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March 4, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:00:40
20250304_did-trumps-free-world-just-get-more-dangerous-with
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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America First Reality 00:02:22
The U.S. drops countries like hot potatoes.
That's my whole life, whether it's Vietnam or Afghanistan, now Ukraine.
Jeffrey Sachs basically parrots a lot of Moscow talking points that somehow Russia was threatened by the expansion of NATO.
When you hear this fear-mongering about the Putinists within our government, it's just ridiculous.
Trying to explain deterrence and spend money for deterrence is always a tough sell.
No, I'm still spending tons of my money on something I don't care about to send over to a nation which is corrupt as hell.
Can we just stop BSing each other for a second?
If Russia absorbs Ukraine, they will rucify the people.
They will annihilate the Ukrainian identity, turn them into Russians.
Go red herring.
Like go out to the guy who smokes and spends all day arguing with strippers and OnlyFan girls going to speak up.
They make better arguments than you do, bro.
President Trump's State of the Union will be more like a state of the world.
Everyone's going to be watching, and Trump's words and decisions are rapidly rewriting the rulebook on both historic alliances and present-day emergencies.
World leaders rallied to President Delensky after his White House blowout.
British Prime Minister Kake Starmer is talking about a coalition of the willing to defend Ukraine's freedom and independence.
And maybe that is the blunt reality of America first.
The United States is not willing to be the world's police force, at least not unless the world is prepared to pay its way.
Many experts have spent the last four days fretting about the United States that is suddenly allied with all the wrong people and no longer the leader of the free world.
The question we're debating tonight is whether that is true.
Does it project American strength or make the free world it created a more dangerous place?
If America really is no longer the leader of the free world, does the MAGA movement care?
In a moment, we'll debate with Andrew Wilson, Dave Smith, Ben Hodges, and Jake Bro.
But first, two big brains who see all this rather differently.
The author and political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, is coming up, and I'm joined first by the economist and public policy analyst, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Professor Sachs, great to have you back on Uncensored, particularly at this moment, which feels like a moment in history.
What is your take on where we are post this extraordinary Oval Office shakedown really is what went down?
It is a big moment.
Multipolar World Risks 00:05:17
I think what our new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said a few weeks ago is the key.
We are in a multipolar world.
I think recognizing that is the first order of us all staying alive to avoid the risks of nuclear war.
President Trump said several times that his greatest concern is to avoid World War III.
I say bravo on that because we had a lot of neglect of that obvious point for many, many years.
So we are in a multipolar world.
China is powerful.
Russia is powerful.
The United States is powerful.
If Europe gets its act together, which I hope it does, Europe can be powerful.
India will be a great power.
That's a reality.
Now it's a matter of these great powers not blowing each other up, not getting into a direct war, and also making sure that the rules of the game don't abuse the rest of the world.
This is feasible.
I think we're on a more realistic course now than we were actually just a few weeks ago.
Do you think we're going to get a peace deal in Ukraine led by Donald Trump?
And if so, how do you think this settlement will look?
Well, we know how the settlement will look when it comes.
And you can look it up online.
There was an April 15th, 2022 draft agreement nearly signed by Ukraine and Russia.
If you reread it, as I've done several times in the last few days, it's a good agreement.
There were a few details left to be concluded, but basically it was fine.
But the United States and UK talked Ukraine out of the agreement, said continue to fight, don't accept neutrality.
And unfortunately, since that bad advice, till today, about one million Ukrainians have lost their lives or have been gravely wounded.
It wasn't good advice.
So we know what the agreement will look like.
It was already just about agreed.
And so for those who are not up to speed with that 2022 memorandum, how would you summarize it?
Yeah, the agreement was that Ukraine would be neutral, that there would be security guarantees involving all of the great powers, including Russia, which I interpret and would recommend should be through the UN Security Council.
There was an annexed map which showed what the territorial lines would be.
And this was at the verge of being signed.
This, I think, is the basis of an agreement, which is end the war, end the bloodshed, end the destruction.
The longer it goes on, the worse for Ukraine.
I said that two years ago, that any delay meant more loss of life, more devastation.
Ukraine would not win on the battlefield, and that's true.
Now, Donald Trump is basically saying, look, Biden played poker.
He bluffed quite a bit.
He thought that the U.S. economic sanctions would bring the Russian economy to its knees.
Nope.
He thought that the Atakims and the Himars would bring Russia to defeat.
He thought that unrest inside Russia would prevent Russia from mobilizing.
No.
It was a poker game.
Trump is saying, I don't want to hold the losing hand.
We shouldn't hold the losing hand.
And Ukraine only suffers from more poker with a bad hand.
Now, Zelensky may be trapped by extremists around him who threaten him maybe with his life or whatever if he makes any concessions.
But he says until today, well, there can't be any peace other than the full restoration of Ukraine's territory up to the borders of 1991.
It's impossible.
It was impossible then.
It was impossible in the context of the Maidan coup.
It was impossible for anybody who has followed events closely from then till now.
And yet Zelensky continues to maintain what is an utterly impossible, literally impossible condition.
Because if we try to implement that, well, either Russia would win everything or it would lose and then it would escalate to nuclear war.
Doesn't he have to, in a way, doesn't Zelensky have to maintain that public position?
He can't be seen at the moment, before they've even got around the negotiating table, to be just ceding Ukrainian territory, right?
I mean, no leader is a good idea.
I would just remind everybody that there were already the negotiations that brought this war nearly to a close two years ago.
