Dave Smith dismantles Piers Morgan's apologies for supporting lockdowns and gun confiscation, arguing Morgan blamed science rather than government overreach. Smith exposes Morgan's contradictory views on Ukraine, noting the West acted after Crimea in 2014 despite Russian control of the naval base. The discussion critiques realist foreign policy, suggesting US aid protects oil interests while risking nuclear escalation if Ukraine loses territory. Ultimately, Smith demands accountability for leaders who undermined freedom, rejecting vague promises to avoid responsibility for policies that ruined millions of lives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Government Overreach and Spin00:06:50
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm riding solo for this episode.
You know who it is.
Dave Smith, Libertarian Tupac.
Okay, so yeah, Rob's off doing his ski resort, stand-up comedy shows.
I am leaving tomorrow morning to head out to Providence, Rhode Island to go do the comedy connection all weekend.
And we're going to do a live podcast up there as well as a bunch of stand-up shows.
So you guys will get that live podcast soon.
Okay, for today, I wanted to respond to Piers Morgan, who, of course, I'm sure most of you know.
Piers Morgan used to host a show on CNN for years.
Then we kicked him out of the country and sent him back over to England.
He's hosting some type of like morning show over there.
Always has a lot of hot takes and controversial opinions.
And, you know, so he was on a podcast, I guess, talking a bit about COVID and what he got wrong.
And I thought this was a really interesting conversation.
I wanted to kind of give my thoughts on it.
There's this is something that is a big, it's a big question, I think, in a lot of people's minds, and certainly is one that's on my mind.
After everything we've gone through over the last three years, just the insanity of these like tyrannical COVID policies, the justifications for all of them completely crumbling, as we, you know, like to think on this show did a pretty good job of being right about this stuff when it mattered.
And so now you're kind of in this situation where it's, it's like when the George W. Bush administration, when they gave up on weapons of mass destruction, like when even they would finally admit it, and sometimes you would still see people who were like George W. Bush supporters who would still be holding on to the bullshit justification.
And you're like, dude, they're not even holding on to this anymore.
Like they're admitting this is all wrong.
And that's kind of the situation we find ourselves in.
I don't know if you've ever like come across some of those people that they'll be like, that we did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And you're like, oh, really?
We did?
Then how come Bush isn't saying that?
Then how come if we did and he was right about this whole thing, how come you'd think he would mention that?
Oh, the reason why he doesn't mention that is because the weapons of mass destruction or whatever that they found were old abandoned chemical weapons plants back from when Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and used them in the 1980 war against Iran.
The problem is that we knew he had them then and we supported him in that war.
So obviously this anyway, my point is it's almost like there's a fork in the road.
There's a split between the people who are just going to be those people.
We did find weapons of mass destruction, you know, the ones who are going to continue to justify the policies, even though the people in the establishment pushing them have abandoned them because they're so paper thin.
Even they can't pretend to get away with this nonsense anymore.
And then you have the people who are going to do what Piers Morgan is doing, which is acknowledge that he was wrong, but kind of try to spin it in the best possible light.
I personally, I kind of feel like there, there needs to be a major attempt at dealing with all of the people who got this wrong over the last few years.
And it's going to be hard if we want to have any chance of coming out of this, like saving our society.
My take on it is that there's kind of got to be, there's got to be accountability, particularly from the people at the top.
But if you think about it, you know, like I know one of the things people like to say like on social media and stuff is we need like a Nuremberg trial type deal, which I'd agree with.
But even at the Nuremberg trials, there was like a level where they cut off.
And, you know, the Nuremberg trials were, there's a whole bunch of other issues associated with that.
But just for this point, there were certain, they tried to get as many people at the top as they could.
At least this was the official story.
A bunch of them ended up in NASA.
Anyway, but the idea was like, there's a certain line where you cut it off and you go, okay, everyone below this, we're not going to charge with crimes.
Cause what are we going to do?
Put like 80% of the nation in jail, you know, like there's at a certain point, you're just like, okay, if you were at the top, you're responsible for this.
In a similar way, if you were say, going to prosecute, you know, like war crimes, no, you're not going to prosecute every single soldier who fought in the war in Iraq.
I mean, you know, spare me whatever, you know, argument you could make about how they were, you know, invading a country and killing people.
And they were, but it's also like, now, like, the president who sent them there, the, you know, the top generals, the top brass, those people should be charged for war crimes.
The other people, it's just not practical.
It's, it's not practical.
And it's not right.
You know, it's like, I don't know.
They were caught up in a system that went mad.
And that's, so anyway, I think Fauci and Cuomo and Newsome and like all these people should, you know, they should be prosecuted.
They're like criminals and they're guilty of crimes against humanity.
Other people, regular people, you know, your, your aunt who just like went along with it should not be prosecuted.
But then that kind of leads you to like the question of like, so how do we move forward?
And I think there should be some type of reconciliation, you know, some type of outlet for people to get kind of acknowledge what they got wrong and apologize for it.
You know, so like, I'm not like we talked about this when we did that article, the COVID amnesty thing.
It's like, yeah, no, like I'm not saying like you should just get amnesty, but if someone's going to recognize what they did and apologize for it, okay, fine.
Piers Morgan, look, we can get it.
We can play this a little bit and let's see how you guys feel about this.
Acknowledging Wrong Science00:11:19
And I'll tell you how I feel about it.
The thing that makes me unwilling to kind of accept his apology is, if you can call it that, is the way he acknowledges it.
And also the fact, and this might be, you know, my own bias, but he's just so god-awful on Ukraine right now that I just like, it's like, dude, you just still are pushing the worst policies in the moment when it matters.
And kind of he's always done that.
But anyway, let's play a little bit of this video and get into it.
There's also a video that a lot of people wanted me to respond to of him talking about Ukraine on Ben Shapiro's show.
Maybe if we have time, we'll do that one also.
Let's see.
Let's see how quickly we get through this.
So let's play.
I'll be honest with you.
It surprised me.
When I did your show in person, afterwards, I said, now that we're good mates, how about you unblock me on Twitter?
And you went, oh, I've blocked you on Twitter.
And I went, yeah, I made, I took the piss out of you over COVID.
And that's when you surprise me because you went, yeah, I deserved it.
Yeah.
I did not expect that actually, given your public persona.
I changed my mind on a few things with COVID because the science changed.
So I'll give you an example.
And I'm quite happy to admit this and talk about it.
And people are like, ah, there you go.
Yeah.
Because to me, it changed.
So I'll give you a classic example.
When they said that vaccines couldn't transmit the virus, I said, okay, right.
In that case, anyone who doesn't have the vaccine right now represents a clear and present threat to spreading this virus and killing people.
