
[00:27:28]  And by the way, this is just crossing the wires, Jim, per Reuters, Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces, citing an advisor to a Ukrainian presidential office.
[00:27:38]  It'll be the first of many reports we hear along those lines as they move further inward.
[00:27:44]  Megan, on camera, I'm afraid I'm going to turn into a meme.
[00:27:47]  This is bad.
[00:27:48]  This is really bad.
[00:27:50]  And you might be thinking, like, why would Russia go there?
[00:27:52]  Well, if you look at a map, first of all, Belarus, which is kind of this, you know, A crony state, a sidekick state to Vladimir Putin's Russia.
[00:28:01]  They went, a whole bunch of Russian troops went into Belarusian territory for.
[00:28:05]  Joint military exercises, which fairly obviously were a preparation to invade Ukraine from another front.
[00:28:12]  And just to pause you, we're putting the map up there.
[00:28:14]  Belarus is right next to Ukraine.
[00:28:17]  It's by Poland, and it's another country that apparently is much more friendly to Russia because we're getting reports that they're helping Russia out with respect to this attack.
[00:28:25]  I think a lot of Americans never even heard of Belarus prior to today.
[00:28:27]  So it's just, you know, just to get our bearings, it's there and it's not really helpful to us at the moment.
[00:28:33]  Go ahead.
[00:28:34]  And Lukashenko, who's been called the last dictator in Europe over there.
[00:28:39]  He's kind of Putin's mini me.
[00:28:41]  Just picture a guy who goes along with everything Russia wants to do, gets a lot of financial support from Russia, and basically sees himself as Putin's sidekick.
[00:28:51]  Well, the shortest distance between a, this is where I wish I had my John Madden telestrator here, the shortest distance between a Ukrainian border and Kiev is coming down from Belarus.
[00:29:01]  And of course, the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where the nuclear power plant was and where all the radiation was back in 1986, is right in that area.
[00:29:09]  So it's one of those things where a lot of people, I've seen people asking, why would Russian troops even go anywhere near that?
[00:29:14]  Well, it's in the way.
[00:29:16]  Now, you could go around it, and Lord knows if I was commanding troops, I wouldn't want going anywhere near those places with that kind of radiation.
[00:29:22]  Russia, but basically, if there's anything we've learned, if you ever watch that Chernobyl miniseries on HBO, is that Russians don't worry about radiation the way the rest of us do.
[00:29:31]  They're kind of laid back about that in a way that sometimes gives them that warm, glowing feeling a little later on.
[00:29:38]  It's true.
[00:29:39]  It's very true.
[00:29:40]  So, all right, so let's just talk about yes, we brought sanctions, and that's what we expect Joe Biden to say.
[00:29:45]  In moments as soon as he takes to the mics, that we're going to be giving the super severe sanctions.
[00:29:50]  I mean, look, we sort of withheld some, we trickled some out, and they're going to trickle more out.
[00:29:54]  And now this should be the super severe sanctions.
[00:29:57]  But what's that going to look like?
[00:29:59]  And realistically, what could it look like that would make him hurt, right?
[00:30:05]  Like that would actually hurt him in terms of the money?
[00:30:09]  Before I tear into our president during an ongoing foreign policy crisis, I'll begin by saying something a little bit nice.
[00:30:16]  I think Biden has focused on this.
[00:30:17]  I think he has really tried.
[00:30:19]  I think he's met with foreign leaders and communicating with them recently.
[00:30:23]  I think he's been trying to galvanize NATO to create a unified, tough response to this.
[00:30:30]  I think fairly obviously it failed.
[00:30:32]  It did not succeed.
[00:30:32]  And I don't know if Biden's the kind of guy who's capable of doing this.
[00:30:35]  But I'll give him a few points for trying.
[00:30:38]  I do note that, and I wrote about this at pretty considerable length this morning in my newsletter, The Morning Jolt.
[00:30:44]  All winter long, Biden, Anthony Blinken, Vice President Harris, they all kept using this phrase, swift and severe sanctions.
[00:30:51]  We're going to unleash sanctions on him like he's never seen.
[00:30:54]  These are the strongest sanctions we've ever seen.
[00:30:56]  And so you kind of created these expectations of, okay, this should really be something.
[00:31:01]  When they unveiled them this week, the first thing is they said they're going to come out in tranches, little groups.
[00:31:07]  They could have just used the term little groups.
[00:31:08]  I don't know why they use the term tranches, but whatever.
[00:31:10]  And it wasn't, there weren't nothing.
[00:31:12]  I mean, they were targeting the two banks that are closest to the Kremlin and Russian military, targeted a couple oligarchs and their family members, and they made it tough.
[00:31:20]  For Russian sovereign debt.
[00:31:22]  Those are steps.
[00:31:22]  I'm not going to say it's nothing.
[00:31:25]  But the first thing is that if you're doing it in tranches or small groups, well, then it's not swift and severe.
[00:31:30]  If you're saving some for later, if you're saying, well, later, we're going to use some of, we might do some of this stuff later on.
[00:31:35]  The big one that everybody wanted to talk about was the swift financial banking system.
[00:31:38]  Basically, it's how you move money from one country to another.
[00:31:41]  And we did this once against the Iranians, and it basically, you know, could really have a huge impact on a country's economy.
[00:31:47]  As of this morning, and before we started having this conversation, Megan, it sounded like a couple of European countries, including Germany, Did not want to go forward with this.
[00:31:55]  I'm looking at the, I'm thinking, like, what are you waiting for?
[00:31:59]  Mushroom clouds?
[00:32:00]  You know, this is a full scale invasion.
[00:32:02]  Like, what, you know, oh, well, it's not bad enough for us to cut off Russian banks from the rest of the world.
[00:32:07]  You know, that step is mind boggling.
[00:32:10]  There were a whole bunch of other gestures that are not necessarily gut punches, but I think are useful in symbolism.
[00:32:17]  Back in 1983, Ronald Reagan, after the Russians shot down Korean Airlines passenger jet 007, they blocked Aeroflot, the Russian Airlines, from landing in U.S. flights.
[00:32:28]  And I think right before we started having this conversation, the United Kingdom announced they were taking that step.
[00:32:33]  We could expel the children of Russian oligarchs and Russian government officials that are studying in American universities and colleges.
[00:32:39]  We may do this.
[00:32:40]  We just didn't do this a couple of days ago when it might have had more impact.
[00:32:45]  Blocking Russian oil and gas imports.
[00:32:47]  We have been importing a lot more oil and gas from Russia over the past year.
[00:32:51]  And that is extraordinarily frustrating.
[00:32:53]  And I can't help but think that one of the reasons Putin is walking around and feeling so cocky is because world energy prices are so high.
[00:33:00]  And his position as an oil and gas exporter gives him more financial leverage over Europe and stuff like that.
[00:33:06]  Oh, by the way, I'm glad we put sanctions on the companies that were.
[00:33:09]  Building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
[00:33:12]  Again, a day late and a dollar short because once Russia controls the pipelines that are currently running through Ukraine, they don't need Nord Stream 2 nearly as much as they did before.
[00:33:21]  Can you just expand on that?
[00:33:22]  Because I think most people haven't been following that closely.
[00:33:25]  I understand Nord Stream 2 is bad because that gets energy from Russia to Germany and keeps Russia's coffers filled.
[00:33:32]  But his backdoor plan doesn't seem to mind because if he controls Ukraine, then what?
[00:33:38]  Go ahead and expand on that.
[00:33:39]  Yeah.
[00:33:40]  So for a long while, You know, US officials looked at this and said, This doesn't look good.
[00:33:44]  This is going to, you know, this will be great for Germany if you like being dependent upon Russia for your energy.
[00:33:50]  If you don't like that, then this is a terrible idea.
[00:33:53]  Unfortunately, Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, is serving on the board of a Russian energy company.
[00:33:59]  Picture a former president going and taking a job on, say, like a Chinese energy company or something like that.
[00:34:05]  That kind of would be the equivalent there.
[00:34:07]  And Angela Merkel thought this was a terrific idea.
[00:34:09]  And this is, oh, by the way, this helps them shut down nuclear plants.
[00:34:12]  This allows them to.
[00:34:14]  In their minds, well, we're going green because the oil and gas isn't coming from us.
[00:34:17]  It's coming from somewhere else.
[00:34:19]  I don't think that is a terribly great long term thinking there.
[00:34:23]  But for a while, the US was trying to pressure them.
[00:34:25]  The Trump administration pressured it.
[00:34:26]  And Biden came into office and initially was saying, we oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
[00:34:31]  The Germans really wanted to go ahead with this.
[00:34:32]  And the Biden administration dropped their opposition to Nord Stream 2.
[00:34:38]  I think there's this idea that, well, we'll make this as a unilateral concession.
[00:34:42]  And if we do this, Putin and Russia will be more cooperative with us.
[00:34:46]  Surprise, it didn't work out that way.
[00:34:48]  Vladimir Putin was not any more cooperative or nice over this.
[00:34:51]  And I think that the Biden administration ended up with egg on their face.
[00:34:54]  They turned back to opposing Nord Stream 2.
[00:34:57]  And it's worth noting that no gas has gone through it yet.
[00:35:00]  Germany said a couple of days ago that they were halting the permitting process.
[00:35:05]  Yeah, we're not going to let you go ahead with that paperwork there.
[00:35:07]  That's going to slow you down.