Impossible Peace Conditions 00:08:16
They were real negotiations.
I went to Turkey to speak with the negotiators.
I've spoken in detail with the negotiators.
There was a negotiated end to the war.
The United States and UK stopped it.
And that's not controversial.
That's just how it is, how it's been explained by everybody.
Well, Boris Johnson, Boris Johnson was actually on my show last week and emphatically denied that he was the instigator for Ukraine continuing to fight.
He said they wanted to be a fighter.
He's the instigator.
Maybe I don't think he was the instigator.
I think the U.S. was the instigator, but I think he was the messenger.
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So the assumption would be then that what they freeze on the current lines, the 20% that Russia is now occupying Ukraine, they would keep, albeit I assume with no transfer of sovereignty because Ukraine wouldn't agree to that, that Ukraine would...
No, no, first of all, we can't negotiate.
This is...
No, I'm asking you what you think is most likely.
What I think should be done is a permanent peace, not a ceasefire or an armistice line.
I don't want to revisit this war and have irredentist sentiments and lobbying for a renewed war and new military buildups and all the rest.
I want peace.
There should be peace.
Ukraine's mistake, but by the way, it wasn't Ukraine's mistake.
It was an American project that we've discussed that goes back to 1994, was to push NATO all the way to Ukraine.
And that crossed Russia's understandable national security red line.
And I would have respected Russia's national security red line because I felt that if you violated it, we would get to where we are today.
So I would aim for peace, not a settlement that is grudging, imposed.
We never will accept the sovereignty of Russia.
What kind of peace is that?
All of that is just a prelude to the next war.
We should have real peace.
By the way, there are three groups of people that are involved or should be involved.
They're the generals.
They know something about fighting, sometimes well or sometimes badly.
They're the politicians.
They know something about grandstanding.
But then they're the diplomats.
The diplomats should work out a real settlement.
And while it's not very popular to say, I'm going to say it, the United Nations Security Council should be the ultimate place where that arrangement is settled, including China, including Russia, including Britain, France, the United States, all as co-guarantors of a true peace.
Not an armistice line, not a frozen conflict, not something that Ukraine never accepts.
No.
An end to this war because we have more important things to do on the planet than have a future in which the question of Lugansk and Donetsk play a central role in somebody's politics.
There are people like Elon Musk calling for America to withdraw from NATO.
Just quickly, what is your response to that?
It will happen if there is no settlement of this war.
If Europe says, well, I'm all in favor, by the way, of Europe getting its act together.
And I was in the European Parliament saying this just very recently.
I agree.
But if Europe says we fight until 1991 borders are restored, the United States will wash its hands of all of this.
I can tell you, they will not play a losing hand.
They started this, by the way.
The U.S. started this.
The U.S. said we can go wherever we want.
Big Brzezinski laid it all out in 1997 as clearly and explicitly as one can do.
So the United States started it, but the U.S. drops countries like hot potatoes.
That's my whole life, whether it's Vietnam or Afghanistan, now Ukraine.
So if the Europeans push so hard of Zelensky because for whatever reason, as an individual, says what is not in the interest of his country, it could be pretty bad for the relations between Europe and the United States.
I would not recommend that at all.
Professor Sachs, great to have you back.
Thank you very much.
Great to be with you.
Thank you.
Well, the author, a political scientist, Francis Fukuyama is coming up, and I'll also be joined by the rest of my panel, but he's joining me now.
Mr. Fukuyama, you've just listened to what Jeffrey Sachs had to say.
I have to say, he's been very consistent about his position on this from the very start.
What is your response?
Well, it's hard to know where to begin.
I think he's been wrong about this from the very start.
It begins with the fundamental assessment of what Putin wants.
Jeffrey Sachs basically parrots a lot of Moscow talking points that somehow Russia was threatened by the expansion of NATO, that it's really NATO that destabilized the situation, and all they're doing is seeking peace.
I think that if you listen to what Putin has been saying from the beginning, he is not just interested in security.
He regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It wasn't just that one statement from the 1990s.
He said this in a very long article published before the war.
He just celebrated the anniversary of the death of Anatoly Sobchak, saying that he, like Sobchak, you know, this was the most traumatic moment when the Soviet Union fell apart.
And if you think that you're going to get peace by any kind of agreement over the current lines in Ukraine, you are wrong, because he wants to reabsorb the whole of Ukraine.
He wants to get Moldova.
He wants to get Georgia.
He wants to get all of these pieces and then ultimately the Baltics.
And so I think that, you know, Jeffrey Sachs is not being realistic about the kind of threat that we are facing.
What should Europe do, given the attitude that Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance seem to have adopted, which is that Europe has to take the lion's share of responsibility here for dealing with this war now?
This is one area where I actually agree with Donald Trump.
I think that Europeans ought to be spending closer to 5% of GDP on their own defense because America is proving that it is indeed a very unreliable ally, even if the Democrats manage to come back in the next few years.
As a European, I would not count on America pulling their chestnuts out of the fire, and therefore they've got to be much more serious about defense cooperation.
Threat to Liberal Democracy 00:03:52
They've got to make much bigger investments in their own defense industrial base, because I think that the threat from Russia is simply not going to cease if there is some kind of a short-term agreement over Ukraine, especially under the conditions that Donald Trump has outlined, where there is basically no Western guarantee that Russia as to what would happen if Russia starts the war again.
You wrote a book called The End of History and The Last Man in 1992.
