March 13, 2022 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| And I think she sees Putin as sloppy. | ||
| I think that he's looking at how Putin did this and he's looking that Putin made mistakes. | ||
| But the way President Xi is looking at this is he's very much paying attention to every country that's giving Ukraine arms. | ||
| He's paying attention to every company that's no longer doing business with Russia. | ||
| He's watching what's happening at the UN. | ||
| He's watching how the world is isolating Russia. | ||
| And he's not saying, no, I'm not going to do this. | ||
| He's saying, OK, when I do this, I'm going to have to do it differently. | ||
| And so, again, we can't take our eyes off of China because China is going to be next. | ||
| What we need to do is learn the lessons of Russia and see what happens when division comes in, which is what happened with us and our allies. | ||
| When we look distracted, it opens a door for these thugs to do, you know, the devil's work. | ||
| And that's exactly what they're doing. | ||
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unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is the former United States ambassador | ||
| to the United Nations, the former governor of South Carolina | ||
| and someone who knows a little something about international relations, Ambassador Nikki Haley. | ||
| Welcome back to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| Great to be with you, Dave. | ||
| Well, I'm glad to have you this week because I've been telling my audience for the last 10 days or so that it's extremely hard right now to figure out exactly what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. | ||
| And of course, Kamala Harris did tell us that Ukraine's small, Russia big. | ||
| But I want to see if we can give a little more thoughtful analysis to that, if possible. | ||
| So first, could you just give us Sort of a Russia-Ukraine 101, a little bit of the history, some of the geopolitics, what got us to this moment, and then we'll go from there. | ||
| Well, I think what got us to the moment is we all know that the Soviet Union fell. | ||
| And when it fell, you know, Russia apparently had borders and Ukraine had freedom and democracy. | ||
| And what has happened is Putin has decided he's just going to ignore history. | ||
| He's going to recreate it. | ||
| And in his mind, he thinks that it needs to go back to the Soviet Union. | ||
| And so he believes That Ukraine is part of Russia. | ||
| It's part of the Soviet Empire, and he's only taking what is rightfully theirs. | ||
| Ukraine, on the other hand, is a flourishing democracy where people appreciate freedom. | ||
| It was knocking on Putin's doorstep. | ||
| He was worried that Russians were going to see the freedom that Ukrainians had, and he didn't want that to happen. | ||
| The lesson in all of this, Dave, is that when an evil dictator Putin says they're going to do something. | ||
| We need to believe them. | ||
| Putin said he was going to take Ukraine, and he is. | ||
| China said they were going to take Hong Kong, and they did. | ||
| Putin says that he's next going for Poland and the Baltics. | ||
| We should believe him. | ||
| China says they're going to get Taiwan. | ||
| That's going to happen. | ||
| Iran says they're going to destroy Israel. | ||
| We need to start understanding that when tyrants say something, we should believe them, get in front of it, so that we don't see this kind of bloodshed that's happening. | ||
| Because what's happening now is nothing short of a tragedy. | ||
| Is this one of the things that we discussed in our original interview, say six or eight months ago, where if we don't, if the United States does not lead, does not say, hey, we have red lines that you can't cross, say there are things that you cannot do, if we don't do it, that the world just kind of goes to hell in the handbasket. | ||
| It doesn't mean we do everything right all the time, but pretty much without us, NATO doesn't function, other countries don't sort of stand up for what's right. | ||
| Yeah, I think it was very clear to me at the United Nations that whether countries like the U.S. | ||
| or not, they want us to lead. | ||
| They would much rather follow the United States than follow China or Russia any day of the week. | ||
| And, you know, what I saw is when we speak, the world listens. | ||
| When we act, the world follows. | ||
| Who we are, the world wants to be. | ||
| And so it doesn't mean we have to go to war, but it means that we need to speak and speak loudly and we need to make sure we do it in the name of freedom and we do it in the name of peace and what we need to be saying loudly now is You know, Europeans thought that if they were nice to Russia, that Russia would leave them alone. | ||