So you're selfish bastards.
I'm going to call you out on that.
And by the way, those who do have the vaccine, they should have more freedoms because they're not going to be able to transmit it once they've had the jab.
You are, and you don't care.
Okay.
So let's already pause it right there.
So this is already what's to me infuriating about it.
It's that he's kind of just like, oh, yeah, I got it wrong.
And then people will be like, ah, you got it wrong.
And it's like, yeah, whatever.
I got it wrong.
The science changed.
Oh, God, I can't stand this, this line.
And this is how they kind of like protect themselves.
Because it's a weird thing in a way.
It's almost like your way of saying, well, I didn't get it wrong.
I got it right then.
But then the science changed.
Whereas actually, it's like, no, that's not what happened.
The reason why a lot of us got this right and you got it wrong isn't because the science changed.
Science doesn't really change.
Perhaps people, the public opinion on scientific matters changes.
And perhaps scientists understanding of science changes, but the science didn't change.
And for him to be like, you know, do this thing where, oh, the guy's like, aha, you got it wrong.
And he's like, yeah, whatever.
I got it wrong.
You know, the science changed.
It's like, what we're talking about is what?
Like you supported instituting apartheid.
I mean, Jesus.
Like, okay.
So at least if you're going to be like, I got that wrong, like recognize it's a kind of profound thing that you got wrong.
People's lives were ruined over this.
People's livelihoods were destroyed, you know?
And it's like, yeah, okay, that's a really, really big deal to get that wrong.
And if you're going to recognize that you got it wrong, I don't know.
It's like this kind of flippant attitude is just like, dude, at least give like a serious apology.
This is like a real, like, I just don't understand how you could, how you could speak about it like this.
This should be on the level of like, you, you're like, I was wrong to support, you know, the war in Iraq.
There should be something serious about that.
Just like, yeah, if you want to point at me and laugh, it's like, oh, yeah, whatever.
Yeah.
Okay.
I was wrong about that.
But, you know, the science changed.
The science said that he had weapons of mass destruction.
And then it turned out he didn't.
So the science changed.
No, he never had them.
That's the point.
Well, back in 1980, maybe when we were supporting him.
Okay, let's keep playing.
Very emphatic, based on a completely erroneous scientific assessment.
Now, you might say, well, you shouldn't have said it anyway.
I would sort of agree.
I would say something else, actually, which is I think that you have a duty to be skeptical.
As a journalist, that is your job.
I've learned a lesson in the pandemic about that.
Definitely.
Definitely.
And I would totally accept that.
I think I was too strident anyway, got too kind of wrapped up in it all.
But, you know, I had good reasons for it.
I had one of my colleagues at Good Morning Britain, Kate Garraway.
Her husband was in a coma from COVID.
I have four or five friends and family who lost loved ones.
I think to say goodbye to their parents on FaceTime and care homes where they ripped through and so on.
So I was very like emotionally invested in it.
Probably too much so for a journalist.
I accept that.
So let's pause it.
So I do, look, I appreciate this acknowledgement.
But it's also, it's like, again, it's such a profound failure.
It's like, yeah, that's your whole role as a journalist is that you're supposed to be skeptical of the power of the power structures.
You're not supposed to just take their assertions as scientific gospel.
And I mean, let's be honest about this here, guys.
This is just, i'm sorry, like i'm little old, me like a stand-up comic with a podcast here and you're Piers Morgan, you're this, you know freaking multi-millionaire who's been on huge networks and all this stuff.
There were scientists throughout the entire thing who were telling the truth and it was pretty easy to find them, despite how much they were getting, you know, kicked off social media and stuff.
If you wanted to look, if you wanted to ever hear about, like you know, you'd think something like a small little thing, like instituting a national apartheid caste system, would there'd be an onus on you to go?
Let me dig into this a little bit.
Is anyone arguing against this?
What are the compelling arguments that are being made on on the other side?
And there were plenty through the whole thing.
So, like you know, it's just like no, this is like a real profound failure.
I appreciate him acknowledging it and saying, i've learned my lesson.
I won't, you know, listen to him next time uh, except the problem with Piers Morgan, you know, is like i'm not convinced.
While the drum beats are are, you know uh, are pounding for uh, this war against Russia?
He's completely awful on that, advocating this.
We don't give them one inch.
You know nonsense.
When, when there were mass shootings here, he was advocating, we round up all the guns.
You know like he's.
When the crisis happens, he always seems to fall right in line and there's something that I I think is a real danger uh in, like libertarian circles and right-wing circles.
Um, particularly in the moment we're in right now, where the okay, so there's such insanity on the left, like on the woke you know craziness that people are looking for people who stand up to to that and then they kind of become almost like heroes within this kind of dissident world.
So, you know, if you're like now there's, you know, men are men and women are women, or something like that, people are like yeah, thank you for saying that.
The problem is that like, that's the easiest thing to stand up against.
It should be the easiest thing for all of us.
We, we should all be in agreement.
You know what I mean.
Um, like yeah don't, don't have.
You know, male strippers and wigs give lap dances to six-year-olds.
Like okay, and that's, and look, as long as that's happening.
It's important to stand up against that.
But at the same time, now you let someone cover over all their other awful takes just because they're they're good on what should be like a given to all of us shouldn't even be something that we're talking about.
Um anyway, all right, let's keep playing point of the transmission.
The scientists then said a bit later, actually it turns out there's not much difference between whether you've had the jab or not for transmission.
And at that point I realized everything i've been saying was completely wrong and completely unfair.
And then it becomes a personal choice again.
Some will say well, it should be a personal choice anyway.
Well yeah, yeah.
But if we had, for example, as one of the Oxford Astrazenekin professors put it to me, if this had been the, the plague comeback was a 30 to 40 percent death rate, including kids, how would people feel then if we had a vaccine that was proven to be largely successful and stopped transmission, Transmission and people were refusing to have it?
And we were seeing not 3,000 people die a day, but 50,000 die a day.
I would say that people's views of that argument might change quite a bit.
Well, you wouldn't need to force anyone to take a vaccine.
All right, let's just pause it right here.
I mean, this is always, isn't it funny?
Do you notice this pattern?
This is the Sam Harris argument too.
Like, it's like, right.
So, you, if the situation were drastically different, things might be drastically different.
Well, maybe.
Okay, fine.
But of course, nothing like this ever happened.
This was not the situation.
Like, we're talking about something that happened in reality, not some hypothetical that you make up out of your mind.
It's like, it is like on the level of if you just like, like you just shot a kid in the face and you were like, okay, but like just hypothetically, if he had been Shaquille O'Neal's size and had a gun pointed at me, you might feel a little bit different about this.
