Well, it looks like you're going to get a hot war with Russia and China, whether you want one or not. Yesterday morning, an American reaper drone went down over the Black Sea. We still do not know exactly what happened. We're not going to lie to you. We don't know, and we don't expect to find out anytime soon, if ever.
The Biden administration says it knows. It says the unmanned drone was harassed and damaged by two Russian fighter jets over international waters. So, that's all we have; we are going to have to take their word for it. Everybody else seems to be.
Lindsey Graham didn't ask many penetrating questions. No, he moved immediately, seized the opportunity to demand that the Pentagon attack the Russian air force. Here he is.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, we should hold them accountable and say that if you ever get near another U.S. asset flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets.
What would Ronald Reagan do? Oh, good question, Senator Graham. Ronald Reagan's two term presidency was notable for the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian air force, and therefore the United States did not go to war with Russia and millions of lives were saved as a result. That's not a small thing. Put one in the Reagan win column there, another president they told you was a crazed warmonger who actually kept us out of war but won the Cold War anyway. And how did Reagan do that? Well, simple. He kept the American economy strong.
Do you remember? That seems like a long time ago. It's pretty much the opposite of the approach being pushed right now by Lindsey Graham and his friends in the War Party. Their plan is to ignore our borders in the United States, but to defend Ukraine. They're even funding the Ukrainian pension system, not kidding, as our own American banks collapse.
What would Ronald Reagan do? He'd probably vomit if he saw it. We're glad Ronald Reagan is not here to watch Lindsey Graham invoke his name to justify anti-American stupidity. What about Lindsey Graham's plans, the plans of almost every Republican senator in the U.S. Senate and all the Democrats? How would they help the United States? Well, they never answer that question because they couldn't be less interested.
So, back in the modern era where the rest of us live, you've got to wonder what exactly is going on here. Lindsey Graham was telling us we have to attack the Russian air force. Why now? Well, let's see. On Monday, there was a major development in the 2024 presidential race. We saw on a list of questions for the likely Republican candidates and we asked them where they stood on the war in Ukraine and we fully expected that most of them would agree with Lindsey Graham and virtually every officeholder in Washington, D.C. But no, that's not what happened. In fact, the opposite happened.
Virtually without exception, every Republican presidential hopeful from Donald Trump long on the record to Ron DeSantis to Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem, Vivek Ramaswamy and others, has turned against the idea of a hot war with Russia. In fact, Ron DeSantis described what is happening in Ukraine as a "territorial dispute" that is not even in the top five critical national security concerns of the United States. Hardly anybody imagined that Ron DeSantis thought that, but he does, and he's on the record saying so.
What does that mean? Well, it means that the Republican presidential nominee, almost, no matter who it is, will oppose an open-ended commitment to fund the war in Ukraine in order to fight Russia forever. Now their position is, in fact, fully in line with the overwhelming majority of conservative voters, the ones who choose the Republican nominee. But those voters have been utterly disenfranchized for the past year as Lindsay Graham and The Atlantic Magazine in the ghost of Ronald Reagan have been permitted to speak for them in bad faith. But it's not just conservative voters who don't want war with Russia. It's the majority of all voters and now there are people running for office, in fact, the most powerful office who agree with voters as in a democracy.
So, for the war party in Washington, this is a flat-out disaster. Oh, the people don't want it. We just spent two years lecturing you about democracy, but the bulk of the population and the people they're about to run against Joe Biden, oppose it. How can you defend democracy and push a war that the population doesn't want? You can't, so they're panicking, and the response is really interesting.
Instead of responding with arguments or reasons of convincing Americans that war with Russia will benefit them in some way, they're just pushing ahead for that war with Russia. They don't care about Ukraine at all. Ukraine means nothing to them. If it did, they want to halt the war because apparently more than 100,000 Ukrainians have already died, but they don't care. They're keeping the war going. That's how much they care about Ukraine.