| And what you find out is when you sleep with the devil, the devil owns you. | ||
| Europeans became 40% dependent on Russia, on Russian oil. | ||
| Russia is a one industry country. | ||
| Their whole livelihood is surrounded by energy and the energy industry. | ||
| And so what Europe has to do now is they have to become Independent of Russian oil. | ||
| Poland and Lithuania have already done that. | ||
| They're getting theirs from Australia. | ||
| The United States should not be taking Russian oil. | ||
| We could open up the Keystone Pipeline and that would take up the oil that we're getting from them. | ||
| But also, we need to double down on fracking. | ||
| We need to export liquefied natural gas. | ||
| We need to really start to understand this is a national security issue. | ||
| Because while a lot of people think this is just Ukraine, a million People have migrated out of Ukraine into all of those European countries, especially Poland right now. | ||
| The entire European region is going to be disrupted and we're all going to feel that. | ||
| And so this is about being smart and realizing where we are and the fact that we need to be doing something. | ||
| If you see the death that's happening in the streets of Ukraine, Don't think that's over there. | ||
| That very well could be us. | ||
| That's not saying, you know, anytime there's a free democracy, there's a tyrant ready to take it. | ||
| We've seen that with Israel for a long time. | ||
| You're now seeing that with Ukraine. | ||
| You're going to see it with Taiwan. | ||
| The United States has to figure out what they want to be when they lead. | ||
| And I think we are always right when we lead on the side of freedom. | ||
| So you briefly mentioned sanctions there. | ||
| I'm sure you saw the clips last week where Jen Psaki basically was saying, you know, we have these incredible sanctions, sanctions like you've never seen before. | ||
| And then just hours later, I think it was our deputy energy secretary who said, oh, but it won't affect the energy sector of Russia's economy. | ||
| I mean, do you sense that the people that are in charge right now, from Biden to the spokesman to the rest of them, that they have a sense of really what's going on here? | ||
| I mean, they're running scared. | ||
| They're running scared. | ||
| Either you're going to be tough on Putin or you're not. | ||
| The only way to be tough on Putin is to sanction the energy companies. | ||
| President Zelensky of Ukraine is begging for it. | ||
| He's begging for things. | ||
| And, you know, are we okay allowing people to die in the streets of Ukraine because we're worried that Russia will get mad if we sanction their energy sector? | ||
| No! | ||
| We should be teaching Russia a lesson by sanctioning their energy companies. | ||
| We should be pulling them out of the international banking system. | ||
| We should be sending arms to Ukraine so that they can defend themselves and protect themselves. | ||
| You know, they desperately need anti-air, anti-tank Javelin and Stinger missiles. | ||
| We should be sending those over. | ||
| You know, Zelensky has said, look, you know, send us planes, send us tanks, send us anything. | ||
| And, you know, the United States, if we stepped up and did it, the rest of the world would step up and do it. | ||
| 20 countries now have provided Ukraine with all sorts of military equipment and things that they need. | ||
| But I'm worried it's going to be too little, too late. | ||
| What would you say to the people who make the argument that, okay, so you do everything you can on sanctions, we arm the Ukrainians, we get some real alliance, worldwide alliance against Putin, but this guy does have nukes. | ||
| There's questions about, you know, what his real motives are and mental health and all of that stuff that if we do basically what you're laying out there, that we then, we just don't know what's at the end of the road of that if you pin this guy or if you paint him into a corner. | ||
| America's never been scared. | ||
| We can't be scared now. | ||
| What you do is you fight evil wherever it exists. | ||
| We need strength right now. | ||
| If he's going to do something, he's going to do it regardless. | ||
| The best thing we can do is continue to isolate him in the eyes of the world and continue to make sure that we have all of our ally partners together. | ||
| I mean, the thing that bothers me the most is where are the Arab countries? | ||
| They haven't said a word through all this. | ||
| This is an oil war. | ||
| They should absolutely be saying something. | ||
| You know why they're not saying anything? | ||
| Is they don't trust that America will lead. | ||
| And they don't trust that Putin will fail. | ||
