The President's Daily Brief
PDB Situation Report | December 28th, 2024: Ukraine's Weapons Surge & America's Fentanyl Crisis
Sat, 28 Dec 2024
In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: The Biden administration pledges a surge of weapons to Ukraine, doubling down on support as a new administration prepares to take over. Retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges joins us to discuss the implications for Ukraine's fight and America's strategic role in the conflict. A deep dive into the deadly pipeline of fentanyl—tracing its path from China to Mexico to U.S. streets—and how it became the nation’s top killer. We’ll speak with Dr. Robert Marbut, producer of Fentanyl: Death Incorporated, to explore why this epidemic has escalated into a national security threat. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Blackout Coffee: https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/PDB Patriot Gold: Call 1-888-870-5457 for a free investor guide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the Biden administration's commitment to Ukraine?
Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll start things off in Washington, where the Biden administration, remember Joe Biden? Well, the Biden administration is reaffirming its commitment to Ukraine, promising a surge of weapons, even as a new administration. prepares to take over.
Retired US Army General Ben Hodges joins us to discuss what this means for Ukraine's fight and America's role in the conflict. Later in the show, we'll trace the deadly pipeline of fentanyl from China to Mexico to U.S. streets and why it's now America's top killer.
Then we'll talk with Dr. Robert Marbitt, producer of the documentary Fentanyl, Death Incorporated, about how this crisis became a national security threat. But first, our BDB situation report spotlight. It was a deadly Christmas in Ukraine as Russian missiles targeted cities across the country, leaving, frankly, devastation and heartbreak in their wake.
Chapter 2: How has the fentanyl crisis evolved in America?
In light of this holiday carnage, the Biden administration is reaffirming its commitment to Ukraine, pledging a surge of weapons and ammunition. Officials say the aid is essential to help Ukraine withstand escalating Russian attacks, even as the U.S. prepares for a new administration to take office.
But how far can this renewed support go in shaping the conflict and what might change under new American leadership? Well, to break it all down, we're joined now by retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges. He's the former commanding general of the United States Army in Europe. General, thanks very much for joining us again here on the Situation Report.
We very much appreciate it during the holiday season. Well, thank you for the privilege. I suppose a lot of people are probably wondering this question. We've got a matter of, well, really days, a handful of weeks, until the new administration takes over in the U.S.,
So is there any way to quantify from let's say election day in November of this year until now, how much has been allocated or authorized by the outgoing Biden administration for Ukraine?
Well, I couldn't put a specific number on it. There has been reporting about, finally, a sense of urgency of delivering what had already been approved authorized and so to get that delivered, but I don't know how much of what we're seeing now, what's going is something that was approved months ago or in the last few weeks. I couldn't offer any kind of a meaningful quantity.
Now, that's actually a really interesting point and a very important point, I think, is that is that we hear a lot about this. And the numbers do seem to vary depending on who you're talking to and how they're quantifying the aid that's been provided to Kyiv since February of 2022. Some people approximate around $60-plus billion or so.
But it's not as if everything lands in Kyiv upon authorization. It takes time. I think you raised an important point as to what has actually made its way over in real assets.
Well, and of course, as you'll know and your listeners will know, there's any number of reasons why it may not go flying off the shelf or out of the warehouse or out of the factory into Ukraine. If it's something that was manufactured in the United States, it has to be shipped over and then received and then transported across Europe.
into the airport in eastern Poland, which is kind of the portal for everything that then goes into Ukraine. And understandably, nobody's advertising, hey, today we're shipping X number of missiles or vehicles or routes of ammunition. The Ukrainians, of course, don't advertise this because the Russians, this would be the kind of information none of us would want to advertise.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of North Korean troops in Ukraine?
Chapter 4: What are the current challenges faced by Ukrainian forces?
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Chapter 5: How does the conflict in Ukraine affect U.S. national security?
Like here you've got North Korea sending away thousands of troops plus huge amounts of ammunition. If I was thinking strategically and in charge of all of it, it might be a good time to do a snap exercise in South Korea to put pressure on the North while they're sending away ammunition and troops for Russia.
Yeah, I mean, there's interesting, there's a number of different estimates, as you point out, in terms of how many troops have actually been sent from North Korea to aid Putin. And there are also likewise different estimates about how many North Korean troops have been killed or injured in action. The South Korean intelligence services estimated it's around 1,100, 1,200. I think the Ukrainian
military is estimating somewhere in that same zone. You have to imagine that Kim Jong-un really doesn't care about the lives of his soldiers. He's essentially bartering lives of his own soldiers, of his own military in exchange for technology transfer for weapons, money, and it's just one of those shocking developments of 2024, I think, that really very few people, if any, saw coming.
Yeah, I would not have guessed that North Korea would be a true contributing nation for Russia's war against because, you know, the whole narrative from Pyongyang had always been that the South is going to attack any day, and we've got to be ready, and that sort of thing, and now to send away, apparently, tens of thousands of troops.
Now, there could be huge amounts of money involved in this, or Russian oil and gas being provided to North Korea. I mean, I'm sure the North would not do it if they weren't getting something really good.
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Chapter 6: What are the prospects for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia?