PENCE PUSHES BACK AGAINST DESANTIS COMMENT THAT UKRAINE WAR WITH RUSSIA IS 'TERRITORIAL DISPUTE'
They're pushing us to war and by the way, shooting down Russian jets that don't fire on us first is an act of war. It's the definition of an act of war and, of course, Lindsey Graham, steeped in all things military, knows that perfectly well. We asked Lindsey Graham to come on the show as we have so many times before, to explain why should we start World War III? He, of course, declined, as he has so many times before, but he doesn't need our help. The rest of the media everywhere is foursquare behind him, as always. Here's Jeb Bush's former press secretary.
NICOLLE WALLACE: A former Mueller investigator said to me, I think about 18 months ago now, that the next Russian election interference won't run afoul of any laws. They're that good. They'll just get their signals from which candidates, who in questions asked by Tucker Carlson, there are no accidents here, and answered by Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, it's abundantly clear who Russia would be interested in aiding.
So, if you disagree with those children, you are committing election interference on behalf of Vladimir Putin. How low could political rhetoric go? Is it even possible to go lower? Well, that seems to be the needle right there. You know the moron in the seat nod saying, "Yes, that's exactly right. It's election interference, too." As a candidate, take a position that's consistent with what the majority of voters want. Wow, dystopian. And if you answer those questions in ways that Jeb Bush's former press secretary doesn't like, you're a disloyal American. Here's more from MSNBC.
JOY REID: DeSantis wants to appease Putin, calling the brutal invasion of Ukraine nothing more than a territorial dispute. It's the latest sign that the party of DeSantis, Trump and Tucker is seriously out of touch with the views of most Americans.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Ron DeSantis, who is parroting Vladimir Putin and Kremlin talking points by calling Russia's invasion of Ukraine a "territorial dispute."
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Trump and DeSantis coming out with anti Ukraine positions, pro-Russia positions, in effect.
DAVID PLOUFFE: The two Republican front-runners basically want to run away from Zelenskyy in Ukraine and into Putin's arms.
STUART STEVENS: The anti-woke guy, Ron DeSantis, his ideal is Putin's Russia, where there are no gay people, where there are no women in power, where, you know, they're all Christians. That's how he wants to see the world.
GOP SENATOR 'P---ED OFF' BY RUSSIA FORCING DOWN US DRONE: 'WE CANNOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN'
You just wind up in this world where you get moral lectures from former political consultants like Stuart Stevens. Not well-situated for moral lectures, because you don't want the Third World War because you have children or grandchildren, because your own country is in deep trouble, your economy is falling apart, so you're not all-in on a World War III against Russia and China and you get a moral lecture from these people. It's like getting a moral lecture from the banks.
But what's interesting is there's actually a lot of news to cover here, news that the other news organizations are completely ignoring. They're basically just handmaidens to power. At this point, they're not even pretending, but if you're paying any attention at all, if you thought for even a moment, "I'm a journalist, I should cover the news," you might notice that we're getting, to charitably put it, mixed messages from people in power. For example, here is Mark Milley today explaining that Ukraine is armed to the teeth with American weaponry.
GEN, MARK MILLEY: Two weeks ago, the United States released another security assistance package, which included high margin ammunition, artillery, vehicle maintenance and vehicles. Ukrainian soldiers wear the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, but the colors of 50 other nations that met today stand beside Ukraine to support the principles of the rules-based international order.
Look how afraid that man looks. Almost want to play the tape again! Go back and look at that on the Internet. That man is afraid. What is he afraid of? It'd be interesting to know. But what he just told us is we've sent a huge amount of material to Ukraine: artillery, ammunition, $100 billion. So that would suggest that the Ukrainian military has a lot of equiment, they're well-armed. Oh, but no, at the very same time that Mark Milley is telling us that, the Pentagon just yesterday informed us that actually Ukraine is running out of munitions.
REPORTER: There is reports out there from the battlefield that the Ukrainians are running out of munitions. They're having shortages. Is that a concern for the Pentagon and what's the Pentagon doing to alleviate that problem?
BRIG. GEN. PAT RYDER: Yeah, so as we've been doing since the beginning of this campaign, we're continuing to do everything that we can to ensure that we're meeting Ukraine's needs, whether it's ammunition, whether it's air defense, armor. You know, you've heard us talk extensively about that. Tomorrow's discussion, of course, will be another opportunity to bring the international community together, to focus on Ukraine's most urgent needs to include ammunition.