| And so the best thing the United States could do is step up and lead and kick Putin where it hurts. | ||
| Might he use nukes? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But the bigger question is, Ukraine had nuclear production. | ||
| And there was a treaty that was done with US, Russia and Ukraine, where Ukraine gave up all of their nukes. | ||
| They were the third largest holder of nuclear arms. | ||
| Gave up all of their nukes. | ||
| In the name of being free, in the name of being independent, what does this say to countries like Iran, North Korea, those that were saying they have to denuclearize? | ||
| Why would they give up their arms now when they know that they really don't get the protections they say they're going to get? | ||
| So what you're going to see is the world is going to start going back to the nuclear arms. | ||
| They're going to start beefing up because they're worried about when it's going to happen to them. | ||
| Did Ukraine just not understand full geopolitics and giving up nukes? | ||
| I mean, at the end of the day that you have to be responsible for your own security, even if everything was right in the U.S. | ||
| and the world was really trying to do the best they could, that at the end of the day it still is about you defending yourself. | ||
| Well, you know, I think Ukraine tried to do the right thing. | ||
| You know, what they did was, in the name of peace, they said, OK, we won't produce, we'll give ours up. | ||
| But history will now look back. | ||
| And I think Ukrainians are probably looking back going, should we have done that? | ||
| And I think now that, you know, the rest of the world is going to look at that. | ||
| And that's why you're going to see all the talks about, you know, denuclearizing are going to be on pause for a good while. | ||
| So you know I'm with you on the, you sort of have to have peace through strength, but there, I do also have a strong libertarian side, and part of me right now, and I'm hearing this from my audience also, people are just kind of like, you know, we're so screwed up in this country right now, all the woke stuff and critical race theory and the border and inflation and supply chain, and of course we can relate some of that back to the energy, which gets us to Russia, but that there's just so many problems right now, it's like, can't someone else Do something right now. | ||
| And I am somewhat sympathetic to that, even hearing the arguments. | ||
| Like there is part of me that's just like, maybe there's just too much to chew off right now, especially because I just don't have faith in our leaders right now. | ||
| If we had leaders that I had faith in, maybe I would feel a little bit differently. | ||
| Well, you know, I've always had a libertarian streak to me too. | ||
| And I think that, you know, government needs to stay out of a lot of things and we would be much better off. | ||
| But what I will tell you is we always have to fight for freedom. | ||
| And the reason we fight for freedom is because it could, you know, the threats could end up on our doorstep. | ||
| Why should you care about Ukraine? | ||
| You should care about Ukraine because this was a country that all they were doing was minding their own business. | ||
| They were trying to be free. | ||
| And what you've got is you've got tyrants around the world. | ||
| I saw this at the United Nations. | ||
| Russia and China started to get together, not because they like each other, not because they trust each other, but because the one unifying thing for both of them is they want to destroy the West. | ||
| They want to destroy democracy. | ||
| They want to destroy freedom. | ||
| And they're going to do whatever they can to do that. | ||
| The reason you should care about Ukraine is because if Russia gets away with this, Taiwan is next. | ||
| And China will take Taiwan. | ||
| It's not if, it's when. | ||
| And when they do, Taiwan produces, you know, half of the the world's semiconductor chips. | ||
| So for all of your viewers, if you like your phone, if you like your computer, if you like your car, all these things that we now electronically can't live without, China would literally own us. | ||
| We would be in the same situation that Europe is with Russia on the dependency of energy. | ||
| We would be in that same dependency with China. | ||
| And China would not be near as kind as Russia. | ||
| I can promise you that. | ||
| They're stronger, they're sleeker, they're smarter, and they're more determined than ever to ruin the West. | ||
| And so these are all places we have to care about. | ||
| Because if If it's another country, it could be us. | ||
| And we're not saying go to war. | ||
| I'll be the first one to say. | ||
| As a wife of a combat veteran, that's a last resort. | ||
