Episode 1664 Scott Adams: Putin Goes All In On Ukraine
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Content:
Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine
Sanctions with teeth?
Winners and Losers
Greta and US Green Movement, benefit Russia?
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Well, today is not the best day in the world, especially if you happen to be in Ukraine.
But we'll be talking about all of that and having the best day that we possibly can, despite the bombs and missiles flying.
And you know what would make you feel safer?
Well, I can only think of one thing because you want to be safe on the inside, not just the outside.
So if you want to fortify your defenses on the inside, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tankard, a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask.
A huge tank would be useful right now.
But anyway, any kind of vessel and fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine hit of the day and you might need it today.
It's called the simultaneous sip and despots around the world are afraid of it and should be.
Join me now.
Go.
Well, I think we're going to need a stronger cup today.
I'm going to have to take it up a notch.
Well, we'll talk about Ukraine, of course, but a couple other things here.
Rasmussen has a poll, says that 47% of likely Republican voters would choose Trump as the candidate they would most likely support.
So, do you think Trump's fortunes are going up or down as Ukraine is being invaded?
Probably up, right?
Because you're always more impressed by the one who didn't make today's mistake.
Now, I don't know that Trump could have done anything about this, and neither do you.
But it's going to feel like he could, right?
And that's what's going to matter to politics.
You know, would you agree with two things?
There are two things I want you to agree with.
One is we couldn't possibly know what would happen if a different president did different stuff.
It's unknowable.
Would you agree with the first part?
You don't really know if somebody else would have done something differently.
And if they did something differently, would you get a better outcome?
You don't know. But if you could agree with the fact that it's a total unknown, would you also agree with the fact that it sure feels like Trump would have done a better job?
Doesn't it? Now, of course, that's a bias that people would have if they were Republican or leaned right or whatever, or had any feelings about Trump that were positive whatsoever.
But we'll never know the reality of it, but it's going to feel like that.
Well, the walls are closing in on Trump, legally.
Oh, wait, no. It turns out that a spokesperson for the Manhattan prosecutors that were investigating Trump and his company in a criminal probe, they've resigned.
So the top prosecutors that were trying to prosecute Trump in this Manhattan situation, it's not his only legal situation.
I think it's one of several.
But the prosecutor just quit, and the rumor is that they thought there was no case there.
So, the walls are closing in.
How many more phony lawsuits are we going to see?
Or phony, I don't know, prosecutions?
All right, let's talk about Ukraine, because it's the only thing you care about today.
Number one, is there anything you would like to hear more?
Than me saying my prediction was wrong.
Is there anybody who would like to enjoy some schadenfreude?
For those of you who correctly predicted that Putin would invade Ukraine, would you enjoy a victory lap at my expense?
I think you've earned it.
Can we agree on that?
Can we agree you've earned it?
So, with my permission, Enthusiastically, I might say.
Could you please take a victory dance at my expense in the comments?
Don't be kind.
Go hard. For the next...
Well, actually, I'll tell you what.
For the remainder of this livestream, I won't block or mute anybody.
Is that fair?
So that way you'll feel, you know, you can be as brutal as you want.
You know, part of the reason this sort of public thinking, if I can call it that, where people like me say things in public and then you react to them and we see who's smarter, it requires a feedback loop.
So when I'm wrong, you need to climb all over me and tell me how dumb and wrong I am, because that's sort of a necessary part of the system.
All right, so in the comments, if you like, you may continue verbally abusing me with my enthusiastic support.
Because if you were wrong, I'd probably mention it.
Don't you think? If I were right and you were wrong, I'd probably mention it.
So you could do the same. All right.
Here's where I think I was wrong.
If I were to analyze, well, a few things.
Number one, I may be addicted to contrarian predictions.
Do you worry about that?
Because you should be. You should be.
This would be the one that even flags me.
I go, huh, I wonder if I got a little too addicted to contrarian predictions.
Because if you get one right, you get a lot of attention, right?
And I'm thinking to myself, this feels like that, doesn't it?
How many would say I should worry about that?
I should. I should.
Now, I don't believe that anybody is capable of being unbiased in general about this or any other topic.
