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Unknown A
So yesterday, President Trump decided that he was going to go whole hog on Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump team is in Saudi Arabia negotiating with the Russian team over the end of the Ukraine war. Ukraine is not present in these negotiations. A matter of some consternation in Ukraine. And let's be very clear about where I stand when it comes to the Ukraine war. Russia attacked Ukraine. There is no good reason for Russia to attack Ukraine. Russia's goal in attacking Ukraine was to take over all, all of Ukraine up to and including Kyiv, and originally to kill Volodymyr Zelensky and anyone else who was ruling in power and who was not going to act as a puppet of the Putin regime. None of this is speculative. That is all just the reality in February of 2022. Now, Ukraine did a masterful job of fending off that attack.
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Unknown A
And by summer of that year, it was very clear that basically a stalemate had set in. And despite all of the best attempts by the Europeans and the half hearted attempts by the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with additional arms, the lines just weren't moving that much. And so since summer of 20, the lines have been pretty much set. The Donbass area has been occupied by Russia. Crimea has been occupied by Russia. And Love nor money is not going to move Russia off of that particular land. Not unless the Biden administration was willing to do much more, which they simply were not. What does that mean? It means that any sort of settlement between Russia and Ukraine was always going to have the following basic outline. One, Russia was going to retain control over Donbass and Crimea because otherwise there was no off ramp for Russia.
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Unknown A
Vladimir Putin was not going to lose face as the dictator of Russia and simply hand back territory that had originally been invaded in 2014 and has been held by Russia ever since. That was number one, Ukraine was not going to win back that territory. It was a victory for Ukraine simply to continue existing in the face of the Russian bear. Number two, Ukraine was going to have to have some pretty significant security guarantees to make sure that Putin didn't just do this again. One of Putin's demands was that Ukraine essentially disarm. That was never going to be a going concern. It was never going to happen. So that was always gonna be the outline of deal, security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia keeps Donbassing Crimea. That was always how this was going to look. It's been this way for almost three years at this point. Now there's some other additional elements that President Trump as the president is throwing into the mix.
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Unknown A
One of those is that he believes the United States has spent an exorbitant amount of money in Ukraine and somehow Ukraine should repay all of that money forthwith. And so he's got a couple of proposals on the table for that. One of those proposals was a sort of economic proposal that was pretty punitive with regard to Ukraine's future industry. Now, the case in favor of that particular economic proposal, which, effectively speaking, forced the Ukrainian government to split pretty much all exportable material with the United States, or at least profits from that exportable material with the United States, the good news for Ukraine in a deal like that was that it would have tied the United States into Ukrainian security for the future. Because if the United States and Ukraine had a big economic deal that was already in the offing and was already operating, then the United States would have a pretty significant interest in making sure that Ukraine was not then invaded once again by Vladimir Putin.
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Unknown A
Right? That was the case in favor. The case again is that the amount that Trump was actually asking of Ukraine was extraordinarily burdensome, according to the at least leaked reports as to what exactly it was that that was being asked. The New York Post, which obviously is a Trump friendly newspaper, suggests that that offer that Trump was making to Vladimir Zelensky and the Ukrainians was far too burdensome for Ukraine to really undertake. Quote, the proposed contract, which reportedly hit Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky's desk last week, demands half the country's revenues from natural resources, ports and infrastructure indefinitely as payback for US Military aid since the war began. So apparently that was met with a rather cold reception in Kiev. And so that ticked off President Trump. Beyond that, Volodymyr Zelensky has a way of getting on President Trump's nerves. There's just no question about this.
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Unknown A
This goes back years. This goes all the way back to the phone calls that they were having, the perfect phone calls that President Trump was having with Vladimir Zelensky during Trump term number one. And then, of course, Zelensky decided to make best friends with Joe Biden. Nothing ticks off President Trump more than that sort of nonsense. Then you recall in the late stages of the election, Vladimir Zelensky actually came to Pennsylvania and for some odd reason was going around to munitions factories with Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, which was seen correctly by the Trump campaign as an attempt to warm up Kamala Harris in anticipation of a Kamala Harris victory. And so Trump didn't like that either. Then Trump made some not particularly nice remarks about Vladimir Zelensky a couple of days ago. And Zelensky responded by suggesting that Trump was part of a disinformation echo chamber.
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Unknown A
And this led to the big blow up yesterday. So President Trump first went on Truth Social, and he made a very lengthy statement, quote, think of it. A modestly successful comedian, Vladimir Zelensky, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he without the US And Trump will never be able to settle. So, just on the facts, this is not true. On the facts, Ukraine did not talk the United States into the war. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor party in this particular situation. As far as the United States expenditures, the United States has spent an extraordinary amount of money. The United States has given or lend to Ukraine really is more of a gift because it's never going to be repaid. The United States up through the end of last year had committed somewhere in the arena of $120 billion to Ukraine.
