All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Nov. 21, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
42:47
20241121_us-missiles-fired-as-putin-threatens-ww3-feat-benn
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Is This War Winnable 00:06:05
He's a dictator?
Let me finish.
Nobody can finish this war.
I want this.
America did not overthrow the government.
You can look at the crowds.
Oh, shut up, man.
With this guy talking about, oh, we just have to help them win.
That's what they said for 20 years in Afghanistan.
While the Ukrainians are already running out of men, and Jake Sullivan is demanding that they increase conscription.
That is slavery.
According to this guy, democratic revolutions are never possible.
We had one in this country in 1776.
What are you talking about?
I didn't say that.
Why don't you argue with something I said, you dumb bastard?
Soviet military tactics and their doctrine always permitted the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
They would be sitting there in some Dr. Strangelove-like situation.
So this is just money that will be carried on the depths and the backs of our grandchildren's grandchildren forever for a Ukrainian war that somebody has yet to quite frankly explain why we are funding or fighting.
President Biden's last stand in the Oval Office is to dramatically change the rules in a conflict 5,000 miles away.
The U.S. has given Ukraine its blessing to fire long-range American missiles into Russia, and it's already done so.
The UK has now done the same.
Now Vladimir Putin is changing the rules too.
The Kremlin says it will consider an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, as a joint assault on Russia.
This wouldn't be Putin's first empty nuclear threat, far from it.
But many people are furious at what they see as a reckless gamble taken so close to the inauguration of a new president with new plans.
And President Trump's plans could be very different indeed.
He campaigned on ending this war without saying how he would do that.
Many of his supporters believe that MAGA means American money for Americans first.
But where will that leave the Ukrainians fighting for their independence and their freedom?
How worried should we be about the prospect of nuclear catastrophe?
And if Trump's supporters believe in peace through the projection of power, will they back him if he follows through in using it?
To debate this, I'm joined by the host of the Benny Show, Benny Johnson, United States Air Force veteran and YouTube commentator, Jake Brow, author of New Book Provoked, How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and in the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton and the former Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs, General Mark Kemmy.
Well, welcome to all of you.
General Kimmy, let me start with you as the senior military man in the room.
I've taken a position from the start of this.
And my brother was a British Army colonel.
My brother-in-law was a British Army colonel.
Lots of military in my family.
And it's interesting because they've completely disagreed about this from the start.
I've taken a view of being very pro-Ukraine's right to defend itself against what I viewed as an illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic European country.
And that everything that's followed since is in that context.
But it's interesting because my brother, for example, would say it's not a war that Ukraine can win, that Russia with its superior power was never going to lose this war.
What do you feel from a military perspective first?
What do you feel about where this war now is?
And do you agree that it's something that Ukraine can't win?
Well, listen, Piers, first of all, I think it's important to understand that two things can be right at the same time.
It is certainly the case that a sovereign nation has the right and the ability to defend itself if attacked.
But I've written a number of pieces for Wall Street Journal.
Three months after the war started, I said this is going to turn out to be a stalemate.
So in many ways, I think it's inevitable that our policy, the United States policy, was give them just enough to fight, but not enough to win, is exactly what got us into this position right now.
despite what's happened in the last week with President Biden and his team dumping more equipment in there, I don't think this is a winnable war if you define winning by President Zelensky's old standard, which is retake and restore territorial integrity, take back Crimea and make Russia pay for this war.
If that's the definition of victory, there's not a chance that Zelensky can win this war.
And before I go to the others, this argument, which I know some of them will put forward, that basically Ukraine brought this on themselves and that it was the encroachment as Russia saw it, the encroachment of NATO, which was then going to include Ukraine, and that they had no choice but to defend themselves against this NATO encroachment.
What do you say to that argument?
Well, what I'd say is that's been the great debate over NATO enlargement since 1991, at that time when President Secretary James Baker agreed with Genscher that there would not be any eastward expansion.
We must understand that Russia has as much paranoia about foreign forces creeping up to their borders as the United States does.
The only difference is that we've had that doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine, since 1807, that we will not allow another country to encroach into our hemisphere.
So I think it's reasonable concern that the Russians had that they would, we would, NATO would put military forces in Ukraine.
And that unfortunately gave a lot of heartburn and heartache and stomachache to Russia.
Don't think they needed to attack, but it's unfortunate that they did.
Benny Johnson, welcome back, John Senson.