=== Trusting No One (04:41) ===

[00:35:08]  I know, Megan, my attitude is where are the eco extremists when we need them?
[00:35:13]  Now I've got a pipeline I'd really love to see them blow up.
[00:35:16]  And I would not mind to see someone wink.
[00:35:19]  Blow that up to ensure that that pipeline never gets completed or used to minimize this.
[00:35:25]  And oh, by the way, we should be developing all of our energy resources and saying, look, you don't need to be dependent upon this maniacal autocrat for your energy supplies.
[00:35:33]  We're the United States of America.
[00:35:35]  We got oil, we got shale, we got gas, we got wind, we got solar, we got liquid natural gas.
[00:35:40]  We're going to send oil to everybody who needs it, and we're not going to be bullies about it.
[00:35:44]  Boy, it's a great opportunity.
[00:35:45]  But hey, we got to save the world.
[00:35:46]  Greta Thunberg says we can't do that.
[00:35:48]  Oh, my Lord.
[00:35:49]  And you were predicting, I mean, because people do wonder what's What's going to happen back here at home?
[00:35:54]  And what should we be expecting?
[00:35:56]  And certainly, higher gas prices is on the list.
[00:36:01]  We're going to see maybe Europe, you said, flooded with refugees.
[00:36:05]  People pay attention to that just now.
[00:36:07]  I mean, frankly, you know, travels open back up.
[00:36:09]  People are starting to go to Europe again in a way that we couldn't during the pandemic.
[00:36:13]  And certainly we're going to see that in places like Poland.
[00:36:16]  They're already predicting that as citizens try to flee.
[00:36:19]  And all eyes, of course, are on China as well.
[00:36:22]  I mean, what do you think Americans should be thinking about right now?
[00:36:27]  Not much good.
[00:36:29]  Maybe we'll get a really good HBO sequel series to Chernobyl out of this.
[00:36:33]  That's the only silver lining that I can find here.
[00:36:36]  Yeah, I mean, the first thing is you're going to notice it at your gas pumps.
[00:36:39]  Probably when you fill up this weekend.
[00:36:40]  Not that gas was cheap before, but this is probably going to end up being a, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an immediate panic bump.
[00:36:48]  And then just generally, you've got a major foreign policy crisis.
[00:36:51]  I assume there'll be at least some effort, I don't know, full on sanctions and some sort of effort to reduce U.S. imports of Russian oil supplies.
[00:37:01]  And oh, by the way, we're getting into the spring and summer, and traditionally Americans drive more then.
[00:37:05]  So all of that is going to expand demand, and supply is going to remain about the same or maybe even constrained more because of this conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
[00:37:13]  So, gas prices are going to be terrible.
[00:37:16]  We saw how the waves of refugees coming in from Syria and also some from Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East were destabilizing to European politics about, you know, let's see if it was the mid to late Obama years, shall we say.
[00:37:31]  That I suspect, you know, you will see some echo of that in European politics.
[00:37:37]  Right before we came on, apparently Chinese state run television is running some sort of documentary or program that is comparing Ukraine to Taiwan.
[00:37:46]  That doesn't sound ominous.
[00:37:48]  Now, does it?
[00:37:49]  I don't know if this means, okay, yeah, the Chinese invasion is going to come immediately.
[00:37:53]  I do think China is watching this very closely.
[00:37:55]  And I just want to just to update you on that because I mentioned this during our A block, but you weren't here yet.
[00:38:01]  Reuters is reporting that Taiwan's Air Force scrambled again on Thursday to warn away nine Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone, according to Taiwan's defense ministry.
[00:38:12]  This is on the same day as the invasion in Ukraine.
[00:38:15]  So obviously, they're watching.
[00:38:16]  And maybe flexing some muscle.
[00:38:18]  I mean, I don't think anybody's predicting Chinese invasion sometime soon, but there's no question that how we handle what's happening right now in Ukraine is going to be front and center for the Chinese.
[00:38:30]  Yeah.
[00:38:30]  I mean, Chinese incursions of Taiwan airspace by itself is not necessarily anything new, but it definitely feels differently this morning.
[00:38:38]  The other thing, which I think is we haven't necessarily recognized, or, you know, only a few Americans are kind of really thinking through the ramifications of, is, you know, Back in the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had a lot of people said that Ukraine had nuclear weapons.
[00:38:52]  The bet was that Soviet nuclear weapons were stored on Ukrainian soil.
[00:38:57]  Ukraine by itself did not have the ability to detonate or use those weapons, but part of the deal was to say, okay, we're going to ship them all back to what's becoming Russia.
[00:39:05]  And in exchange, we, the West, will ensure you'll never get invaded by Russia.
[00:39:10]  And that was a deal between the United States and Russia and Ukraine.
[00:39:15]  And maybe was the UK involved in that too?
[00:39:17]  But I mean.
[00:39:18]  Yeah, basically everyone in NATO was party to all this.
[00:39:21]  Russia is a signatory to that.
[00:39:22]  Russia doesn't care about treaties.
[00:39:25]  Wow.
[00:39:25]  Shocking.
[00:39:26]  They went back on their word, and now so are we.
[00:39:28]  You can't trust a former KGB lieutenant colonel.
[00:39:31]  Who can you trust these days?
[00:39:33]  Yes.
[00:39:33]  Well, but that's a good point because what's the lesson there?
[00:39:36]  Okay, give up your nukes and we'll have your back, except when we don't, which we aren't.
[00:39:41]  And what other countries now that don't have nukes, like Japan, I don't know, South Korea, are thinking, hmm, opportunity.