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Unknown A
About $25 billion of that is basically coming back to the United States in the form of defense expenditures, somewhere around $100 billion that has been given to Ukraine. Now, to be fair, the result of that has been the complete evisceration of Russia's forward military power, which, as a bit of a bargain, is not terrible if you see Russia as a geopolitical enemy, which, of course, it has been historically for the United States. President Trump continues, the United states has spent $200 billion more than Europe, and Europe's money is guaranteed. While the United States will get nothing back, I see no evidence of this particular proposition. Europe apparently has actually spent slightly more money than the United States. When you aggregate all of the European countries together, they spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $138 billion or committed that much money. And it's gone up again recently, so closer to $180 billion committed to Ukraine.
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Unknown A
So they actually have spent slightly more money than the United States in Ukraine. And as to the idea that Europe's money is guaranteed, meaning Ukraine is gonna pay it back, no, no, no shot. President Trump said, why didn't Sleepy Joe demand equalization? And that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big, beautiful ocean of separation. Now, this is the first point that Trump is making that is actually correct, which is, okay. Why is the United States footing the bill for this war? The Europeans really need to step up. And as we'll see, whether that is the intended effect of Trump's attacks on Vladimir Zelensky or whether that is the kind of positive byproduct of those attacks, Europe is going to have to step into the breach here. He's right. The Europeans have much more of a stake in Ukraine remaining Russian free than the United States does.
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Unknown A
Trump continued, on top of this, Zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is missing. He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. Okay, well, as far as refusing to have elections, martial law is declared because you may have noticed there's a war on. A war that has currently cost, at a minimum, 43,000 dead between February 2022 and December 2024 in Ukraine. Large swaths of Ukrainian territory is currently occupied by Russia. Like, do those people get to vote in Donbass and Crimea in a Russian election? Millions of people are refugees from Ukraine because they've left since the war began. And you have hundreds of thousands of men in fighting positions. So it makes it kind of difficult, just on a logistical level to actually have a workable election.
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Unknown A
As far as him being very low in Ukrainian polls, that's not particularly true either. Vladimir Zelensky is riding above 50% in the Ukrainian polls and going up in part because of the conflict with Trump. Trump says a dictator without elections, Zelensky better move faster. He is not going to have a country left. Now, again, this may be just a tactic by Trump to put pressure on Zelensky to come to the table and recognize the obvious, but the truth is that he doesn't have to recognize the obvious. The United States can basically just sign his name on the dotted line. In fact, I have been suggesting just that since August of 2022, that the United States would have to basically go around Ukraine, cut a deal Ukraine doesn't like, and then cram it down on Ukraine. I still don't believe that that requires the moral blindness of suggesting that Zelenskyy is, in fact, a dictator.
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Unknown A
You know, as opposed to Vladimir Putin, who has not held a legitimate election in the country of Russia for a quarter century at this point. Zelensky was elected in 2019. His term expired at the end of 2024, and there will presumably be another election. By the way, we should point out at this point that these statements have resulted in Zelenskyy's opposition in Ukraine coming to Zelenskyy's defense. So the idea that he is a dictator who's quashing the opposition doesn't really explain why all the opposition parties are now coming to the defense of Volodymyr Zelensky. President Trump says in the meantime, we are successfully negotiating end to the war with Russia, something I'll admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do. Biden never tried. Now that part is true. Trump is the only one who's attempting to get to a solution Biden did never try.
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Unknown A
This is one of the signal failures of the Biden administration. I pointed this out throughout Biden's entire term Europe has failed to bring peace. Again, he is correct about this. Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going. Again, that is a pretty nasty accusation that Zelensky is is willing to let tens of thousands of his own people be slaughtered in the streets simply so the money can keep flowing to Ukraine. I love Ukraine, says President Trump. But Zelenskyy has done a terrible job. His country has shattered and millions have unnecessarily died. And so it continues. Now, again, these are the source of words that presumably the Russian delegation is very happy to hear. We'll get some more on that in a moment. First, you know that creepy feeling you get sometimes like you're being watched while browsing online? Well, here's the thing. You actually are.
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Unknown A
Every time you hop on the Internet, your service provider can see literally everything you do. And get this in the United States, they can legally sell your entire browsing history. Y even that incognito browsing isn't so private after all. Who would've thunk? That's why I started using ExpressVPN. It's this brilliant app that encrypts everything I do online and routes it through secure servers. Since I started using it, my Internet provider can't see any of my browsing history, which means they've got nothing to sell because they actually don't have anything on me. But here's what I really love about ExpressVPN. It also hides my IP address so those annoying data brokers can't build a profile about me to sell to advertisers. Plus, it's incredibly user friendly. You don't have to be a tech wizard to use it. They made it so simple, even your kids could figure it out.
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Unknown A
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Unknown A
Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. Plus, Acorns has tons of videos, articles and tips to help you grow your financial literacy. Ready to take control of your money? Sign up right now. Join the over 13 million all time customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Plus Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment offer available at acorns.comshapiro that's acorns.coms h a p I r o to get your $20 bonus investment today paid Non Client Endorsement Compensation provides incentives to positively promote Acorns. Tier 3 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures@acorns.com Shapiro and we should point out here that just in terms of the return to the United States on its investment here, the Russian military machine has been absolutely crippled by the war in Ukraine.