We're a biased species.
I feel like the best you can do is to be conscious of where your biases probably are.
I don't know if you can go beyond that, like as a human capability.
I think the best you can do is to say, you know, I could be biased, but this is what it feels like.
That's as honest as you could be.
Right. Yeah, it's the rogue doctor problem, right?
It's exactly the rogue doctor problem.
That people do like to be contrarians.
It's addicting. I'll confess that.
It's totally addicting. Now, on top of that, here's at least...
So that might be my subconscious reason for being wrong.
But on a conscious level, here's the assumption I made that was completely inaccurate.
The assumption is that Putin wouldn't have enough of, let's say, an emotional, psychological need to do this.
And that it was economics.
And that he would do it for cold, calculated, just sort of practical reasons.
And I thought to myself, you know, this doesn't look practical.
And a realist and a practical guy like Putin would take as many risks as he was confident he could get away with, but he wouldn't take more than that.
Because he would act rationally.
Now, there are two possibilities for why he's doing something that, in my naive and misinformed way, looks very impractical.
To me, what he's doing doesn't look rational.
But is it?
But is it? And are any of us really rational?
So here's the...
I'm going to try to frame this in a way that you can see Putin's point of view without supporting his point of view.
Can I do that? Do you think I can slice this fine enough?
To tell you what is the best version of his point of view that explains events, but I'm not supporting it.
I'm just explaining it.
And it would go like this.
Imagine if Ukraine had always been ambiguously Russia.
And would you say that that's true, at least from the Russian perspective?
Not from the Ukrainian perspective, probably.
But from the Russian perspective, has it always been true that Ukraine has been sort of Russian?
Or sort of part of Russia?
Probably yes. Yes.
And Putin has said so directly, right?
Now, you can't trust what Putin says directly because he's managing...
You know, managing the narrative.
So he's not in the business of being honest when it comes to this stuff or anything else.
But it does seem that the Russian people probably think there's some deep connection there.
Now, if Ukraine and Russia were simply separate countries, could Russia tolerate that?
Let's say there's no other variable going on.
The only variable is that, well, they're a separate country.
We think we should be one, but it's a separate country.
Do you think that would be enough to attack?
Maybe, but probably not.
Like, there's not enough of a psychological impetus for that, right?
But now suppose...
That that country that is supposed to be, or ambiguously is Russian, decides to get a NATO brand and become part of NATO. If you're in Russia, what do you think of NATO? It's just America, right?
Do you think the Russians think of NATO as really an alliance of equal countries or something?
I don't think so. They probably just think it's the US and Great Britain, but mostly the US. I think they think that.
So wouldn't it look like the United States just planted its flag in proxy via NATO on Russian soil?
If you were Russian, the threat of NATO accepting Ukraine, wouldn't it feel like an invasion?
Wouldn't it feel like one?
Or like a pending invasion.
Now, I'm not saying that NATO would then use Ukraine as a launching pad to invade Russia.
That's crazy. That's crazy.
But it would look like they had already conquered Ukraine.
It would be like saying the United States has a right to be in Ukraine, but Russia doesn't.
Try to imagine that you're Russian.
Put yourself in a Russian mindset that you think Ukraine is basically sort of a cousin brotherish country.
It's as Russian almost as you are.
It's as different as maybe regions within Russia are different from each other.
It's not so much different that it's not just sort of Russia-ish.
And suddenly your biggest national rival plants his flag there.
Not literally, but if you see NATO as basically a front for the United States, and if NATO got its umbrella over Ukraine, you'd expect the United States to have deeper connections there, especially.
Now, when I describe it this way, and by the way, I've never seen the press in this country describe it the way I have.
And it took me, honestly, until today to sort of even be able to imagine what it might look like if you were Russian.
Now, I'm not saying they have the preferred point of view or anything, right, if you're joining late.
I'm not supporting any particular point of view.
I'm just describing them.
People have very different points of view.
Now... And don't make it an analogy yet.
As soon as you make the analogies to Taiwan, you end up going down a complicated road that's not going to help.