=== Putin on a Roll (14:53) ===

[00:39:50]  As every country that is not already accepted, Explicitly guaranteed protection under the nuclear umbrella of the United States is now thinking very seriously.
[00:39:58]  If we don't have a nuke, somebody someday is going to do the same thing to us.
[00:40:02]  The only way we can ensure Our sovereignty, our security, and preserving our borders as they are is to have a nuke of our own.
[00:40:10]  We have a lot of bad consequences coming out of what's happening between Russia and Ukraine right now.
[00:40:14]  I think a giant international nuclear arms race could be another one of those really bad ones because would I trust Japan with a nuclear weapon?
[00:40:21]  Sure.
[00:40:21]  Would I trust South Korea?
[00:40:23]  These are generally stable, wise, non reckless regimes, but not all governments around the world are, or maybe they have a stable government now, but at some point down the road, Somebody who's a little more cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs ends up running those countries.
[00:40:38]  So that was another reason we really wanted to deter this.
[00:40:42]  And I think that, you know, despite trying to, I think you can point to some, some, Biden went into office wanting to create, he kept emphasizing a stable and predictable relationship with Russia.
[00:40:56]  I think it was very clear Vladimir Putin never wanted stable or predictable government.
[00:41:00]  Oh, yeah.
[00:41:01]  Well, you pointed out on National Review that Biden sounded like John Wayne.
[00:41:05]  Talking about, oh, he's never dealt with me, you know, wait until I get in there.
[00:41:10]  And now it's like, yeah, well, you got in.
[00:41:11]  He couldn't care less.
[00:41:12]  He's actually more aggressive than ever.
[00:41:14]  Yeah.
[00:41:15]  You know, there are a lot of criticisms to be made about Joe Biden, and your program is only two hours.
[00:41:20]  So I won't list out all of them.
[00:41:21]  But one of the ones that comes to mind is how much he talked on the campaign trail as if these problems were easy.
[00:41:29]  And, oh, you know, we're going to shut down the virus, right?
[00:41:31]  And all these other examples of how we're going to, you know, have these really quick, well, you know, it turns out Vladimir Putin.
[00:41:36]  Is a real cold, heartless, evil SOB who was always looking for leverage.
[00:41:41]  And it was not just a matter of, oh, if we're nicer to him or he's going to be intimidated by the longtime senator from Delaware with his cool aviator glasses.
[00:41:49]  In the end, there was this, I think it was about late 2019, there's this short video that Biden recorded for his campaign.
[00:41:58]  It's on Twitter and I linked to it today.
[00:42:00]  And it's him saying, Putin knows that when I become president, his days of tyranny and intimidating the US and Eastern Europe are over.
[00:42:07]  And it just looks ridiculous, it just looks absurd.
[00:42:10]  No, by the way, all I can think of right now, Jim, is Joggle Joggle Jip.
[00:42:18]  Sorry.
[00:42:18]  And, you know, look, every president, you know, every presidential candidate oversimplifies things on the campaign trail.
[00:42:25]  But I think Biden is particularly guilty of making people think this was going to be easy, getting in there and not really knowing how he was going to achieve his goals.
[00:42:35]  And it turns out Putin is not nearly as intimidated of Biden as Biden seemed to think he was going to be.
[00:42:41]  And he does not, you know, NATO is not as unified as they.
[00:42:44]  I mean, the fact that the European countries wouldn't go along with these swift banking restrictions makes it sound like for the past three months, Biden has been saying swift and severe sanctions, swift and severe.
[00:42:55]  When in the background, NATO is like, no, no, we're not doing this.
[00:42:59]  We're not on board with all that stuff.
[00:43:00]  Right.
[00:43:00]  Which he telegraphed.
[00:43:01]  He telegraphed at that never ending presser where he said too much about too many things.
[00:43:05]  And then the White House had to clean up.
[00:43:06]  But he was telegraphing NATO divisions.
[00:43:08]  And it wasn't, as it turns out, just about the pipeline, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
[00:43:13]  A couple things that I want to get to, and I'll squeeze in a break, but I want to talk about whether we think.
[00:43:17]  Putin just made a veiled nuclear threat?
[00:43:20]  And is that just utter nonsense given the, you know, obviously consequence of that?
[00:43:25]  And also the call by the Ukrainian leader and the president there now saying he needs everyone, everyone, anybody who has had any weapons training to grab a weapon and fight.
[00:43:35]  And that sounds like it's getting more dire by the moment.
[00:43:37]  We're going to pick it up right there.
[00:43:39]  After a quick break, I want to tell the audience update on President Biden.
[00:43:41]  His scheduled remarks now pushed back to 1 30 p.m. Eastern Time.
[00:43:45]  We're going to keep an eye on it.
[00:43:47]  If he begins on time, we'll take some of it and more with Jim Garrity and then Mike Pompeo right after this.
[00:43:58]  A few updates for you here.
[00:44:00]  Representative Michael McCall on the House Foreign Affairs.
[00:44:03]  Committee saying that we haven't seen anything like this since Hitler invaded Poland in World War II.
[00:44:09]  I just hope this is not the beginning of World War III.
[00:44:14]  Similar responses from others across the aisle.
[00:44:17]  Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta saying, What's at stake is whether we've learned the lessons from World War II that we cannot allow a tyrant to invade a sovereign democracy and get away with it.
[00:44:27]  NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis coming out and saying, This is the beginning of a significant campaign.
[00:44:33]  If this isn't shock and awe, he says, I don't know what would be.
[00:44:37]  We're on a rocket ride back to the 1930s.
[00:44:40]  Putin will attempt to terrify the Ukrainian people.
[00:44:43]  It's scary, Jim.
[00:44:44]  It's scary what's happening.
[00:44:46]  And when you look at what Putin himself said, it gets even scarier.
[00:44:49]  He said, No one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.
[00:44:56]  Continues on.
[00:44:57]  To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside, if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.
[00:45:05]  Some speculating that maybe a Dark threat reference to the use of nuclear weapons.
[00:45:12]  But realistically, unless Putin's gone completely out of his mind, he knows that's not an option.
[00:45:19]  I can give you a pessimistic take, an optimistic take, and then a bonus pessimistic take based on that statement.
[00:45:25]  The first one is that, at least on paper, according to stated Russian military strategy, they don't see nuclear weapons as something that's like far and away separate from their use of their conventional military forces.
[00:45:36]  They've always said that they see that as just another military tool.
[00:45:39]  And that they will not hesitate to use them in the execution of their objectives.
[00:45:45]  Now, that may be, that sounds like saber rattling.
[00:45:48]  Nobody likes to talk about, oh, we're just going to use nuclear weapons willy nilly.
[00:45:51]  But for what it's worth, it's not like they would say, oh, this is something we've never done.
[00:45:55]  We have a no first strike policy or anything like that.
[00:45:58]  The optimistic take I can give you is that even if you think Putin is now losing his marbles, and apparently he has spent the better part of the past two years in remarkable isolation, which is, and I think a couple other leaders, like the leader of Finland, who said they met him.
[00:46:13]  Seemed like his personality had changed, that he had become angrier, more erratic.
[00:46:19]  You know, this is not great news to if you're nothing about that is reassuring.
[00:46:23]  That said, if you want to take Ukraine, you don't want to take a radioactive wasteland, which is one of the reasons I wouldn't send my troops through the Chernobyl zone.
[00:46:31]  But by and large, if you're using a nuclear weapon on a target, you're basically making it unworkable.
[00:46:39]  And then the last thing that kind of comes to mind is just a repetition oh, Putin wouldn't do that.
[00:46:43]  I don't think that sentence should be in our vocabulary anymore.
[00:46:45]  I don't think you can rule anything as completely.
[00:46:47]  Completely out of the question for what Putin's willing to do.
[00:46:50]  My goodness.
[00:46:51]  One of my visits over there, I interviewed him at Kaliningrad, which is the site of their nuclear weapons arsenal.
[00:46:56]  And the thought of something from that site being used on these innocent Ukrainians, on those of us who may step in to help in some way, again, not boots on the ground, but in some way, militarily or otherwise, it's chilling.
[00:47:08]  Jim Garrity, you're a rock star.
[00:47:10]  Thank you so much for all the great analysis, not just today on this show, but all the time at National Review and on the editors.
[00:47:15]  You're a gem.
[00:47:16]  Thank you.
[00:47:16]  Always enjoy it, Megan.
[00:47:17]  Thanks for having me.
[00:47:19]  Okay.
[00:47:19]  After this, we're going to cover.