Wait a minute. Are you saying, General, that they're not doing this pro bono? That this is not a charity case from Kim Jong-un's perspective? Yeah, it is shocking, though, when you see it. It's just interesting. I've been trying to... assess as to just how significant the impact of those North Korean troops are from Putin's perspective.
And I take your point, it does perhaps postpone that day when he may need to do another large-scale conscription, if he ever decides to do that, because I think you're right, that's the one thing that he desperately wants to avoid. If we could, General, I wanted to touch on a couple of other topics. the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft that went down.
Have you heard anything further about the cause of that crash?
You know, two or three things that I would want to address right off the top. First of all, what courage and skill of these pilots that managed to get that aircraft on the ground in Kazakhstan after it was hit and after they were denied the ability to land somewhere on the western side of the Caspian. They then were diverted across the Caspian and crash landed in Kazakhstan. That's incredible.
I mean, as I've listened to aviation experts talk about what the loss of controllability that the pilots could keep that thing even in the air to get to land and Apparently about a third to a half of the passengers survived that terrible crash. It was incredible, and I think that credit goes to those pilots. Secondly, why was the Grozny Airport still open?
I mean, there have been reports coming from the Russian side that there were Ukrainian drones all around Grozny Airport, part of this ongoing series of Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia. And so typically, I know I live near the airport here in Frankfurt, anytime some knuckleheads out with his own personal drone, they shut down the whole airport.
So why would the Grozny Airport still be open so that this airliner from Azerbaijan would be trying to land there? It should have been diverted long before that. Finally, I think there's no doubt that this aircraft was hit by Russian air and missile defense. Of course, there'll be an investigation. Of course, they'll have to do it as they should.
But just looking at the footage that you and everybody else has looked at, those are not bird strikes.
Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I know the investigation is ongoing. It's tough. And the last thing we want to do is speculate. But I appreciate your insight and your update there. The other thing I wanted to touch on, and this is sort of outside the focus of our conversation, as you mentioned, you're based in Frankfurt.
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Chapter 7: What caused the recent crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft?
Yeah, it's a terrific point. Look, we address this situation, the border situation, national security on the PDB on a regular basis. And our point tends to always be the same, which is you can't have national security. You can't do your primary function as a government, which is to protect your citizens and protect national security interests, if you don't know who's coming across the border.
I agree with you 100%. It's as simple as that. If you don't have a secure border, then you're failing in your primary objective as a government.
Part of the problem also, I think, as you pointed out, is, look, the primary outside players, the Mexican cartels, the Chinese regime in some fashion, whether it's the criminal elements or whether the Chinese regime is complicit in some fashion to some degree, The problem with the Chinese regime is, of course, they only act when it's in their best interests.
You could argue that a lot of countries do the same thing, but they tend to be the primary proponent of that concept. If they don't see this as being an issue for them or in their best interests, then we're going to be hard pressed without taking serious action, whether it's tariffs, whether it's actual serious sanctions to get the Chinese regime to change.
I remember during the Obama administration, they had that famous, you know, state meeting where President Obama and Xi Jinping stood side by side. And President Obama talked about how Xi Jinping had promised to stop engaging in cyber shenanigans. And they just doubled down on it. Right. So because, again, it wasn't in their best interest. So I guess
What I'm getting to in a rambling way, Doctor, is from your perspective, how would you deal with this? How would you work, if you were in charge, if you were the fentanyl czar, on day one, what would you start doing?
Well, and I spent three weeks in China prepping for this movie, almost three weeks. And the good news is China knows how to take care of this for themselves. There's almost no fentanyl use nationwide in China. So the highest populous country of the world has almost no use. And what they have done is they've criminalized hard drugs. and they hold accountable, and it's certain.
So right out of the box, if you were a distributor, wholesaler of it, they have very strict, very strict, it's very certain, it's very fast. So compare that to us in the United States that's doing things like harm reduction. And I don't think you can reduce any harm. I call it so-called harm reduction because there's no way you can make fentanyl safe or the fentanyl supply chain safe.
You can't make it safe. Yet in California, there are places like San Francisco spent $28 million on a safe consumption site, a block and a half from City Hall out in the public square. where they funded where you can go take your fentanyl and provided you with straws and foil and paraphernalia. Think of that versus China. China has strict punishment in there.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from the Christmas market attack in Germany?
Absolutely. Dr. Robert Marbut, thank you very much again for your insight. I look forward to having you back on and I appreciate your time. All right. Well, that is all the time we have for the PDB Situation Report. And by the way, I do hope that you're having a terrific holiday season as well. Seems like it just flown by.
If you have any questions or comments or if you have humorous anecdotes or maybe you've got a limerick or two, I don't know, people still do limericks. reach out to me at pdbatthefirsttv.com. Of course, every month we take the comments and your questions and we smash them all together into an episode that we call Ask Me Anything. We've got another one in the hopper about ready to launch.
So keep the cards and letters coming. Also, as you may have heard, to listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, well, it is simple. You become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief. by visiting pdbpremium.com. And please don't forget, check out our YouTube channel. You can find that at President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker.
And until next time, and from some other part of the world, well, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.