Always great to have you.
You and I don't agree about this, but explain to me, I mean, your position, I'm going to miscategorize it, but I think your position is the kind of making America great theme means that America should put itself and its own interests first.
And those interests do not include racing to the defense of a country thousands of miles away that's already had a lot of billions of American money poured into it and can't defeat the enemy anyway.
Is that broadly where you sit?
The Unthinkable Republican Shift 00:14:52
Yes.
And if you go talk to the progressive left or if you go talk to anyone at a MAGA rally, they'll tell you the exact same thing.
This is one of the most unifying issues in America right now is that Americans are done having our greatest treasure, which is the lives of Americans poured into countries that are not our own, defending territories and borders that are not our own.
And then other treasures of Americans like our national debt, our actual monies being spent to the tune of $35 trillion in debt.
What is that going to leave our children?
It certainly hasn't made the world a safer place, peers.
And I'll say this, it is suicidal for Joe Biden on his way out to sabotage a peace that President Trump has promised to bring to this region.
And I hope he does, because an ugly peace is better than a hot war, for Joe Biden to say that American missiles should be lobbed into the heart of Russia.
Would you stand for it if Russian missiles were being lobbed into the Midwest?
I certainly wouldn't.
Russian missiles are being lobbed indiscriminately into a European sovereign democratic country.
They've also just recruited 10,000 North Korean soldiers to join the war.
And I'm just curious, Betty, genuinely curious.
I hear you.
I respect your opinion.
Genuinely curious, if you went back 25, 30 years, the idea that Republicans would be happy for a Russian dictator helped by North Korea to invade a sovereign democratic European country and actually want Putin to keep what he's stolen would be unthinkable.
I mean, I think, for example, I'm not going to allow people to do that.
Well, okay, you can answer, but I just want to ask you to ask you, man, but I'm not going to categorize that.
I'm not going to allow you to categorize that.
No, he's happy about this.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, let me finish.
He's a dictator.
Let me finish.
Nobody fights this war.
I don't want this war to happen.
I want this war to be won.
I don't want this war to be happening at all.
I want there to be peace.
I want people to stop dying.
Much like Israel and Gaza, I want peace.
I do not want this to drag on so that it creates a nuclear conflict that might draft my children or your children into another war.
You have military-age sons, peers.
Would you want them to fight in Ukraine?
The point I was going to make before you interrupted me was...
Would you?
You have military-age sons.
You want them to go fight in Ukraine?
I will answer that question in a moment.
But what I will say to you first of all is what I was trying to say before you jumped in, which was, what is the difference?
Just ideologically, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Kuwait wasn't a NATO country.
Why did Desert Storm happen?
Why did General Norman Swarshkov, encouraged by every Republican I've ever met in my life, encourage the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait?
What is the difference?
You were basically supporting Kuwait's right to defend itself and to have freedom from a rampaging dictator from Iraq.
Why are the different rules now?
What change?
There's so much that's changed, especially in the policy of the Republican Party, which is where I thought you were going with this, Piers, which is why I cracked a smile, because the Republican Party itself has now taken a stance against neocons.
I would argue probably the worst decision Kamala Harris made on the campaign trail.
That's a long list.
Piers, I wonder if you'd agree with me on this, is to bring Liz Cheney on the trail with us.
Totally agree.
And to say, Liz Cheney's going to be my secretary of defense.
Totally agree.
You go and say that to Arab communities in Michigan and you wonder why you lose Michigan.
I think it's suicidal.
I think people are done with neocon ideology.
It's your point about Saddam Hussein.
I'll say the same thing that I'll say about Putin.
I'll say the exact same thing.
These are dictators.
They're bloodthirsty.
I don't think they're to be trusted.
I don't like these actions.
But let me tell you, I am an American first.
I was born on this soil.
This is my country.
I am a Native American.
I'm born here.
My grandparents were born here.
I do not want my children, and I have four peers, to die for Iraq.
I don't want my children to die for Afghanistan or die fighting ISIS or Russia in Ukrainian soil.
I think that is antithetical to the founding of this nation and antithetical to our great founding father, George Washington, who warned in his last declaration to the American people as he was leaving office, do not get embroiled in foreign entanglements.
It's the destroyer of nations.
Okay, one thing.
We've seen it with the British Empire.
Piers, sorry to, sorry.
We've seen it with the British Empire.
We've seen it with every empire that has existed with the Roman Empire all the way through.