And like, what?
What kind of defense is this?
It's like, if you're going to apologize, just apologize because there's no, like, there's no softening this with like, oh, if it was this other situation.
Now, of course, the retort, which is the correct retort that the host gives him there is that like, yeah, okay, if 40%, like take me through this scenario where if 40% of the, you know, there's a 40% death rate from a virus that's spreading around to like almost everyone you know is getting it and 40% of them are dying, including little kids, and we have a cure and the cure works.
And this hypothetical, there's no debate about it.
The cure just works.
You really think you'd have to force people to take that?
Like name, we have other cures for other bad diseases, you know?
Doesn't seem like you have to force any of it on people if it actually works.
And if the and if the virus was this severe, believe me, the problem you would have had would have been people were lining up to take this.
That would have been your only issue.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is stamps.com.
For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses.
Get access to the USPS and UPS services you need to run your business right from your computer.
With inflation on the rise, every dollar counts.
Protect your margins with major discounts from the United States Postal Service and UPS rates up to 86% off.
Use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business.
All you need is a computer and a printer.
And if you need a package picked up, you can easily schedule it through stamps.com's dashboard.
Rates are constantly changing, but with stamps.com's switch and save feature, you can easily compare carriers and rates.
So you know you're getting the best deal every time.
And if you're running an online store, stamps.com works seamlessly with all the major shopping carts and marketplaces.
Sign up with my promo code problem for a special offer.
It includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale, no long-term commitments or contracts.
You just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and enter the promo code problem, stamps.com.
Lockdown Arguments Fade00:15:11
All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, I don't know.
The whole, the whole line of logic is ridiculous.
And it kind of serves to cushion yourself from like the reality of what you advocated for and how evil it was.
So let's keep playing.
Right.
So what my point being that the argument would play slightly better if there were much higher numbers of people dying, which would come back to my sort of thing that if the principle's the principle, it doesn't really, it shouldn't really matter what the scale is.
But I totally accept my rhetoric was over the top.
And I think that people, once it was known that you could transmit it, whether you've been jabbed or not, I think it's entirely your personal decision to then have the vaccine or not.
And that's a complete U-turn of what I thought.
But the scientists are the U-turn.
I was basing all my emphatic, passionate rhetoric on what I believe the science to be.
Another lesson from the pandemic.
Science evolves.
Facts change.
They find out more information.
I don't think, as some people do, that all scientists are evil.
I don't think that's...
Pause it right there.
This is just the part that it's like, is just infuriating where it's like, no, facts don't actually evolve.
I mean, you might get the facts wrong and then realize later that you were wrong, but that's not a fact evolving.
That's your understanding of facts evolving.
And like, no, the science.
And again, you keep saying it's a science change or the scientists admitted this.
No, there were scientists who were right the whole time.
And then, of course, he's got a straw man, the opposition side, and say, you can argue that all scientists are evil.
Like, what?
No one's arguing all scientists are evil.
We're arguing that some are.
Some are very corrupt.
And that the ones who told the truth got, you know, basically kicked out of the club.
I mean, for God's sakes, we were just talking about a couple of weeks ago.
The head of the CDC was telling the truth about this stuff.
And what happened?
He's out.
We're only hearing about this now because the Republicans took Congress and they had a hearing where they let him talk.
But it's like, no, the science didn't change.
And what really didn't change was, you know, how tyrannical the policies you were pushing were.
So like, okay, I kind of appreciate this, but it's like, no, dude, if you want, if you want this apology, as far as I'm concerned, and as far as, you know, I have the ear of some people who are listening to this.
So if I'm talking to all you guys and we're talking about this, like, well, should we accept this or not?
You know, it's like, no, dude, if you want anyone to ever trust you again or listen to you, then you got to actually acknowledge what you got wrong and not kind of do all this dancing around and sugarcoating it.
I admit that it's better than some, but I'm saying not good enough.
Let's keep playing.
To mislead people, I think they're trying to get to the truth.
It was a novel virus early on when there were no vaccines and no hope of any.
There'd never been a coronavirus vaccine.
So in those first few months, when people were dying in big numbers, there were no therapeutic drugs, really no vaccine, and it looked incredibly serious for mankind.
At that point, I felt the only answer was the blunt instrument of a lockdown.
As it went on, I think the argument for lockdown became less and less convincing.
And I always believed that all the subsidiary effects of lockdown on other health issues, heart disease, cancer, and so on, were going to come back and haunt us.
The question then was, where was the pendulum on that deal?
Look, France.
Let's pause it there.
Okay, so you got spooked.
And so you supported totalitarianism.
I mean, how else can you describe that?
I say the argument for lockdowns, you to say it was strongest at the beginning.
Well, the argument for lockdowns at the beginning was we need two weeks.
That was the argument.
We need two weeks so that the hospitals aren't overwhelmed.
That was the argument.
So if you want to say that that was the strongest of all the lockdown arguments, like, all right, fine.
But it was a, it was a lie.
I mean, it was just a lie to get people to accept them.
And then the lockdown stayed for months or months and months.
I mean, by summer of 2021, there were still areas that were locked down.
And there were still areas that were quasi-locked down well beyond that.
So again, it's like, yeah, then you started to weigh out the fact.
No, what happened is then you started to realize the carnage that you were causing and realize little by little that the lockdowns weren't producing results.
The areas that didn't lock down were doing as good, in some cases, better than the areas that did lockdown.
So no, it's not, it's not like, oh, there was a great argument for it and then it became less and less.
It's like, no, the argument for it was always bullshit, always bullshit.
And again, it's like you could say, oh, people were dying in like these huge numbers, but we knew right from the beginning who was dying.
You know, it was not this, COVID was never an indiscriminate killer of all people equally.
There were certain groups of people who were at high risk.
And so if you want to even make an argument, the argument would have been to protect those people, the people who are at high risk.
We would have been so much better off, so much better off all across the world if that was the, you know, the way that we played it.
Even better off if they just didn't do anything.
If governments around the world just told people what they thought COVID was, and that's that, we would have been so much better off.
Damn shame.
And it's a damn shame that there were people like Piers Morgan who were, you know, not, again, for people who don't know, it's not only that Piers Morgan supported these policies, but he like ruthlessly attacked all of us.
You know, it's like, I don't know, dude, there's just the tone here just isn't what it should be.
It's like, you can't just like demonize in the most vicious ways all this whole group of people and then admit that they got it right the whole time and that you were completely wrong and not, you know, give me something, dude.
Some indication that this actually like weighs on you, that this means something.
