It Could Happen Here - Why Conservatives Hate Ukraine feat. Rudy Giuliani

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Robert discusses how the Republican Party came to see Ukraine as an enemy, and plays an argument he had with Rudy Giuliani at the 2024 RNC. Sources: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/07/29/war-in-ukraine-wide-partisan-differences-on-u-s-responsibility-and-support/ https://archive.is/VUyw0 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/20/republicans-ukraine-aid-package-congress https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/republican-opposition-to-ukraine-is-reaching-tipping-point.html https://www.newsweek.com/trump-rnc-chair-whatley-says-ukraine-us-adversary-republicans-1887731 https://news.gallup.com/poll/643601/americans-say-not-helping-ukraine-enough.aspx https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/11/russia-to-build-migrant-village-for-conservative-american-expats-a81101 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/ https://archive.is/9UPuP#selection-2869.0-2869.506 https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-weapons-audit-watchdog-us-congress-biden-9abecd14528b9551ff4ddb6786ad7fda https://www.businessinsider.com/no-sign-of-mass-arms-trafficking-from-ukraine-authorities-say-2022-10 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world

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On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Calls on Media. Robert Evans here.

This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And today I wanted to take some time to talk about Ukraine and particularly to talk about the sort of cultural place that the Ukrainian resistance against Russia, the expanded invasion by Russia, has taken in American politics and in American kind of political culture. Obviously, I am recording this within a few hours of another attempted assassination on former

President Trump, this one by a guy who, among a confusing melange of other things, claimed to be a major advocate of Ukrainian sovereignty and that that was a major reason why he was angry at the Republicans and angry at former President Trump. And kind of that, at least failed assassination attempt, is sort of in line with a lot of derangement around Ukraine. And you can find this on the left and the right and the center. I've come to think that if you're trying to evaluate sort of how credible someone is as a geopolitical expert today, one of the best things you can do is kind of look back to early February 2022 and see what sort of claims they were making about what was going to happen, whether or not Russia was actually going to go into Ukraine and expand their invasion. And that's obviously, you know, a bigger topic than I think we're going to get

into today. One of the things that I find really interesting when I kind of analyze how particularly conservatives have turned on the Ukrainian cause is how kind of incomprehensible that seems just based on the way in which I was raised by the conservatives in my life to think about Russia and to think about Russian military aggression. I grew up largely in the post-Cold War era, but my parents were both raised by Cold Warriors. They mostly grew up on military bases. And I still grew up with an awful lot of the kind of Cold War shrapnel in my sort of ideological training. You know, the movie Red Dawn was a big part of my childhood.

You know, some of those early James Bond movies where the Soviet unions are still the bad guy. You know, this was all major stuff for me. So it's been particularly disorienting kind of watching philo-Russian attitudes infiltrate the right and us move from this idea of like, these people are one way or the other kind of a geopolitical opponent of the United States towards these people are almost existing in an idealized version of the society we bring around. It's been a cause of some whiplash for me and for I think a lot of people who were raised in that environment

and then kind of came out of those ideological beliefs. And when we look at the kind of turnaround on the right about this stuff, one of the people who's been on the bleeding edge of this has been vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. And in fact, Ukraine might mark the first place where Vance really came in ahead of the rest of his party on an issue they would all ultimately move in behind him on. Back in early 2022, in the immediate wake of Russia's expanded invasion, Vance told Steve Bannon in one of his many ill-advised podcast interviews, quote, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.

Now, as this paragraph from an article by Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine makes clear, Vance was swiftly followed by others. Quote, Then Congressman Madison Cawthorn parroted Russian propaganda by saying, The Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies. And his colleague, Marjorie Taylor Greene, called the Ukrainians neo-Nazis. Fox News' Tucker Carlson was a constant font of bitter hostility towards U.S. aid for

Ukraine. Now, Cawthorn was and remains now a stooge, but I think it really is kind of drilling into the precise wording of his claim here. The fact that he's so focused on wokeness, you know, within the context of a conflict that seems much more serious than kind of the standard American culture war bullshit. A lot of why we're seeing this has to do with the fallout over the Russiagate culture war that consumed the Democrats during the first half of the Trump administration. This led to a the enemy of the enemy is my friend sort of thinking among the right. And this was stoked consciously by Russian propaganda efforts. After Trump left office, these efforts were redoubled, especially after the war in Ukraine became an existential issue for Putin's regime.