And I think we should follow these wise words in this country.
And one final point to you before I go to the others, which is if a deal was done and Putin got to keep the land he's stolen along with Crimea and his next action is to go and invade Poland, just as Nazi Germany did in 1939, what should America do in that position, given that Poland is part of NATO?
Again, that would be suicidal for Russia because Poland is part of NATO and then there would be a lot of people.
What should America do?
Well, Article 5 would be enacted.
So what do you think morally?
What do you think morally America should do in that eventuality?
I will have to lead it.
I'll have to leave it up to the military mind.
Some of them are on this panel.
What I'll say this, I'll say this, and this is my stance permanently, Piers, which is that an ugly peace in the Ukrainian war, an ugly peace, and virtually in all situations, an ugly peace is better than a hot war.
Okay.
My estimate.
I mean, I find it strange that you wouldn't say, obviously, you've got to kick him out of Poland.
Let me go to Jake Brow, U.S. That's what Article 5 would be.
Article 5 would be an attack.
No, no, I know.
I know what would happen.
I know what's supposed to happen.
I was curious what your moral view of it is, given what you said earlier.
Jake Brow, U.S. Air Force veteran, thank you for your service.
Obviously, I know you don't agree here.
I am genuinely, it is very surprising how the politics of this kind of thing have changed so dramatically.
It would have been unthinkable 30 years ago to have a conversation with conservatives on the airways where they would talk this way, I think, about this.
I'm not saying, by the way, that Benny's wrong, and I'm not saying he's not right that a lot of Americans agree with him.
But how do you feel?
The Conservatives really had their act together in the George W. Bush years, right, everybody?
Right.
Yeah, I mean, what's your view of this?
They were really great back then.
So, Piers, I'm going to defer to your former UK prime minister who stated this week that there's this segment of the Republican Party that has a weird homoerotic fixation on Putin.
They love his tough guy image.
They love his tough guy politics.
Doesn't appeal to me, but it does appeal to a certain segment of the Republican Party.
And to bring up the neocons and what happened 20, 25 years ago, I didn't support the Iraq War.
I was 19 in 2003.
And I'm firmly in support of this war, supporting Ukraine, because this is a generational fight.
History is repeating itself.
All the claims that Putin is making about Russian speakers in the Donbass region and past territorial claims, it's the exact same argument that Hitler made in World War II, going into the Rhineland and then Czechoslovakia and, of course, Poland.
And the other panel member talking about America First, we had an America First movement in 1938, 1939, 1940 to keep the United States out of World War II.
I don't want to go to war.
I don't like war.
But sometimes democratic nations aren't given a choice.
What is happening today has never happened since the advent of nuclear weapons.
A nuclear-powered state has said this territory used to belong to us.
We want it back.
Give it to us because we have nuclear weapons.
This is not something the Western Alliance or the international community can tolerate.
Nuclear states talking about historical claims, saying, give us back territory that once belonged to us.
Otherwise, we're going to nuke you.
Day two of this full-scale invasion, and we just went over 1,000 days.
Day two, Putin raised the equivalent of his DEF CON saying, don't help Kiev.
Don't give any assistance.
Otherwise, we might use nukes.
And for a thousand days, they haven't used nukes because they can't.
I can lay out the arguments why, but this is not tolerable because it'll never end.
If this works, it will embolden dictators around the world.
The first group who already have nukes to start talking about historical claims because they know the international community is not going to stop them.
And any dictators that want to go and get back historical territory, they're going to want nukes.
And for any smaller country who doesn't feel defended by the international community, they're also going to want nukes now because the United States, France, UK, the democratic countries that have nuclear weapons are not going to help them.
They're not going to defend them.
Okay.
Let me go to Scott because you've literally written the book about this, Provoked, How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine.
There's no doubt when you look at the full history going back to the start of the 90s.
It's complicated.
There's no doubt.
It is a complicated history that it's not clear-cut.
It's not simple, I don't think.
A bit of American meddling in there, a bit of Russia meddling.
Everyone's meddling around in Ukraine.
I think the theme of your book, though, is that very much that Russia was provoked into waging this war.
Why do you say that?
Well, of course, it was.
It was American meddling, as you say, going back really to the end of the last Cold War, as I document in the book.
And I would object to sort of the way that you paraphrase it earlier in the show that I think you're implying that I would argue that Kiev brought this on themselves, as the title, subtitle there says, Washington is the one who brought this.