That's just, look, these are just my feelings in terms of like how you'd view this as like, oh, can this person be trusted or not going forward?
All right, let's let's play.
There's a little more.
I both supported the first lockdown.
And actually someone quote tweeted a tweet of mine from the very first moments when I was saying we need to work together and stop thinking solely about ourselves.
And people are now using that against me.
So I know, I know, I know that the position that you're in, but I think the one thing sticking with the theme of freedom that we've been talking about that I found very concerning is the amount of censorship that was happening of scientists, very prominent scientists, including Nobel Prize winning scientists being censored for talking about things that are in their era of leak.
I totally agree.
I totally agree.
I think that was, it was everyone slightly lost their minds.
And people will say, well, you're banging on about freedom.
Where were you for the freedom of people to espouse views you didn't agree with on COVID?
And it's a tricky one when a lot of people are dying.
But of course, the whole point of fighting for freedom is sometimes a lot of people die for freedom.
So I totally accept that.
And I've evolved my opinion.
If there was another health crisis, I would probably behave rather differently.
I think we all will.
Let's pause this.
Well, it's good to know that Piers Morgan would probably behave differently.
You know, the thing about it is, is that, as you can see, okay, Piers Morgan here is giving half an apology, but it's constantly like he's constantly weaseling out of it.
He's constantly giving caveats to the apology.
And then, you know, he, I guess, might behave differently if it happened again.
It was good.
Good to know we can count on you, Piers, to maybe not, you know, advocate for totalitarianism next time.
But there is something that I got to say is pretty aggravating about when people go like, well, everybody lost their minds.
Because like, no, no, we fucking didn't.
We didn't all.
Many of us did not lose our minds.
That's kind of the whole point of all of this is actually like a lot of people didn't lose their minds.
A lot of people had no issue of like soberly analyzing what was going on in front of them.
Many of us still believed in freedom throughout the whole thing.
Now, I'm not saying that like in the first couple of weeks of the pandemic that we had all of the information that we later had.
Obviously, all of us, myself included, learned a lot more about this thing along the way.
But it's not true that everyone got so spooked that they weren't able.
It's just like, yeah, we just all, we all started sacrificing freedom.
And that is the point, which he kind of acknowledges, but then doesn't really grapple with, is that it's like, yeah, I don't want to hear you talking about freedom if you couldn't stand up for it when it really mattered.
You know, there's an old Noam Chomsky point that he made.
He said it in just like a really eloquent way.
I'll butcher it up a little bit, but he was talking about freedom of speech.
And he was like, he goes, you know, Joseph Stalin was all for freedom of speech that he liked.
And Adolf Hitler had no problem with speech that he liked.
You know, the test of freedom of speech is like, will you stand up for the person who's saying the thing that you hate?
That's kind of the whole point.
That's the test of whether you believe in freedom of speech.
And if you're in the middle of advocating for like instituting an apartheid state and some scientist is arguing that you're wrong and they get silenced, like that's if you weren't good on that, then you don't get to claim that you're all about free speech.
You just don't get to be that person.
It's like, okay, great.
You'll call a drag queen a dude.
Like, all right, thanks.
But this, this was a bit more important than that.
You know, this is something that really destroyed millions of people's lives.
And okay, that's great that you recognize to some degree you got it wrong.
But I guess I hope you guys see what I'm saying here, where it's like, this just, by the very nature of what this conversation is, this just requires a little bit more than like, no, I probably wouldn't do that again.
Yeah.
I've evolved.
The science has evolved.
The facts have evolved.
I probably wouldn't do it again.
Jeez.
I won't count on you.
I won't ever trust anything you got to say.
Let's keep playing.
I would say the same thing about when I campaigned against guns in America.
I was a British guy telling Americans how to lead their lives.
They have 420 million guns.
We have hardly any.
And so what do I really know about their gun culture?
The truth is I thought I knew better than them and shouted it louder and louder to try and get them to give up guns.
And they sold more and more guns because of my shouting.
That's a complete opposite effect to what I thought.
And if I had my time again, I would dial down the rhetoric and I would try and have a much more open and constructive debate.
Or I would even suggest, let's stop calling it gun control.
Call it gun safety.
How do you make it safer?
I know you can't take all the guns away.
So how do we make it safer?
Much more interesting conversation than a British guy who, with an accent like mine, we've been driven out with guns to get them independence in the first place.
Jay Leno got it right with me.
I think he said to me, Piers, look, the smart crowd in like LA and New York, the smart liberals, he said, you kind of all agree with you, right?
You're right.
It's madness, it's gun sense.
It's madness.
He said, but most of the rest of America thinks, who's this snotty British guy with this British accent telling us what to do?
So it'd be like you go to Germany and saying they can't speed on the autobahn.
Again, the smart liberals would be like, he's right.
Too many people die on the autobahn.
We should reduce speed.
And the rest of Germany is going, I don't want to hear this from this guy.
And I definitely don't want to hear it from my accent.
And he's right.
He was right.
It would be like an American coming over here and saying, I want to ban cricket because, you know, people get injured.
And what would we do?
He said, sod off, knowing American.
Go back to him.
You know, that's what we would think, right?
So I broke that.
All right.
We can stop it here.
We basically get the point that he's making.
That's kind of the same thing.
It's kind of the same thing.
That's Piers Morgan's reflection on his cringy, embarrassing stand against guns that he took a few years back.
I think it was in the wake of Sandy Hook.
And it's like, no, dude, it's not just that.
I mean, okay, it's partly true that yes, we don't want to hear like some snotty British guy lecture us about our rights.
But the bigger picture there is that you were just dead wrong.
You got wrecked in every debate that you had about it because you didn't know what you were talking about.
And so this is the same thing here where Pierce hasn't actually reflected about how profoundly wrong he was on the issue.
You know, it's just like always this kind of surface level, like, yeah, I shouldn't have said it like that.
I guess I would probably do it differently.
I would probably have more of an open conversation about it.
It's like, no, you objectively got it wrong.
And by the way, in all of these areas, it's wrong in one direction.
It's wrong in supporting tyranny.
That's your tendency when things get tough.
That's what you do when there's like a tragedy or there's a school shooting or there's a pandemic or there's a war in Ukraine.
That's what your tendency is toward.
So like, I'm sorry, I just don't want to, I, I, I just, that's just not good enough for me, man.
Just not good enough.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Grove Collaborative.
Grove creates and curates everything you need for a sustainable home.
Their aim is to make living a healthy lifestyle easy and accessible for you and your family.
They're on a mission to make household products a force for good.