A good example of the more obvious sort of messaging is this Moscow Times article from May of 2023, with the title, Russia to Build Migrant Village for Conservative American Expats. Quote, Timur Beslangarov, a migration lawyer at Moscow's Vista Foreign Business Support, claimed that around 200 families wish to immigrate to Russia for ideological reasons. The reason is propaganda of radical values. Today they have 70 genders, and who knows what will come next? RIA Novosti quoted Basangarov as saying, echoing President Vladimir Putin's frequently deployed grievances against Western countries' comparative gender freedom. And here we see it again, the focus on hatred of woke as a justification for solidarity

with Russia. A sizable plurality of Americans still support the U.S. sending aid to Ukraine. And the reality of Russia's invasion is hideous enough that the bulk of modern Russian propaganda in this country today seems to focus on the woke issue more than anything directly relevant to the war. As I write this, one of the top stories in the country is how a Tennessee-based media network, Tenant Media, hired a bunch of American influencers like Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and paid them north of a hundred grand of video to make Russian propaganda. Now, Poole and Rubin and their fellows claim to

be shocked, shocked, that a foreign government was involved in all and deny acting as unregistered foreign agents or breaking the law in any way. We'll see how those claims look in a few months. For now, I think it's illustrative to turn towards a wired analysis of the content of dozens of Tenet Media videos written by Tim Marchman and Drov Mirota. It shows us the kind of propaganda that Russia found fruitful in ceding to an American audience. Quote,

This analysis does not show that in these videos the influencers were particularly fixated on the Ukraine war. The word Ukraine appears in the transcript 67 times, about as often as misinformation, Christianity, and Clinton. It does show the influencers stressing highly divisive culture war topics in the videos, which carried titles like, Trans Widows Are A Thing, and It's Getting All Caps

Out Of Hand and Race Is Biological But Gender Isn't? The word trans appears 152 times and transgender 98. So 67 times we see Ukraine appear in these transcripts as opposed to well over 200 times for trans and transgender together. transcripts as opposed to well over 200 times for trans and transgender together. Now, if you want a snapshot of just how absurd and divorced from reality the culture wars have gotten, the Russian government, funding a clandestine influence operation, considered stoking fears about trans people to have a higher rate of return than actually propagandizing directly about the war in Ukraine. As absurd as this sounds, these tactics have borne fruit,

and I think the reason why is simple, by building a sense of solidarity between bigoted American conservatives and what they see as a similarly conservative Russia. Now, obviously, the reality of the situation is that Russia is not exactly the country these people think it is. While it is true that the number of Russian adults who consider themselves at least somewhat religious skyrocketed after the fall of the USSR, from 11% or so to over 50% today, much of that is likely just explained by the change away from an expressly atheistic government. Even today, Pew Research notes, quote, For most Russians, the return to religion did not correspond with a return to church. Across all three waves of ISSP data, no more than about 1 in 10 Russians said they attend religious services at least once a month.

The share of regular attenders, monthly or more often, was 2% in 1991, 9% in 1998, and 7% in 2008. 1991, 9% in 1998, and 7% in 2008. For reference, about 32% of Americans currently attend church, synagogue, mosque, etc. on a weekly basis. Now this is down significantly from 49% in 1958 and does represent a low for church attendance in U.S. history. But you can see we still beat the Russians in at least active religiosity by a factor of like five. Now, one of the modern bugbears of the right wing in the U.S. is no-fault divorce, which often gets wrapped up in conversations about wokeness. Here, Russia is also not a bastion of good old-fashioned values. I'm going to quote from an article in Russia Beyond by Nikolay Shevchenko.

I'm going to quote from an article in Russia Beyond by Nikolay Shevchenko. In 2016, the ratio in Russian of divorces to new marriages that year was 1 to 1.6, meaning that Russians divorce more often than they marry. In recent decades, over 60% of marriages in Russia ended in official separation. Now, there is precisely one issue where Russian culture is in reality more in line with the kind of culture American conservatives claim to desire, and that is in its treatment of LGBT people and ethnic minorities. The last years in Putin's Russia have seen a surge in hate crimes against queer Russians as LGBT advocacy organizations have been declared illegal and punished by the government.

This is the Russia our American right wing finds solidarity with, and we shouldn't forget that, right? When we're looking at to what extent do these people see Russia as kind of embodying the values they would like to bring to the United States, it has a lot less to do with actual religiosity, with good old-fashioned family values, and a lot more to do with hate for specific groups of people. And we're going to talk about what dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community,

and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk

Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions, like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save?