You argued then that the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy, which occurred after the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that humanity had reached not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such, that is the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
Given everything that's going on now, are you still as confident that we reach that turning point, irrevocable turning point?
Or are you concerned that actually that might have been a little premature?
Actually, I did not say either in the original article or the book that it was irrevocable.
I said that there's better.
Sorry, you may have mischaracterized you.
I'm sorry.
No, the real question is, is there a, you know, first of all, the history I was talking about is not events.
It is the broad social evolution of societies.
And the question is, is there a superior form of civilization that is going to supplant Western liberal democracy?
And I, frankly, for all of the backsliding that has occurred in existing democracies in recent years, I don't see that higher alternative.
I don't think we're all going to look like China in another 50 years, because I do think that people want basic freedom.
And I think that they need governments that are restrained by checks and balances, which is the essence of a liberal democracy.
So we're going through a very tough period.
There's no question that democracy is threatened.
I guess the one thing I really didn't anticipate is that the threat to liberal democracy could be so prominent in the United States itself.
That is something I really had not anticipated.
But here we are.
I think that the international liberal order is being threatened.
But I think the liberal order in the United States, and by liberal, I don't mean liberal in the left-right sense as in the United States.
Liberal meaning the fundamental rule of law, the constraint of checks and balances in a constitutional system.
I did not expect that it would come under the kind of threat domestically that it is experiencing today.
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Shockwaves From The Oval Office 00:10:32
Are we seeing a complete reframing geopolitically of the world order?
Well, Donald Trump has a very different view of the world in which basically democratic values are completely absent.
You know, when Jeff Stax talks about, you know, a multipolar world, this is a world in which the basic value of democracy as an organizing principle is absent.
And the world then revolves simply around power, and it revolves around great powers that can decide to do with the rest of the world what they please.
I think that for the last 70 years, we've been trying to build a different kind of world in which rules both domestically and internationally would try to limit the pure exercise of power.
And I think that, you know, we're going to suffer if we move into that world where it's simply a contest of power.
I mean, there was no discussion of China.
You know, is China then going to say, well, if the United States can take Greenland and Panama, you know, we have every right to take back Taiwan.
And I think that invites further use of force and further instability.
It's not going to lead to, you know, a more peaceful world.
Are we more or less likely to be heading to some kind of nuclear conflict?
Well, that's another red herring.
I think that there were many red lines that Putin laid down that had been crossed.
It's insane to think that they would resort to nuclear weapons over anything going on in Ukraine because they are going to come out the losers if that happens.
And they know that.
Nuclear deterrence continues to hold.
And I think that making preemptive concessions out of some kind of abstract fear of World War III is simply wrong.
Francis Fukuyamo, thank you very much indeed for coming on.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much for having me.
So is America no longer the leader of the free world?
And if so, should Americans care?
Do you want me to debate this?
Andrew Wilson, host of The Crucible, the host of the Part of the Problem podcast, Dave Smith, the Air Force veteran and YouTuber, Jake Brough.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Let me just start with you, Jake, if I may.
We're really at a very critical moment, it seems to me, for the world order, in a sense, in that what happened in the Oval Office on Friday sent shockwaves around the world about whether America was going to continue being with Europe when it came to issues like the invasion of a sovereign democratic European country by a Russian dictator.
How concerned are you that we might see a genuine fracturing here?
Last Friday was shocking, but unfortunately I'm not surprised.
Donald Trump and JD Vance just trashed the 80-year transatlantic partnership that has kept all of us safe in the Western world.
And now all of our allies are asking, can we trust Donald Trump?
Can we trust the United States?
Are they a good faith partner?
Canada is already preparing for the worst.
And now all of our partners in Europe, as well as our partners in the Asia-Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, the entire democratic world is wondering, will the United States honor their commitments?
If a treaty has been signed by the U.S. Congress, Donald Trump can't arbitrarily break it.
That's in violation of federal and international law.
But right now, Donald Trump says, I have the power to do whatever I want.
I can make law.
I can discern what the law is.
Nobody can stop me.
Nobody can check me.
And we've entered a new age.
I don't think anyone alive today really remembers what it was like back in the age of empires prior to World War I, prior to World War II.
And that's what Donald Trump and the Putinists in our own government want to do.
The United States wants to ally.
Our government wants to ally with Russia against our smaller, weaker, democratic, traditional allies.
These alliances were built on shared values, respecting democracy, international law, human rights, three things that Donald Trump doesn't care about.
Three things that Vladimir Putin doesn't care about.
And if the American people don't rise up now and put a stop to this, then we're going to have a lot more wars.
Okay.
A lot more wars as she wants to redraw the maps, Putin wants to redraw the maps, and Trump wants to redraw the maps.
Okay.
Andrew Wilson, your response to that.
Yeah, so I mean, more panic mongering from the stupid leftists.
So anything they can do to say, oh, Zelensky's a hero, this guy, by the way, in the paradox of freedom who's pressing people into service in his country, don't want to go.
While he's in a great battle for freedom, he went to the White House and completely embarrassed himself.
He decided to have a massive argument in front of the American people, which should not have happened, in the middle of trying to get some type of peace treaty together on behalf of his own nation.
Do leftists hold him accountable?
Of course not.
Instead, somehow it's always Donald Trump's fault.
By the way, this is our treasure, my treasure, my money that's going over to Ukraine in order to fund this rapidly growing bloodbath that you so desperately want.