If the only thing you knew about the story was it looked like a rival had planted its flag on your territory, what you psychologically imagined to be your territory, I could see a war breaking out.
I could see you almost had to do it.
So... I had thought from the, even as recently as yesterday, I was thinking, now obviously by yesterday it looked like the invasion was on, but I still thought there was a possibility that it was the world's best bluff.
I also think it still might be not exactly a bluff, but what would you call it if you're trying to scare the other side into surrendering?
Is that a bluff?
Intimidate them into surrendering?
Because it looks like Putin is trying to tell them...
Oh, a gambit?
Would you call that a gambit?
Okay. Shock and awe.
Yeah. So think of what Russia did.
So there was this story that the Russians had a kill list of Ukrainian leaders or critics or whatever, and that if they got control of Ukraine, they were just going to line them up and kill them all.
Now, don't you think that maybe Russia itself is the one who started that rumor to get the Ukraine leaders to get on a plane and get out of there?
Because if that happened, then the country would just fall without any bloodshed.
The best outcome for Putin would be that he scares the Ukrainian leadership into leaving.
And he's got to be close to that.
If you were Zelensky, would you still be there?
I don't know that I would.
I mean, literally, they're saying they're going to execute him.
How would you like to wake up and be Zelensky and know that you might be one week away from being executed?
Not fun. Not a good day, right?
Yeah, we had a literal deck of cards for Iraq.
That's right. So it's not unrealistic to imagine that Russia did literally have a kill list.
But it is also imaginable that Russia itself is the one that let that get out so that they would, you know, maybe escape the country.
I asked this question, and Google did not give me a definitive answer, but don't you think there's a correlation between the age of a leader, a despot, let's say, and their desire to go to war against a neighboring country?
Doesn't it seem to you that war is a younger leader's game?
And that it's kind of unusual that somebody in their 70s would start a land war of this magnitude?
Now, it's not impossible.
I guess Brezhnev went into Afghanistan when he was 70.
I thought Putin was actually in his 70s now.
Can somebody give me a Putin age update?
I swear I just read he was in his early 70s.
That's not true? 69?
Yeah, okay. And I wonder if we actually know his age.
Do you think we actually know his age?
Somebody says 73.
I'm seeing different estimates here.
I wonder if we actually don't know his actual age.
Because it's hard to find out about stuff like that, isn't it?
Well, but whether he's 69 or 73, I think the question holds, which is, what would make somebody that age do something this risky?
Because it generally is a younger person's game.
Now, one of the things that one group of researchers tried to do, I was just looking at this online, is they tried to figure out if...
If, in fact, there was a link, and they did think that their analysis found a link, that the older the leader, the less likely they would want to go to war.
Now, other studies found the opposite, or that they didn't find that correlation.
But one study said, oh, but we know they got causation wrong, so we did it in a more clever way by looking at, well, it doesn't matter how they did it.
But the point is that there's at least one study that says we're the only ones who did it right, and it does show that the older you are, the less likely you're going to go to war, meaning as a leader.
What would cause somebody who is in that don't-go-to-war phase to go to war?
Now, it could be that, like I explained, that just this putting a NATO brand on part of something that looked like Russia, two Russians...
It was just too far. Maybe the national identity just couldn't handle it, and Putin, as the maybe keeper of the national pride, just couldn't take it.
It just was too much.
That's possible. That could be the whole story, really.
Of course, there's strategic benefits that he would like to get as well.
But what if Putin changed his meds?
In the comments, tell me how many people who are around 70 are not on some kind of med that could potentially change their personality.
Now, I don't think he's on an SSRI. Do you think that there's any chance that Putin is on steroids or testosterone?
Do you think that Putin, knowing his personality, you know, his shirtless riding of dragons and whatever else he's doing, knowing his personality for ego, knowing that he's reaching an age in which his seven concubines per day might seem like too much these days, and he feels like he's slowing down?
Don't you think...
That he's talked to his Russian doctors about giving him whatever is the best boost a leader could get.
And how about all those sleepless nights that you have to have, even if you're the one who's starting a war?
Don't you think if you're the one who's starting a war, you've got some sleepless nights?