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Unknown A
According to one NATO official quoted today in the international press, Russia's overall dead and wounded in this war amounts to 837,000. That is a massive number. A huge number. At a minimum, you're talking about 90 to 100,000 Russian troops who've been killed in this war. War in which Putin was supposed to stroll into Kiev. Now, as we can talk about, and as we will talk about, Joe Biden was a signal failure in leading the world on this. And when it comes to practical policy, the policy that is likely to emerge from what Trump is doing here is likely to be a much better policy than anything Joe Biden was doing. However, Trump's statements about Zelensky, the attacks on him as a dictator, the suggestion that somehow Russia is the moral party here, that is wrong. And it's not true. Trump then reiterated this in a speech.
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Unknown A
This is clearly White House policy. Now. This is not Trump making a mistake, whether it is animus for Zelensky on a personal level or frustration with Zelensky or whether in a sort of Machiavellian way, it's an attempt to pressure Zelensky, make Zelensky look bad so that he can cut a deal without Zelensky and then cram it down on Zelensky. And he feels he needs the imprimatur of public opinion to do that. I don't know why he's saying this, and the motivations are unclear to me. He is obviously reiterating this. This is purposeful. Here he was last night.
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Unknown B
But think of it, a modestly successful comedian. President Zelensky talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that basically couldn't be won, that never had to start and never would have started if I was president. Not even a chance. And it didn't start for four years, never would have started. But a war that he without the US And Trump will never be able to settle. They'll never settle that war without our involvement.
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Unknown A
Now Russia is attempting to make economic overtures to President Trump. This, of course, is one way to the Trump team's heart, because President Trump has a very long standing policy when it comes to foreign policy, which is that the United States should earn money. And again, that's not a bad policy. It's just that there are other countervailing interests that sometimes overcome those interests. You can earn a lot of money doing business with China. You can also completely undermine your manufacturing base, have all of your IP stolen and pave the way to Chinese aggression all over the region. And so money is not the only consideration. It is, however, a fair consideration. According to the New York Times, the Russian government's top investment manager, who has Harvard and McKinsey credentials in fluent English, brought a simple printout to Tuesday's talks with the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia.
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Unknown A
Its message by pulling out of Russia in outrage over the invasion of Ukraine, American companies had walked away from piles of cold, hard cash. The document, which was handed over by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth Fund, showed to a New York Times reporter. It said total loss is $324 billion. And appealing to President Trump, the Kremlin has zeroed in on his desire to make a profit. President Putin on Wednesday praised the U.S. delegation in Riyadh for not criticizing Russia as previous administrations had done. Now Again, you can make the case that the reason Trump's not doing that is what's the point? If he goes out there and he just shouts at Putin about being a dictator, then is he able to get to the actual endpoint that he wants? By the same token, is there a real politic rationale for attacking Zelensky in this way?
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Unknown A
If there is, you know, I'm hard pressed to see it. And again, on a moral level, what he's saying is obviously not true. Russia attacked Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is, in fact, a quite murderous dictator who has no problem poisoning his enemies or throwing them off of the tops, buildings and such. The predictable result of all of this, however, could be salutary in the end. And the reason I say that is, if you already knew how this war was going to end, which once again, many of us have been asking for and demanding for nigh on three years at this point, perhaps it gets to an end faster because of the kind of activities that Trump is participating in now. It may not get there faster with the United States as part of a broader economic deal. Right. That economic deal that was proposed by the Trump administration is almost certain to be refused by Ukraine because it wouldn't pencil out for them in any way, shape or form.
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Unknown A
In all likelihood, what is going to happen here is the United States is going to try to cut some sort of deal with Russia, and then there'll be a countervailing negotiation led by the Europeans and Ukraine on the other side. Europe is going to be forced to step up here. And that part is what Trump really does have, right? When it comes to Russia. Ukraine. President Zelensky has pulled out of his trip that was planned to Saudi Arabia to avoid what he called coincidences following that meeting between the United States and Russian officials in Riyadh. This is according to euronews. Zelensky's announcement came as he met with Turkish President Recepa Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Ankara, during which he said any Russia, Ukraine peace negotiations should not take place behind the backs of the parties involved. He said the Russian American meeting in Saudi Arabia came as a surprise to us, just as it did to many others when we saw the media coverage.
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Unknown A
I don't know who will stay, who will leave, where anyone is going. To be honest, I don't really care. What matters to me is that our partners take time to think about us. So again, I think Zelensky is taking a rather unwise position vis a vis the Trump administration because a position of personal animus with President Trump is a bad place to be if you're a foreign leader. However, the result of this is likely to be, again, what has been suggested for years. One, the Ukrainians are likely to rally around Zelensky because of Trump attacking him. So, oddly enough, you'll end up in a stronger domestic position because of Trump's attacks than he otherwise would. And again, the sort of bizarre parallel here is Joe Biden full on attacking Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and that making Bibi significantly more popular in Israel because they're in the middle of an existential war.