While at the same time, you say, well, Andrew, Andrew, don't you think that it's all because Putin is so bad?
It's like, look, there's no good guys here.
Stop pretending that I need to follow this dialectic that there's good guys who are involved in this.
Ukraine was always a corrupt government.
The Russian government's a corrupt, oligarchical government, and they're at war with each other.
And I don't want my treasure to go over there, and I don't want my kids to go over there and fight a war.
I'm sorry, but I think that we will refrain from entering into another European theater.
As you bring up, people don't really understand what it was like, you know, these pre-imperial dynasties.
Yeah, the thing is, is like, we do have grandparents or great-grandparents left alive who were part of these European theaters and they were blood bass, absolute blood bass.
And what we need right now is a peace treaty, not any more of your, you know, cocksure posturing about, oh, the good guy Zelensky and the bad guy Putin.
It's a false dialectic and I'm sick of it.
Dave Smith, it's very interesting to me to see the difference between the way a lot of people in America are viewing all this, particularly the Oval Office showdown, and the way countries like the UK here or other European countries are viewing it.
But ultimately, everybody would like to see peace.
Do you think we're more or less near to a peace settlement than we were before Friday?
Oh, I think we're closer to one, and I think that's great.
And Andrew is spot on.
And look, I mean, I know I've said this before on your show, Piers here, but when you hear this fear-mongering about the Putinists in our government, I mean, look, at least during Joseph McCarthy and the Senate and the House on un-American activities, you know, during what is known now as McCarthyism, at least back then there were some actual communists.
The idea that there are Putinists within our government is just ridiculous.
And, you know, I love how everybody freaks out when Donald Trump is doing what is the scariest thing in D.C., talking about potentially ending a war.
And then we hear these lectures about like the power of the president.
Meanwhile, you know, Barack Obama, not that long ago, forget, obviously the Constitution is very clear that Congress has to declare a war.
We haven't declared a war since World War II, but at least George W. Bush got like some authorizations from the Congress.
Barack Obama went to war in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen.
Not even anything from Congress.
And we don't hear a freak out about the power of the president until one is actually discussing the possibility of ending a war.
And look, I mean, what Zelensky did in the Oval Office has got to be the greatest strategic blunder that I've ever seen in my life for him to think that when he is in a desperate situation, completely reliant on Donald Trump, he thought the way to accomplish this was to go in there and try to out-alpha Donald Trump in a language he barely speaks?
I mean, this was, he did the biggest disservice to his own country and this entire effort.
But you know what?
I'm fine with that because the whole thing is that America was never supposed to be a global empire.
And the American people don't want to be a global empire.
We're supposed to be a constitutionally limited republic.
And there is no such thing as a constitutionally limited world empire.
We should get out of the empire business.
It's been nothing but a disaster for the American people.
Well, let me bring in Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, retired U.S. commander in Europe.
General, great to have you on uncensored.
You've heard there the conflicting views.
From your perspective, with all your extensive military background, what did you make first of all of what you saw in the Oval Office on Friday?
Well, thanks for the privilege.
And extensive military service is another way of saying I'm really old.
So thanks for the euphemism.
My apologies for the ageist way I frame that.
Look, I have to say, Friday was one of the hardest days for me I've had in a long time.
It was very difficult to watch how President Zelensky was treated in there.
And look, you could criticize his, as Dave just did, you know, the fact that he pushed back there in the Oval Office.
But you know what?
I mean, he's leading a country that's fighting for its survival, and he was being bombarded with absolute false information.
And it also revealed to me or made it clear to me that the people around the president do not understand the nature of war or why people fight.
This notion that, look, you got to stop.
You don't have the cards.
George Washington sure didn't have the cards.
The Taliban didn't have the cards.
The Vietnamese did not have the cards, but yet all of them defeated much larger, technically superior forces.
False Information And War 00:14:58
And so I think that what's missing from this is a clarity of what is our strategic objective.
What are we trying to accomplish?
What do we want in Europe?
Why does Ukraine matter?
It's not charity, obviously.
It's because the Chinese are watching to see, are we serious when we talk about respect for sovereignty, respect for international law, respect for freedom of navigation?
And if the Chinese see that we're not even willing to do this in Europe, then I don't think they'll be very impressed with what we say and do in the Indo-Pacific.
And of course, our economy is tied to Europe.
The biggest trading block in the world or the trading relationship is between Europe and the United States.
And so if Ukraine fails, you're going to see about another 10 million Ukrainian refugees heading into Poland and Germany and Western Europe.
That affects us.
So the Biden administration failed to do it.
The Trump administration has not yet done it to say our strategic objective.
Before I go to Andrew to respond to that, General, just from a pure military perspective, is there any way Ukraine can either win this war with enough support or chuck Russia out of the 20% of Ukraine it's currently occupying?
Are either of those two things remotely achievable?
Absolutely.
Look, this war has been going on 11 years.
11 years, and Russia still, with every advantage, only controls 20% of Ukraine.
They have gone a total of 60 kilometers in the last year from Avdivka to the outskirts of Prokhorus.
That's it.
Despite enormous advantages and huge casualties, the great Russian Black Sea Fleet, nobody even talks about them anymore.
The Russian Air Force failed its two main tasks, achieve air superiority and interdict the lines of communication from Poland and Ukraine.
They're not able to do it.
So it's clear that the Russians do not have the ability to break through or overrun the Ukrainian defenders the way their grandfathers did in the Second World War.
That just doesn't exist.