Because you've got a lot of uncertainty there yourself.
Don't you think that maybe Putin asked his doctor about some stimulants?
Maybe. They could be perfectly prescription-legal and approved stimulants, but most of you who are watching this know that a couple years ago I documented live by living through it, you know, and doing live streams every day, how taking prednisone changed my personality.
In real time, I could feel it happening.
People could observe it.
It was real.
I had a different personality when I was on prednisone.
And that's just one example.
I have a different personality if I'm doing anything that has some prescription strength, if you know what I mean.
So do you think that part of what we're seeing Could be a side effect of medication.
Because to me, Putin doesn't look like the same guy.
I heard Dana Perino say this on The Five, and some people agree.
But I don't know if that could also be bias.
If he's acting differently, maybe he just looks differently because you imagine that he looks differently.
So it could totally be imagination.
But I feel as if he just looks a little different.
He looks darker. Didn't Putin used to be always laughing?
Now, I know he's going to war, so he can't be in his laughy face now.
But something looks like it changed.
Don't know what. But I'm going to guess medication.
Medication and or testosterone and or all of it.
But he looks like maybe a person who is a chemical experiment at this point, which is pretty dangerous.
All right, what else?
Here's some more questions.
So here's Putin's excuses that Ukraine has been layering abuse and genocide on, I guess, Russian and ethnic people in Ukraine.
And do you think that's true?
Do you think that Ukraine, the government of Ukraine and Ukraine forces, have been brutalizing Putin?
The breakaway separatist groups?
I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't, because it's their country.
I suppose they get to fight their civil wars any way they want.
But do you think there's anything to it?
Is it a complete lie?
Or is there some bad stuff going on there?
Something tells me that this is not a yes or no question here.
All right. And Putin also said, and this is very clever, I hate to sound like Trump, but yes, this is interesting.
He announced his operation is to, quote, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and promising to put its leaders on trial.
So he's going to try to take the narrative that Ukraine is a Nazi...
Infested government.
Now, I've seen that in social media over here.
But I discount it because everybody gets called a Nazi, so I think, ah, maybe.
But I doubt it defines the government, but maybe.
I don't know. So here's the other possibility.
If Putin is a narcissist, one of the things narcissists always do is projection.
So, because Putin is acting like Hitler, the strongest thing he can do is to say, I'm going over there to fight Hitler.
It's projection. Oh, no, the other side is Hitler.
I'm the anti-Hitler.
Don't you get it?
The other side is Hitler.
So if all we're seeing is some Putin personality problem and he's just a narcissist, you would see exactly this.
Not just blaming them of his own unique set of crimes, because he could make up something, right?
What's different about the narcissist is that they blame you for their exact crime.
Their exact crime.
That's the weird part.
The exactness of it.
Because wouldn't it be easier if somebody accused him of being Hitler?
Wouldn't it be easier for him to say, no, no, I have my reasons, I'm liberating you, I'm a good guy?
He doesn't have to accuse the other side of being Hitler.
But when you see that, that's a flag.
Wait a minute. Who does that?
Narcissists. It's a personality trait.
It's really baked in.
It's like a really, really...
You almost can't change it.
It's such a baked-in personality trait.
The other thing is gaslighting.
Have we seen any of that?
Well, that's all it was.
The entire Russian approach to the pre-war was nothing but gaslighting.
No, that's not happening. Invasion?
I don't even know what you're talking about.
Maybe you should see somebody about your mental problems if you really think we're going to invade.
So, in a way, in the sense that Russia is really just a reflection of Putin, That what the country does is basically what his personality is causing it to do.
You're seeing the country act like a narcissist.
Now, what about this overconfidence?
Russia seems pretty confident that they can get this done without suffering a cost that wouldn't make it worth it.
Well, narcissists are overconfident.
So, he seems to be having a narcissistic...
Sort of accelerated experience, which I would bet is based on testosterone plus a stimulant of some kind.
A meth-like stimulant.
And that those two things, when you put them together with his natural personality, makes him think that a land war with his neighbor is a good idea if he's been insulted.