I wasn't talking about you directly there.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
It's okay.
I just want to clarify.
And I'm not arguing either that they gave the Russians no choice because I think they had lots of choices to do this.
That still doesn't absolve the responsibility of the Americans.
And basically, to sum it up, it's broken promises on NATO expansion.
It's missile defense systems installed in Romania in violation of the founding act of 1997.
And it's essentially an American-backed side in a long-term civil war that's going on in the country after America overthrew the government twice in 10 years in the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Maidan Revolution of 2014, because the wrong guy kept winning the election.
And as the Americans said over and over again, and I document it as thoroughly as could be, we are taking Ukraine away from Russia.
This is not allowing Ukraine to be independent.
This is America forcing the issue.
And as everyone on this panel knows, the status quo in Crimea held from 1991 all the way through 2014 until America overthrew the government there for the second time.
And the new government...
America did not overthrow the government.
You can look at the crowds.
Oh, shut up, man.
You know what?
We heard your piece.
They immediately threatened to kick the Russians out of the Sevastopol naval base.
Only then did the Russians change the status quo on the Crimean Peninsula, which, by the way, belonged to Russia since the 1780s, since before the American Constitution.
Should we give Alaska back?
Anyway, this guy's an idiot, but if you want me to keep talking with you, Pierce, I'll have to.
No, no, finish your point.
This guy sounds, I'll tell you what.
With this guy talking about, oh, we just have to help them win.
That's what they said for 20 years in Afghanistan.
We just have to help the Tajiks and the Hazaras and the Uzbeks crush the Pashtuns.
And once we're done, it'll be great.
We can't sell them out now.
We can't leave now.
And then what happened?
Hundreds of thousands of people killed and they lost anyway.
And everyone knows it's in the Wall Street Journal.
It's in the Council on Foreign Relations Journal, Foreign Affairs.
Even Haas, Richard Haas, the former president of the CFR, has a new piece in foreign affairs saying, give it up.
We know that there's nothing America can do to help Ukraine retake the Donbass Zaprozha curse on Crimea.
They can't, unless you want to call in the B-2s and the B-52s and the U.S. Navy, at which point we have a general war.
So the war is lost.
So this guy can bloviate all he wants about how, no, it would be wrong to turn our back now.
The Russians haven't even launched a full-scale mobilization in their country.
This is a police action to them while the Ukrainians are already running out of men and Jake Sullivan is demanding that they increase conscription.
That is slavery on behalf of a war.
We're looking at anti-war.com today.
We have the head-house conspiracy.
The majority of Ukrainians want to negotiate.
There's your democracy for you.
The majority of Ukrainians know that what I just said is true.
Even Yulia Timoshenko a year ago said it's time to negotiate.
Okay.
This guy's a fool.
Okay.
Well, before I go to General Kimmett, again, I want to just get Jake to just respond to that because you're a fool, apparently.
Well, according to this guy, democratic revolutions are never possible.
We had one in this country in 1776.
I didn't say that.
Why don't you argue with something I said, you dumb bastard?
Wow.
Okay.
You got some answers.
I knew that was never possible.
America spent $100 million to overthrow the government in Ukraine.
These guys on this panel are arguing that the people of the former Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
They're saying that as soon as Putin installs a strong man in any of these countries that remains corrupt and loyal to him, change is never possible.
Viktor Yanukovych was not killed.
He was not imprisoned.
He fled.
He fled back to Russia.
He fled back to his masters.
And in my opinion, when you're the president of a country and you have to spend 100 million people on him, look, man.
Okay, so I'm being serious here.
I genuinely want to understand the conspiracy that the United States is behind the color revolutions of the Soviet Union.
You've never heard of the national endowment.
Because of democracy, huh?
When Russia invaded, why did we offer them a ride?
Why the delay in tanks?
Why the delay in high Mars?
Why the delay in Patriot systems?
Nuclear Weapons Doctrine Debate 00:04:21
Why the delay in F-16s?
Why are we just giving approval for Atakums this week after 1,000 days of the war if the conspiracy always was the United States was trying to separate Ukraine from Russia, that we're trying to install a CIA-backed government or whatever?
I don't understand this conspiracy when we haven't done everything to fully support Ukraine.
Okay, let me explain.
I don't understand.
Okay, let me just time out for a second.
I want to bring in General Kimmett.
I want to bring in General Kimmett.