So, and this is without the United States actually committing or European countries actually committing to helping Ukraine win.
You know, the Biden administration never could say we want Ukraine to win.
And so you ended up with this sort of drip, drip, drip support.
And of course, I think if the Europeans are finally waking up, they realize that they are going to pay an enormous price if Ukraine fails.
And so about 50% of the ammunition that's produced in Europe today goes to customers in the Middle East and in Africa.
So it's not like they don't have industrial capacity.
They don't have, they have not yet shown the political will or the strategic backbone to do what needs to be done.
Okay.
Andrew Wilson, some people on the conservative right in America want to see Zelensky resign and have somebody else to deal with here.
What do you feel about that?
Well, I mean, there hasn't been a, he suspended all elections in his nation and probably shouldn't be the sitting president.
But he's actually, oh, hang on.
On that point, though, just to be clear, the country remains under martial law.
So it was supposed to have an election, I think, last April, May.
If this happened here in the United States, these guys would be screaming bloody murder, that Trump was a dictator, that he was a neo-Nazi, that he was a fascist authoritarian.
If this happened under martial law in the United States, these guys would be screaming for blood right now.
For some reason, though, and it's Zelensky, it's fine because it's under martial law.
That makes it all better.
They can press people into service.
That's okay.
They don't mind that.
But how could they?
Okay, but how could they?
But Andrew, how could they realistically have a free and fair election given that six and a half million Ukrainians have left the country as refugees?
That's pretty cool.
Hang on, Let me finish.
Three and a half million more are living under Russian occupation.
So clearly can't vote freely or fairly in the way they may wish to.
Plus, they're still at war.
So there's a front line which has thousands and thousands more Ukrainians battling it out every day who wouldn't be able to vote either.
How does this election even happen?
Never mind the fact that under their constitution, which got parliamentaries massive support, dictates they can't have an election while they're under martial law anyway.
But how do you have a free, fair election, given those set of circumstances?
Perhaps you couldn't, though there are war-torn regions before which have had elections.
But let's just grant for a second that you couldn't.
So what?
These guys would still be screaming bloody murder if the shoe was on the other foot here in the United States.
And it was impossible for us to do a free fair election.
Nobody did when the UK would still be screaming.
Nobody did when the UK didn't have an election for 10 years before and during World War II.
Everybody understood.
There was no criticism of that.
There was a realization.
There was a lot of era with people who weren't lunatics.
And now the left is a bunch of lunatics and they apply a double standard and they have what is called the paradox of freedom.
And right now, they don't care that people are being pressed into the front lines.
He brings up Washington, who was using a volunteer militia.
Nobody was getting pressed into service in order to fight off the British.
These people.
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People are lunatics and they're bloodthirsty monsters, ultimately.
Anytime we try to move towards peace, as Dave Smith rightly points out, these people want to do everything possible to not do that because, oh, Putin might get a W.
It's like, look, ultimately, I'm going to say this again, reiterate it again.
Neither one of these are the good guys.
Ukraine has a corrupt government, has a history of corruption.
Putin and Russia, history of corruption, very, very bad countries doing very bad things to each other.
The Europeans didn't, if they cared so much, how come they only recently started to actually fund this when there was only there was only four of them, four countries, including ours, that even had 3% of its GDP going to this conflict until Trump demanded it.
So it's like, no, I don't buy this narrative that, oh, we've always cared about our tree.
If you cared when it was when our treasury is going over there and funding the entire thing, right?
Suddenly there's a blank check.
I'm sure that the corrupt Ukrainian government loves having our blank checks go over there where they pocket half of it and only half of it goes to the war effort.
I don't trust any of these people.
All right, Jake, I mean, there's no doubt, and I said this from the moment Donald Trump first started talking about NATO being potentially obsolete if the member countries didn't pay their basic financial dues, which they weren't doing in the main.
There's no doubt, given how many more are now paying their dues or more, that that memo got loudly received.
But Europe is still most countries, including this country, UK, have not been stepping up properly on their own defenses.
And there comes a point, is there not, where I completely understand why a lot of Americans are simply done with being the global police officer.
Why should they be?
If the Europeans aren't prepared to take their own defenses seriously enough, why should America constantly feel obliged to come in and spend American taxpayer money on bailing them out?
The honest answer is because America has been writing the security policy for these countries since World War II.
If America makes all the decisions, America calls the shots in this alliance, what incentive is there for our allies to spend increased amounts?
Should they have been meeting that 2% NATO guideline?
Of course they should.
But they were lulled into a false sense of security, both from the United States and from the Russians.
This entire plan of making Europe dependent on Russian energy exports, nations that trade together don't go to war with each other.
We now know that's a lie.
This was a post-communist collapse experiment.
What if we economically intertwined ourselves with the Chinese, with the Russians?
We make this globalization effort in order to connect them.
That way, they won't want to risk their trade partners in order to go to war with their neighbors.
And what we've learned in the last three years is that we were wrong.
We never should have made our economy, our energy needs dependent on either the Chinese or the Russians because they're dictatorships and they're authoritarians and they want to be empires.
They want to invade their smaller, weaker neighbors or topple their governments, either create proxy states or redraw the maps.
So now nobody can deny the reality.
Nobody can deny the truth.
Every democracy in the world has to reevaluate their trade partnerships and their food and energy supplies because you cannot be reliant on dictators.
You cannot be reliant on either China or Russia because they will use those trade relations as leverage to get what they want on the battlefield, to get concessions from democratic nations that do try to negotiate in good faith.