[00:47:20]  Putin's Ukraine invasion from all angles, including with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
[00:47:26]  What would Trump be doing now?
[00:47:27]  I'll ask him next.
[00:47:33]  Mike Pompeo served as the Secretary of State under President Trump.
[00:47:37]  He's also a former CIA director, congressman, and Army officer who was stationed in Germany during the Cold War.
[00:47:43]  In a column today for Fox News, he wrote Putin is about the business of trying to bring back the Soviet Union.
[00:47:50]  We must not allow that to happen.
[00:47:52]  Secretary Pompeo, good to have you here.
[00:47:54]  Welcome.
[00:47:55]  Megan, thank you very much.
[00:47:56]  It's great to be with you.
[00:47:57]  So, for a while now, there's been, you know, sort of the well, he doesn't want the expansion of NATO.
[00:48:02]  He doesn't want Ukraine in NATO.
[00:48:03]  That makes sense.
[00:48:04]  Why would he want that?
[00:48:05]  You know, we could understand that.
[00:48:06]  But it's really, I mean, I had an argument.
[00:48:09]  On this show with Adam Curry about it.
[00:48:11]  And I was saying, look, I've interviewed the guy repeatedly.
[00:48:13]  I did a lot of prep for those interviews.
[00:48:14]  And if there's one thing you know about Putin, it's that he views the collapse of the USSR as a calamity of world order.
[00:48:23]  And that his goal is to try to cobble together something that bears some resemblance to the old Soviet Union before he departs this earth.
[00:48:32]  Is today step one in that?
[00:48:33]  Or maybe not even step one, maybe step four.
[00:48:36]  I don't know, but the biggest step yet.
[00:48:39]  Well, Megan, I think you have it exactly right.
[00:48:41]  That's what I wrote about in the piece that you described.
[00:48:44]  We need to take him at his word.
[00:48:45]  He talked about this in some remarks he gave a month ago.
[00:48:47]  And indeed, last summer, he openly talked about his desire to restore what he believes is rightfully Russia's or the former Soviet Union's.
[00:48:55]  If you've spoken to him at all, as it sounds like you did, this is in his heart.
[00:48:59]  It's been on his mind.
[00:49:00]  And whether it was the effort in Georgia or the effort in Crimea or the expansion of the warm water port in the Mediterranean, each of these is a step along the way, what he sees as rectifying this historic.
[00:49:13]  Embarrassment, the destruction of the Soviet Union.
[00:49:16]  Sadly, the people of those places, those former satellite countries, don't want to be anything to do with Russian leadership.
[00:49:23]  And thus, you see the conflict today in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people standing, fighting valiantly, trying to remain separate and apart from this thug and this autocrat.
[00:49:32]  What did we do, right?
[00:49:33]  He did invade Georgia.
[00:49:34]  I think that was 08, and then Crimea, 14, and so on.
[00:49:38]  My memory is we imposed some sanctions.
[00:49:39]  We said the same kind of stuff under Barack Obama Sanctions, you're going to pay.
[00:49:44]  And then they kind of went away.
[00:49:45]  They got watered down.
[00:49:47]  People didn't live by them because Europe needs Russia's oil and gas resources and so on.
[00:49:53]  To me, the lesson to him all along has been he'll pay a little for a while.
[00:49:58]  Megan, I think that's exactly right.
[00:50:01]  Add to that, I believe deeply what he saw in Ukraine for him was a green light.
[00:50:05]  He saw an administration that wasn't prepared to impose any real costs on anyone for bad behavior.
[00:50:11]  And so you add it up, right?
[00:50:12]  Those historic things that you talked about over what's now the last 15 years.
[00:50:16]  And I think he sees that this is his moment.
[00:50:18]  This was the right time to.
[00:50:20]  Engage in this.
[00:50:21]  The strikes that we're seeing today are deep and complex and well prepared.
[00:50:26]  They're enormously broad and they're focused.
[00:50:30]  The focus on the singular admission of making Ukraine a satellite state.
[00:50:34]  He'll replace the government and he will see how long it is before the West walks away and just says, well, never mind, good enough.
[00:50:41]  We'll let him have this one more piece.
[00:50:43]  Don't do it again.
[00:50:45]  And then what?
[00:50:47]  Because that's really the worry, even for America firsters.
[00:50:50]  You know, people who don't want us to get involved in Ukraine, they're sick and tired of us getting involved in foreign conflicts.
[00:50:55]  I think even those folks are worried okay, if we ignore this one, what does he do next?
[00:51:02]  Megan, I'm an America first.
[00:51:04]  I'm worried about Ukraine, too.
[00:51:06]  I'm also worried about Ukraine.
[00:51:08]  This will put Vladimir Putin on a roll.
[00:51:10]  He will see his power increase.
[00:51:12]  Don't forget, Ukraine has a significant piece of the global wheat supply.
[00:51:17]  These are economic things that if he's able to get control and obtain the capacity to tax and regulate this place, Will have real benefits to him.
[00:51:25]  It may not be two years, it may be costly in the short run, but over an extended period of time, he will have benefited from this enormously.
[00:51:32]  We can't let that happen.
[00:51:33]  It matters to Americans too.
[00:51:34]  You can see what's happening in our markets today crude oil prices higher.
[00:51:39]  That means higher gas prices at the pump for every American.
[00:51:42]  Natural gas prices will increase.
[00:51:44]  That means heating your home will get more expensive.
[00:51:46]  I talked about corn and wheat.
[00:51:49]  I'm from Kansas, a farm state.
[00:51:51]  This means fertilizer will be more expensive.
[00:51:53]  This will roil.
[00:51:55]  The global economy, and that's never good for Americans.
[00:51:58]  Okay, so what about the Baltic states?
[00:52:00]  Do we think that, I mean, just hypothetically, I realize we're not there yet, but could he start go collecting those?
[00:52:05]  I mean, what do you think it would take?
[00:52:07]  To get America involved militarily in a serious way, because we cannot have a Hitler.
[00:52:13]  I mean, we cannot have a madman in Europe running around conquering other countries that have done nothing to it.
[00:52:21]  I hope this moment will be the one that convinces American leadership and NATO and the European countries that this is serious business, that they need to get about doing what we asked them to do in 2017 and 18, which was to spend some money.
[00:52:34]  You all are spending less than 2% of your GDP to defend your own nation.
[00:52:38]  It seemed like a long ways away, I suspect, if you were German or French or You were sitting on the Atlantic and not on the eastern edge of freedom's frontier.
[00:52:47]  I hope this will create the resolve necessary.
[00:52:50]  We're a great power.
[00:52:51]  Europe has the capacity to defend itself.
[00:52:53]  We can do those things, Megan.
[00:52:54]  We shouldn't shy away from that.
[00:52:56]  It's not about American soldiers.
[00:52:58]  It's about making sure that we use America's power in a way that secures and defends the things that matter most.
[00:53:03]  I've spent my whole life on this project.
[00:53:05]  I was a young lieutenant that patrolled the then East German border.
[00:53:09]  We know how to take down regimes just like Vladimir Putin's.
[00:53:13]  He thinks we're afraid to do that, that we've lost our will.
[00:53:16]  We have to make clear to him that we've not lost our will.
[00:53:19]  And it's not about words.
[00:53:20]  It's not about meetings at the UN or NATO meetings.
[00:53:24]  This is about real deeds that will put pressure on his regime and convince him that it's just too costly to do what it is he's intending to do.
[00:53:30]  Okay, but how?
[00:53:31]  That sounds like sanctions.
[00:53:33]  Let me start with sanctions.
[00:53:35]  The list is long.
[00:53:36]  They put the waiver on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, telling Vladimir Putin, knock yourself out, make Germany dependent.
[00:53:41]  We had sanctioned it.
[00:53:42]  We were on the cusp of having it shut down.
[00:53:45]  Biden came in and released it.
[00:53:46]  The sanctions in place today, maybe this afternoon he'll announce a whole bunch more.
[00:53:50]  I pray that he will.
[00:53:51]  But the sanctions he's put in place today have told him this is just a small step along the way towards your ultimate success.
[00:53:59]  I promise you, Vladimir Putin sees the sanctions that Biden announced yesterday and says, oh, they don't care about this.
[00:54:05]  Let me give you a third idea.
[00:54:07]  A third idea would be to announce today that we're going to start supporting the world's largest and an energy exporter, the United States of America.
[00:54:14]  We are going to flood global markets with American crude oil.
[00:54:18]  And American natural gas, cutting in half, maybe by two thirds, the price of gasoline and the price of crude oil refined products and natural gas.
[00:54:26]  This is a John McCain joked about it being a gas station.
[00:54:30]  If we cut off his revenue stream, the profitability of Russian energy, this will deal an enormous blow to the people of Russia.
[00:54:37]  And then ultimately, I hope that they will put the pressure on Vladimir Putin that we ultimately, the list is long.