I'll come back to you, Scott.
You asked me something, Pierce, so let me answer it.
Okay.
You're completely mixing up what I said about 2014 within questions about 22.
Clearly, as everyone on this panel knows, they announced repeatedly in the New York Times and the Washington Post in March and April of 22 that the purpose of the war now is to prolong it for the strategic weakening of Russia.
So no amount of the West.
Russia can stop this war at any time.
Russia's state of the US.
No amount of the West can continue this war.
No amount of the weapons you just named would have turned the tide at that point.
Okay, let me bring it up.
The Biden administration decided to trickle the weapons in, as you correctly describe, in order to keep the war going.
All right, let me bring in General Kimmett.
I want to bring in General Kimmett now.
General Kimmett, a lot of people.
Hang on.
Hang on, Scott.
Let me bring in the others.
There are foolish people in Afghanistan in the 80s.
Scott, let me bring in General Kimmett.
He's been waiting very...
I will come back to you.
There are four of us on the thing.
All right, guys, guys, please.
Time out.
Time out, please.
General Kimmett.
Thank you for your patience.
A lot of people are very concerned, General Kimmett, about the possibility of this developing into a nuclear conflict.
I've never understood that because every red line that's been crossed in this war, of which there have been multiple Putin red lines crossed, he's not done anything despite threatening to use nukes all the time and his people threatening to use nukes all the time.
I don't understand why anyone thinks he would use nuclear weapons given the establishment of mad mutually assured destruction.
Why would he press a button that leads to his instant death?
Am I misguided?
Am I naive?
Or is that the military view too?
Well, let me give you the other side of the argument.
It doesn't matter what I believe, but the other side of the argument to argue against your point would be that Soviet military tactics and their doctrine always permitted the use of tactical nuclear weapons, artillery-launched nuclear weapons on the battlefield if the country of Russia was invaded.
There is a legitimate doctrinal purpose for using artillery-launched nuclear weapons.
Once they went into Kursk, I mean, you're talking about a nuclear weapon that really isn't much more than about five or six 155 rounds hitting the ground at the same time.
So my view would be doctrinally, Putin has an argument to make.
His country has been invaded.
His doctrine says, use nukes if we're invaded.
Now, whether he will or not, I think, is a different story.
As has been mentioned a number of times so far, we've allowed ourselves to be self-deterred throughout this war.
You ask, I don't believe that your guest that says we're doing this intentionally to bleed out the Russians by giving dribs and drabs of equipment to the Ukrainians so that we can go on a killing spree for a thousand days at this point.
I would simply say no administration is that smart and no administration is that stupid.
I've sat in the National Security Council situation room and heard the arguments that are made between the State Department, the Defense Department, and the President and the National Security Advisor and the notion that they would be sitting there in some Dr. Strangelove-like situation, you know, wringing their hands or wrapping their hands and saying, let's bleed these guys out for a couple of years because that's good for America.
I just, I did not see that in my years in the situation room, and I'm surprised that anybody would think that this government is either that smart or that stupid.
Changing America's War Mindset 00:03:19
And before I go to that, hang on one second.
Hang on one second.
Hang on.
Can I please address that?
No, I'm going to come to Benny in a second.
I want to ask General Kimberly before we go to Benny.
But he was remarking on something I said.
I know, but everyone must get a fair chance to speak.
Before I go to Benny, Benny's point is that everything has changed in America.
A lot of Republicans who would have endorsed a lot of those, as he put it, the neocon wars, and I opposed the Iraq war as editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper here very vociferously and helped lead a march for 2 million people through the streets of London.
Tony Blair went against the will of the people, as far as I'm concerned.
But his point that really Republicans are driving this movement in America are they're just sick and tired of fighting other people's wars.
And that actually there is a real shift in will that is becoming much more instant in America.
And I've heard it said that America's fought wars for the last 60, 70 years and barely won anything.
Because, you know, what do you call a win?
What do you call victory?
And a lot of them have been a massive, gigantic mess, whether it's Vietnam, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Afghanistan.
So I can understand why people like Benny are like, we're done with this.
What do you feel, General, before I go to Benny?
What do you feel about that from, again, from a military point of view?
Well, first of all, we do what our nation tells us, unless it's illegal or moral.
But what I would say is, let's not forget the Second Gulf War, 99 senators on both sides of the aisle out of a Congress of 100 senators voted for the use of force in Iraq.