Especially... Especially if he's been insulted.
And NATO and Ukraine is probably an insult.
So wouldn't Putin look weak if Ukraine went NATO? He would look weak, wouldn't he?
So it was sort of a personal insult that NATO was even considering branding itself with Ukraine.
So let's say UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says there are going to be these massive economic sanctions that will hobble the economy.
Does anybody believe the sanctions will work?
I feel like the sanctions are what you do when you've already decided to lose.
At least in this context.
Maybe there's some context where it makes sense.
Doesn't it look like we've decided to lose and we're just going to take our gains?
Remember I told you that a lot of Russian public thinks that the United States was trying to trick Russia into attacking because there'd be some benefit to the United States?
I wonder if we haven't thought of it that way.
Because there is talk about, you know, Russia being bogged down in Ukraine, and obviously American energy companies should be able to sell more stuff, you know, the natural gas stuff especially.
So I would think it would be good for American markets in the long run.
Stock markets taking a dump today.
And I would think it would be bad for the Russian economy in the long run.
And that that's good for the United States in the long run.
If we don't spend too much money, and I know this is the coldest calculation, but unfortunately, if we're just looking at the economics and not the human cost, I'm not devaluing the human cost.
I'm just, for analysis sake, let's look at them separately.
And, I don't know, to me it looks like Russia's going to pay for this and it's not going to be economically viable.
So, I think the United States might come out ahead.
I think the United States might come out ahead, and I think we knew it.
What do you think? I also wonder, how does Russia ever do a deal with anybody when, you know, it's not as if we didn't know that they wouldn't keep their international deals, because we have some history.
It's not as if we didn't know Russia lies.
And you could argue that all the countries lie.
You know, the United States, too.
But this specific lie is so in your face, it's so in your face, that I don't know how you can have normal relationships with somebody like this after that.
How do you talk to a Russian leader like Lavrov?
How can anybody have a conversation with Lavrov and he says, oh, let me promise you that the Russians will not do X? Wouldn't you just laugh?
I mean, Lavrov, I would laugh him off.
I would laugh off Lavrov.
If I were a rapper, I could make something out of that, let me tell you.
I'm going to see Lavrov.
I'm not going to laugh it off.
Kanye, I need some help.
I'll even call you Ye if you'll help my rhyme.
All right. So...
I'm sure the countries will just go back to normal diplomatic relations.
It's just mind-boggling that that's a thing.
I guess people will just act practically.
Now, I'm seeing that Mitt Romney is being revived in the...
at least in the left's telling of things.
I told you Chris Silliza did a piece on CNN in which he was saying, well, Romney was right when he said, when he was running against Obama, he said that Russia would be the biggest foe.
Are you buying that? I don't see that at all.
I don't see that.
Romney still looks wrong to me.
All I see is Russia taking care of a specific piece of business that seems very Russian.
I'm not giving them cover.
I'm just saying that this is such a specific kind of a threat.
It's a sort of a Russia on Russian crime.
It's not exactly what I would call our biggest threat.
I mean, I don't think anybody really expects that the United States and Russia will get into a direct war about this.
And all it does is look like Russia just degraded itself economically and the United States did not.
I mean, this looks like the opposite of our biggest risk.
It's just a pain in the ass at the moment.
There's no way this is a bigger risk than China.
Are you kidding me? Let me ask the question.
In the comments, I probably primed you too much, but tell me, which is the bigger problem, China or Russia, for the United States?
China or Russia?
In the comments. All right, I'm seeing a wall of China.
Nothing but China on the locals' platform.
And then, yeah, China, China, China.
So the media is trying to convince us that Mitt Romney got this right, and I think 100% of you watching this live stream, you're not buying any of that.
Now, partly, many of you may be not the biggest Mitt Romney fans.
I think that's probably part of it.
All right. I asked in a Twitter poll, which has no scientific basis whatsoever, will Russia come out ahead economically in the long run?
And the last I checked, maybe somebody could check it for me quickly because I'm doing this...
But it was roughly one-third said yes, Russia will come out ahead.
About a third said no, and about a third said it could go either way.