UK TURNS RUSSOPHOBIA ARGUMENT ON MOSCOW, CLAIMS GREATEST THREAT TO RUSSIAN SOCIETY IS WAR IN UKRAINE
Leaving aside the fact, the dead certain fact, that the US military probably should have enough of its own ammunition, now they're all invoking Ronald Reagan. Remember, peace through superior firepower? Weakness invites aggression? Speaking of weakness, the U.S. military increasingly is weak and part of the reason, there are a number of reasons, but one of them is we're sending all this stuff to Ukraine. So, there's the military question that no one seems to have answered, but there's also an economic question. Where's all the money going?
We spent more than Russia's typical annual military budget in Ukraine, and yet the Ukrainian military is out of ammunition again? OK, that might be a question for Zelenskyy. Where's all the money going? They're on the phone with BlackRock all day. Where's all the money going? People are getting very rich. You can't have an audit because if you want an audit of where your money is going into the most corrupt country in Europe, you're a tool of Putin.
The media, by the way, isn't mad about the fact our money appears to be disappearing into this sinkhole of corruption called Ukraine or being used to close Christian churches. No, they're mad because the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, hasn't rushed to kiss the ring of Zelenskyy. Watch.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN: President Vladimir Zelenskyy makes an offer to the U.S. House Speaker that Kevin McCarthy is refusing.
TIM MILLER, MSNBC: Look at Kyiv, for example. He was invited to Kyiv by Zelenskyy. Any other speaker of the House would have obviously gone there to show solidarity with our ally.
ALEXANDER VINDMAN, MSNBC: This is all completely Kevin McCarthy kind of pandering to the extreme wing of his party.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC: What is your reaction to Kevin McCarthy refusing President Zelenskyy's invitation to come to Ukraine or discuss with him directly aid to Ukraine?
DAVID ROTHKOPF, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: I don't know what kind of single-celled creature Kevin McCarthy is more like that's an amoeba or it's a paramecium. He is letting down the United States.
SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: I understand Kevin McCarthy, again is playing to his isolationist America first, which is actually not "America first," it’s actually "America last on the world stage."
PENTAGON: RUSSIAN JET TAKING DOWN US DRONE PART OF 'PATTERN' OF 'AGGRESSIVE' PILOT ACTIONS
Wow. These people are having a lot to answer for at some point, hopefully soon, but imagine how degrading the scenario you just witnessed is. They're hectoring the speaker of the House and by the way, we would defend if the roles were reversed, a Democrat speaker of the House on these same grounds because they are American grounds, not partisan grounds. But here you have these people, these hair hats on television, scolding the American speaker of the House because he won't suck up to a corrupt foreign leader who's demanding that you send your children to a war in a country you can't find on a map.
Zelenskyy is on television almost every day demanding that you send your children to war (Really?) where they could die. Now, typically, people who demand that you put your children in a position where they could die are not your allies exactly. No, they're your enemies. Yeah. You must kiss his ring because he's a religious figure now. Right.
But as they were yapping about all of that, they missed some other things that were going on in the United States, like, for example, the collapse of our economy. The second and third-biggest bank failures in the history of this country just took place. Now, the venerable Credit Suisse is down 97% from its all-time high. It's trading for about 2 Swiss francs.
Are you worried about that? Yeah, you probably should be. Your leaders aren't worried at all. The media don't care at all. Instead, they're telling you that you're a traitor to your country if you don't want a Third World War, and they're panicked, of course, just like Milley was panicked in that tape. They're afraid.
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Why are they afraid? Because they know the public is not on their side, but the second we actually go to war with Russia, they will use that as a pretext to crush all dissent. There is no dissent allowed in wartime, and that's what this is really about in addition to their personal enrichment. It's about changing the domestic politics of the United States.
The second we can all say we're at war with Russia, not in effect, but in reality, in a hot war, which is what they want, that's the moment that you were no longer allowed to express your opinions. And the penalty is jail during war. It's happened a lot, and they want that now. Hopefully on the basis the questionnaires we received, other people will take charge soon and save us from this lunacy.