And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

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Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So earlier this year, I headed to the Republican National Convention, and I had a lot on my mind there. But one of the things I was kind of interested in is hearing the way in which conservatives talked about Ukraine when they

felt like they were among friends. It was not uncommon to hear Ukraine referenced in conversations as a geopolitical enemy of the United States. And, you know, this is something I encountered a number of times, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a fluke of my own experiences there. And I assure you, it was not. Michael Waitley, who Donald Trump picked to chair the RNC, appeared on Fox News in April and lumped Ukraine in with China and Iran as aggressive adversaries of the United States. Now, you know, we can quibble on that list for a number of reasons, but Ukraine, a country we are currently arming and training to fight in our stead, is just kind of absurd to describe as an aggressive adversary of the United States. Now, that very month, Congress voted on a

foreign aid package, which caused a massive split in the Republican Party. The anti-Ukraine side was led by voices like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told Steve Bannon, the Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They're not attacking Christianity. Now, like most things, Greene says, this is not quite accurate. The Guardian noted at the time, quote, in fact, according to figures from the Institute for Religious Freedom, a Ukrainian group, at least 630 religious sites had been damaged or looted in Russia's invasion by December last year. Green received a speaking slot at the RNC, as did tech investor David Sachs, who spent some of his time on stage arguing that Joe Biden somehow provoked the Russians to invade

Ukraine by talking about NATO expansion. Now, this is a claim you'll hear on some segments of The Left, too, and it tends to ignore that Russia invaded back in 2014, after a revolution against a Kremlin-backed President Yanukovych threw their own plans in the region into disarray. Ukraine, to this day, despite the expanded invasion, is not a part of NATO, and Biden's administration has been leery not only of pushing for this, but of supplying Ukraine with long-range weapons to strike inside Russian territory. The fact that Ukrainians and others did start discussing Ukrainian membership in NATO after almost a decade of war is certainly not among the things that we can blame the Biden administration for starting.

As I trolled the RNC, talking to attendees about their feelings on the war, I got a variety of responses. The most positive believed that Ukraine had been wronged, but that the war was unwinnable, so the U.S. had to negotiate some kind of peace. More argued that the Ukrainians were somehow stealing U.S. aid, which, they imagined, would be put to better use helping Americans. I found this an illogical position, personally, given that our aid to Ukraine has primarily taken the form of old weapons systems no longer in use by U.S. troops. Unless you want to house homeless veterans in Bradley fighting vehicles, I don't really see how what we've sent

Zelensky is much use to the kind of Americans who are actually suffering today. The most enlightening conversation that I had while I was at the Republican convention about their sentiments on Ukraine came when Garrison and I stumbled upon Rudy Giuliani, seated at the booth for some streaming network or another, exiled from the main stage of the event. I introduced myself to Rudy, and we started off just talking about how surreal the mood was given the recent attempted assassination of the former president. He's a conquering hero. We would have been even without him Saturday. With Saturday, it's surreal.

I think people feel they're living through history. That image of him rallying America has to be one of our 10 historical great images. Now, I included that because it's a fun snapshot of just how elated Republicans were that week, right before Biden dropped out and the whole election changed yet again on a dime. From here, Rudy and I moved to talking a bit about how badly the Secret Service had fucked up in protecting Trump, which is not really something I had a particular disagreement with, although I think Giuliani was coming at it from more of a conspiratorial standpoint than I would. I think simple incompetence more or less explains everything that happened that day pretty well.

This morphed in fairly short order into him ranting about how all of this was Biden's fault and how no one ever gets fired for incompetence in the Biden administration. He brought up Afghanistan, and that is what led us finally to Ukraine. Ukraine would not have happened if he hadn't been a complete coward over Afghanistan. Proof is very simple. Putin invaded three times under the last four presidents. There's only one president he was scared of. It was Trump. He invaded under Bush. He invaded under Obama. He invaded under Biden. He didn't invade under Trump. So don't tell me he would have invaded under Trump. He

had a chance to, but he didn't. Now, I responded by pointing out that Giuliani's time frame was a little off. Well, but I mean, I was there in 2015, and my friends who were in the Ukrainian military were still fighting under Trump. You know, the invasion was still happening. It was just not at the current level that it's at. Rudy went on to blame Obama for not having given weapons to Ukraine in a timely fashion. In fact, Poroshenko,

who is a corrupt pal of Biden's, told me that, yeah, they were my friends, but I didn't get any guns until Trump came in. They wanted me to win with pea shooters. He said, I never knew what side they were on. Obama never gave them arms. He gave them money. Now, this is, again, not accurate. Now this is again not accurate. By December of 2019, the U.S. had provided Ukraine with about $1.5 billion in aid since the 2014 invasion. This did include weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and armored vehicles, which is why they had some of these weapons when the expanded Russian invasion occurred. Rather than loosening the purse strings as Russian aggression

continued, President Trump withheld $391 million in aid to try and get a political favor from Zelensky. We're going to continue with Rudy Giuliani and my conversation, but first, here's a little bit more ads. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, music, películas and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing

real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities artists and culture shifters this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.

Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job

is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm. But you also have a lot of questions, like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k?

Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, It's the one with the green guy on it. to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace,

wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

and we're back so after Giuliani made his claim that the United States didn't send any weapons over to Ukraine until Trump was president he said this he let Biden handle the money the last guy in the world that should be handling money to Ukraine now and Ukraine's gotten 200 billion and nobody let us audit it this is this is the acknowledged to be the most corrupt second most corrupt third most corrupt country in the world the fact that they were invaded by russia doesn't make them honest it makes them the victim doesn't make them honest and you pour a couple hundred billion in there without controls what am i a jackass i can't figure out what's happening and you pour a couple hundred billion in there without controls, what am I, a jackass? I can't figure out what's happening. And you don't win? How much more do you have to get? Not too much

a billion? Now, Rudy, like most Republicans on this issue, always describes the aid we've sent to Ukraine as if it's cash. I find it interesting that he claims Ukrainian corruption is also somehow to blame for us not auditing the aid we sent. Now, there are issues with how the U.S. Defense Department has audited some of the aid going to Ukraine, but those are issues with the Defense Department. In fact, it came out in January of 2024 that the United States failed to audit about a billion dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. Now, first off, this is not cash, as Giuliani repeatedly insinuates. It's all weapons, and there's no evidence that any of these weapons were ever sold to another country or used outside

of Ukraine. They simply weren't audited the way that they ought to have been because the Pentagon fired all of the people who should have been auditing this aid, right? This is a pretty common issue with the Pentagon. You can look back to Iraq and the sheer amount of aid that was sent to Iraq and then kind of disappeared in the ether because they just didn't have anyone paying attention to it. Obviously, because that happened under a Republican administration, Giuliani isn't concerned at all about it. But he is deeply concerned about this kind of fantastical $200 billion that he believes has been shotgunned out to Ukrainian mobsters.

And here's Rudy again as our conversation continued. Biden has us consigned to a war without end in Ukraine. He doesn't even dare to suggest an end because he's afraid of confrontation with Russia. So he's just going to get more people killed. I mean, there probably isn't an American president that's had more people killed other than in a war than Biden. It's interesting you describe it as them not winning, because I do have trouble. I know in the lead up to the expanded invasion in February 2022, the expectation from most of the people in our military and most people internationally was that the Ukrainian military was going to fold in a matter of days. And they're now back to about 17% of the country under Russian

occupation, which isn't a massive escalation over where it was previously because they pushed the Russians out of Kiev. Well, will that end the war? Russia can keep 17%? I don't think the Ukrainians are willing to end the war. The war is won when you achieve the objective that has you stop conducting war. They're not even close to it. The only way Ukraine says it will stop fighting is if Russia is pushed out of Ukraine. They haven't been able to do that. So they're not winning the war. I mean, nor are they presenting a plan that we're funding to do that. We're not planning, we're not funding, we're just endlessly giving them money to keep the status quo. We do not have a plan to win that or end it. So, I mean, when I talk to...

Colin Powell used to say the worst thing about American foreign policy under unrealistic, somewhat left-leaning liberals is war without end. When you go into a war, you've got to be willing to commit yourself, and you've got to be willing to win it quick. Otherwise, you're going to lose. And, you know, when we started losing wars, that's the policy we followed. But if you compare where Ukraine is at right now to the wars the United States has gotten involved in in this century, Iraq, you know, around a decade or so, close to 20 years for Afghanistan. Ukraine is two years since the expanded invasion. And you know, war, it's a massive international conflict between a much smaller nation and a larger one.

