WEBVTT - Why Conservatives Hate Ukraine (ft. Rudy Giuliani) 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:07.200 A Zone Media, Robert Evans here it could happen here, 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:11.080 a podcast about things falling apart, And today I wanted 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:14.360 to take some time to talk about Ukraine, and particularly 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:18.439 to talk about the sort of cultural place that the 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:23.880 Ukrainian resistance against Russia expanded invasion by Russia has taken 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:28.400 in American politics and in American kind of political culture. Obviously, 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.280 I am recording this within a few hours of another 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.600 attempted assassination on former President Trump, this one by a 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.560 guy who, among a confusing milange of other things, claimed 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.040 to be a major advocate of Ukrainian sovereignty and that 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.360 that was a major reason why he was angry at 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:49.080 the Republicans and angry at former President Trump, and kind 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.120 of that at least failed assassination attempt is sort of 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.600 in line with a lot of derangement around Ukraine. And 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:58.520 you can find this on the left and the right 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.040 in the center. I've come to think that if you're 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:05.080 trying to evaluate sort of how credible someone is as 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.880 a geopolitical expert today, one of the best things you 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.600 can do is kind of look back to early February 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.120 twenty twenty two and see what sort of claims they 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.440 were making about what was going to happen, whether or 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.679 not Russia was actually going to go into Ukraine and 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.319 expand their invasion. And that's obviously, you know, a bigger 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:24.600 topic than I think we're going to get into today. 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.200 One of the things that I find really interesting when 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.840 I kind of analyze how particularly conservatives have turned on 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.920 the Ukrainian cause is how kind of incomprehensible that seems, 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:37.920 just based on the way in which I was raised 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.160 by the conservatives in my life to think about Russia 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.040 and to think about like Russian military aggression. You know, 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.320 I grew up largely in the post Cold War era, 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.960 but my parents were both like raised by Cold warriors. 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.240 They mostly grew up on military bases, and I still 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:57.560 grew up with an awful lot of the kind of 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:01.960 Cold War shrapnel and my sort of ideological training. You know, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.360 the movie Read Dawn was a big part of my childhood. 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.000 You know, some of those early James Bond movies where 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:10.800 the Soviet Unions are still the bad guy. You know, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.440 this was all major stuff for me. So it's been 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:19.640 particularly disorienting kind of watching Philo Russian attitudes infiltrate the 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.320 right and US move from this idea of like these 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:25.360 people are one way or the other kind of a 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:29.720 geopolitical opponent of the United States, towards these people are 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.120 almost existing in an idealized version of the society we 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.600 bring around. It's been a cause of some whiplash for 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:38.639 me and for I think a lot of people who 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:41.440 were raised in that environment and then kind of came 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.000 out of those ideological beliefs. And when we look at 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.960 the kind of turnaround on the right about this stuff, 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.400 one of the people who's been on the bleeding edge 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:53.440 of this has been Vice presidential candidate JD. 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:54.000 Vance. 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.560 And in fact, Ukraine might mark the first place where 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.240 Vance really came in ahead of the rest of his 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.280 party on an issue they would all ultimately move in 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.640 behind him on back In early twenty twenty two, in 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.160 the immediate wake of Russia's expanded invasion, Vance told Steve 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.560 Bannon in one of his many ill advised podcast interviews, quote, 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.440 I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.440 or the other now is This paragraph from an article 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.959 by Ed Kilgore and New York Magazine makes clear Vance 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:28.440 was swiftly followed by others. Quote then Congressman Madison Cawthorn 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:32.320 parrooted Russian propaganda by saying, the Ukrainian government is incredibly 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.280 corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies, 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.600 and his colleague Marjorie Taylor Green called the Ukrainians neo Nazis. 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.800 Fox News's Tucker Carlson was a constant font of bitter 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:49.000 hostility towards USAID for Ukraine. Now Cawthorne was and remains 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:51.040 now a stooge. But I think it really is kind 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.880 of drilling into the precise wording of his claim here, 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:57.920 the fact that he's so focused on wokeness within the 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.840 context of a conflict. But it seems much more serious 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.680 than kind of the standard American culture war bullshit. A 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:07.680 lot of why we're seeing this has to do with 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.920 the fallout over the Russiagate culture war that consumed the 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.640 Democrats during the first half of the Trump administration. This 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.440 led to the enemy of the enemy as my friends 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.200 sort of thinking among the right, and this was stoked 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:24.440 consciously by Russian propaganda efforts. After Trump left office, these 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.760 efforts were redoubled, especially after the war in Ukraine became 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.120 an existential issue for Putin's regime. A good example of 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.279 the more obvious sort of messaging is this Moscow Times 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.520 article from May of twenty twenty three, with the title 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.880 Russia to build migrant village for conservative American expats. Quote 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.880 Timor Beslangarov, a migration lawyer at Moscow's Vista Foreign Business Support, 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.640 claimed that around two hundred families wish to immigrate to 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:56.840 Russia for ideological reasons. The reason is propaganda of radical values. 