President Trump launches a rhetorical assault on Ukrainian President Vlodomir Zelenskyy; the Department of Defense examines possible cuts; and Pete Buttigieg makes his play to lead the Democratic Party. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2142 - - - Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: Don’t just watch CPAC—be part of it LIVE with Daily Wire Backstage TONIGHT, February 20, on DailyWire+! Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Go to https://dailywire.com/subscribe today. Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/ben and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! Acorns - Sign up now at https://acorns.com/Shapiro to start saving and get your $20 bonus investment today! Fitbod - Get 25% off your subscription or try the app FREE for seven days at https://Fitbod.me/SHAPIRO Helix Sleep - Go to https://helixsleep.com/ben for an exclusive offer. - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB
Chapter 1: Why is Trump criticizing Zelensky and Ukraine?
So yesterday, President Trump decided that he was going to go whole hog on Vladimir 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 that. 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 of Ukraine up to and including Kiev and originally to kill Vladimir Zelensky and anyone else who is ruling in power and who is 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. 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 2022, 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 forward. 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.
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 going to be the outline of the deal. Security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia keeps Donbass and 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. 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...
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Chapter 2: What are the proposed outcomes for the Ukraine-Russia conflict?
That's helixsleep.com slash Ben for 27% off site wide, plus two free dream pillows with mattress purchase and free bedding bundle. Again, two dream pillows, sheet set, mattress protector with any Lux or Elite mattress order. helixsleep.com slash Ben for this exclusive offer. Now, Democrats, of course, are sounding off in extraordinary ways about all of this.
And here, 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 this 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 and 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. 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.
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.
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 Donbass 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.
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