| What I am saying is use the power of our voice for good. | ||
| Use the fact that we do have military arms that we can send for good. | ||
| Use the fact that we can help get our allies together to become less dependent on Russia so they don't put all of us in a bad situation so that we can really get more alliances together. | ||
| That's all for good. | ||
| That's not You know, that's not going to war. | ||
| That's not getting government involved. | ||
| That's saying we're going to protect freedom and we have to protect freedom wherever it reigns. | ||
| How much of this do you blame on the Biden administration? | ||
| I mean, you were at the U.N. | ||
| under President Trump. | ||
| You know, it's not that we had perfect world peace, obviously, but Putin was quiet when it came to Ukraine. | ||
| He did some stuff, Crimea under Obama. | ||
| But there was certainly the feeling that if he did something under Trump, who obviously was like, well, what would Trump do? | ||
| So he didn't do it. | ||
| You know, so Putin didn't make a move. | ||
| How much of this do you blame on Biden? | ||
| You mentioned Keystone Pipeline. | ||
| I mean, we're reliant on the bad guys. | ||
| This is a problem. | ||
| Biden is has really, really done this to all of us. | ||
| And I will tell you, this never would have happened under President Trump. | ||
| And it was because President Trump Really kind of laid it out there for all the tyrants out there. | ||
| But President Trump did something that Russia absolutely disliked. | ||
| He built up our military, which Russia never wanted us to do. | ||
| He made sure we were energy independent, which Russia didn't like. | ||
| And he made sure that he would not allow Nord Stream 2 to go through, which was going to be a big revenue source for Russia. | ||
| But what's happened since then? | ||
| President Biden now comes into office. | ||
| He allows Afghanistan to fall, but not only did Afghanistan fall, what they saw was the United States left Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling the allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for two decades, without telling them that we were doing it. | ||
| Big signal to our enemies, big signal to our allies. | ||
| Then you go forward and he goes and waves Nord Stream 2. | ||
| A gift to Putin at a time that he needed it. | ||
| Then you add on to that, Biden's falling all over himself to get into the Iran deal. | ||
| I mean, the weakness of that, when Iran wouldn't even let the U.S. | ||
| in the room, Biden's begging to get back into a deal with the number one state sponsor of terror. | ||
| And then finally, you see Biden speak. | ||
| And what does he say? | ||
| He says, well, if it's a minor incursion, we'll do one thing. | ||
| If it's an invasion, we'll do another. | ||
| Those were all green lights for Putin. | ||
| Putin knew that never again would we have a weak president like this in America. | ||
| And it's the same thing President Xi sees in China. | ||
| They see it. | ||
| They know there's an opportunity. | ||
| Putin chose to move on it. | ||
| It never would have happened under President Trump because there was never any weakness. | ||
| There was deterrence under President Trump. | ||
| Do you think Putin's a little surprised that it seems like the whole world has rallied around this? | ||
| I mean, you know, they're talking about kicking him off the SWIFT system and the sanctioning of the oligarchs and all of this stuff. | ||
| I don't know that it's going to work exactly, but do you think he's a little surprised how quickly things came to be? | ||
| Although they did, Russia did veto their Security Council members, so they vetoed the UN Security Council resolution, which is sort of hilarious, I suppose, in a depressing sense. | ||
| I think he's completely taken aback. | ||
| I mean, I don't think that he thought that, you know, that he was going to see this much resistance. | ||
| I don't think he thought that President Zelensky would become this much of a hero. | ||
| I don't think he knew the courage and inspiration that the Ukrainian people would be to the world. | ||
| And so, you know, what you've got is Ukrainians picking up knives from their kitchens if they have to. | ||
| They're, you know, standing up in front of tanks. | ||
| They're, you know, picking up guns from anywhere and they're fighting back for their freedom and fighting back for their country. | ||
| We should take a lesson from them on how much they are doing to protect being free, how Precious being free actually is. | ||
| And so I think Putin's absolutely taken back. | ||
| And I think she sees Putin as sloppy. | ||
| I think that he's looking at how Putin did this, and he's looking that Putin made mistakes. | ||