Now, they were clutching pearls and wringing their hands about two years later when it didn't turn out the way we thought it was going to.
And one can argue about why that happened, whether it's poor intelligence, poor tactics, whatever.
But it's not just the Americans that the Republicans either want to start war or stop war.
It's really both sides of the aisle.
And I think both sides of the aisle will say, look, America is willing to fight a war that's an existential threat to the United States of America.
But these optional wars, we shouldn't be rushing to war just because there's somebody pointing a gun at either us or our allies.
There ought to be a higher bar, the Brzezinski rules that we used to talk about before we start putting American sons and daughters into combat.
And we seem to have lowered that bar ever since 1982 when we, or 1983, when we valiantly parachuted into Grenada to stop that hotspot of red terrorism.
But no, I just think that, look, anybody that says America should go to all wars or America should go to none war, no wars is just being foolish.
We just have to be more discriminate about the wars that we fight.
We need to have a better conversation about going into war before we send the 82nd Airborne in.
Benny, I do think it's a really interesting debate.
I do not agree more.
Yeah, it's a really interesting debate.
And it's interesting to hear the general talk that way because it's not a million miles really from what you were saying.
Yes, thank you, General.
That was very sound.
Yeah, it was very interesting, I thought.
Very reasonable.
Very, very reasonable.
Also, Benny, Trump, you know, Trump did not go to war or didn't start a new war during his 10 years president.
I've talked to him about this.
Who Pays For This Conflict 00:02:57
He just sees it as bad business.
I mean, it's good business for the people that build all the munitions, but it's bad business for America PLC.
Wars are incredibly expensive.
And as Trump put it, what do we get out of all this at the end of the day?
And the answer is often a bigger mess than you start.
You look at the Iraq war, for example, out of that came ISIS, which caused merry hell around the world for years.
So other than that and wrecking Iraq, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of that war was.
It was revenge against a country which had nothing to do with 9-11, etc.
So I don't want to go over each of the conflicts, but Trump definitely seems to be with you on this, right?
And do you think that is becoming almost the mainstream now with Republicans?
The American people are with me, Piers, because the American people are grounded in reality.
I have an article right here on my phone that I'm reading right now.
It is breaking news at time of recording, Piers, that says that Joe Biden has forgiven the loan of up to the tune of $10 billion that was given to Ukrainian armed forces.
So this is just money that will be carried on the debts in the backs of our grandchildren's grandchildren forever for a Ukrainian war that somebody has yet to quite frankly explain why we are funding or fighting.
And this is something that is catastrophic to the American mind when they can't afford groceries.
When a mother is standing in line wondering how she will feed her children or how she will fill up her gas tank or why there are so many massive potholes on her road with a house that she has to rent a single room in because she can't, God help her, afford a home.
That's utterly out of reach and unfathomable in the current economy.
And she's sitting here looking at Joe Biden forgiving the loans of Ukraine to go slaughter the flower of Russia and Ukraine, these young children that are fighting and dying in these trenches.
And she's wondering, what the hell?
I can't feed my kids.
And Taylor Swift and Lizzo and Oprah and all these billionaires are out telling me this is great.
This is good.
No, it's not good.
It's how you lose an entire country.
And it's a horrible thing to do.
The American people.
And I'm telling you, Piers, because I have a man on the street show and I go and I talk to both sides.
You can go to the far left, Palestinian protests.
You can go to the far right, Israel, and or all the way to the, you know, the heart of MAGA, and they'll all say the same thing.
And I ask them these questions, Piers, and I'm telling you, this has got to be a 90-10 issue in America.
If any politicians listening, this is your 90-10 issue.
Americans want money spent in America first to improve the lives of Americans first.
And we have big hearts with the biggest, I think the biggest hearts in the world to help out those in need.
Prioritizing Americans First 00:10:42
But we are sick and tired of being sold out for endless wars, and you just listed many of them.
For my generation, which is millennial, it's Iraq and Afghanistan.
And how did we leave Afghanistan with 13 body bags in an avoidable, chaotic, disastrous, nightmarish, suicidal mission that got us effing nothing, Piers?
And we're sick of it.
Jay, your response to that.
America's not fighting this war.
There's no American forces on the ground in Ukraine fighting this war for Ukraine.
So just keep saying America should be fighting this war.
Fighting this war with a lot of people murdering our children, sir.