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.720 Today they have seventy genders and who knows what will next. 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:05.800 Ria Novosti quoted Bessangorov as saying, echoing President Vladimir Putin's 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:10.640 frequently deployed grievances against Western countries, comparative gender freedom, and 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:13.359 here we see it again, the focus on hatred of 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.480 woke as a justification for solidarity with Russia. A sizable 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:21.640 plurality of Americans still support the US sending aid to Ukraine, 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.960 and the reality of Russia's invasion is hideous enough that 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.040 the bulk of modern Russian propaganda in this country today 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.480 seems to focus on the woke issue more than anything 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.960 directly relevant to the war. As I write this, one 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:36.920 of the top stories in the country is how a 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.480 Tennessee based media network, Tenet Media, hired a bunch of 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.000 American influencers like Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and paid 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:46.160 them north of one hundred grand of video to make 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.800 Russian propaganda. Now, Pool and Ruben and their fellows claim 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.679 to be shocked, shocked that a foreign government was involved 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:56.599 in all and deny acting as unregistered foreign agents or 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.200 breaking the law in any way. We'll see how those 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.320 claims look in few months. For now, I think it's 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.760 illustrative to turn towards a wired analysis of the content 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.239 of dozens of Tenant Media videos written by Tim Marshman 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.160 and Drove Merota. It shows us the kind of propaganda 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.120 that Russia found fruitful, inceeding to an American audience quote. 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:19.960 This analysis does not show that in these videos the 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.880 influencers were particularly fixated on the Ukraine War. The word 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.000 Ukraine appears in the transcript sixty seven times, about as 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:31.120 often as misinformation, Christianity, and Clinton. It does show the 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.240 influencers stressing highly divisive culture war topics in the videos, 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.360 which carried titles like trans widows are a thing, and 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.800 it's getting all caps out of hand and race is 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:45.760 biological but gender isn't question mark question mark question mark. 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.080 The word trans appears one hundred and fifty two times 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.400 and transgender ninety eight, So sixty seven times we see 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.400 Ukraine appear in these transcripts, as opposed to well over 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.400 two hundred times for trans and transgender together. Now, if 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.160 you want a snapshot of just how absurd and divorced 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.440 from reality the culture wars have gotten, the Russian government 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:11.200 funding a clandestine influence operation considered stoking fears about trans 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.800 people to have a higher rate of return than actually 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:18.400 propagandizing directly about the war in Ukraine. As absurd as 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.400 this sounds, these tactics have borne fruit, and I think 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.240 the reason why it is simple, by building a sense of 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:28.840 solidarity between bigoted American conservatives and what they see as 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:33.200 a similarly conservative Russia. Now, obviously, the reality of the 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.400 situation is that Russia is not exactly the country these 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:38.840 people think it is. While it is true that the 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.160 number of Russian adults who consider themselves at least somewhat 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.880 religious skyrocketed after the fall of the uss Are from 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.480 eleven percent or so to over fifty percent today, much 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.239 of that is likely just explained by the change away 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:57.600 from an expressly atheistic government. Even today, Pew Research notes quote, 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.920 for most Russians, the return to religion did not correspond 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:03.960 with a return to church. Across all three waves of 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.280 ISSP data, no more than about one in ten Russians 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.360 said they attend religious services at least once a month. 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.720 The share of regular attenders monthly or more often was 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.480 two percent in nineteen ninety one, nine percent in nineteen 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.200 ninety eight, and seven percent in two thousand and eight. 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.880 For reference, about thirty two percent of Americans currently attend church, synagogue, mosque, 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.240 et cetera on a weekly basis. Now, this is down 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.520 significantly from forty nine percent in nineteen fifty eight and 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.680 does represent a low for church attendance in US history. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.400 But you can see we still beat the Russians in 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:42.120 at least active religiosity by a factor of like five. Now, 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:44.480 one of the modern bugbears of the right wing in 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.560 the US is no fault divorce, which often gets wrapped 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:49.720 up in conversations about wokeness. 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:50.240 Here. 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.960 Russia is also not a bastion of good old fashioned values. 