Now, the numbers were bouncing all around, so they could have changed quite a bit before I got on.
But generally speaking, the people answering this couldn't tell if Russia would come out ahead, behind, or about the same.
And does that sound...
Does it sound reasonable in the sense that the wisdom of the crowd can't tell?
Now, do you think that Putin has a stronger confidence than the public that I polled?
Because he would have, you know, access to the best information, and he would know what Russia could do to get around sanctions, so he would have the most information about this.
Do you think that Russia...
And Putin can look at this situation that they're creating and say, oh, this will pay for itself.
Do you think he's confident of that?
Because this gets back to, did he change his meds?
Because he could be confident of something you shouldn't be confident of.
That's where you get in trouble.
Putin would be confident just on principle, right?
That's the problem, isn't it? We're already paying for it with higher oil prices, yeah.
So, Putin might also...
I wonder if Putin is already making a profit, because he's putting out the expense of the military, and there may be future expense of deals he can't get done with other countries.
But at the moment, the price of oil is going up so much, doesn't he make a profit?
And we should be seeing a lot more on the economic question, shouldn't we?
Because I feel like at the very least you could take each of these categories and put some kind of estimate on it.
So, for example, this category would be the windfall profit that Russia will make just from rising energy prices as a producer of energy.
Now, would the prices also go up in Russia?
Would the Russian citizens be paying more for energy?
Yes or no? Is that a controlled expense?
Maybe it's a controlled expense.
I don't know. They're probably protected from that, aren't they?
I don't know. Yeah, killing the Keystone Pipeline, that's certainly part of it.
All right. I think the probable...
I'm going to go with the current estimate more because I want the conversation to become deeper.
I think the winners in this will be China.
See if you agree with my estimates on the winners and the losers of this Ukraine action.
I think the winner will be China.
I think NATO unity will be greater.
And I think the United States might end up ahead.
I think the United States might end up ahead.
But that's uncertain at this point.
We're going to eat some more inflation, for sure.
But I think it's going to cause us to get serious about our energy situation.
Now, did you know this?
I saw this in a Matt Ridley tweet.
Did you know that the head of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, quote, engaged actively with the so-called non-governmental organizations and environmental organizations working against shale gas to maintain Europe's dependence on imported Russian gas?
Wow. So Russia put $95 million into these NGOs, these non-government organizations, to persuade Russia that shale gas, which would compete with the Russian product of gas, was too dangerous for a variety of reasons.
Bad for the environment and stuff.
Now, do you think that shale gas will be revived in Europe because of this?
Maybe. I don't know.
Do you think that Greta Thunberg and the Green Movement in the United States is completely free from Russian and or Chinese influence?
What are the odds that Russia actively tried to influence European shale and did not try to actively influence the Green Movement in the United States?
Is there any chance...
Any chance that Russia isn't trying to make us go green as fast as we can?
I'm pretty sure Russia is pro-solar panels for the United States.
Pretty sure. I'm pretty sure they're pro-closed-down pipelines in the United States.
And we have to ask ourselves, how much of our American economic policy is suspiciously close to exactly what Russia wants it to be?
How powerful is persuasion?
Well, I estimated in an earlier live stream that you could move, even if you didn't have complete control of the internet in your country, even if the internet allowed people to see different points of view, if you could control the media in your country, you could still convince half of them of just about anything.
Anything. So given that persuasion is that strong, that even with alternate sources of truth and fact-checking, you can convince 50% of the public of, did I mention anything?
Just anything, apparently.
And why wouldn't Russia be actively supporting efforts to close down our own pipelines and energy business?
It'd be crazy if they weren't, right?
It'd be crazy. If it worked in Europe, why wouldn't it work here?
Of course it would work.
Now, do you remember when President Trump, before he was president, said that climate change was a Chinese hoax?
Do you remember when that sounded ridiculous?
And now we know that at least the shale gas part of climate change was actually a hoax.
Literally. A misinformation campaign for economic reasons, for Russia in this case.
Now, you don't think China would do something like that?
You think only Russia would do a disinformation campaign against an energy source?
Wasn't it even Thomas Edison who did a disinformation campaign against Tesla?