When the Russians and the Chinese will never negotiate in good faith, they will always make maximum demands.
They will always lie.
They will always cheat.
They will always steal.
You can't trust them.
You shouldn't be working with them.
And right now, Donald Trump is trying to negotiate an aluminum deal with the Russians.
Donald Trump is trying to resume direct flights between the United States and Moscow on stolen planes.
All of these aircraft that the Russians stole three years ago, Donald Trump wants to pretend like it never happened.
We're trying to increase diplomatic staff when we know these people are all FSB agents and spies here just to subvert, undermine, and weaken the United States.
Donald Trump is opening up the gates and making every American less safe and our country weaker.
This has been a disaster the last three days.
And Donald Trump and JD Vance are the ones driving all of this right now.
Okay.
I mean, Dave Smith, I would not share some of that categorization because I don't think this is by any means done, this scenario.
I think that Trump ultimately is desperate to bring peace.
He prefers peace to war.
He said he'd do this before he came into office.
He wants to get it done, as he does in Gaza as well.
He wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
There are lots of incentives here for Donald Trump to deliver on what he said he would deliver on.
So I don't share that slightly apocalyptic view of where we are, but I also think Jake makes some very good points about, you know, when you dance with the devil, you get pricked by the horns.
And a lot of people believe that the way Donald Trump interacts with people like Putin and G and Kim Jong-un and others is detrimental to America's national interests.
What do you feel?
I mean, this is global politics always involves interacting with bad people.
And it only seems like the propaganda about this arises when it's somebody who we want to support a war against.
How about the way we interact with the Saudis or the Israelis for that matter?
We've, you know, look, the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world has happened over the last 30 years.
And a billion people have been pulled out of extreme poverty.
And a big part of that was because Richard Nixon went and talked to Mao Zedong, the most evil man who ever lived by the numbers.
And so, look, I just think there's, again, there's always this fear-mongering that is associated with every single war.
And, you know, you mentioned age before.
I'm old enough to have lived through a lot of these wars right now.
America's been in a constant state of war since at least 9-11.
And of course, we know that with the war in Iraq, it was what it was going to be a mushroom cloud over Kansas, right?
Saddam Hussein was going to give the weapons that he didn't have to the terrorists he wasn't friends with, and then they were going to nuke America.
And they convinced everyone in America that this was the case.
And we hear the same thing now.
Although, weirdly, there seems to be something so contradictory here between making the argument that Vladimir Putin is so weak that he can't even take over Ukraine, even though he's been at war with them since 2014 or however you want to calculate when the war actually started.
And yet, also, he's some huge threat to reconstitute the Soviet Union, or we just hear it asserted that China will move on Taiwan if Vladimir Putin gets to keep his percentage of Ukraine, which I'm not even saying is impossible, but it's certainly not an inevitability.
By the way, I don't think we could do anything if China wanted to move on Taiwan tomorrow.
And I think Americans have to get out of this mindset, this empire mindset.
Like, just for example, imagine, let's just say there was the political will and there was the desire.
Let's say that the U.S. wanted to take Mexico City.
We were just, we had decided we're going to do that.
What could Russia do to stop us?
What could China do to stop us?
Nothing.
The idea is ridiculous.
If we decided we wanted to do that, then we'd do that, period, because we're the bigger, stronger country.
And that might, that's not great, but it is the way of the world.
Look, the bottom line here is that people, and I will say, like me at this point, because I've been talking about this conflict on big platforms for years at this point now.
The head of NATO, Stroltenberg, I always get his name wrong, but he himself said that in late 2021, Vladimir Putin put a draft, drafted a treaty between Russia and NATO.
And what he was asking for was a promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
And he said for that, he would not invade.
And you know, the people like you just interviewed the great Jeffrey Sachs before we started this panel, the people like that, that's the deal we could have had if we had listened to people like that.
And now, oh my God, wouldn't you give anything for that deal?
Imagine you could have all of Ukraine minus Crimea under Ukrainian control, and all you had to give was a promise of not bringing Ukraine into NATO.
Now, NATO's not even on the table anymore, and there's no way Ukraine's going to keep 100% of its geographic integrity from the beginning of the war.
This is the reality of the situation.
Governments are not perfect, and neither is ours, but peace is better than war.
This war did not need to happen, and it's been an absolute disaster, worst of all for the Ukrainian people.
Failed Nuclear Deterrence 00:14:50
On the issue of the election, I think it's worth noting, and I'll come to you, General, if I may have a response to this.
But Ukraine's parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution affirming the legitimacy of Zelensky's stay in office, asserting the constitutionality of deferring the presidential election while the country is at war.
The 268 parliament members present voted unanimously to approve the resolution, while 12 other MPs were not present during the session.
So that seems to me to be a very clear democratic mandate by the elected officials of Ukraine to endorse not having an election until the war is over.
Well, you know, we may, some of us may not like the fact that Ukrainian martial law includes a suspension of elections, but that is the law.
And so the fact that the Rada made the decision to vote and give that sort of public endorsement, to me, that's compelling.
Now, I do want to say, give Dave Dave Smith credit.
I finally heard him say something today that I agreed with.
Hold on.
This war could have been avoided if we, the West, led by the United States, had responded appropriately after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, if we had responded appropriately after they invaded Ukraine in 2014.
And that's not a game.
I mean, the whole world saw Russia invade Ukraine in 2014.