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.480 I'm going to quote from an article in Russia Beyond 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:01.360 by Nikolay Schevchenko. In twenty sixteen, the ratio in Russian 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.880 of divorces to new marriages that year was one to 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:06.840 one point six, meaning that Russians divorce more often than 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:10.200 they marry. In recent decades, over sixty percent of marriages 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:15.360 in Russia ended in official separation. Now, there is precisely 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.319 one issue where Russian culture is in reality more in 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.840 line with the kind of culture American conservatives claim to desire, 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.200 and that is in its treatment of LGBT people and 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.920 ethnic minorities. The last years in Putin's Russia have seen 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:32.520 a surge in hate crimes against queer Russians, as LGBT 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.680 advocacy organizations have been declared illegal and punished by the government. 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.960 This is the Russia our American right wing finds solidarity with, 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.720 and we shouldn't forget that right when we're looking at 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.480 to what extent do these people see Russia as kind 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.599 of embodying the values they would like to bring to 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:51.960 the United States. It has a lot less to do 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:56.000 with actual religiosity, with good old fashioned family values, and 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.400 a lot more to do with hate for specific groups 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.960 of people. Going to talk about what that means within 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.720 the context of US politics, in a little bit. But 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:19.280 first here's some ads. So earlier this year, I headed 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.000 to the Republican National Convention, and I had a lot 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:23.800 on my mind there. But one of the things I 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.600 was kind of interested in is hearing the way in 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:31.000 which Conservatives talked about Ukraine when they felt like they 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:35.640 were among friends. It was not uncommon to hear Ukraine 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:39.880 referenced in conversations as a geopolitical enemy of the United States. 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:43.240 And this is something I encountered a number of times, 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:44.800 and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.679 fluke of my own experiences there. And I assure you 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.480 it was not. Michael Waitely, who Donald Trump picked to 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.800 chair the RNC, appeared on Fox News in April and 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.120 lumped Ukraine in with China and Iran as aggressive adversaries 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.720 of the United States. Now, you know, we can quibble 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:04.920 on that list for a number of reasons, but Ukraine, 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.800 a country we are currently arming and training to fight 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.720 in our stead, is just kind of absurd to describe 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.520 as an aggressive adversary of the United States. Now, that 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.760 very month, Congress voted on a foreign aid package, which 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.079 caused a massive split in the Republican Party. The anti 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.240 Ukraine side was led by voices like Marjorie Taylor Green, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:28.079 who told Steve Bannon, the Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:32.040 The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:36.720 They're not attacking Christianity. Now, like most things, Green says, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:39.720 this is not quite accurate. The Guardian noted at the 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.040 time quote. In fact, according to figures from the Institute 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.040 for Religious Freedom a Ukrainian group, at least six hundred 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.640 and thirty religious sites had been damaged or looted in 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:53.600 Russia's invasion by December last year. Green received a speaking 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:57.240 slot at the RNC, as did tech investor David Sachs, 0:11:57.320 --> 0:11:59.760 who spent some of his time on stage arguing that 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.920 o'biden somehow provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine by talking 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.199 about NATO expansion. Now, this is a claim you'll hear 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:09.240 on some segments of the left too, and it tends 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.720 to ignore that Russia invaded back in twenty fourteen after 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.560 a revolution against a Kremlin backed president Yenikovich, threw their 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:20.560 own plans in the region into disarray. Ukraine, to this day, 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.559 despite the expanded invasion, is not a part of NATO, 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.840 and Biden's administration has been leery not only of pushing 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.760 for this, but of supplying Ukraine with long range weapons 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:33.560 to strike inside Russian territory. The fact that Ukrainians and 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:37.079 others did start discussing Ukrainian membership in NATO after almost 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.959 a decade of war is certainly not among the things 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:44.000 that we can blame the Biden administration for starting. As 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.360 I trolled the RNC talking to attendees about their feelings 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:50.240 on the war, I got a variety of responses. The 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.400 most positive believe that Ukraine had been wronged, but that 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.400 the war was unwinnable, so the US had to negotiate 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.840 some kind of peace. Moore argued that the Ukrainians were 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.840 somehow stealing usaid, which they imagined would be put to 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.800 better use helping Americans. I found this an illogical position personally, 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.600 given that our aid Ukraine has primarily taken the form 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.280 of old weapons systems no longer in use by US 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.800 troops unless you want to house homeless veterans in Bradley 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.199 fighting vehicles. I don't really see how what we've sent 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.960 Zelensky is much used to the kind of Americans who 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:27.560 are actually suffering today. The most enlightening conversation that I 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.040 had while I was at the Republican convention about their 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.480 sentiments on Ukraine came when Garrison and I stumbled upon 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:38.720 Rudy Giuliani, seated at the booth for some streaming network 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.840 or another, exiled from the main stage of the event. 