Their Grove co-products from concentrated cleaners to laundry detergent to hand soap are crafted with the highest standards for efficacy, sustainability, and peace of mind.
Today, Grove carries over 360 plastic-free products and has many more on the way.
By 2025, everything Grove makes and sells will be 100% plastic free.
I'll tell you personally, I like knowing that their stuff is safe and there's not a lot of toxic crap in it, like there is with the stuff that you get at the supermarket.
You got to go check them out, Grove Collaborative.
Go to grove.com slash P-O-T-P today and get a free starter set worth up to $50 with your first order.
Plus, the shipping is fast and free.
Get started right now at grove.com slash P-O-T-P.
That's G-R-O-V-E dot com slash P-O-T-P.
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's go.
Since we do have some time, let's go to the other video.
This was, I guess, a week ago, 10 days ago, something like that.
Ben Shapiro had Piers Morgan on his show.
And I got a lot of people asking me to respond to this one.
Afghanistan Withdrawal Reality00:12:58
They did a section where they talked all about Ukraine.
So let's talk about that because now we can see, and this is kind of, I think they're kind of related in a way, is the problem with Piers Morgan is that like, even when he's claiming, maybe pretending to like reflect on these things that he got wrong, he's not really like grappling with how wrong he was.
And he's giving himself all these caveats and all these outs.
And so here he is talking about the current crisis and getting it all completely wrong.
So here's here's Piers Morgan.
Yeah, but between that and all of Europe deciding to listen to the ramblings of a Swedish teenager about energy policy, it turns out that you're going to cut yourself off from your economic base.
This does raise the question of Ukraine.
So you've been obviously extremely hawkish on Western policy in Ukraine.
There's a sort of a split on the right in the United States, at least with regard to Ukraine.
More isolationist sentiments cropping up on the right.
There's some on the left as well.
But that's not unusual.
The United States has always had a very strong isolationist sentiment because we're geographically incredibly lucky.
We're surrounded on two sides by Canada and on the other side by Mexico and on two sides by oceans.
So we can basically isolate ourselves over here.
We can be autarkic and have all of our resources.
We're fine.
Like the United States is always in good shape comparatively to the rest of the world because of all of that.
However, the case that Hawks have made is that if the United States does not continue to fund the Ukraine war, that Russia will end up winning.
And the converse case, which I think is sort of a moderate piecenet case, moderate dovish case, is one that I've made on occasion and Henry Kissinger has made.
And what that is, is we all know where this is going.
We know what the end point of this war is.
And the end point of this war is very likely that Russia is going to end up retaining large parts of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
And everybody knows that that's what the end point here is going to be.
I don't think that's true.
I don't think that's true.
I think that that would have been the case early on.
I think that's when Kissinger was saying this.
I'm not sure when he last said this, but nobody expected Ukraine to still be in the battle in the way that they are or doing as well as they are or for the Russians to be struggling militarily as they are.
And the longer it's gone on, the more I think the Ukrainians, inspired by Zelensky, who's not a perfect individual by any means, you know, he was a former TV producer, you know, comedian, did dancing with the stars in Ukraine, and suddenly he's propelled into becoming a wartime president.
And it reminded me a little bit of Winston Churchill in that sense, where Churchill was a bit of a joke before World War II, you know, denounced by his party, flip-flop between parties.
No one really took him seriously.
And then when confronted with the biggest challenge of his lifetime, he rose to that challenge magnificently.
That's the way I see Zelensky.
But Churchill wasn't perfect either, but he came at the right moment at the right time.
So I think the fundamental importance to me of why Ukraine must win is for the reasons that you just articulated.
Vladimir Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union.
He wants to be a modern-day Tsar presiding over the once great Soviet Union again.
And I think he smelt weakness.
I think he looked at what happened with the Afghanistan withdrawal.
And I think he thought, hmm, no Trump.
Biden looks weak, threw the towel in Afghanistan, didn't seem to care.
Now's the time to test the Americans.
Because the Ukrainians can't do this without America.
You know, they could do it without the British.
They could do it without the Germans, without the French.
But let's be completely clear.
You're the number one superpower in the world.
You still have, I think, 50% of the world's military hardware.
And the Ukrainians need the Americans.
So let's pause it for a second here.
I mean, I don't even know what to say.
Just the invoking of Churchill in World War II.
They always have to go to World War II.
It's like the only response anyway.
That's the only prism by which we can see reality.
And of course, they get that wrong, all completely wrong.
Like World War II.
Churchill rose to the occasion magnificently.
It's like, oh, yeah, we had the biggest mass slaughter campaign in human history, and then they lost the British Empire.
Wasn't it wonderful?
It's just, it's amazing the way people talk about World War II.
But all of this is, it's so, it's just absurd on its face that he's, you know, this is always the argument that the hawks make.
Well, this happened because we were so weak.
So we have to get so much tougher.
But think about how Piers Morgan contradicts himself a second later.
He literally is talking about how Putin thought we were weak and then starts talking two seconds later about how America's got the most powerful military in the history of the world.
That's what you think?
Is really your assessment is that we pulled out of Afghanistan after 20 years bleeding ourselves dry.
And then Putin went, yeah, I got to get in on that.
Listen, Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine was a move of desperation.
Okay.
He's not that stupid that he didn't know that this was going to be like, you know, that it was going to cost lives and money.
He did this because he felt desperate.
And it wasn't because Trump's gone and now the weak Joe Biden's in there.
So I can get away with it.
It's more like the guy who was instrumental in overthrowing the pro-Russian government in 2014 as vice president and installing a pro-Western government is now back.
That was much more what it was saying.
And all this stuff about how Vladimir Putin is hell-bent on reconstituting the Soviet Union.
I think he said he wants to be a czar of the Soviet Union, whatever that means.
This is just not true.
And there's really no argument to back it up.
There's no, I mean, you can look through the speeches that Vladimir Putin's given.
I mean, if you want to just claim to read his mind, fine.
That's not what he's ever been saying.
I mean, it is true that he talks about wanting to like restore Russia to national greatness, but that's like what every leader would say about their country.
No leader's ever up there like, yeah, we want to be really weak.
We want to go back to the Boris Yeltsin days or something.
Yeah, obviously that's not his position.
Vladimir Putin has been very clear about this, as has the entire Russian elite for decades, that they see Ukraine as being, you know, like obviously as a member of NATO, but also just like as part of the Western world, as part of Pax Americana, as the brightest of red lines, as the CIA director Burns would put it, the brightest of red lines.
And they feel that that is a security threat.
That's what they've been yelling over and over throughout this whole thing.
And oh man, it's like, you know, this is like what people used to say.
It's like, oh, well, the reason 9-11 happened is because we were too weak.