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Unknown A
And the slow walking of the aid was happening via Biden, who's attempting to oust the sitting prime minister. It seems like the same thing is happening with Zelenskyy. According to Politico, Yulia Timoshenko, former prime Minister of Ukraine and leader of of the oppositional motherland faction in the Ukrainian parliament, put out a statement backing Zelensky, quote, ukraine is a sovereign state. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the president of Ukraine legitimate Until another is elected, Only Ukrainians can decide when and under what conditions they should change their government. Today, there are no such conditions. And again, this is coming not from Zelenskyy himself or Zelenskyy's puppets. This is coming from people who legitimately oppose Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine. So, for example, Member of Parliament Ivana Klimpush Cinsadzi didn't defend Zelensky outright, but this person is the senior figure in Europe's Europe. Ukraine's European Solidarity Party. The leader of that party, Petro Poroshenko, is seen as one of the chief rivals to Zelensky.
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Unknown A
But this MP described Trump's remarks as unacceptable. She's pushing for the president to form a unity government and to involve all political parties in the negotiation process as well. She put out a statement saying, quote, yes, we heard completely unacceptable statements by the US Leader about who started the war, about resolving the conflict in Ukraine by completely satisfying Putin's wishes, about de facto potentially forcing Ukraine to surrender everything we've been fighting for, for 11 years against aggressive, dictatorial Russia. She said Zelensky should bury the acts of war with the opposition and unite the country. And again, pretty much all of the politicians, right, left and center in Ukraine are coming to Zelensky's defense because they don't like the characterization of the war by President Trump. So ironically, Zelensky gains in popularity domestically. Meanwhile, the Europeans are finally deciding that, hey, maybe if the United States is gonna lead the way here, we ought to lead the way here.
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Unknown A
So, for example, Kemi Badenoch, who's the leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain and who's generally warm toward President Trump, put out a statement, quote, president Zelensky is not a dictator. He's the democratically elected leader of Ukraine who bravely stood up to Putin's illegal invasion. Under my leadership and under successive Conservative prime ministers, we have and always will stand with Ukraine. President Trump is right that Europe needs to pull its weight, and that includes the UK we need to get serious. The PM will have my support to increase defense spending. There is a fully funded plan to get to 2.5% sitting on his desk. That should be the bare minimum. Summer should get on with it, get on a plane to Washington and show some leadership. We cannot afford to get this wrong. Meanwhile, President Zelensky put out a statement after a conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rudy, same quote, Mark informed me about his meeting with General Keith Kellogg.
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Unknown A
Keith Kellogg is an envoy from the United States to Ukraine. Quote, the key messages align with our goal of achieving guaranteed peace, not just a temporary ceasefire. There must be confidence that in a few months or years, Putin won't return with his war. We also discussed our future contacts with partners and coordinated next steps. We cannot allow Putin to deceive everyone again. Before any potential negotiations, all partners must clearly understand strong security guarantees are the priority for lasting peace. Thank you, Mark, for your support and assistance. And again, that is him calling on NATO, which is American, but also European, for support. So the predictable result of actually all of this could be salutary. As I say, it is quite possible that the predictable result of this is we get to the deal everybody knew was coming. The Europeans are the ones who actually have to enforce it and pay for it, not the United States.
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Unknown A
And Zelenskyy ends up more popular in his own country. That's quite possible. That does not alleviate the sort of moral responsibility to say true things as opposed to false things about Vladimir Putin. But from a real politik sort of point of view, this could end in a decent weight. Well, speaking of actual solutions to real problems, you've heard me talk about fitbod before. Let me reiterate, it is a true game changer when it comes to building muscle and creating workout routines that are ideal for you and your body. Everybody hits a wall in their workout routine at some point, wondering if they're really making any progress. With fitbod, that concern and frustration disappears. Just last week, I opened the app before I headed over to the gym. Within seconds it created a personalized workout based on my goals and available equipment. The app also noticed which muscle groups had been hitting harder, so it automatically adjusted to focus on other muscle groups that were fresh and ready for action.
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Unknown A
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Unknown A
Helix sleep.com men for this exclusive offer Now Democrats of course are sounding off in extraordinary ways about all of this. And here I I I'm sorry, I do not care what Chuck Schumer has to say about this. I do not. The Democrats are the ones who created the situation in the first place. It was Democrats who had control of the boat for three years and they did nothing. Democrats had a choice. They could either increase the amount of aid to Ukraine sufficient to allow them to actually attempt to liberate Donbass in Crimea or they could have found an off ramp. They had three years to do it and instead they decided that they were going to slow walk aid such that Ukraine couldn't actually take back any of those areas despite heroic defense. And they decided they were also not going to look for an off ramp.