=== Cutting Russian Revenue (15:37) ===

[00:54:43]  Megan, we have many things we can do.
[00:54:45]  It's not just sanctions, they're one tool, but diplomacy.
[00:54:48]  Without the threat of real pain infliction, you know, that's you interviewed him.
[00:54:53]  He understands one thing power.
[00:54:55]  We need to demonstrate it.
[00:54:56]  Yeah, you made a point in a tweet or an article that you wrote recently saying that what the Biden administration did with Putin's finances is we basically put his economy on super warp by allowing the Nord Stream 2.
[00:55:11]  Like we said, yes, great, let's make him even richer.
[00:55:13]  Let's make Russia even richer.
[00:55:15]  This will be great.
[00:55:16]  And without asking, wait, what does Putin do when he's feeling powerful?
[00:55:19]  What does Putin do when He's controlling oil markets and knows he's got this spigot of money coming in.
[00:55:27]  Megan, today's not the day for politics.
[00:55:29]  But when you put climate change at the top of your foreign policy agenda, right?
[00:55:33]  When the first person to go meet Vladimir Putin from the Biden administration is not Secretary Blinken or the president, but Secretary Kerry.
[00:55:40]  When you put that at the top of the list, the bad guys just smile.
[00:55:44]  They shake your hand and say, You bet, we'll work on carbon right alongside you.
[00:55:48]  And then they proceed to pollute and invade.
[00:55:52]  What do you think the number one thing Trump would do if he were president would be?
[00:55:56]  I think he would have done a lot more to prevent this in the first instance.
[00:56:00]  I get asked all the time, would this have happened?
[00:56:02]  You know, I can't prove it, Megan.
[00:56:04]  I think it's unfathomable that it would have happened while President Trump and I were in charge of American national.
[00:56:09]  Security.
[00:56:11]  We had a deterrence model that worked, that convinced dictators all around the world that we would impose real costs on you.
[00:56:17]  The Iranians certainly lived that in the strike on Qasem Soleimani.
[00:56:21]  We were clear about the things that mattered.
[00:56:23]  We did put America first and drew a set of lines, and then we're prepared to enforce them with enormous viciousness.
[00:56:29]  I think that's what we do today.
[00:56:31]  I think we wouldn't piecemeal out sanctions.
[00:56:33]  I think we wouldn't have capped America's energy production.
[00:56:35]  I think we would be doing the things that I have described here this morning.
[00:56:40]  And I'm convinced Vladimir Putin would have a very different sense.
[00:56:43]  Of opportunity.
[00:56:45]  One of the disturbing things about what we're witnessing is the cozying up of China and Russia.
[00:56:50]  And, you know, the concern is real that the more we alienate Putin, the more he runs into the arms of President Xi.
[00:56:58]  And where does that leave us?
[00:56:59]  I know you've been honest about the fact that President Trump really wanted you to take a look at that and how do we drive a wedge in between those two as opposed to create circumstances where they're embracing one another and that it was a lot harder than it looked.
[00:57:13]  So, can you give us some perspective on the risks that we're looking at here and whether it's still possible to?
[00:57:18]  Sort of pull a Nixon and like divide the two of them by giving one of them what they want?
[00:57:24]  Yes, the reverse Kissinger.
[00:57:26]  They tried to use Russia as the nation that pulled closer to the West.
[00:57:32]  Right.
[00:57:33]  President Trump, truly, he did.
[00:57:35]  He wanted to find places that we could work with the Russians.
[00:57:38]  And so I endeavored to do that, both as CIA director and as Secretary of State.
[00:57:42]  We took down some terror plots there.
[00:57:44]  Indeed, Vladimir Putin thanked me for that work, right?
[00:57:47]  Saving lives, demonstrating that working with the West.
[00:57:50]  Provided a more secure country for you were the kinds of things that we were working on.
[00:57:55]  It was difficult to do, Megan, to be honest with you.
[00:57:57]  We had two and a half years.
[00:57:58]  We had the Russia hoax hanging over our heads.
[00:58:00]  Each time I would travel to Russia, the stories were Pompeo, Russian asset.
[00:58:05]  Oh, my Lord.
[00:58:06]  They're still writing.
[00:58:07]  They're still writing.
[00:58:08]  Oh, he referred to him as strong.
[00:58:10]  They're still picking apart your language with respect to Vladimir Putin.
[00:58:13]  You can say a leader is strong while still trying to criticize their policy and coming after that.
[00:58:17]  Anyway, we don't need to waste time, but I keep going.
[00:58:20]  Goodness gracious.
[00:58:20]  I spent my whole life trying to destroy the communist.
[00:58:22]  Parties around the world.
[00:58:24]  I don't intend to walk away from that.
[00:58:25]  Now, I will say one more thing.
[00:58:27]  You know, if you don't acknowledge your enemy's assets, their capabilities, you'll call them the JV and you'll end up getting your head cut off.
[00:58:35]  President Obama did to ISIS, and we had to come in and solve that problem for him and for America as well.
[00:58:41]  Look, Putin can understand American power, but what we ought to do is find a place where his look to the West, his desire to say, can I really find a way to find a relationship with the West that works for me?
[00:58:54]  Was something that we were intent upon seeking common course.
[00:58:58]  We didn't get all the way.
[00:59:00]  Make no mistake about it, he will cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party if we don't get him looking west.
[00:59:05]  I think that most Russians would prefer to look west rather than east.
[00:59:09]  And he knows this too.
[00:59:10]  He will always be the sidecar, he'll always be the second fiddle to Xi Jinping.
[00:59:14]  They have a massive economy and 1.4 billion people.
[00:59:17]  He's never going to be Xi Jinping's true partner.
[00:59:20]  I think Putin knows that.
[00:59:23]  But if it is convenient, For the moment, to work alongside the Chinese Communist Party, they do share a desire to expand their hegemon, their space.
[00:59:34]  And they also share a deep understanding that human life doesn't matter.
[00:59:38]  In that sense, Xi and Putin are cousins.
[00:59:41]  We ought to do our best to create space as between them and do our best to make sure that we have the resources and assets and singular focus on the Chinese Communist Party that the next 50 years are going to demand.
[00:59:54]  How, I mean, How likely is it that we do see action by China with respect to Taiwan now and how soon?
[01:00:02]  Megan, I'm worried about it.
[01:00:03]  I've been worried about it for a long time.
[01:00:06]  She also is someone who sees moments of opportunity.
[01:00:09]  He might well see this as a moment of opportunity as well.
[01:00:13]  So, I already put an enormous amount of pressure on Taiwan.
[01:00:15]  I'm actually going to travel there a week from now to demonstrate American support for the people of Taiwan and to talk with their leadership about the things they can do to defend themselves.
[01:00:28]  We have to wonder whether Xi Jinping might not say if America is not prepared to lead, if they're not prepared to build out alliances with Australia, with South Korea, with Japan, with India, with all of our.
[01:00:40]  Our economic partners in the region, then maybe I just can get a green light, and maybe I too could do something like what Putin is doing today in Ukraine in Taiwan, and the world will simply shrug its shoulders.
[01:00:52]  That'd be really bad for the United States of America.
[01:00:55]  I could go on about the reasons, but we should start with the very semiconductors that people are listening to your podcast on.
[01:01:01]  We're most certainly made in either South Korea or Taiwan.
[01:01:06]  We need to do our level best to make sure we continue to be able to defend our national security and not.
[01:01:12]  Depend on high end technology that comes from a place that would be under the control of Xi Jinping.
[01:01:16]  Well, and isn't this one of the proposals with respect to Putin to take away his ability to access those semiconductors and lean on technology firms and other countries providing him to not do so?
[01:01:27]  Because, I mean, that would certainly undermine his abilities militarily and otherwise.
[01:01:32]  And let's not forget about hacking.
[01:01:33]  That's one of the things we worry about a cyber attack, is Putin can attack us, yes, with nukes, but of course there's mutually assured destruction, that whole thing.
[01:01:41]  But cyber and And he's already done that in Ukraine.
[01:01:44]  The question about whether that might be coming our way if we get too involved in this looms.
[01:01:49]  It might.
[01:01:49]  They have a very capable cyber force.
[01:01:52]  There's no doubt about that.
[01:01:54]  We're pretty damn good, too, Megan.
[01:01:56]  We're pretty capable at both responding when required, and we're pretty good at defending and protecting ourselves from that as well.
[01:02:04]  There can be a hiccup if some bad actor wants to do something offense, it's easier to play in defense than the cyberspace.
[01:02:10]  But make no mistake about it.
[01:02:11]  Vladimir Putin knows we're very capable there as well.
[01:02:14]  It does suggest one other thing, Megan.
[01:02:17]  I do worry about this problem of cascading threats.
[01:02:20]  You said Russia, I would say Afghanistan, Russia, then China.
[01:02:25]  I'm worried about Iran as well.
[01:02:28]  We are on the cusp, it appears, of signing a piece of paper that will prove worthless in making sure that Iran doesn't end up with a nuclear weapon.
[01:02:37]  We were determined, and we worked really hard and made progress at denying them the wealth and resources they need to build out a nuclear weapons program.
[01:02:44]  It looks like we're about to hand them five, seven, ten billion dollars.
[01:02:48]  With which to conduct terror campaigns around the world.
[01:02:50]  And this axis of partners from Russia to China to Iran and North Korea is real in their disdain for the West.
[01:02:59]  It is real in their belief that America and the West are in decline.
[01:03:02]  And to see Putin make this kind of advance without real costs imposed on him does run the risk of a series, a cascading series of problems to protect American interests.
[01:03:13]  And they'll come out and they'll celebrate that document and tell us that it's made America more safe and that Iran is abandoning its hopes for a nuclear weapon.
[01:03:20]  And it will be just as true as it's ever been, which is not at all, right?
[01:03:23]  That's why you guys abandon it.
[01:03:25]  Can I ask you about actual help to Ukraine for now?
[01:03:28]  Because former CIA guy who we've had on the show sent out a message saying as follows Sanctions won't be enough.
[01:03:35]  Covert action and the overall initiation of irregular warfare via the U.S. Intelligence Committee and SOF.
[01:03:41]  What is SOF?
[01:03:44]  Special Operating Forces.
[01:03:45]  Special Forces.
[01:03:46]  Okay.
[01:03:46]  To train, equip, advise, and assist Ukrainian forces.
[01:03:50]  Must now be our focus.
[01:03:52]  He says this sounds harsh, but the key is to send home in body bags Russia's invading forces.
[01:03:58]  What about that?
[01:03:59]  The use of our intelligence committee or special forces to go into Ukraine and provide more hand to hand support?
[01:04:07]  We have real capabilities and we need to impose real costs on Vladimir Putin.
[01:04:11]  I have to be a little careful making about the things I speak about, but make no mistake about it.
[01:04:17]  We should provide weapon systems to the resistance inside of Ukraine.
[01:04:22]  If it turns out that Zelensky has to flee the country and set up a government somewhere else in Poland or someplace else in Europe, we should support that government.
[01:04:30]  We shouldn't recognize whatever scumbag Vladimir Putin puts and installs in Kyiv.
[01:04:35]  We should make sure that.
[01:04:37]  That government is under pressure every day and always we know how to do these things.
[01:04:41]  And so, yes, all the tools that America has in its kit bag ought to be used to impose real costs, real costs on the person who was the aggressor who's already killed Ukrainians.
[01:04:53]  I have a friend there named Father Oleg who's in Ukraine.
[01:04:56]  He's in the Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
[01:04:59]  He runs a military hospital in Kyiv.
[01:05:02]  He's already had soldiers coming back, some of whom have passed away.
[01:05:06]  These are noble, worthy fighters.
[01:05:08]  We ought to provide them the tools, assistance, intelligence that they need to continue this resistance as long as Vladimir Putin has wrongly taken over that country.
[01:05:17]  There's a call now from the army in Ukraine calling on reservists and anyone who can hold a weapon, anyone who can hold a weapon to attack.
[01:05:28]  I mean, realistically, what's going to happen here?
[01:05:31]  They're outmanned, they're outmatched.
[01:05:35]  The international community is not going to create a no fly zone as.
[01:05:39]  Zelensky's begging for.
[01:05:41]  So, what's likely to happen and how quickly?
[01:05:45]  Well, the Russians have overwhelming capacity and they've been stacking it up since at least October along the border.
[01:05:54]  And this is a deep assault with all the reinforcements and supplies and supply chain that are needed.
[01:05:59]  I'm convinced that the Ukrainians will fight, they will impose real costs, but it could well be the case that the Russians in a matter of days might well come to have at least cut off significant pieces of the Ukrainians' military capacity to reinforce the capital city.
[01:06:13]  Occupation is hard, Megan.
[01:06:15]  We should make it harder.
[01:06:17]  What about NATO?
[01:06:19]  I got to ask you because the Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, he came out and said, We are fully activating NATO response forces, 30,000 troops.
[01:06:29]  We're going to flood them forward to the borders of the alliance.
[01:06:32]  He says, If you are waking up in Europe this morning, you want to be in NATO.
[01:06:37]  I mean, tell it to Ukraine.
[01:06:38]  He says, Putin is going to look powerful as he rolls over for a third time, a very weak neighbor.
[01:06:45]  But the alliance outnumbers him three or four to one.
[01:06:47]  He's not going to try to cross a NATO border in anger.
[01:06:51]  So, what do you take from that message?
[01:06:53]  Well, it's a good message, but words are one thing, actions are another, Megan.
[01:06:59]  We certainly have seen this in these past months.
[01:07:02]  Look, Secretary General Stoltenberg, the NATO commander, is a good, decent man.
[01:07:08]  He's got a fractious coalition.
[01:07:10]  You will have NATO countries that want to do less and others who are demanding that they do more.
[01:07:14]  I hope that he can bring them together.
[01:07:16]  I think it makes excellent sense to move those NATO forces forward to move them to the Baltic states.
[01:07:21]  The next most likely target for Vladimir would be to go into Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania.
[01:07:28]  So I think the statement he made is a good one.
[01:07:31]  The next thing we would need to see is that not only are they moving those forces to the right places to protect and defend NATO, but they are providing them with the tools that they need, all the support to maintain that.
[01:07:41]  So they're not just putting them there for a week or an hour or a month, but they are making clear to Vladimir Putin that we understand that he has a long term plan.
[01:07:49]  And that the West, those of us who are civilized and decent and don't conduct wars of aggression, that we have a long term plan as well.
[01:07:56]  It's unbelievable to think about these innocent Ukrainians just sitting there trying to grab guns.
[01:08:01]  And if they happen to defend themselves over what?
[01:08:03]  What did they do?
[01:08:03]  Absolutely nothing.
[01:08:05]  They didn't like Putin.
[01:08:06]  That's the problem.
[01:08:07]  They weren't cozy enough, the Ukrainians, toward Putin.
[01:08:10]  They don't want anything to do with him.
[01:08:12]  That's their real sin.
[01:08:13]  That's what he's doing and trying to recapture them in an attempt to reclaim some sort of Soviet glory, which may exist only in his own mind.
[01:08:23]  Meanwhile, his chief sort of press officer slash chief of staff, Dmitry Peskov, is out there saying Ukraine needs to be freed of Nazis.
[01:08:32]  We need to cleanse it of Nazis.
[01:08:34]  That's the kind of propaganda they're offering to the Russian people, who, according to the reports, are either Totally in favor of Vladimir Putin or concerned because they got a lot of relatives in Ukraine and they don't see it as an enemy.
[01:08:46]  They don't see it as something to be conquered.
[01:08:48]  I don't know.
[01:08:48]  I'll give you the last word as we await President Biden on what the American people should be going to bed thinking about tonight.
[01:08:54]  Megan, my final thought is along those same lines.
[01:08:57]  I'm praying for the Ukrainian people, the women, the children, those that are out fighting against this Russian aggression.
[01:09:04]  I pray that they are successful and that we get a good outcome.
[01:09:08]  I also pray for a resolve from America's leaders.
[01:09:11]  I want America's leadership to be successful.
[01:09:13]  If we can get back on our front foot, if we can begin to truly impose costs so that Vladimir Putin has to see them and feel them, and the people of Russia can feel them, and the leaders around him can feel it, then we have a chance of turning the tide.
[01:09:24]  If not, I fear that we're in for an awfully long struggle.
[01:09:27]  Oh, my.
[01:09:29]  Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, always a pleasure.
[01:09:31]  Thank you for being here, sir.
[01:09:32]  Thank you, Megan.
[01:09:37]  New fears at this hour that we may be witnessing the start of another world war as Russia launches a full scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
[01:09:46]  Earlier, a member of the Ukrainian parliament spoke to CBS and delivered this emotional statement.
[01:09:51]  Please save Ukrainian men, women, and children.
[01:09:58]  Helena, I can hear it in your voice.
[01:10:00]  I mean, this is a.
[01:10:05]  Block Russia from sleep.
[01:10:07]  I beg you.
[01:10:09]  Please save our people.
[01:10:11]  Another dozen of people, and maybe hundreds of people, might be murdered tonight.
[01:10:19]  My God.