We just weren't doing enough in the Middle East.
That was the problem.
Not enough U.S. meddling in the Middle East.
And that's why 9-11 happened.
When literally all of the, you know, 9-11 hijackers and the al-Qaeda guys who planned the attack, all of them were escaping from dictatorships that America props up, right?
They were all a bunch of Egyptians and Saudis who took took cover in Afghanistan.
And you know what?
This is the Lindsey Graham lesson that he takes from that.
Well, you know what that means?
We should have been in Afghanistan, right?
It wasn't enough that we were in all these other countries.
That's the lesson that they take from it.
I guess we should have done more.
We just weren't meddling in Ukraine enough.
The billions of dollars over the years that we've sent them, the multi-million dollar weapons packages, all that stuff announcing that they'd be part of NATO.
You know, we just didn't do enough of that.
And that's why Vladimir Putin invaded.
Because there's not enough, there's not a strong enough U.S. presence around the world.
That's really, that's your answer here.
I guess NATO didn't expand quite enough.
That would have stopped him from invading.
And just talk about getting this whole thing completely wrong.
All right, let's keep playing.
But I think they can win with enough American support.
So the question then becomes, why should America keep investing the money?
Well, the alternative is you let Putin win.
Win being he takes the existing Crimea, which he took in 2014, takes large sways of the Donbass, and he just takes the land he wants.
A, if that happens, he won't stop there.
I'm absolutely certain of it.
He didn't stop after Crimea.
Why would he stop if he wins another chunk of land of Ukraine?
But secondly, when did Americans, particularly Republicans, when did they actually think it was a good thing that a dictator like Vladimir Putin invaded a democratic country?
So you can already see like what a ridiculous question this is.
Well, when did you think it was so good?
Why is it good that dictators invade other countries?
Like as if that's ever what anyone ever is arguing.
But listen, isn't this like just so ridiculous that again, you know, you'd think this guy, Piers Morgan, who, again, even then this is why his apology in the beginning is just like not nearly enough.
He's like, hey, buddy, didn't you just get the most important issue of our time completely wrong?
Right?
Maybe sit this one out.
Or maybe at least, you know, I don't know.
Allow for some room of question in your mind.
No, I'm absolutely certain Vladimir Putin will go for more if he wins this war.
Why?
Why are you certain of that?
Just because you said so?
He'll definitely go for more.
Look, I'm not even going to tell you it's a certainty that he wouldn't, but there's no reason to say, first off, you're saying that you think, you think simultaneously he's saying he thinks Ukraine can win.
And he defined win by getting all of the Donbass and Crimea back.
That's how he's, he's saying that Ukraine can win, okay?
And that Vladimir Putin's military is just being destroyed.
And this, now, look, I would say, I think my best assessment of that is that there's somewhere, there's some, it's in the middle somewhere.
I think this is not, Vladimir Putin has not dominated Ukraine in the fact in the way he probably thought he would have, in the way that many of us thought he would have.
That has to do with the fact that we've sent in more than Russia's entire military budget into Ukraine in aid.
So, okay, that's a big part of it.
But it's also kept the war going much longer than it otherwise would have.
But so you're arguing that he's getting his ass handed to him in Ukraine, but that also he's a big threat to what, reconstitute the Soviet Union?
What's he going to do?
He's going to march on Poland, you think, if he takes Ukraine?
You think he's then going to directly confront NATO?
It's just like it's so far-fetched.
And then to just say that you know it's true with certainty is ridiculous.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
And, you know, it's like, I'm sure Piers Morgan doesn't even know half of the history of all this shit, but to say he took Crimea in 2014 and we did nothing, it's just so misleading.
It's like he didn't really take Crimea.
He kept it.
Does that make sense?
He always had it.
Now, yes, it was Ukrainian in name, but he had his naval base there.
And so after the coup of 2014, known as the Madonna Revolution, the new government came into power and they said, we're kicking you out.
We're tearing up the lease and you can't have your naval base there anymore.
And he said, no.
And his men left the base.
It was a bloodless, like, or I should say bloodless.
I think like four or five people died or something like that.
But it was like, this wasn't like a huge battle.
He didn't like invade, you know, if you're thinking like some shock and awe campaign or something like that.
It was like a coup de main.
Like it was just overwhelming for in the same sense of the way the Taliban took over Afghanistan after we left.
So everyone just kind of put their guns down and went, okay, it's yours.
This overwhelming force.
And you don't have to trust the referendum that they had there in 2015 in Crimea, where they voted something like 80 something percent voted that they wanted to be a part of Russia.
But there was independent polling that came in that backed up that data.
It's like independent polling that it's like the vast overwhelming majority of people in Crimea wanted to be with Russia, not with Ukraine.
It was a majority ethnic Russian area.
And so, you know, the idea that like, oh, he took Crimea and we did nothing.
No, there was nothing anyone was going to do.
It's like, again, the comparison that I like to use with Crimea, it's like Guantanamo Bay, you know, Russia just let us take Guantanamo Bay or something like that.
Russia let us?
No one let us.
No one can stop us.
And that's not to say that we should have Guantanamo Bay on Cuba.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just, it just is the reality of the situation.
And then after taking, after he took Crimea from in 2014, from 2014 to the present day, there was a civil war within Ukraine.
Something like 15,000 people have died.
This is before Vladimir Putin invaded.
And as people know famously, because this is what Trump was impeached over, he was impeached over, you know, like threatening to hold up the weapons deal to Ukraine.
Nuclear War Scenarios00:15:19
But he caved on that and he sent them in weapons.
And even at the time when officials were asked, well, won't this be, you know, should we be sending these weapons in?
They said, oh, it was going to be a deterrent against Vladimir Putin invading.
And so it was like, well, okay, objectively, there's only two options here.
Either your deterrent didn't work or it was actually a provocation.
So, no, the lesson isn't, oh, we did nothing when he took Crimea.
We actually did a lot.
We got more aggressive.
Even Obama wouldn't arm the neo-Nazis.
He just helped overthrow the government.
But Trump did.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Fume.
You know him well, longtime sponsor.
Cold turkey might sound good, but there's a better way to break your bad habits.
We're not talking about some weird mind voodoo from your crazy neighbor.
We're talking about our sponsor, Fume, and they look at a problem in a different way.
Not everything in a bad habit is wrong.
So instead of drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad from your habit?
Fume is an innovative, award-nominated device that does just that.
Instead of electronics, fume is completely natural.
Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air.
And instead of harmful chemicals, fume uses all natural, delicious flavors.
You get it.
Instead of bad, fume is good.