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Unknown A
They were going to simply allow this war to continue to percolate with tens of thousands of people dying on both sides. That was going to be their plan. So I don't want to hear from you guys about Donald Trump and his mean words about Vladimir Zelensky. It was you who left Ukraine in the lurch while simultaneously promoting the continuation of a war to which you had no endpoint. Here is the Senate Minority Leader on this.
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Unknown C
In a Fox interview released last night, President Trump spoke about the war in Ukraine and some of his comments sounded straight from a Russian propaganda playbook. Rather than speak the truth, rather than acknowledge Vladimir Putin's role in starting this war, President Trump amazingly blamed Ukraine for Putin's invasion. To quote the president, you should never have started it. He said he was saying that to President Zelensky. This is disgusting. Disgusting after how this man has fought so hard and so valiantly.
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Unknown A
Now again, the moral suasion argument from the same people who slow walked aid to Ukraine, who did not give them the jets that they needed, did not give them the weaponry that they needed in the middle of a war that they then were encouraging them to run across into Donbas and get themselves killed. I'm not willing to hear that from Chuck Schumer. He has no moral leg to stand on here. Again, I think that Trump is factually and morally wrong when he says that Zelensky started the war or when he labels Zelensky A dictator, or when he suggests the true immoral power here is Ukraine. But I'm not willing to hear that from Chuck Schumer, who is largely responsible for the terrible Western policy toward Ukraine over the course of the last three years. Same thing coming from Senator Tammy Duckworth. Again, it's the same routine message. I'm just not buying it from these folks.
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Unknown D
He is parroting Vladimir Putin's talking points. It's a complete betrayal of the Ukrainian people, of American leadership and our values. I never thought in the 23 years I served in the military that I would hear the commander in chief of the United States military parroting Russian talking points. And really, you know, it is astonishing to me that he would also betray our allies in Europe in this way and pave the way for Putin. He essentially just surrendered to Putin, and that simply is not acceptable.
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Unknown A
Now, again, that's not true. Any deal here is going to end with security guarantees from the NATO powers to Ukraine to prevent a further invasion. It will end with that, because otherwise, Ukraine won't be able to accept it and the war will continue. No matter how much pressure President Trump puts on Vladimir Zelensky. That's just the reality. Putin is not gonna end up with Kyiv. He's not gonna end up running Ukraine. That is not. I've said this for years. Trump does not want that happening. No matter how much he personally dislikes Vladimir Zelensky, he does not actually want Vladimir Putin walking down the streets of Kyiv in triumph. That's not something that he wants. It was Democrats who blew this, and that's how they end up with Donald Trump as president. He's the one who's gonna have to negotiate the deal. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is looking into overspending at the Department of Defense, and it is unclear to me what exactly the policy is.
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Unknown A
So if the policy here is to unleash doge on the Department of Defense to find golden toilet seats, I'm all for it. If we're talking about getting rid of the sort of waste, fraud, and abuse that we've seen in pretty much every other department, I'm in favor of it. It's not clear that's what the policy is. Apparently. According to the Washington Post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has now ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years. According to a memo obtained by the Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter, that is a massive, massive reduction in military expenditure among the areas that The Trump administration wants exempted operations at the U.S. southern border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of some range one way attack drones and other munitions.
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Unknown A
Robert Solisa, a senior Pentagon official said in a statement. The money saved could be realigned to pay for new priorities in the Trump administration, including for example, Iron Dome for America. So if what we're talking about is to save money in other, in some areas to move toward new weapons systems, all in favor of it, that sounds great to me because obviously the money that's been allocated to many of the older weapons system is money that is wasted. If the goal, however, is actual spending cuts that are not reallocated into growth of our military power around the globe, that to me is a large scale mistake. The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion with broad consensus on Capitol Hill that extensive spending is necessary to deter both China and Russia. If adopted in full, the cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.
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Unknown A
Now again, if the goal here is to simply cut that waste, fraud and abuse, that's one thing. If the cuts are being identified by size and not by location, that is another thing. Well, you see that what I'm, the argument that I'm making here is if you find like a bad weapons program, you should cut it no matter how much it costs. If the goal Is to cut 8% and you're just spotting places to cut to hit that 8%, that is a bigger problem because you could be cutting into actual muscle at that point, you're no longer cutting fat. At that point you're cutting into actual muscle. And this is a problem because the reality is that the United States is actually not spending like a country that is preparing to retain its position of world dominance. We're not. Here, for example, is a chart of US Military spending by percentage of gdp.
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Unknown A
Historically as particular chart, you can see that during wartime it spiked. It was all the way up a near 15% in 1953. And then it's been steadily declining since the end of the Cold War. By the end of the Cold War, the United States was spending north of 6% of GDP. Today we are spending approximately 3.6% of our GDP on defense. And that's in the face of a very aggressive China. China is a rising power. China is extraordinarily aggressive. Cutting our own defense capacity in the face of all this would be a fairly large scale mistake. The commander of Indo Pacific guy named Admiral Sam Paparo, he said, quote, work very close to the Point where on a daily basis, the fig leaf of an exercise could very well hide operational warning, meaning China doing these sort of military exercises around Taiwan, their aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan right now are not exercises.