When I talk to Ukrainians and I ask them, what do you think you need to actually win this? One of the things they repeatedly say is the ability to strike Russian assets inside Russia. Who prevents them from doing that? Yeah, I'm just wondering. Four minutes and we got to go. Who prevents them from doing that? Name a person. Definitely the Biden administration hasn't allowed that. He tells us he wants them to win. Do you do you think lying? Would you be supportive under a new Republican administration of allowing Ukraine to strike inside? I would be supportive of sitting down and having a realistic conversation about a plan. First thing I do is audit the money we gave. Now, of course, Rudy can't support that.

So he pivoted back to arguing that we need to audit Ukraine to, quote, find out what happened to the money we gave him, him being Zelensky. Again, I pointed out that we aren't giving him money directly. We're sending over weapons. Nevertheless, our conversation continued. Now, the vast majority of the 200 billion that's been sent over, though, is in munitions. Like, we're not talking about cash primarily. And that's an honest industry? Have you found any? It's an American industry.

But there has been... It's an American industry. It's an American industry. So you want to defend the American military industrial complex? What I want to say... And you don't think there's a lot of leaks of money in the American... I'm not concerned about money, though, because what we haven't seen... I'm concerned about money because the money doesn't get to the field.

There's no javelins winding up outside of Ukraine. There's no AGTMs winding up outside of Ukraine. But they're getting plenty of money. They're mostly getting weaponry, though. They're getting Bradleys. They're getting Abrams tanks. They're getting HIMARS systems. They also have been on the market selling those things.

Where have they sold them? They've been caught three times selling weapons. Where? I'd have to go back and look. But they've been caught three times selling weapons. Where? I'd have to go back and look, but they've been caught three times selling weapons. Plus, they have... Now, this was just a lie. Ukraine has not been caught selling U.S. weapons. Rudy only claims they have been because he's consumed a huge amount of Kremlin-funded media

that has been arguing since 2022 that U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine will end up on the black market. There's no outside evidence that shows that this has happened. And in fact, Elias Yusuf, a research analyst for the security think tank the Stimson Center, recently told Business Insider, I don't think we've seen any real diversion, particularly outside the country, of weapons. That article continues, Pro-Russian media has aired similar claims of a mass diversion of arms meant for the front line, some citing a retracted CBS report that included a source

claiming only 30% of weapons sent to Ukraine made it to the battlefield. One conspiracy-inclined website purportedly citing anonymous Ukrainians claimed the weapons are stolen to such a degree that Ukraine, as of August, had already lost the war because of the black market diversion. Now, in the months since that claim was made that Ukraine had lost the war because they had given up all of their weapons, they took a bunch of those weapons and invaded Russia, punching a hole through their lines and taking a considerable amount of territory in the Kursk region, which they occupy to an extent today, as is always the case with guys like Giuliani. Reality doesn't matter here. It's about repeating the same talking points until you get a journalist ignorant enough to take them as true. And it's the kind of

thing where if you're not up on all of the different claims being made on the right and all of the claims about corruption and money being siphoned off and taken by mobsters, then you're not going to be able to properly argue with them, right? If you don't really know what you're talking about, you might cede the point to Giuliani that there have been at least three cases of the Ukrainians caught selling American weapons overseas. Now, when you look into it, you see that this is primarily a claim that spreads on right-wing Facebook pages, and there's not really any evidence of a sizable diversion, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is, in the moment, being able to kind of spread a point out to the extent that nobody

really questions you on it. And I don't know, it's the kind of thing that happens a lot in politics, and it's the kind of thing that is probably pointless to really address, right? Like me arguing with Rudy Giuliani got him hot and flustered and kind of pissed off and certainly got me frustrated. But I don't think it accomplished much. And I really, I think kind of the thing that you have to accept when you're looking at sort of right wing lies about what's happening in Ukraine, or the lies being told right now about, you know, Springfield, Ohio and the Haitian migrant population over there, there's really very little point in actually confronting these people directly about the disinformation that they put out, because it's not really a case where they care about the truth one way or the other. It's a matter of you've kind of lost the fight if you care at all about trying to prove reality to them, you know? And that's kind of a bummer note to end this on, but I guess I don't really have anything

optimistic to say. I just thought you'd be interested in my little conversation with Rudy Giuliani and some of the talking points that are continuing to spread along the right. So, you know, at the very least, maybe the next time you wind up in an argument this Thanksgiving with your uncle about Ukraine, you'll be kind of wary for some of the arguments he's going to bring out, you know, to the extent that that does anybody any good. Until next time, I'm Robert Evans, and this is It Could Happen Here. If you want to see these sources for this episode and do some reading yourself, they're in the show notes. So just check them out there and we will be back tomorrow.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

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