| But the way President Xi is looking at this is He's very much paying attention to every country that's giving Ukraine arms. | ||
| He's paying attention to every company that's no longer doing business with Russia. | ||
| He's watching what's happening at the UN. | ||
| He's watching how the world is isolating Russia. | ||
| And he's not saying, no, I'm not going to do this. | ||
| He's saying, OK, when I do this, I'm going to have to do it differently. | ||
| And so, again, we can't take our eyes off of China because China is going to be next. | ||
| What we need to do is learn the lessons of Russia and see what happens when division comes in, which is what happened with us and our allies. | ||
| When we look distracted, it opens a door for these thugs to do, you know, the devil's work. | ||
| And that's exactly what they're doing. | ||
| So if you were still the ambassador at the U.N. | ||
| right now, if you were the U.S. | ||
| ambassador at the U.N. | ||
| and you were sitting across the table from your Russian counterpart right now, what would you be saying to him? | ||
| Like, how do we get Putin to turn back? | ||
| What do you think his off-ramp is? | ||
| What would you be offering them to say, hey, okay, this thing got messy for two weeks, but let's back up now? | ||
| Well, first of all, Dave, I would be railing at the United Nations right now. | ||
| I would be railing every single day to get some attention towards Ukraine before this conflict happened, but also to kind of rally the world into not just saying you're with Ukraine, but actually doing something about it and having them act. | ||
| And the first group that needs to act are the Europeans. | ||
| It's their region. | ||
| They need to really step up. | ||
| Did we do anything? | ||
| Did we do anything at the U.N.? | ||
| I mean, this was like a slow motion war for three weeks where Biden kept saying, oh, it's going to happen. | ||
| Maybe it'll happen tomorrow, three days. | ||
| I mean, were we doing anything at the U.N.? | ||
| Oh, yes, absolutely. | ||
| What America was doing at the UN was they got back into the UN Human Rights Council, you know, and now they're sitting on that Human Rights Council shoulder to shoulder with Russia and China, who Russia is now committing war crimes. | ||
| So Biden either needs to kick Russia out of the Human Rights Council, or he needs to get off himself. | ||
| America was active at the UN in dealing with this Iran deal. | ||
| Can you imagine now that you're going to go in a room and negotiate with China and Russia on how to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons? | ||
| That's a joke, and it's a fireable offense if Biden continues to try and get into this. | ||
| Iran deal. | ||
| And so, yeah, they were doing things. | ||
| They were doing all the wrong things. | ||
| And what they should have been doing was rallying the troops. | ||
| What they should have been doing was tough love to the Europeans, saying, stop this. | ||
| And, you know, one of the things I did was I was constantly beating up Germany for Nord Stream 2. | ||
| And, you know, and we were constantly saying this can't happen. | ||
| That never should have been allowed to happen this year. | ||
| So there were a lot of things done. | ||
| It just were all the wrong things. | ||
| So when they have a resolution at the UN and one of the countries that's doing the invading has veto power, is it all just theater? | ||
| I mean, at the end, like, is it just sort of ridiculous theater? | ||
| Because Russia vetoed the resolution about Russia. | ||
| You can't blame them for doing that. | ||
| So the interesting thing is, yes, Russia vetoed the resolution in the Security Council. | ||
| But what they were able to do that Russia couldn't do anything about was they took it to the General Assembly, you know, the 193 countries. | ||
| And what happened was, you know, Basically, the world condemned Russia. | ||
| There were only five countries on the side of Russia, Russia included, but Russia stood there with Syria and North Korea. | ||
| Those are not friends you want to be sitting on the corner with, and that's who they were. | ||
| And so, yeah, they did that, but at the end of the day, what does a resolution do, right? | ||
| Yes, it's, you know, you're condemning, you're telling Russia you're bad, you got to stop, but it's not doing anything. | ||
| And so, you know, there goes to my frustration with the United Nations is, you know, saying something and acting, that's great. | ||
| Now what? | ||
| You know, now we got to do more. | ||
| So what does a sane resolution of this situation look like to you? | ||
| I mean, is this something that we're just going to be sort of slowly in for a long time? | ||