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Unknown A
They call them, they're rehearsals. They're rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland. Paparo said our magazines run low. Our maintenance backlogs grow longer each month. We operate on an increasingly thin margin of error. Our opponents see these gaps and they're moving aggressively to exploit them. And that is right. And when it comes to, for example, Chinese military spending, the reality is that China, well, the claim is that China's only spending like 1 point something percent, 1.6% of their GDP on defense. That's not actually true. Other estimates suggest they're not spending $280 billion on their military every year. They're spending close to $700 billion on the military every year and hiding it in order to prevent the United States from seeing exactly what it is that they are doing. And this raised some generalized questions about what exactly the Trump foreign policy is going to look like.
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Unknown A
And we have some indicators. Obviously, it's an aggressive foreign policy willing to use economic power in order to leverage change in places like Colombia or in Mexico. President Trump is willing to think outside the box in the Middle east in, I think, new and amazing ways. And President Trump obviously wants to get to a solution in Ukraine. If, however, the goal is to cut defense, if the goal is a sort of generalized American retreat from the world, the sort of neo isolationist position that if the United States retreats from the world, that nothing fills the gap, that is just not true. Something will fill the gap, and the thing that fills the gap will not be friendly to the United States. Now, maybe you make the calculation somehow, somehow, that the turning of the Far east into a giant Chinese pond is somehow not all that damaging to the United States.
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Unknown A
Or at least, you know, if we save a couple hundred billion dollars here or there around the military, somehow that outweighs the amount of cost to China taking over the South China Sea. I failed to see how that pencils out precisely because what we're talking about here in ramping up American military capacity is deterrence. The goal is to never have to go to war. That is what peace through strength is all about, to push people off the line. Something, by the way, that Trump is very familiar with and that he's been very successful at in the past. That credible threat of use of force has been President Trump's friend, historically speaking, withdrawing from areas all over the globe in the sort of hackneyed belief that the rest of the world will then become a friendly place, that a multipolar world would be constructed similarly to the current world order.
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Unknown A
That allies that we have across the world won't simply reorient toward China, which is much more ambitious and willing to expend capital and willing to expend military force where it wants. That's just not true. There are countries that we take for granted, say Japan, Australia. These are countries that have been longtime American allies. If the United States were to abandon its footing in the Far east, what do Japan and Australia do? Well, either they arm up, in which case you have arms races in the Far east, which raises the prospect of serious conflict, or you have these countries trying to make some sort of accommodation with China, which of course strengthens China at the expense of the United States. Economics is not a zero sum game, because if two sides trade, both sides get richer. But foreign policy power is a zero sum game, and trajectory matters.
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Unknown A
The United States is, in fact, the guarantor of, say, freedom of the seas. The United States is the force that is keeping North Korea from walking across the border in South Korea. It's our trigger force in South Korea. It is, in fact, American presence in places like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and the Baltic states that does prevent further Russian aggression in those states. It is not the grand threat of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia's military prowess. Preventative power. It's always very easy to do the counterfactual. And the counterfactual is all, well, you know, if we just withdrew from these areas, if we didn't have military power, if we cut the defense budget, then probably everything would be okay, because that's an imaginary world. The costs right now are real, but the success of the counterfactual is imaginary. So it's easy to make that case. Well, you know, the costs are real.
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Unknown A
We have to keep soldiers in a lot of places and spend a lot of money, and do we really want to be doing that? The counterfactual, however, fails to acknowledge the reality of life, which is that America has aggressive enemies, all of which have their own interests in mind. They act on their own. They're not acting in opposition to the United States in the sense that the US does something. They simply react. They have their own priorities, they have their own agendas, and those agendas do not align with the agenda of the United States. Now, again, I don't think that that is what President Trump is looking for. I think what President Trump is looking for here is a Peace through strength policy. I think that because he told me that on this show. And that is why I think it's important to see who gets staffed up in, for example, the Defense Department.
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Unknown A
There's a bubbling battle over a potential Defense Department nominee named Elbridge Colby. And there's a lot of controversy over exactly what Elbridge Colby thinks. Very good piece over at Tablet magazine, Bailey Smith, talking about Elbridge Colby. But the bizarre thing about Elbridge Colby, who again, is being pushed by some segments of sort of the maga, right? The bizarre thing about Elbridge Colby is that his actual history is working in Democratic circles. He began his career working for the center for a New American Security, which is a think tank founded by Clinton officials and allies with the purpose of turning military officers into loyal Democrats. He then worked at West Exec Advisors, founded in 2017 by two former Barack Obama officials, Anthony Blinken and Michelle Flournoy. Avril Haynes, the West Exec consultant, went on to become Biden's Director of National Intelligence. Blinken, of course, went on to be Secretary of State.