=== Saving Ukrainian Men (06:18) ===

[01:10:20]  My next guest just wrote a gut wrenching account of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine.
[01:10:26]  Natalia Umanyok is a Ukrainian journalist and war correspondent.
[01:10:30]  Natalia, thank you for joining us.
[01:10:31]  And I'm sure you can relate to her emotion.
[01:10:35]  Sure, of course, because it's difficult not to be emotional.
[01:10:39]  And, you know, we can describe a lot what's happening.
[01:10:42]  We are also asked what the world can do.
[01:10:45]  And there are some things.
[01:10:46]  So at the moment, when already for more than 16 hours almost, the Ukrainian army is really trying to deter this incredible, formidable force, you know, which we couldn't even imagine in any other conflict of our generation.
[01:11:03]  That's what Ukraine faces.
[01:11:05]  If there are any, you know, emergency things which could be done by the West, if we speak about this swift thing or imposing a no flight zone, of course, that feels like that's something which still could be done.
[01:11:20]  The no fly zone, and yet.
[01:11:22]  Most of the analysts over here who know what they're talking about say that's not going to happen, that the United States and that its European allies would not be prepared to go that far.
[01:11:33]  That would be, you know, what should I say?
[01:11:36]  I was, again, I was asked for a lot of time today by the Western colleagues what should we do?
[01:11:42]  And we are saying, but also, as we understand, for a long time, Ukraine was kind of warned that there would be some imminent attack.
[01:11:51]  So there was some hope that, you know, the plans should be in place.
[01:11:55]  Because, as we understand, there was no any will of the Ukrainian state to fight this war.
[01:12:01]  It was all about the defense.
[01:12:03]  The Ukrainian president was addressing the Russian citizens.
[01:12:05]  By the way, he does it.
[01:12:07]  Still.
[01:12:08]  So, in this way, if not, we have two options, you know, they're going together.
[01:12:14]  But indeed, I want to add that despite everything, for all these hours, many hours, there are the fighting going on all over the country by the regular Ukrainian armed forces in order to deter, you know, the Russian troops, which are coming all over.
[01:12:32]  You know, there are 2,000 kilometers long border with Russia.
[01:12:38]  There are the platoons deployed in the south, in the east, in the west.
[01:12:42]  But of course, what we understood that almost all major towns were in that way hit.
[01:12:49]  Not really civilians' areas, but there are civilian casualties.
[01:12:53]  But as we understand, Russia, kind of as a former Soviet state, Ukraine is also a former Soviet state, knows kind of the maps where the military objects, warehouses, you know, airfields, or even like military units.
[01:13:09]  So that's where they target.
[01:13:11]  And I also should say that quite a lot of Westerners were skeptical whether Ukraine could stand even for a couple of hours.
[01:13:19]  So I do think at this moment, we're coming to the night here, that would be, you know, we're splitting, spilling to the second day.
[01:13:25]  But I do think that, you know, like Ukraine is buying this time still to deter, still to protect its population.
[01:13:35]  Tell us what you're hearing with respect to your relatives in Ukraine and their experience of airstrikes or seeking shelter or friends that you've talked to.
[01:13:44]  So, you know, as I just said, people should imagine in the US that Ukraine is as large as France.
[01:13:51]  You know, it's populated.
[01:13:52]  We're living in the megapolises.
[01:13:54]  It's not that easy to overtake a megapolises, even like with, you know, troops which are deployed.
[01:14:01]  However, it's possible to, you know, damage and hurt.
[01:14:07]  We lived for many years, especially in the, you know, most of the Ukraine, apart from where the conflict was fought, in a quite a usual Western way.
[01:14:15]  That way, that Your audience lives today.
[01:14:18]  So, for everybody, it's shock.
[01:14:20]  Despite the war is there, despite the warning, you still couldn't imagine that scale of the attack because it's really unthinkable from the human point of view, from the historical point of view.
[01:14:31]  I may be kind of moving a bit from the personal moment, but I really want to say that following all the other wars, it's way bigger, which we had in our generation.
[01:14:42]  So, the people thought they could go to the west of the country.
[01:14:47]  They're welcomed by their relatives, by friends.
[01:14:51]  But, you know, there were not just really traffic jams at the moment when it was really clear that Russia is targeting, you know, like not just capital, which they probably want to overtake.
[01:15:05]  Would it be safe to travel?
[01:15:06]  Of course, Ukrainian railway works, airlines, of course, not, but the railway works, the roads are there.
[01:15:13]  So people thought, like, should we just wait for these days to be safe?
[01:15:19]  And in this regard, also, people, they are not calm, they are afraid, but they, Keep some dignity in how they respond.
[01:15:29]  Everybody who is active trying to do something, active, and of course, people try to care about their kids, elderly, parents.
[01:15:38]  So they were asked to stay at home, maybe go to shelters under the houses, in the basements of the houses.
[01:15:48]  So that's where we are.
[01:15:50]  But the electricity, the water, or mobile connection, it still works.
[01:15:55]  It's also not the miracle, it's also the part of the You know, the state is trying to make it possible.
[01:16:02]  Yeah, that's right, because that would ensure real panic if the electricity went out.
[01:16:07]  Ability to get water and so on went out.
[01:16:10]  I understand your husband, you're a war correspondent, so you've been through something like this before.
[01:16:14]  Your husband, I'm told, you had a little talk with him about not going on the balcony and how to protect oneself.
[01:16:22]  I'm told he took a trip this morning to get something that would keep you guys safe.
[01:16:29]  Yeah, we are both journalists.
[01:16:31]  And so for us, it's, you know, how to say it, I can't say it's easy, but I think this sense of purpose.