And we did nothing when they jumped over the Obama red line in Syria.
So this war is a result of failed deterrence.
And Trying to explain deterrence and spend money for deterrence is always a tough sell because you have to convince taxpayers and voters and legislators of what the risk is and why you have to do it.
That's hard.
But it is much, much cheaper, obviously, to do that, to have successful deterrence, as we did for over 70 years after the Second World War, versus dealing with the failed deterrence we're dealing with right now.
I think that for Andrew, I would just offer, as I'm pretty sure you know this, the amount of money, the 120 to 180 billion, depending on how what you include in that amount, it's clearly not 350, but the amount of money that the United States has spent or contributed towards helping Ukraine, the overwhelming majority of that money was spent in the United States.
It's not pallets of ammunition, of money that are loaded onto a C-17 and then delivered into Ukraine.
It's money that is spent replacing or buying ammunition, refurbishing old equipment that is then loaned or given to Ukraine.
And of course, there are no U.S. troops in Ukraine except for those officers that are assigned to the embassy and the Office of Defense Cooperation, whose task is to make sure accountability of every javelin, every artillery round, every set of binoculars.
Oh, you can shake your head if you want to.
That's a fact.
So pretending that we don't have United States Special Forces on the ground right this second.
We don't have CIA agents all over Ukraine right this second.
Why don't you just stop pretending?
Because it's nonsense.
And we all know it's nonsense.
This is the way, hang on.
This is the way it's been going for a long time.
And when you talk about, well, Andrew, what we're actually doing is we're spending a whole bunch of money on refurbishing equipment here instead of buying new equipment to send over there.
So what?
So why are you still spending tons of my money on something I don't care about to send over to a nation which is corrupt as hell?
So can we just stop BSing each other for a second?
Yes, the United States has boots on the ground there.
Yes, we have special forces units there.
We have CIA agents there.
And we would be fools to pretend we don't.
It's an interesting argumentative style that you had.
And, you know, when people start calling me names or whatever, then I really, the credibility.
I didn't call you any names, sir.
I didn't call you any names.
Okay.
What was the name that I called you?
I think the key is this idea of trying to...
I'm actually just defended by tone.
You just don't like tone.
You know, maybe a little tone policing getting worked in there.
Maybe that southern draw where you try to make yourself sound likable because you have it doesn't work so well on me because you can't gaslight me with this stuff.
It's nonsense.
Yes, there's boots on the ground there.
Yes, there have been boots on the ground there probably since the beginning.
Yes, we're spending $100 billion plus dollars on equipment that we then either send over there.
And by the way, there's hidden money going over there too.
This is such nonsense.
Just stop gaslighting the American people.
Stop it.
We're like, we're not stupid.
We've seen this on repeat so many times now.
So many times.
General, respond?
The ending, the idea of ending the war, of course, is exactly what we would like to do, but it needs to be an end that is sustainable.
And I think President Zelensky understands that he can't just sign or accept an end to the war where Russia will wait for us to lose interest because we always do lose interest.
And then they pick right back up with a resumption of the conflict after we have left or turned our back.
And so I think it's reasonable to expect Ukrainians to want some sort of guarantee, whether that's continued aid, continued equipment, or presence.
They haven't.
I don't know exactly what that looks like.
Obviously, I would prefer to see Ukraine in NATO.
We get better the day they join NATO.
It's not going to happen anytime soon, especially if the United States is not willing to do it and the Biden administration also is not willing to do it.
But how do we end it when you're the partner on the other side, negotiating partner on the other side of the table is Vladimir Putin?
I mean, there's no reason to have confidence that they will live up to any agreement because there's nothing in their history.
And I do appreciate that Andrew likes my North Florida accent.
Let me bring in Dave.
I want to bring in Dave.
I want to bring in Dave.
We've got.
Yeah, I just, I never quite understand this argument that seems to just logically fall apart that we can't end a war because the war might pick up at some point in the future.
And therefore, if we don't have a perfect guarantee that, I mean, what even if it, I mean, I don't know.
I've heard the entire time through this war, including on your show, Pierce, that if Putin was successful in Ukraine, then he was going to move on Poland, right?
Like this is what Joe Biden kept saying.
This was the official, like, you know, fear-mongering of this war.
And so if you're telling me that even NATO membership isn't a guarantee, then yes, we never have a perfect guarantee.
By the way, you also don't have a guarantee from any government in the history of the world.
That doesn't mean that ending a war isn't still a positive.
And I just want to go back to what was brought up initially.
The idea that this was a case of failed deterrence, and that if only we had deterred Vladimir Putin sooner, then we could have avoided this whole thing.
I mean, let's just kind of quickly overlook the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy in Europe.
We've expanded NATO all the way to Vladimir Putin's borders.
We constantly floated out the idea for years that we would include Ukraine at some point, give them full membership.
We said point blank in 2008 at the Bucharest summit that we were bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO before Russia ended up going to war with Georgia there.
And then we pour, I mean, look, Pierce, like we've done this before on the show too, right?
But just imagine if you can have a little bit of strategic empathy and put yourself in the Russians' shoes if Russia, let's say the Soviet Union had never collapsed and the Soviet Union had poured $100 million into a Mexican street protest that overthrew a democratically elected government.
And they have been saying for years they were going to bring Mexico into their military alliance.
And then when the new government came up, they recognized them immediately and started arming them, as Donald Trump foolishly bragged about the other day with Zielinski in the Oval Office.