| Is there something that we can do to give Putin that off-ramp so that he doesn't have to escalate? | ||
| What does an actual out of this look like? | ||
| Well, I think look at the environment, right? | ||
| So you've got Ukrainians taking to the streets to defend themselves. | ||
| You've got Russians. | ||
| It's pretty ironic that you've got thousands of Russians taking to the streets of Russia, protesting Putin. | ||
| Extremely courageous because they know that they'll be killed. | ||
| They know that they'll be jailed for doing that. | ||
| You've got, you know, the Europeans really stepping up at a time to help Ukraine. | ||
| I think that you're going to see Russia is going to continue to take Ukraine by force. | ||
| I think they're going to kind of sit on the barrier for a while and try and see how much progress they can make. | ||
| But at the end of the day, Putin's going to try and put one of his own lackeys in government, you know, in Ukraine. | ||
| But the Ukrainian people aren't going to go for that. | ||
| I mean, I think you've seen the spirit of the Ukrainian people. | ||
| They're not ever going to go for that. | ||
| So Putin's got to figure this out. | ||
| You know, he's already become a pariah in the world. | ||
| He's isolating himself. | ||
| So he's already very paranoid. | ||
| I think he's worried about being eliminated himself. | ||
| We know that he's trying to eliminate Zelensky. | ||
| So, you know, I think this isn't going to be done in a couple of days. | ||
| The sad part is the media is going to get tired of days. | ||
| The media is not going to have constant Ukraine shots, and everybody else is going to go back to their business. | ||
| But the bloodshed is not going to stop, and I think this is going to last a while. | ||
| Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the media part of this because I feel that it's my job to just sort of translate some of this stuff to my audience and bring on people like you who are the experts in this so that they can get an honest assessment of this. | ||
| One of the things that I'm really struggling with right now is who to trust. | ||
| You know, I've lost such trust In our corporate press that, you know, it's very hard for me to pick up the New York Times that I feel lies about so many things and say, oh, but this is the thing they're telling the truth on. | ||
| How do you I mean, is it just from talking to other ambassadors and talking to people on the ground? | ||
| How do you get news that makes sense to you? | ||
| I read a lot and I read a lot of different sources. | ||
| And I do. | ||
| I have been in conversations with my counterpart at the United Nations from Ukraine, who's now back in Ukraine. | ||
| You know, we were talking to people who have families on the ground in Russia. | ||
| You know, you just you read as much as you can and you take all the opinions out of it. | ||
| That's the key is, you know, the media wants to tell you what to think. | ||
| You don't need to know what to think. | ||
| You need to know the facts and then you put together what you think on your own. | ||
| And so, you know, you can't read too much. | ||
| But the media at this point, I will say the media. | ||
| At least they're covering Ukraine in what is a fair way. | ||
| They're not trying to, you know, rosy up on Putin. | ||
| They're calling him the thug that he is. | ||
| They're showing the bloodshed that's happening. | ||
| They're highlighting Zelensky and the brave people of Ukraine. | ||
| And I think that's what we need to see. | ||
| But, you know, the media hasn't been an outlet to trust for a very long time. | ||
| Do you think that if it was the guy that you worked for, President Trump, and this was happening right now, that the media would be treating this the same? | ||
| I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me that the media would be, everything would be at the footsteps of America right now, and this is what Trump brought upon us. | ||
| I mean, you can actually see them doing some of that, blaming Trump for this. | ||
| Psaki, you know, you probably saw that line the other day where she said, there's a pattern here of Putin invading Ukraine. | ||
| She forgot that the thing that broke the pattern was the four years under Trump. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because I've always told everybody, you know, the four years that President Trump had, he never got an ounce of peace or one bit of credit through all four years. | ||
| He was hammered every day, all day. | ||
| And he didn't have Afghanistan. | ||
| He didn't have the Ukraine mess. | ||
| He didn't have inflation like this. | ||
| He didn't have the crime in the streets. | ||
| He didn't have all that, and they still beat up on him. | ||