=== Pragmatists in Kremlin (10:04) ===

[01:16:39]  Is there because I think I would be really mad, you know, like just to be there and read the news.
[01:16:46]  We still, you know, figure out what is the most important.
[01:16:50]  My husband is Russian.
[01:16:52]  He works for independent Russian media.
[01:16:54]  And, you know, it's also quite an important work to convey the message for the Russian citizens, which also, so for the whole day, we are receiving, you know, this request for forgiveness.
[01:17:10]  And for how ashamed a lot of people in Russia feel.
[01:17:14]  But Ukrainian president, who is actually a very famous actor and persona, well known across Russia, he addressed the Russian citizens and Russian residents yesterday in Russian, like, do something.
[01:17:30]  He's still in his meetings, which has almost every hour he speaks, he tries to say, go to the streets, but no, it's hardly possible if you speak about Russia.
[01:17:41]  His message, unlike the bizarre rant we got from Vladimir Putin about how Ukraine's basically part of Russia and always has been, and if you want to throw down, then he's going to throw down.
[01:17:51]  I mean, it was just he went on.
[01:17:53]  But Zelensky's message was very different to the Ukrainian people, saying, I want to address all citizens of Russia.
[01:18:01]  We are separated by more than 2,000 kilometers of mutual borders, along which 200,000 of your soldiers and 1,000 armored vehicles are standing.
[01:18:09]  Your leadership has approved their step forward.
[01:18:12]  Onto the territory of another country.
[01:18:14]  This step could become the beginning of a big war.
[01:18:16]  This could cause at any moment, any provocation, a spark, a spark that could burn everything down.
[01:18:22]  You're told this flame will liberate the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free.
[01:18:27]  You were told we hate Russian culture.
[01:18:29]  How can one hate a culture?
[01:18:30]  Neighbors always enrich each other culturally.
[01:18:33]  However, that doesn't make them a single whole.
[01:18:35]  It doesn't dissolve us into you.
[01:18:37]  We're different.
[01:18:37]  But that's not a reason to be enemies.
[01:18:39]  He says, listen to the voice of reason.
[01:18:41]  The people of Ukraine want peace.
[01:18:43]  The authorities in Ukraine want peace.
[01:18:46]  And they're doing everything they can for it.
[01:18:48]  We don't need war, but we will defend ourselves.
[01:18:51]  We won't attack, but defend ourselves.
[01:18:54]  By attacking, you will see our faces, not our backs, our faces.
[01:19:00]  The problem is the Russian people won't hear that, will they, Natalia?
[01:19:04]  They won't see it.
[01:19:06]  And he said that probably they won't, but there are other reasonable people who would.
[01:19:10]  But again, it maybe sounded unavoidable and not something you can move.
[01:19:16]  But I do think this address is also a Very strong moral, uh, has a very strong moral stance for the world, understanding that indeed this conflict is absolutely black and white, and there is no any reason to attack Ukraine, there is no real pretext, there is this madness of Vladimir Putin, and also being in touch.
[01:19:38]  I've been working with the topic for so many years, so I even talked to some people who some time ago were close to the Russian government, they are not there, and they feel the shame.
[01:19:48]  And they say, I said, like, what is the reason?
[01:19:50]  And they said, like, he's Crazy, we can't say he just hates Ukraine with the reason because it's different, because it's democratic, it's exactly what he doesn't want Russia to be.
[01:19:59]  And there is this huge country just nearby, which shows that pluralism is possible, where democracy is possible.
[01:20:08]  And this is also strange, you know, that's also very difficult to add because we hoped, and I think a lot of people hope that there are those pragmatists in the Kremlin who would say, okay, this ruins the economy, this would ruin, you know, everything we have, the peace we have in the globe.
[01:20:25]  But we see that such decisions are driven by the people who just, you know, hate the other people.
[01:20:33]  But honestly, it's very odd for me to say that, and I talk to Talking to a lot of people now.
[01:20:41]  The only thing, it feels sometimes that the only thing which in fact works, these are those javelins, which the anti air defense missiles, which were given to Ukraine, because we see that, though Ukraine is a smaller army, but as I said earlier, it deters as long as possible the Russian army.
[01:21:05]  And of course, the Ukrainians' idea is to really show that it's not.
[01:21:10]  It's not, it should be unconquerable for Russia.
[01:21:14]  It should be the case when they can't occupy it.
[01:21:18]  But of course, the life should be changed, it should be saved before we get to that stage.
[01:21:25]  What, I mean, you know the Ukrainian people.
[01:21:28]  What would happen if Vladimir Putin exercises, if he gains control over Ukraine and not just the military sites, but over Ukraine and installs a new president, somebody who's loyal to him?
[01:21:41]  How will the Ukrainian people react?
[01:21:44]  So, first of all, you know, Ukrainians as every society is diverse.
[01:21:49]  And a couple of months ago, I would say there would be ugly political battles, and Russia always wants to divide and conquer.
[01:21:56]  The country is absolutely united at the moment.
[01:22:00]  The willingness to resist is growing.
[01:22:03]  Even before this attack, when it was not that clear, you know, we have beyond the 50% of the Ukrainians ready to defend it with the arms.
[01:22:13]  We understand there are people who won't, you know, elderly or, you know, too young or kids.
[01:22:19]  But every active person tries to do these things.
[01:22:22]  And even today shows again that the firefighters are working, the hospitals are working, the bank workers trying to do something, the political opponents who really, as I said, fought ugly battles.
[01:22:38]  They are together and the army, it's there supporting the army.
[01:22:42]  And also, probably should say, it's not yet the guerrilla army, it's a legit Ukrainian army.
[01:22:48]  Military within the last days, there was a day when, you know, after this speech of Vladimir Putin, within one day, Ukrainians gathered six, 700,000 US dollars to donate to the organization which gives support for the Ukrainian army.
[01:23:04]  And now, at this day, people should care about themselves and their families.
[01:23:08]  But I also think that even like the government address to the people, people care about themselves, just also to understand it's their job.
[01:23:18]  Your citizens and every citizen does what they need.
[01:23:22]  Using force could be very deadly.
[01:23:24]  We don't know how some people would react, but an option that could be any, you know, any person whom they would impose and that it would be doable can't be seen.
[01:23:37]  But the price could be very, very high.
[01:23:41]  Right now, you say that the president has advised people to stay inside, to go downstairs into basements and so on.
[01:23:47]  Is that, as far as you understand, the current status of?
[01:23:50]  Most of the folks in Ukraine?
[01:23:51]  I mean, schools, I imagine, are closed, businesses closed.
[01:23:55]  Walk us through what it's like on the streets and in the civilian areas, which you say are not being targeted yet.
[01:24:01]  So, in the morning, of course, it was calmer than usual.
[01:24:05]  Some services didn't work, people went to stores.
[01:24:10]  What I understand in different towns, there are less people on the street.
[01:24:16]  There was imposed curfew for the first time in our history, honestly.
[01:24:21]  And it's a difficult decision.
[01:24:25]  I don't think that any country, also of this size, would be ready to prepare for something like that when the whole of its territory is attacked by a mighty force.
[01:24:37]  You can't have that many basements.
[01:24:38]  You can't have that many.
[01:24:40]  The situation is itself not normal.
[01:24:43]  People do stay at home, they're watching news, they're trying to plan these things.
[01:24:50]  Unfortunately, I should admit, there are cases, there are civilian casualties where a strike hit a civilian residential building.
[01:24:57]  And people are afraid, but I should say, being afraid, being scared of what we're living through, it doesn't mean people panic because it gives some hope.
[01:25:11]  There is some stoicism in what is going on.
[01:25:15]  There is, I should tell the audience that we're two minutes now from hearing from President Joe Biden.
[01:25:19]  We've been given the two minute warning before our president speaks to the latest response to what's happening in Ukraine.
[01:25:26]  There's an article in the National Review over here, a popular right leaning publication written by a former Marine, Mark Antonio Wright, who had the following thoughts, Natalia.
[01:25:36]  He writes Americans are free people.
[01:25:39]  We're free to disagree with each other, to strongly and bitterly disagree with each other about what in foreign affairs is our national interest to become involved with.
[01:25:47]  We're free to say this is tragic, but it's not our problem.
[01:25:50]  It's true that we are, relatively speaking, safe and secure behind our oceans, but we cannot ignore that a dark cloud has fallen across Europe.
[01:25:58]  And by God, that's more important than the price that Americans will pay at the pump.
[01:26:03]  There are more important things than our pocketbooks.
[01:26:06]  Pray for all the young men at the front, young men who will soon face the fury of modern mechanized combat, young men with families and loved ones at home, young men who only wish to defend their country and, if possible, make it home alive.
[01:26:20]  And pray for all the civilians who will, over the next days and weeks, get caught in the crossfire.
[01:26:25]  To the Kremlin, they are not people or even names or numbers.
[01:26:28]  Shame on us if we treat them that way.
[01:26:31]  Vladimir Putin has unleashed this horror, but he won't be the one to pay its most tragic price.
[01:26:39]  Our thoughts are with you and your countrymen today.
[01:26:42]  Thank you so much, Natalia.