Concerning all of the past wars that America has been involved in, we can't overlook the Cold War.
Is the world better off today because of the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Is the world better off today with the Kremlin and the Russians weakened?
The 14 Soviet republics that broke away.
Some of them have gone through peace democratic revolutions.
Look at the economic miracle of Eastern Europe and all these countries joining the EU, joining NATO.
Do any of them want to return back to the Russian sphere of influence?
What this war is about is does Ukraine have the right of self-determination?
And other people on this panel are saying no.
Because the Russians have nukes, because we don't want confrontation with Russia, if Russia wants to go into Kiev and install a puppet regime and basically absorb it back into their empire, like they've done with Belarus, they've got troops in Transnistria, they've got troops in Syria, they've got troops in Georgia.
The pattern keeps repeating.
And Putin's never going to stop.
He's dictator for life.
He could potentially live another 20 years.
These wars are never going to end.
When you look at the stuff they're teaching their kids in Russian schools, they're preparing them for war for the next 20 decades.
Putin wants his empire back.
And I'm going to continue arguing that is not in the best interest of America.
A resurgent Soviet Russian empire dominating Central Asia, dominating the Caucasus, dominating Eastern Europe, committing acts of hybrid warfare all the time.
The Russians with impunity are poisoning people, destroying underwater cables, conducting cyber attacks.
When is America going to say is enough is enough?
We're not going to let Russia have their empire back.
And it's pennies.
The billions that we've sent in old equipment.
We're spending the money here in the United States.
Defense production is ramping up here to rebuild our industrial base to keep the world safer.
Peace through strength.
That's the legacy of Ronald Reagan.
And I don't know why I have to remind Republicans of what Ronald Reagan achieved, defeating the evil empire.
And I don't understand the people on this panel who are saying, let Russia have it.
Let Russia obtain this population, these people, their resources, and then go to the next war.
Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Moldova.
No, I agree with you, but others don't.
Scott Holton's one of them.
Wait, wait a second.
Russia blew up the pipeline.
Hold on.
Do you believe that Russia blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?
Like, do you have better sourcing than the New York Times on this?
Do you actually care about Russia pipeline?
The Nord Stream pipeline?
You just said that Russia blew up.
I don't care about the pipeline.
But you just said that in your argument.
So now you don't care about your own argument a minute ago?
How many people died with the pipeline blew up, dude?
I don't care about this pipeline.
I don't know why people keep talking about this pipeline.
So you don't care that Ukraine blew up the pipeline?
No, it's war.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
They're blowing up oil refineries.
What's the difference between an oil refinery and a pipeline?
So you're okay with Ukraine blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, even though that went against them.
We don't have evidence that they did blow up the pipeline, but if they did, it's war.
Russia is blowing up all their thermal power plants right now.
They're blowing up coffee shops.
They're blowing up supermarkets.
They're blowing up hospitals, children's hospitals.
Children's hospitals are being blown up by the Russians.
I don't give a damn about the pipeline.
Okay, let me bring in Scott.
Scott, final word to you.
And I want it to be this question really that you address.
What do you want Donald Trump to do once he takes office in January?
What do you want him to do about not just this war, but maybe widen it and to say generally as a foreign policy in the next four years?
Obviously, the Israeli mass war is still raging and so on.
What doctrine do you want him to have?
Well, I prefer pure Ron Paulian non-interventionism and abandon all of all these alliances and come home.
And people can make all their Hitler analogies all they want, but Hitler's long gone and so is Joe Stalin.
Putin is not a romantic.
Putin is a bureaucrat.
And the fact that, you know, this claim that he wants to rebuild the whole Russian empire and all that is nonsense.
This is a border dispute and America forced the issue through our intervention in Ukraine over the last especially 20 years, as I demonstrate in the book.
That doesn't mean that he's coming for Poland and the Baltics and everybody else next.
This is just essentially fantasy land.
That's not what this war is about.
That's what they say in the Kremlin state.
There's a long-term civil war going on since 2000 for eight years.
And it took eight years before he rolled in a full-scale invasion to reverse the civil war that had already been raging since Obama overthrew the government in 2014.
Okay, so it's just silly to say that this is all about preventing him from taking over the whole world and all these World War II fantasies.
This just has nothing to do with that at all.
But all other things being equal, what Donald Trump should do on this issue is he should just be honest with Ukraine.
They already accept this.
The last general in charge got fired, Zaluzny, for saying that, look, we have to negotiate.
