Brace and Liz record on February 26, 2023, admitting their failed prediction that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine—mocking CIA conspiracy theories while Brace cites skepticism of U.S. claims about foreign threats. Liz dismisses overanalysis, calling the war a tragedy she never expected after Putin’s September 2022 recognition of Ukrainian separatist regions. Their shock mirrors broader miscalculations as the conflict escalates beyond pre-speech warnings, leaving them frustrated by political posturing amid personal struggles like Brace’s COVID recovery and Liz’s exasperation with ideological fixation over human cost. [Automatically generated summary]
Just to temporally anchor us, it is Saturday, February 26, 2023 at 1.32 p.m. Pacific Time.
Yeah.
So 2023, just to lie to people.
Oh, wait, did you say 2023?
Yes, but let's see.
Oh, I didn't even catch it.
February 26th, 2023.
Before we start, I do want to say that now there's definitive proof that we aren't intelligence assets because we got the intelligence wrong.
We didn't think this would happen.
Well, we could be part of a massive disinformation campaign by the CIA to lead podcast listeners astray.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to another episode of True and On.
My name is Brace.
Hello, I'm Liz.
We are, of course, as always, joined by producer Yank Chomsky.
And you already said what the podcast was.
I know.
I've never done that before.
I don't know.
We were just getting into it.
Yeah, that was a weird.
I feel ashamed for having done that.
Well, we're here because Russia invaded Ukraine a couple days ago.
Yes.
Yeah, I'd missed that.
But you texted me about it this morning.
Frankly, I'm going to need to see some more evidence of it.
Yeah, you need to catch up on the news.
Yeah.
I mean, I've had COVID.
All right.
I have long.
Brace is the opposite of me and almost everyone else, where he can't stop telling everyone that he has COVID.
No, I only told people yesterday once I was basically over it.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I felt ashamed of having gotten it now.
Now it's a mark of it's not as cool now, I suppose.
I mean, it's like everyone else got it in December.
I like, I don't, don't get me started on this.
I was given it to take me out of the equation.
Okay.
Let's talk.
Yeah.
Because we're here to talk about what's been happening in Ukraine.
Yeah.
And I want to start with a Maya culpable.
Well, Maya not culpable.
I want to be clear on that, but a maya culpa because I was wrong.
Dead wrong on this.
I thought Ukraine was not going to get invaded by Russia.
And it turns out the opposite of that happened.
Yeah, I also was wrong.
I think that although I'm not going to, I don't really, no Maya culpa for me.
I don't really care, to be honest, about being wrong.
I'm going to say, like, there's, I'm not going to, like, I don't know.
I think there's some people that out there that care more about like, I don't know, I've noticed this at least over the past couple of days that like everyone seems a little confused about like, what's the take?
What's the right take?
What should the left take be?
The left take should be this.
The take should be this.
What side am I on?
Like, you know, who's what?
And so there seems to be a lot of like people looking at kind of like, you know, tallying up the different points on each side and seeing what's what.
And I just don't care about any of that.
I'm not going to like fucking apologize for wish casting that war not happen.
I didn't want to believe that Putin would enforce his red line, you know.
And he did.
I think if people listen to those episodes, they shouldn't be in any kind of, they shouldn't be confused why this is happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think for me, I, there's, there's a, because I've been thinking about it for like the, you know, basically since this happened.
And I can't remember when we recorded those episodes, but it was before Putin gave his speech and recognized the republics in eastern Ukraine.
Yeah.
And then obviously before the invasion.
And I'm trying to think of like, well, there was, you know, when it happened, the night that it happened, I was, I was pretty shocked.
And I think a large part of the reason of that is A, that, I mean, the most basic reason I think I got it wrong is that I don't believe basically anything that the US government says, especially about a foreign adversary, right?
The same people that said that like Russia was going to invade Ukraine are the same people that has basically fed us bullshit since I was like a kid, right?
And I think a general heuristic that I've taken is like, well, basically don't believe anything that these people say.