Pierce, do you think Americans would feel that was deterrence?
Or do you think we might view that as a provocation?
I mean, like, it's just when Donald Trump is...
It's not using logic, Dave.
Well, look, let me ask.
Well, rather than me trying to answer a very logical question, let me get Jake to respond to that.
So the first thing that he said, what is the concern if Russia takes Ukraine?
If Russia can't even go 60 kilometers deep and take the city of Pokrosk, what is the threat to NATO?
And it's, yes, absorbing a country of 40 million people, absorbing a country that has $10 trillion of natural resources under the ground.
It's the strategic location on the Black Sea.
If Russia absorbs Ukraine, they will rucify the people.
They will annihilate the Ukrainian identity, turn them into Russians, and then start press ganging them into the military and send them into meatwave attacks against the Baltics, against Poland, in the Swalky Gap.
The fear of the United States is trying to prevent Ukraine before getting stronger.
And I don't care about what Russia thinks or feels.
Russia is not a great power.
Russia has an economy the same size roughly as Spain.
Do you think Spain is a great power?
They should respect.
Exactly, dude.
Listen, listen, we are in the business of trying to be a world empire and we are going broke.
We're $36 trillion in debt because we can't afford to do it.
We've blown $8 trillion in the last 20 years.
Why is Donald Trump talking about invading Greenland?
Why is Donald Trump talking about invading Ukraine?
I don't agree with that.
Why is Donald Trump talking about annexing Canada?
Why is he talking about ethnic cleansing in the gun?
That's it.
You lost.
Stay on stage.
That's a total red herring.
Total red herring.
Total red herring.
By the way, I don't support it.
Like GoDaddy.
Is the guy who smokes and spends all day arguing with strippers and OnlyFan girls going to speak up?
I don't know.
They make better arguments than you do.
General Van Hai.
It's not my fault.
Thank you so much for your time.
Laura IP and the stripper and OnlyFans.
You're an expert.
These other guys, I can't take them serious.
Okay, well, I mean, listen, you just co-casting.
You need to have the right pedigree in order to make an argument, bro.
Yes, say that you can't take me seriously, but you just completely didn't.
You had no response to the argument.
Listen, the current estimate I've seen is that Russia's GDP is about $2 trillion a year.
Try to keep perspective on this.
That is less than a third of the world.
Is Spain a great power that we should respect?
Is Italy a great power that we should respect?
Well, aren't we all missing?
Okay, let me bring the elephant in the room into the debate.
Nobody's mentioning the nuclear arsenal that Russia has.
That's what makes it different to any of these other countries.
Russia on its own has more nukes than any other country, including the United States.
That is a fact.
There are, I think, nine countries in the world that have nukes.
The UK has some.
France has some.
There are American nukes at a number of other European countries.
But let's be clear.
When it comes to deterrent, there's probably only one deterrent that Putin really cares about, and that is a nation that is nuclear armed.
And when I interview, I'll bring the general in here for this.
When I interviewed President Zelensky two weeks ago, he did say as part of the security that he wanted, maybe we could have our nuclear weapons back.
Because of course, when Ukraine became an independent country, they had a lot of Russian nuclear missiles on their territory, a lot.
And they agreed to give them all back to Russia, but only because Russia, America, and the UK gave undertakings that they would be guaranteed defense.
And that hasn't materialized.
And so you could argue, if you go right back to the start of all this, from when Ukraine went out on its own, had they been allowed to keep some of those nuclear missiles that were Russian-owned, but were on Ukraine territory, had they been able to keep them and remain a nuclear power, that might have been the only thing that would have deterred Vladimir Putin.
Now, what would you say to that?
Well, of course, you have to take Russia's nuclear capabilities seriously.
They have a lot of them.
And they don't care how many innocent people might be killed.
But I think that it was a mistake of the Biden administration to assume that if Ukraine was successful or we did too much, that Russia might retaliate with a nuclear weapon of some sort.
And I think there was never a chance they were going to do that because there was no benefit to the Russians to use.
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had retained some of the nuclear weapons they had to give up back in the mid-90s?
Well, that's a fair question to ask, but I don't know.
I mean, you know, having a nuclear force is incredibly expensive.
Almost half of UK's defense budget is tied up just in their nuclear force.
So could Ukraine have managed to continue a nuclear deterrent that was modernized, ready, prepared, when in fact, you know, it's not just about having those big silver bullets.
It's also the whole system of to be able to deliver it.
And I'm not sure that that's a I can't answer that with any sort of assurance.
But nuclear deterrence, you know, this has always been one of the most important contributions of the United States to NATO was the nuclear capability that we brought, as well as what UK and France possess as well.
So we do live in the nuclear world.
I think it was unfortunate that we allowed ourselves to be deterred by Russian threats of nuclear weapons because now everybody else that wants a nuke or has one or is trying to get one sees that we could be deterred by just the threat of the U.S.
I totally agree.
I was saying that actually throughout the entire time, every time Putin was in a bit of a hot situation, he'd just rattle his nuclear saber in a threatening and aggressive manner rather than the deterrent, defensive manner that you're supposed to do with your nuclear deterrent.
And everyone backed off, terrified.
That's not how a nuclear deterrent is supposed to work.
You're supposed to, if you've got as many as he's got, which the Americans and the UK and France collectively would have, rattle them back.
That's the point.
Anyway, I've got to leave it there.
Rattling The Nuclear Saber 00:00:29
Thank you.
Fascinating debate.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you all very much.
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