We're out of men.
We're not in any position to make the change here.
Now, you could argue that if France and Germany and Poland and the United States sent our NATO forces into Ukraine, we could liberate the Donbass.
But that would be at the cost of thermonuclear war.
And no, the sovereignty over Dipronovskofrovsk over there is not worth it.
Nobody in America has ever even heard of these oblasts before.
And no, I'm not willing to trade Travis and Williamson County, Texas for Dipronovsky-Flovsk and for Luhansk Oblast.
I'm just not.
And no one in America is.
And as I said before, the majority of the people of Ukraine want to negotiate too.
Even some of the radical rightists have said, you know what?
Let's just let the Donbass go.
We hate them anyway.
It's not even a real country anyway.
So let's just be rid of them and then we'll be happier and we can move west without their burden.
Czechoslovakia broke up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Nobody thought that that was the world's greatest sin.
And it's too late now anyway, Pierce.
If maybe if Barack Obama had given Kiev some H-bombs back in 2016, then Russia would have never been able to do this.
But there's nothing you could do to reverse it now.
So we need to negotiate.
And the fact is, they're going to lose those four oblasts because even if, and I used to think maybe we could negotiate two out of four or something like that.
But the thing is, Kiev already cut off the fresh water to Crimea, and Russia has to control Zaprozha and Kherson in order to guarantee those fresh water supplies.
They're not going to give up that so-called land bridge.
It's already over.
The question now is whether they're going to lose Kharkiv and Odessa or whether we can call it now and quit while they're only so far behind.
And I want to address to the general's point real quickly here.
And I show this in the book.
And I had missed this before the war because I was doing something else and I missed it.
But there are so many quotes of the American establishment and including Admiral Stravridis and others saying, we don't know how to defeat an insurgency, but we sure know how to back one.
And what we're going to do is we want to replicate the Afghanistan war.
And they weren't talking about our Afghanistan war.
They were talking about the 1980s Operation Cyclone.
And they said, what we'll do is, see, they assumed that the Ukrainian military would be broken and that it would be an insurgency from the get-go and that we would back this insurgency as long as it took to bankrupt the Russians and force them out the hard way the same way that Osama bin Laden just got Bush and Obama to do to us in Afghanistan over the last generation.
And they said, let's do that again.
They said it over and over again.
Right now, we're on plan B, where the Ukrainian military wasn't broken.
They stood.
And so America has been able to back them.
If they were to finally be broken and Russia were to dominate the place, all other things being equal, a status quo, our government would go back to Plan A, backing the militias of Ukraine against the Russian occupation for the long term.
And this is just crazy.
And as the general said, we actually are backing Ukrainian forces inside Russia.
We have crossed the line of their doctrine of nuclear use.
Now, I'm not saying they're going to.
I think they're going to hold their horses and negotiate here.
I think the White House calculated that, well, now's the time to do this because Putin won't do anything crazy because he's going to wait on Trump.
So now we can go ahead and bloody their nose a little bit more.
But even the Reuters piece says they're just trying to get one peg ahead for a better position to negotiate because they know that the status quo is the absolute best that they could possibly hope for.
Okay.
Listen, I just want to say that's one of the best panels I've had in a long time, right?
I learned a lot of new stuff.
I heard a lot of passionate views argued extremely articulately.
I thank you all.
I thought that was really a meaningful discussion about a complex issue.
And we'll have to hope and pray this gets resolved soon.
But how that gets done is going to be very complicated, I think.
But I'll be fascinated to see what happens.
Thank you to my panel.
I appreciate it.
This new Trump administration.
They're calling it the Avengers.
You're a fool if you're going to predict the outcome of that.
He has Musk.
He has RFK.
Ramaswamy.
These are formidable people.
These aren't people who need the political power.
Those are the people you surround yourself with if you're out on a quest.
Putin will hold himself in check until Trump takes power and that the war will come to a rapid end.
I'm strapped in for the ride.
Complicated Future Resolution 00:00:28
My father, he died recently.
Man with very high standards.
My deepest condolence.
I think I remember mostly reading with you.
That was so much fun.
I thought so.
I can see how moved you are.
You say here he could be fearsome.
Here's you always make me cry when you interview me.
Do you believe in God?
Do you think there is a heaven?
The problem is there's a whole literature that Richard Dawkins knows nothing about.
Go to hell.
You're not stopping
Export Selection