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Unknown A
And Flournoy was theoretically going to lead the Pentagon, where supposedly she was going to actually hire Elbridge Colby. Instead, Colby ended up working in the first Trump administration under James Mattis, who of course, was not a friend. The Trump foreign policy. He's advised a bunch of people in the gop, including, for example, Jeb Bush. So Colby's foreign policy doesn't truly align particularly well with many of the things that President Trump has said. Colby's argument historically has been that we need to reorient American interests away from, say, Europe and the Middle east and toward China, which is a fair enough argument if what you mean to do is actually then ramp up your capacity around Taiwan. But as Lee Smith points out, many of the people who are being put into place in the Defense Department don't even want to confront China. Michael Dimino, who is named as the Pentagon's principal Middle east policy advisor, and Andrew Byers, who's tapped for a South and Southeast Asia job.
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Unknown A
Both of those people are fellows at Defense Priorities, which is a Koch funded think tank. The Koch brothers are quite isolationist on foreign policy. Byers believes the United States should abandon belligerent military initiatives targeted at China because the two are, quote, more geopolitical rivals than full fledged adversaries. Meanwhile, Colby himself, he says we ought to orient again toward China. But he says, quote, it is true that Taiwan is very important strategic interest to the United States. It is not, however, an existential interest. America has a strong interest in defending Taiwan, but Americans could survive without it. And then he posted, Taiwan is very important but not existential interest for America. The real focus is denying China regional hegemony there. Thus defending Taiwan must make a cost benefit sense for Americans. And then he suggested that the only logical and coherent position was to raise the alarm that we are heading to a situation in which defending Taiwan won't make sense and may not even be possible.
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Unknown A
So in other words, swivel attention from the Middle east to China and then ignore China, which is a very, very weird policy and certainly not one that seems to align with the Trump foreign policy. But the Trump foreign policy remains early stages here. We'll have to see how all of this shakes out. We'll have to see how this ends up defining itself over time. Suffice it to say that America that abandons a leadership interest in the world is going to watch its interests get wrested away by opponents of the United States because again, those opponents don't stop existing just because you wish they would. And then you start unilaterally cutting defense or divesting from certain parts of the globe. It doesn't mean every intervention everywhere is a good idea, obviously. Clearly, many interventions aren't worth it. It doesn't mean that we ought to expend money in stupid places.
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Unknown A
Doesn't mean we ought to expend money on bad weapons systems. It does mean, however, that pretending away America's enemies and pretending that there will be no cost to the United States if those enemies gain regional power is whistling past the graveyard. Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the latest with regard to Doge. First, if you are with us for election night or the inauguration, you already know the Daily Wire doesn't just show up, we take over. And now we are headed back to D.C. to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin and Jeremy Boreing, all on Stage Live tonight February 20th. Check it out. No scripted talking points, no corporate approved narratives, just real conversations that actually matter. Streaming live at Daily Wire plus and we are taking your questions. Don't just watch CPAC be a part of it.
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Unknown A
Live tonight, February 20th at Daily Wire Plus. Meanwhile, controversy continues over Doge. President Trump announced yesterday in a piece of interesting news that he is considering a Doge dividend, which would essentially take a per capita payment saved by Doge and then pass it back to the American people in the form of a check or a tax cut. Now there's a case to be made that we actually should use that money to pay down the national debt. Because, of course, that is one of the reasons that you're cutting the spending. However, I'd rather the taxpayers have back their money than that that money be blown on random turning the kids gay in Guatemala. Nonsense. Here's President Trump.
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Unknown B
There's even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the doge savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt. Because the numbers are incredible, Elon. So many billions of dollars. Billions. Hundreds of billions. And we're thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens and 20% down to pay back debt at Pay down debt.
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Unknown A
So, again, I think that not a bad idea. How much is DOGE actually cutting is sort of one of the open questions at this point. Because DOGE is working so fast and because they are citing a bunch of different things they're cutting, it's sort of hard to get a handle on what exactly is being cut. Apparently, according to the website for Doge, they account for $16.6 billion at this point of savings via cuts. But there was an error in some of the data that was published at the Doge website. They mislabeled the contract as an $8 billion contract was actually an $8 million contract. So you're talking about under $10 billion in actual itemized savings. At this point. It may be much, much more than that. It may be less. We don't actually know at this point. The itemized list includes a huge number of failed spending initiatives.
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Unknown A
And you can imagine that by the time we go through the entire federal government, it is going to amount to, say, $100 billion. Now in the vast scope of federal spending, is that going to make a huge den? Are you talking about trillions of dollars that is suddenly gonna get clawed back? I seriously doubt it. And herein lies the problem that I've noted for a while. DOGE is doing great work, and I love what they're doing. And I love the idea of naming all these programs, because the American people need to be made aware of how much of their money is being wasted. But the reality is the big drivers of America's debt are, of course, the giant entitlement programs. Kevin O'Leary on CNN makes this case. He says, Listen, Doge actually needs to be radically increasing the amount of cuts.