| And then, you know, to go have them hail Biden's State of the Union speech as this amazing unifier, you know, it wasn't that. | ||
| All it was was a lot of Republican talking points saying, you know, we've got to get rid of crime on the streets. | ||
| We've got to put kids back in school. | ||
| We have to Choose freedom over tyranny. | ||
| You know, we've got to fund the police. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| We've been saying that this entire year that Biden's been in office, and now he's saying it, but he didn't offer one solution. | ||
| Not one solution. | ||
| And, you know, the only solution, Dave, is to win the races in 2022. | ||
| We've got to take back the House. | ||
| We've got to take back the Senate. | ||
| We've got 36 governor's races. | ||
| And if you ever saw the importance of a governor, you know, you saw it during COVID and you saw some fantastic Republican governors go and protect their people. | ||
| And I think that we've got to really make sure that we put a stop to all of this progressive extremism that we're seeing come out of the left. | ||
| And, you know, stop Biden and try and, you know, say a prayer along the way, because it's going to be a long three years. | ||
| Not only do I know it, but as you know, I'm living it because I am in the free state of Florida right now, not at my home in Cali anymore. | ||
| We only have a couple of minutes left, but let's just go with the political part of this for just a bit. | ||
| Does it drive you crazy? | ||
| Like when you watch the State of the Union and Biden basically starts repeating the things that Republicans Conservatives, whatever, have been saying for years, oh, now we have to fund the police, we have to get kids back in school, et cetera. | ||
| Does it drive you nuts that they can always get away with it? | ||
| That's where I'm really hung up at the moment. | ||
| They're getting away with it, and I think by October, they're gonna have people believing that it was Republicans who wanted lockdowns, and Republicans who wanted mandates, and Republicans who wanted to defund the police, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| They're not gonna get away with it, Dave. | ||
| I hope you're right. | ||
| The American public is too smart. | ||
| The American people are too smart. | ||
| I was campaigning for Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. | ||
| I was campaigning for Jack Cittarelli in New Jersey, and we only lost that race by one percentage point. | ||
| And I'm telling you, the frustration on the ground in Virginia was no different than the frustration on the ground In New Jersey and what you saw were you saw independents and conservative Democrats say we've had enough. | ||
| They were tired of what was happening to their kids in schools. | ||
| They're tired of seeing all these mandates. | ||
| They were tired of seeing the crime in their streets and they're each. | ||
| You know, every family is paying more than $250 more a month. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| So, no, I don't think the American people will fall for this, and I think they'll show it when we come November in 2022 and we win all these races back. | ||
| All right, Ambassador. | ||
| If we win, that means we have to prove we deserve to be there when we get there. | ||
| Yeah, well, absolutely. | ||
| So I only have one more question for you. | ||
| It's the question you definitely don't want. | ||
| But because I'm on the record as saying that I want DeSantis to stay here in Florida because I believe that those those governorships are so important. | ||
| There is a presidential election after the other thing. | ||
| I kind of asked you last time. | ||
| I mean, how you feeling? | ||
| Obviously, you're not thrilled with worldwide leadership at the moment, and there's going to be a really wide-ranging crop. | ||
| Whoever is in it, I'm excited for the Republican crop, because I do sense it's going to be a lot of new fresh blood, and there'll be a sort of wide variety of voices. | ||
| Are you thinking about it at all? | ||
| Well, I think that there is no 24 if we don't win in 2022, but I don't think I have to make a decision until the first part of 23. | ||
| I can tell you I've never lost a race. | ||
| I'm not going to start now. | ||
| So if there's a place for me, then we'll move. | ||
| If there's not, I'm gonna fight for America for as long as I can and make sure that we do whatever we need to. | ||
| The beauty of it is, is the Republican bench is strong. | ||
| We've got a lot of talent on our bench, the Democrat bench, not so much. | ||
| The current situation with them ain't so great either. | ||
| Ambassador Haley, I appreciate you taking the time and hopefully we can do this in person sometime soon. |
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