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.360 I introduced myself to Rudy and we started off just 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.240 talking about how surreal the mood was given the recent 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:50.680 attempted assassination of the former president. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.719 He's a conquering your own history party. We would have 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.400 been even without a Saturday. What's Saturday? It's surreal. I 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.520 think people shoel the living through history. That image of 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.800 him in rallying America, that's give be one of our 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.920 ten historical great interest now. 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:10.960 I included that because it's a fun snapshot of just 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.080 how elated Republicans were that week, right before Biden dropped 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.439 out and the whole election changed yet again on a dime. 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.360 From here, Rudy and I moved to talking a bit 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.840 about how badly the Secret Service had fucked up and 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.840 protecting Trump, which is not really something I had a 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.000 particular disagreement with, although I think Juliani was coming at 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.240 it from more of a conspiratorial standpoint than I would. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.200 I think simple incompetence more or less explains everything that 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:40.400 happened that day pretty well. This morphed in fairly short 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.000 order into him ranting about how all of this was 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.440 Biden's fault and how no one ever gets fired for 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.760 incompetence in the Biden administration. He brought up Afghanistan and 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.720 that is what led us finally to Ukraine. 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:55.360 Ukraine would not have happened if he hadn't been a 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:56.640 complete power at oldgraph. 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:57.160 God isn't now. 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:02.480 Yeah, what proof is very simple, including invaded three times 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:05.440 under the last four presidents. There's only one president he 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:05.960 was scared of. 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:06.760 It was Trump. 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.000 He invaded under Bush, he invaded under Obama, he invaded 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.880 under Biden. He didn't invade under Trump. So don't tell 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:14.160 me he would have invaded under Trump. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:15.880 He had a chance to know what he did now. 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:19.640 I responded by pointing out that Giuliani's time frame was 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.440 a little off. Well, but I mean I was there 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.440 in twenty fifteen, and my friends who were in the 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.040 Ukrainian military were still fighting under Trump. 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:28.240 You know. 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.280 The invasion, Yeah, was still happening. It was just not 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.360 at the current level that it's at. Rudy went on 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:37.680 to blame Obama for not having given weapons to Ukraine 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:38.800 in a timely fashion. 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.440 In fact, Poroshenko, who. 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:48.840 Is a corrupt pal of Biden's, told me, yeah, they 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.480 were my friends, but I didn't get any guns until 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:52.200 Trump came in. 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:54.920 They wanted me to win with t shootings and steff. 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:56.920 He said, I never knew what side they were on. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:00.680 Obama never gave them offs. We gave him money. 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.800 Now, this is again not accurate. By December of twenty nineteen, 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.560 the US had provided Ukraine with about one point five 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.920 billion dollars in aid since the twenty fourteen invasion. This 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:16.520 did include weapons including javelin, anti tank missiles and armored vehicles, 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:19.160 which is why they had some of these weapons when 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:23.600 the expanded Russian invasion occurred. Rather than loosening the purse 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:27.400 strings as Russian aggression continued, President Trump withheld three hundred 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.560 and ninety one million dollars in aid to try and 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:33.680 get a political favor from Zelenski. We're going to continue 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.000 with Rudy Giuliani and my conversation, but first here's a 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:53.440 little bit more ads and we're back. So after Giuliani 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.200 made his claim that the United States didn't send any 0:16:56.240 --> 0:17:00.160 weapons over to Ukraine until Trump was president, he said this. 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.520 He let Biden handle the money, the last guy in 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.560 the world that should be only money to Ukraine now 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:08.840 and Ukraine's gotten. 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:10.399 Two hundred billion and nobody let us order it. 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:15.960 This is the acknowledge to be the most corrupt, second most, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.639 third most corrupt country in the world. The fact that 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.639 they were invaded by Russia doesn't make them honest. It 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.240 makes them the victim. Doesn't make them honest. And you 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:28.960 pour a couple hundred billion in there without controls? What 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:30.960 am I a jackass? I can't figure out what's happening 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:31.959 and you don't win. 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:34.000 Now much more do you have? You can? That's aw 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:35.520 hundred billion now. 