=== Premeditated Attack (02:25) ===

[01:26:44]  All the best.
[01:26:44]  We'll stay in touch.
[01:26:45]  And now, President Joe Biden taking to the lectern at the very latest.
[01:26:50]  This is a premeditated attack.
[01:26:53]  Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months, as we've been saying all along.
[01:26:58]  He moved more than 175,000 troops, military equipment, and positions along the Ukrainian border.
[01:27:06]  He moved blood supplies into position and built a field hospital, which tells you all you need to know about his intentions all along.
[01:27:15]  He rejected every good faith effort the United States and our allies and partners made to address our mutual security concerns through dialogue to avoid needless conflict and avert human suffering.
[01:27:28]  For weeks, for weeks, we have been warning that this would happen.
[01:27:33]  And now it's unfolding largely as we predicted.
[01:27:37]  In the past week, we've seen shelling increase in the Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian backed separatists.
[01:27:46]  The Russian government has perpetrated cyber attacks against Ukraine.
[01:27:52]  We saw a staged political theater in Moscow, outlandish and baseless claims that Ukraine was about to invade.
[01:28:01]  And launch a war against Russia.
[01:28:04]  That Ukraine was prepared to use chemical weapons.
[01:28:07]  Ukraine committed a genocide.
[01:28:09]  Without any evidence, we saw a flagrant violation of international law in attempting to unilaterally create two new so called republics on sovereign Ukrainian territory.
[01:28:24]  And at the very moment that the United Nations Security Council was meeting to stand up for Ukraine's sovereignty, to stave off invasion, Putin declared his war.
[01:28:35]  Within moments, missile strikes began to fall on historic cities across Ukraine.
[01:28:41]  Then came the air raids.
[01:28:43]  Followed by tanks and troops rolling in.
[01:28:46]  We've been transparent with the world.
[01:28:49]  We've shared declassified evidence about Russia's plans and cyber attacks and false pretexts so that there could be no confusion or cover up about what Putin was doing.
[01:29:00]  Putin is the aggressor.
[01:29:03]  Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.

=== Sanctioning Russian Banks (03:34) ===

[01:29:09]  Today, I'm authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia.
[01:29:18]  This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.
[01:29:23]  We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize the long term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies.
[01:29:33]  And I want to be clear the United States is not doing this alone.
[01:29:38]  For months, we've been building a coalition of partners representing well more than half the global economy.
[01:29:46]  27 members of the European Union, including France, Germany, Italy, as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and many others to amplify the joint impact of our response.
[01:29:59]  I just spoke with the G7 leaders this morning, and we're in full and total agreement.
[01:30:04]  We will limit Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to be part of the global economy.
[01:30:13]  We'll limit their ability to do that.
[01:30:15]  We're going to stunt the ability to finance and grow the Russian military.
[01:30:21]  We're going to impose Major, and we're going to impair their ability to compete in high tech 21st century economy.
[01:30:28]  We've already seen the impact of our actions on Russia's currency and the ruble, which early today hit its weakest level ever, ever in history.
[01:30:38]  The Russia stock market plunged today.
[01:30:41]  The Russian government borrowing rates spiked by over 15%.
[01:30:47]  In today's actions, we've now sanctioned Russian banks that together hold around $1 trillion in assets.
[01:30:54]  We've cut off Russia's largest bank, a bank that holds more than one third of Russia's banking assets by itself, cut it off from the U.S. financial system.
[01:31:04]  And today, we're also blocking four more major banks.
[01:31:08]  That means every asset they have in America will be frozen.
[01:31:13]  This includes VTB, the second largest bank in Russia, which has $250 billion in assets.
[01:31:21]  As promised, we're also adding the names to the list of Russian elites and their family members.
[01:31:29]  That we're sanctioning as well.
[01:31:30]  As I said on Tuesday, these are people who personally gain from the Kremlin's policies and they should share in the pain.
[01:31:38]  We will keep up this drumbeat of those designations against corrupt billionaires in the days ahead.
[01:31:46]  On Tuesday, we stopped the Russian government from raising money from U.S. or European investors.
[01:31:52]  Now we're going to apply the same restrictions to Russia's largest state owned enterprises, companies with assets that exceed.
[01:32:00]  $1.4 trillion.
[01:32:03]  Some of the most powerful impacts of our actions will come over time as we squeeze Russians' access to finances and technology.
[01:32:11]  For strategic sectors of its economy and degrade its industrial capacity for years to come.
[01:32:17]  Between our actions and those of our allies and partners, we estimate that we'll cut off more than half of Russia's high tech imports.
[01:32:25]  It'll strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military.
[01:32:29]  It'll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.
[01:32:34]  It'll hurt their ability to build ships, reducing their ability to compete economically.
[01:32:39]  And it will be a major hit.
[01:32:41]  To Putin's long term strategic ambitions.

=== Protecting NATO Allies (03:18) ===

[01:32:44]  And we're preparing to do more.
[01:32:46]  In addition to the economic penalties we're imposing, we're also taking steps to defend our NATO allies, particularly in the East.
[01:32:55]  Tomorrow, NATO will convene a summit.
[01:32:57]  We'll be there to bring together the leaders of 30 allied nations and close partners to affirm our solidarity and to map out the next steps we will take to further strengthen all aspects of our NATO alliance.
[01:33:13]  Although we provided over $650 million in defensive assistance to Ukraine just this year, it's last year, let me say it again.
[01:33:23]  Our forces are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine.
[01:33:30]  Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East.
[01:33:39]  As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.
[01:33:46]  And the good news is, NATO is more united and more determined than ever.
[01:33:52]  There is no doubt, no doubt that the United States and every NATO ally will meet our Article 5 commitments, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all.
[01:34:03]  Over the past few weeks, I ordered thousands of additional forces to Germany and Poland as part of our commitment to NATO.
[01:34:11]  On Tuesday, in response to Russia's aggressive action, including its troop presence in Belarus, And the Black Sea, I've authorized the deployment of ground and air forces already stationed in Europe to NATO's eastern flank allies, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.
[01:34:29]  Our allies have also been stepping up, adding the other allies, the rest of NATO, adding their own forces and capabilities to ensure collective defense.
[01:34:39]  And today, within hours of Russia's unleashing its assault, NATO came together and authorized and activated And activation of response plans.
[01:34:49]  This will enable NATO's high readiness forces to deploy when and where they're needed to protect our NATO allies on the eastern boundaries of Europe.
[01:35:00]  And now I'm authorizing additional U.S. force capabilities to deploy to Germany as part of NATO's response, including some of the U.S. based forces that the Department of Defense placed on standby weeks ago.
[01:35:14]  I've also spoken with Defense Secretary Austin and Chairman of Joint Chiefs General Milley.
[01:35:19]  About preparations for additional moves should they become necessary to protect our NATO allies and support the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, NATO.
[01:35:28]  That's going to do it for our two hours today.
[01:35:30]  We'll have everything covered for you again tomorrow.
[01:35:33]  So far, what we're hearing is more sanctions, military to some NATO countries, but no boots or military assistance in Ukraine as expected.
[01:35:45]  This from Dan Crenshaw as we close out the show.
[01:35:47]  Ukrainian government giving weapons to anyone who wants to fight.
[01:35:50]  Good.
[01:35:51]  Get some.
[01:35:52]  May God be with you as you fight for your freedom.
[01:35:55]  We'll see you tomorrow.
[01:35:58]  Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[01:36:00]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.