It's a habit you're free to enjoy and makes replacing your bad habits easy.
Your fume comes with an adjustable airflow dial and is designed with movable parts and movable magnets for fidgeting, giving your fingers a lot to do, which is helpful for de-stressing and anxiety while breaking your habit.
Stopping is something we all put off because it's hard, but switching to fume is easy, enjoyable, and even fun.
Fume has served over 100,000 customers and has thousands of success stories, and there's no reason that can't be you.
Join fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits by picking up the journey pack today.
Head to tryfume.com.
Use the promo code problem and save 10% off when you get the journey pack.
That's tryfume, T-R-Y-F-U-M.com, promo code problem for an additional 10% off your order today.
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's keep playing.
Attacking maternity hospitals and so on.
And just thought, actually, that's not our concern.
It's never been the American way.
And I compare it not to the second Iraq war, which was a fiasco fought over a false pretext for Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction and a false link between him and 9-11 when there wasn't one.
But the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, we're not a NATO country.
And America was right in there, was storming Norman, leading the way to kick him out and restore the sovereignty of Kuwait.
And I don't remember many Republicans saying that was a terrible thing to do.
In fact, quite the opposite.
They thought it was a great thing to do.
And there was great American pride in the military operation to kick Saddam out of Kuwait.
All right, let's go.
Let's just be clear on this for the record.
It was a terrible thing to do.
It was a goddamn terrible thing to do.
And much like in that situation, this had nothing to do with a humanitarian impulse.
This is what's such bullshit about this whole line of thinking.
It's like, oh, like Piers Morgan's like, a dictator is invading a country and killing people.
We just don't want to do something about that.
It's like, yeah, Pierce, you know, why are you picking this one?
You know, all the humanitarian crisis crises around the world.
Why are you picking the one in Ukraine?
How about what's going on in Gaza?
You know, like, how about what's going on in what's been going on in Yemen?
How about what's going on in almost all of Africa?
Right?
Oh, you just happen to be picking the one that undermines Russian interests.
Okay, right, right, right.
That's right.
Because our CIA all of a sudden are such humanitarians.
So in 1991, yeah, right.
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
And the reason why we stopped this is because there were big like British oil interests in Kuwait.
Again, in 1980, he invaded Iran and killed 500,000 people, gassed people.
These are the most bloody vicious, so much worse than anything he did in Kuwait.
And we supported him the whole time because we wanted to contain Iran.
That was our goal.
And we were funding Iran also at the same time.
We funded both sides of that war, but forget it for just for the sake of making the point.
It said nothing to do with humanitarian impulses.
Then to be like, oh, well, I didn't hear a lot of Republicans who were opposed to that war.
Yeah, okay, that's true.
The Republicans supported that war then, right?
And then everybody celebrated like how we were having Bob Hope specials and everyone was like, look at that.
Easy peasy.
We just went in there and won this war.
It was really like almost lost no one.
It was almost bloodless on our side, not theirs.
But, you know, it's like, oh, isn't that wonderful?
And that was in, this was, was a war in 1991.
And we're still there today.
This is the example you're using.
We still have a military presence in Iraq today in 2023.
That's how easy the war was.
And the war basically never stopped.
It continued all through the Clinton years, the sanctions, the blockades, the bombing campaigns.
And then, of course, George W. Bush re, you know, invaded the country.
But yeah, what an example you used.
Oh, we could just do that.
Oh, great.
And then maybe we'll still, what, we'll still be fighting this war in the year, you know, 2058 or something like that.
Great.
What a great example.
In the military operation to kick Saddam out of Kuwait.
The only difference between that and Ukraine is that A, it's more important, Ukraine, strategically and geographically, I think.
And secondly, Vladimir Putin has nuclear weapons.
Well, it's that second factor that I think is leading a lot of people to take pause, meaning that let's say that he gets the deal that I proposed before, that he comes to the table, he says, I'll cut it out.
Why should the Ukrainians give him an inch?
Well, it's not about why the Ukrainians should give him an inch.
It's why the United States should back the Ukrainians in not giving him.
Why should the Americans encourage Ukraine to give up an inch?
To avoid the worst scenario, which would be the use of a tactical nuclear weapon.
What would you feel if Vladimir Putin threatened American mainland with nuclear weapons?
Believe me, on an emotional level, I totally understand where Ukrainians are coming from and I'm rooting for the...
Well, what would you feel?
What would all the American peace snakes at the moment?
They want to give up the land.
Listen, there's no question.
Listen.
If he suddenly invaded, oh, yeah, we'll give him a mission.
If one missile, but the United States is also the most powerful country in the world that's not reliant on anybody else in terms of our own self-defense and preservation.
If you're an American, your first question is not how do Ukrainians feel about Ukraine?
Your first question is, what is in America's interest?
And so the argument that I've made is that overall, American foreign policy has been quite Wilsonian in sort of intent for the last century.
And that's not been great in a lot of different ways.
The sort of idea that should be pursued is that realism in America's interest can coincide with things like support, military support for Ukraine in order to achieve America's interests.
America's interests in Ukraine are, as you mentioned, not allowing dictators to run roughshod over borders, maintaining an American-led sphere of influence that guarantees freedom of waterways, for example, freedom of trade, restraint in terms of military use of force that threatens all the supply lines so we don't end up back in sort of the same thing.
Why would Putin's ability to have this nuclear arsenal change your thinking about how you deal with it?
When did a nuclear deterrent become something that a dictator could use as a stick to threaten?
Well, I mean, throughout the entire Cold War.
I mean, the entire Cold War, the United States did not lose.
Let's just pause one second because there's a lot there.
I got to say, Ben Shapiro is doing a better job than I expected him to do on this.
When the wars aren't for Israel, he's, I guess, a little better on this.
So it's just so ridiculous.
First of all, when did nuclear weapons go from being a deterrent to being something that you could use as a threat?
And he goes, 1945, when they were invented.
That's when they became a threat, when America used them on Japan.
And then throughout the entire Cold War and up to now, that's when nuclear weapons became a concern that they could be used.
Now, this, by the way, he asked this question almost like as if there's not an obvious answer to it.
Like, why should Ukraine give them an inch?
Why should they give them an inch?
So people stop dying.
So you take the threat of a nuclear war off the table.
because you're never going to get Crimea back from them anyway.
So you don't destroy your entire society.
So pretty compelling answers, I would say.
That's why.
And his comparison of like, well, what if they attacked America?
Would you still say the same thing?
It's like, I don't know.
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't.
It's a different situation.
It is a different situation.
Vladimir Putin absorbing the ethnic Russian areas directly outside his border and traveling halfway across the world to attack America are very different things.