Do I remember my history wrong?
That's a yes, right? Even in our own American history, Edison did a total disinformation campaign against Tesla, which is why we have the types of networks we have today, in part.
Yeah. So, there's a long history of doing persuasion campaigns against energy sources that are the ones you're not selling.
Fracking is ramping up on private lands.
Is it? Good.
I mean, I think it's good.
I'm no expert on fracking, but from an economic standpoint, it's probably good.
Environmentally, I have no idea.
Don't have an opinion. So...
And I guess Russia today runs an anti-fracking program, etc.
So I ask you this.
Do you think that the Biden administration will break the spell...
Which is, will they realize that a lot of what they're doing for Greta Thunberg Save the World purposes may in fact be largely driven by, first of all, the public in the United States, but that the public in the United States might be driven by Russia and China and other misinformation campaigns?
When do we wake up and say, wait, public opinion in the United States is probably artificial, right?
Because that would be what happened in Europe.
In Europe, their opinion about fracking was actually artificial.
It wasn't actually their opinion.
It was an assigned opinion that half the people took.
So, let's see.
How does Putin get permission to travel internationally to, let's say, democratic countries after this?
Do we just act like it didn't happen?
What the hell are we going to do?
Now, I don't have...
I'm not a historian, but could Hitler travel anywhere he wanted?
Let's say before...
Well, yeah, after the war started.
After Hitler started invading neighbors, could he travel anywhere he wanted?
Depends on the reason.
No, I suppose if he were going to negotiate a ceasefire, yes.
But could he travel just to do his propaganda and appear on 60 Minutes and stuff?
I don't think so, right?
So... I wonder about how much this matters.
Imagine being as powerful as Putin and having the vast wealth of Russia at your disposal and the military...
And you can't take a trip to someplace nice.
The only place you can go is China, where you're going to be spied on everywhere.
Your own country that you're kind of tired of.
And you just can't go anywhere.
Fun. Wouldn't that kind of suck?
Imagine if the only sanction that happened was that Putin isn't allowed to travel into any other country that supports NATO and just said, you know, you can't go to Brazil.
I know you'd like to, you just can't.
You'd like to visit France because you like the wine?
Sorry. Never again.
You'll never go to France.
United States? Nope.
Nope. New York City? Nope.
I don't know. How do we treat that?
And is there any modern...
Can anybody think of a modern example?
Now, of course, we have to explain how China can have, you know, the Uyghurs, you know, let's say cultural genocide, but not murder genocide as far as we know.
How does that happen?
And President Xi can still travel anywhere he wants, right?
But... It feels like that happened somewhat gradually, so it's different.
You know, it's the difference between war starts today, which is what Putin did.
Like, that feels like a slap in the face.
Whereas anything in China feels like it's been building up forever.
So you just got used to it, no matter how much you don't like it.
You're like, well, I don't know.
I haven't seen any pictures.
I don't see anything exploding.
I don't know. It's easier just to go on with your day.
So, you know, an invasion does look different than some low-grade evil that's been, you know, increasing over time.
You said the same thing about Kim Jong.
Which thing?
I might have. I don't know what you're talking about exactly.
All right. Why would he want to travel?
Good question. I think that Putin is happiest when he travels.
What do you think? Doesn't he travel a lot?
I feel like every time I look up, Putin's in a different country.
Now, yeah, I'm seeing a comment that I'm mind-reading Putin, and that is correct.
But it is also correct that you have to try to anticipate what people think in order to know what you should do.
So we don't have the option of not trying to guess what he's thinking.
It would be mind-reading if I told you I know what he's thinking.
But I won't do that.
I'm going to make a general comment that somebody with a billion dollars really, really would hate not being able to travel anywhere they want.
Would you buy that?
That basically anybody with that much resources and power would really hate it if they just couldn't even visit certain countries.
But on the other hand, maybe when he visits other countries, he's just going from hotel to plane anyway, and maybe he doesn't care at all.
Maybe the only place he's ever free is in Russia, because he's safer there, I guess.
All right.
Let's see what else we've got going on.