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Unknown E
I think the issue is they're not whacking enough. There's this concept in private equity. When you get a bankrupt company and you go in there, you cut 20% more than your initial read, and then you find like a pool of mercury, the organization gels back together again. Always cut deeper, harder. When there's fat and waste, the faa, it's not the people. The code is cobalt. It's from the 60s. It needs capex put into it for the technology to be upgraded to make it safer. It needs fat like a chicken. All of these agencies are like big fat chickens dripping over barbecues of fat. This is the best barbecue I've ever seen. But I don't think it's happening fast enough. They're not cutting enough. Keep slashing, keep hacking. While you have a 24 month mandate before the midterms. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. More, more cutting. Believe me, it's going to work out just great.
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Unknown D
Everybody, people with the nuclear codes, cut them too.
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Unknown E
Cut everything. Because if you don't see what they're doing and they can't show you that they're adding value, you whack.
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Unknown A
Okay. By the way, this is exactly how a company should be run. If you come in and there's a lot of fat dripping from the edge of the company, you gotta cut and cut nearly everywhere. By the way, there's tons of fat that needs to be cut. A Washington Free Beacon report now says that the Biden EPA actually awarded a group linked to Stacey Abrams with no real Track record a $2 billion environmental grant in 2024, which looks very much like just a money laundering attempt to left wing causes, which of course is what so much of the spending actually is. And Democrats are trying to fight back against this and they are doing so unsuccessfully. They have two angles. One is how dare you cut all of our fat? That fat needs to remain. Chuck Schumer, the awful Senate minority leader, he tried to say this.
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Unknown A
Listen, I'm fine with taking a scalpel, but you're using a meat ax. Well, yeah, because the government is as bloated as any government in human history.
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Unknown C
Of course there's some wasteful spending, but you don't use a meat axe and cut everything. We need to look at each program. We need to go through Congress and see what's wasteful and move to eliminate it. And what's very not wasteful, but very much needed. I'll give you one example. They went after community health centers in Medicaid. They're among the most efficient producers of health care we have. Yet they tried to eliminate. Eliminate them. Makes no sense. They're just using a meat axe and cutting everything, including many things that American families need, want and approve of.
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Unknown A
So, no, actually the meat axe is A good thing and good for Trump and good for Musk for taking the initiative on all of this. Angle number two, Democrats are trying is to find single incidents of cuts that really tug at the heart. And they're having a problem here because it turns out that government employees are not the most sympathetic victims. So for example, here you have Chelsea Milborn, a former federal employee fired from the Education Department, brought on to CNN to cry about it.
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Unknown F
I was excited to continue serving in this capacity. And they not only tore that out from under my feet, but couldn't even just grant me a layoff and instead place the blame on me that it was my performance. And I've gotten nothing but positive reviews on that. So I feel very much like the message is that my service is valued. They don't care about how this impacts me or people like me. And to me, it's inhumane. It feels like they're ignoring our personhood and not respecting us as human beings or as American citizens.
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Unknown A
Inhumane. I mean, not respecting you as a human. Like, what if we just don't want you doing the job that you were doing because we don't feel like paying you for that? You are not owed a job. Good luck with this. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is trying to blame President Trump for airplane crashes. Now they're getting desperate. Here's Chuck Schumer.
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Unknown C
Yesterday, the more Donald Trump and Doge indiscriminately hack away at public agencies, the greater harm to Americans well being and even their safety. The FAA is a good example. Just weeks after the deadliest plane crash in a long time. And just as we see more incidents around the country, President Trump has fired hundreds of FAA workers, including air safety personnel. Firing people whose very job it is to keep air travel safe is nothing short of reckless.
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Unknown A
Okay, but there's only one problem, which is they have yet to connect any of the cuts to any of the airplane crashes. This is what Delta CEO was saying to Gayle King, who tried the same exact routine yesterday.
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Unknown D
The Trump administration recently fired many employees of the FAA administration. Do those cuts, do those cuts worry you? And do you think that impacts the safety? I know you just said it's the safest way to travel, but after looking at all these mishaps, a lot of people are very nervous. Do these cuts affect you?
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Unknown E
The cuts do not affect us, Gail. I've been in close communication with the Secretary of Transportation. I understand that the cuts at this time are something that are raising questions.
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Unknown A
But the reality is there's over 50,000.
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Unknown E
People that work at the FAA and.
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Unknown A
The cuts I understand were 300 people.
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Unknown E
And they were in non critical safety functions.
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Unknown A
So no, actually it is not President Trump at all. They're having some real trouble, some real trouble out there. Okay, in just one second we're going to get to Democrats who are trying to vie now for leadership of a failing Democratic Party. The Democratic Party ratings by the way are absolutely in the toilet. We're talking like 30% in the 20s. Truly terrible. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. We got so much great stuff behind the paywall ranging from our various movies and TV shows to things like All Access special behind the scenes stuff all about Matt Walsh's work. Just tons of great stuff behind the paywall. Go check it out right now over at Daily Wire Pl SA.