And like, yeah, we wouldn't be begging the Ukrainians for money because we would defend ourselves.
So yes, it's different.
It's like if someone, you know, there's like a little old lady who's like being mugged on the street and you were like, she's getting mugged.
A guy pulls a gun on her and you were like, ah, maybe she should just give him her purse, you know?
And she's like, why should she?
Why should she give her purse?
It's like, so she doesn't get shot.
That's why.
Oh, so you think that's right?
You think it's right that people should be able to mug little old ladies?
No.
But in this situation, I think that's the strategic play.
And she's like, okay, but what if the guy didn't have a gun and he came over and tried to rob Chuck Liddell?
What do you think he should do?
Kick his ass?
Like, what do you mean?
There's a different situation.
So yes, you're not proving any point.
And no, it's not.
America is not obligated to defend Ukraine.
We have no obligation.
They're not even a NATO member.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
Would he launch a nuclear strike?
Knowing it would lead to his immediate evisceration.
If he believes that the alternative is his immediate evisceration, meaning that if he's pushed all the way to the wall, the theory goes.
You think Russian generals would go along with that?
Knowing that them and all their families immediately die?
Well, I mean, I'm not sure that it's worth the bet.
That's the question.
For America.
Then psychologically, he wins and he wins big.
And then also.
If he loses 200,000 troops on Ukraine, which is what he will lose.
Right.
But China, China look at that and they've got nuclear weapons and they go, oh, okay.
So all you've got to do is threaten to use nuclear weapons and the Americans back off.
The world's biggest superpower with the biggest military will not engage if you threaten them with nuclear weapons.
And everyone's got a weapon as a deterrent turns around and goes, actually, we're going to use them.
So what are you going to do about it?
Once you blink on this, and I think it's a really fundamental point, it is basically a form of cowardice to say if somebody threatens to do something, the school bully threatens to punch you in the face, right?
And you have the ability to defend yourself.
You've got the same weapons that he has.
If you allow that bully to win and you back off because you're worried about what he may do to you, everybody loses.
And America loses big time.
And China looks at it and goes, okay, now we go into Taiwan.
So then the question becomes.
That's my thought problem.
I understand.
The question becomes, what does the off-ramp look like?
Because what the Biden administration has said, as long as it takes them, we don't know what the off-ramp looks like.
And the question becomes for Americans, okay, so how long has this going on?
We're now seeing some unintended side effects.
China is suggesting that they're going to get involved by shipping weapons via Moscow and all the rest in an obvious attempt to sort of bring this thing to a conclusion and get everybody to the table because China doesn't like what's happening very much either.
It was all fun in games when Russia was becoming a proxy oil state for them.
When Russia's actually on the verge of possible collapse, then China starts to worry a little bit more because they're on their border.
So the question becomes, what does that off-ramp look like?
Does there have to be some off-ramp that allows I don't think you give him an inch?
Then what is the outcome?
And by the way, every American I know, every American I know, if I said to them, Vladimir Putin invades any part of the United States and takes an inch of territory and claims it as his own, every American to a man and woman that I know would say, absolutely not in a million years.
I'd rather die.
So number one, in other words, there's a moral inconsistency because that's the Ukrainian position.
Why the hell should they give up even one inch of their land to this murderous dictator?
The point that I'm making here is that I totally agree with Ukrainians who say they don't want to give up one inch of land.
I'm just not sure that America has to agree with Ukrainians that what's in America's best interest is not for the Ukrainians to give up one inch.
Well, only if America cares about freedom and democracy and saving a sovereign country from being taken over by a Russian dictator.
Well, I mean, they've been saved, meaning Ukraine.
He's already committed $110 billion to this, right?
So you just say, okay, well, we're just going to write that off and give up.
What do you mean to give up?
So Piers Morgan finally wraps up with invoking the sunk cost fallacy.
Well, we've spent a lot of money already.
We've wasted a lot of money already.
So I guess we should just waste a lot more money prolonging a war, continuing a war, arguing against a ceasefire, which is the official position of the White House now, arguing against a ceasefire that China's trying to broker, by the way.
And yet you still go, the murderous dictator and all of this.
Like, okay, like our government hasn't murdered people.
Like, what?
That's just all so ridiculous.
Look, Piers Morgan is so wrong about this on every level.
And he can say that, well, you know, if Vladimir Putin wins, then he'll reconstitute the Soviet Union.
I'm sure of it.
I'm sure he'll invade more countries.
And then China will be emboldened.
And then they realize all they have to do is threaten the use of nuclear weapons or whatever.
Look, the truth is that the threat of nuclear weapons has always existed since we've had nuclear weapons.
But this is a unique situation.
You've got a proxy war on Russia's border.
Okay.
And the president of the United States is arming the people who Russia's fighting against on their border.
And he has said on more than one occasion that our policy is to overthrow Vladimir Putin.
Now, again, as Ben Shapiro correctly points out here, that's the scenario where he might use nuclear weapons.
That's the whole point.
Now, if he wins, you're not going to use nuclear weapons.
Obviously, people know this is the end of the world if we do this, or it's very likely could lead to that.
So Vladimir Putin is not going to use nuclear weapons if he wins.
If he wins and he can sell it to his people, like, look, I just led this awesome campaign and we won and Russia's great and we're strong.
There's no, he's not going to use nuclear weapons in that scenario.
But if he loses a war on his border and is humiliated and is in fear for his own life, that's the scenario where he might.
Putin's Fear of Defeat00:01:18
That's what we're trying to avoid.
And I'm sorry, there is no obligation that Americans have to make this potentially a reality.
This is just like the craziest policy in the world, in the history of the world, that Piers Morgan, the guy who got everything wrong when it mattered the most, is going to just tell you, like, oh, no, I'm sure.
You have to do it.
It's cowardice.
It's cowardice if you don't.
Piers Morgan, yes, you're right.
You're right.
It's cowardice.
We all wish we could have the courage of Piers Morgan to sit in his like, you know, to sit in whatever, his, his multi-million dollar home and advocate for the officially approved policy of the regime.
The courage.
I mean, other people are going to fight and die.
You won't, but you'll say the thing that the entire State Department, CIA, Pentagon is saying.
Great.
The courage, just like you did during COVID.
Showed such great courage on that.
Yeah, Piers Morgan is really wrong when it really counts.
Yeah.
Anyway, he'll tell a trans woman that she's a dude.
So he's good for that, I guess.
All right.
That's our show for today.
Catch you guys next time.
I'm headed out to Providence, Rhode Island this weekend.
Gonna go have some fun.
Chris Vega and Robbie the Fire are out there with me.