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.280 Rudy, like most Republicans on this issue, always describes the 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.480 aid we've sent to Ukraine as it's cash. I find 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.679 it interesting that he claims Ukrainian corruption is also somehow 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.560 to blame for US not auditing the aid we sent. Now, 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.800 there are issues with how the US Defense Department has 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:55.000 audited some of the aid going to Ukraine, but those 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.719 are issues with the Defense Department. In fact, it came 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.639 out in January of twenty twenty four that the United 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.359 States failed to audit about a billion dollars worth of 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.359 military aid to Ukraine. Now, first off, this is not cash, 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.119 as Juliani repeatedly insinuates. It's all weapons, and there's no 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.560 evidence that any of these weapons were ever sold to 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:17.520 another country or used outside of Ukraine. They simply weren't 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.840 audited the way that they ought to have been because 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:22.399 the Pentagon fired all of the people who should have 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.320 been auditing this aid. Right, this is a pretty common 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.959 issue with the Pentagon. You can look back to Iraq 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:31.240 and the sheer amount of aid that was sent to 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.680 Iraq and then kind of disappeared in the ether because 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.160 they just didn't have anyone paying attention to it. Obviously, 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.520 because that happened under Republican administration, Juliani isn't concerned at 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:43.960 all about it. But he is deeply concerned about this 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.960 kind of fantastical two hundred billion dollars that he believes 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:52.600 has been shotgunned out to Ukrainian mobsters. And here's Rudy again. 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:54.800 As our conversation continued. 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:59.199 Biden has US consigned to a war without animate in Ukraine. 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.639 He doesn't even dare to suggest an end because he's 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:03.240 afraid of confrontation with Russia. 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:05.119 So he's just going to get more people killed. 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.840 I mean, there probably isn't an American president that said 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:10.440 more people killed other than a war than bud. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.760 It's interesting you describe it as them not winning, because 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.080 I do have trouble. I know, in the lead up 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:19.119 to the expanded invasion of February twenty twenty two, the 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:21.960 expectation from most of the people in our military and 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.679 most people internationally, was that the Ukrainian military was going 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.119 to fold in a manner of days. And they're now 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.520 back to about seventeen percent of the country under Russian occupation, 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.080 which isn't a massive escalation over where it was previously 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.280 because they pushed well, because they pushed the Russians out 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:37.840 of Kiev. 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.880 Well, will that end the war? Russia can keep seven 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:42.320 pay percent. 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:44.520 I don't think the Ukrainians are willing to send the 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:45.040 war that. 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:49.560 The war is one when you achieve the objective that 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.280 has you stopped conducting war. 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:52.840 They're not even close to them. 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:57.080 The only way Ukraine says it will stop fighting is 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:00.560 if Russia is pushed out of Ukraine. They haven't been 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:02.320 able to do that. So they're not winning the war. 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.280 I mean, nor are they presenting a plan that we're 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:09.760 funding to do that. We're not planning, we're not funding. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.960 We're just endlessly giving them money to keep the status quo. 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:16.840 We do not have a plan to win them or 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:20.520 end it. So I mean when I Tom Towell used 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.680 to say the worst thing about American foreign policy under unrealistic, 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.720 somewhat left leaning liberals is war without end. When you 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:32.320 go into a war, you've got to be willing to 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.080 commit yourself and you've got to be willing to win 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:39.000 it quick, otherwise you're gonna lose it. And you know 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:42.240 when we started, when we started losing wars, that's the 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:43.400 policy we fall. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.600 But if you compare where Ukraine is at right now 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.159 to the wars the United States has gotten involved in 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:53.240 in the century, Iraq, you know, around a decade or 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:57.320 so close to twenty years for Afghanistan. Ukraine is two 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:03.160 years since the expanded invasion, and you know, war, it's 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:06.600 a it's a massive international conflict between a much smaller 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:09.760 nation and a larger one. When I talk to Ukrainians 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:11.800 and they I asked them, what do you think you 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:14.439 need to actually win this? One of the things they 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.800 repeatedly say is the ability to strike Russian assets inside Russia. 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:19.119 Who doesn't give him? 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.080 Who doesn't? Yeah, I'm just wonder more minutes to go. 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:24.960 Who prevents person? 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:28.040 Definitely, the Biden administration hasn't allowed that. 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:30.399 He tells us he wants them to win. 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:33.360 Do you do you think why would you be supportive 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.640 under a new Republican administration of allowing Ukraine to strike 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:38.240 inside Russia? 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.680 I would be supportive of sitting down and having a 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:42.720 realistic conversation about a plant. 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:45.000 First thing I do is audit the money we gave. 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.000 Now, of course, Rudy can't support that, so he pivoted 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:51.480 back to arguing that we need to audit Ukraine to 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.640 quote find out what happened to the money we gave him, 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:58.080 him being Zelensky. And again I pointed out that we 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.600