I don't think there's much.
Yeah, that's about it.
How many of you think that Trump would have done a better job?
Or let's say, how many of you think that Trump would have prevented the invasion of Ukraine?
In the comments, how many think you would?
I'm saying yeses.
A lot of yeses, some noes.
Some think it would be limited, yeses, no doubt about it.
Now, how would he have done that?
What mechanism would he have employed to do that?
Here's what I think Trump would have done.
First of all, he would have just turned the knob on our energy production and said, thank you for this windfall profit.
This is the best thing that ever happened to the American economy.
We really wish you wouldn't do this, but if you're going to do it, you're handing us Europe as a customer.
If I were Trump, I would say you're handing Europe to us as a future customer.
More of a customer, I guess, for our energy business.
So I guess that's a bit...
Trump would at least have the credible threat that he's going to take your business.
Right? And I don't think Biden ever talks about it that way because he's such a traditional politician.
I think Trump could threaten them economically in a different way.
Trump could say, look, you just made it impossible for us to ever lose a bidding war against you.
You'd have to really be cheap.
Your energy would have to be awfully cheap before you're going to win a bidding war against us in the future.
So we basically just took your gas business.
It'll be a matter of time.
It's going to take a while, and we have to use tankers and stuff, not pipelines.
But yeah, we're basically going to take that business.
Russia has high cost of production, somebody says?
Maybe. How many people think that Putin will continue his aggression?
Is there another next place that's obvious?
Because it doesn't feel like Poland is at risk.
I mean, a NATO country.
I don't think any of the NATO countries are at risk.
Now, I saw a map, I think maybe...
Maybe Ian Bremmer tweeted it.
I can't remember who did. But I saw an animated map of the increase in NATO nations.
Have you ever seen this? You see a map that shows, over time, Soviet influence.
So it starts with the Soviet Union.
Well, Russian influence.
So it starts with the Soviet Union, and then you see over time, you know, that all the satellite countries are disappearing.
And then you see NATO that starts as a smaller entity, and it just starts swallowing up countries that used to have Russian influence.
If you were a Russian and you saw that map, it would look like NATO is an offensive force.
Because NATO keeps essentially taking new countries, in a way.
Swallowing them up. It would look aggressive to you if you saw it on the map and you were Russia.
It would look like Russia was shrinking and NATO was increasing.
And this might be the final...
This might have been the point where Putin just said, you know, I can see Poland.
They don't even speak Russian.
But when you're talking about Ukraine, that's like just an insult.
It's like it goes from strategic things you don't like to personal insult.
And I think that's maybe what Ukraine did.
I think it crossed the line into personal insult.
Personal meaning not just Putin, but almost personal to the Russian personality, if you will.
Maddow has proof.
Okay. Nazis and commies, right?
Only the eastern part of Ukraine speaks Russian.
Yeah, but realistically, they need to control it all while they're there.
You could imagine that they would say, oh, we only want the eastern part, and that would make their argument stronger.
But as long as they're there, why would they let any of it potentially go to NATO? He invaded Georgia in 2008.
Now, Georgia...
All right, let me reveal my lack of foreign experience.
What language do the Georgians speak?
Fact check me.
What language do the Georgians speak?
Georgian is a language, right?
But they would also, I imagine, speak Russian for practical reasons.
Some Russian, but there's a Georgian Russian, yeah.
Yeah, I guess I don't know the background of Georgia so much.
But I don't think that there's anything that's, you know, arguably Russian left, is there?
I can certainly see them trying to swallow up everything that's arguably Russian.
And then Belarus, what is the language they speak in Belarus?
Belarusian? Is there a national Belarus?
Is it all Russian? Okay.
Well, I guess we're all getting a lesson on that part of the country.
Guess what topic I didn't mention today?
Yeah, you know. Yep.
There's a big old topic.
Big old topic I didn't mention today.
Doesn't that feel good?
I can't give you good news about Ukraine.
I can't do it.
But if you've been keeping track, today is the first day in two years that a certain topic did not cross my live stream.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a weird coincidence that we get this new national problem or international problem at the same time that the old one seems to go away.
