No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT BIDEN

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

Russia invades Ukraine, and top Republicans find themselves on the wrong side of the conflict. Brian interviews the president of the United States, Joe Biden, about Trump praising Putin, his historic Supreme Court nomination, and his legacy.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Russia invading Ukraine and the Republican Party's wholly unpopular response to it. And I interview the President of the United States Joe Biden. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, obviously a big week. I'm recording this in Washington, D.C., where I sat down with the president for his first one-on-one interview since both the war in Ukraine and his Supreme Court nomination. But first, Russia has officially invaded Ukraine, bombings in cities,

across the country began early Thursday morning, and they're continuing night after night as it looks like Putin's attempting to seize control of Kiev. President Biden's responded with sanctions, including most recently on Vladimir Putin himself, along with his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, joining the European Union in doing so. The White House has also targeted Russia's largest banks, semiconductors, telecommunications, encryption security, lasers, sensors, navigation, avionics, maritime technologies, sanctions on a number of oligarchs and Russian elites and their families who are close to Putin, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and a number of individuals in Belarus, which is allied with Russia, along with Belarusian banks and defense firms.

What's counterintuitive, too, is that if Putin's goals are to undermine NATO and to reestablish the Soviet Union, he's accomplished the opposite. The West and NATO and basically the entire international community are united. They've all promised yet more severe sanctions if the attacks continue to elevate. Now there's talk of Finland and Sweden joining NATO. The Finnish prime minister said, quote, Finland is not currently facing an immediate military threat, but it is also now clear that the debate on NATO membership in Finland will change.

Like, if you don't want NATO on your doorstep, I'm not sure that starting a war and bringing hundreds of thousands of NATO troops to your doorstep is the move. I'm not sure pushing more countries into the hands of NATO is the move. And yet, of course, there is one notable faction of people who found themselves decidedly on the wrong side of this thing. In the hours leading up to the invasion, Trump was recorded heaping praise onto Putin.

So Putin is now saying it's independent, a large section of Ukraine. I said, how smart is that? And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen.

They're going to keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here's a guy who's very sad. I know him very well, very, very well. By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here's a guy that says, you know,

I'm going to declare a big portion of Ukraine independent. He used the word independent. And we're going to go out and we're going to go in and we're going to help keep peace. You've got to say that's pretty savvy. Genius, savvy, smart. Like, a few hours later, Vladimir Putin would start bombing Ukraine, but he's a genius. He says we could use that on our southern border. Trump looked

at an autocrat moving to invade a sovereign country and said to himself, that should be us. The only way he could make his disdain for democracy more obvious is if the guy literally tattooed autocrat onto his face. And it's not just Trump. Tucker Carlson on Fox, the whisper of the Republican Party, he's made it his life's mission right now to carry water for Putin and try to claim that Ukraine, a democracy is somehow, on some planet, just as bad as Russia, which is led by a war-mongering tyrant. But is there another reason we should side with Ukraine over Russia? Russia is a much more significant country by every measure.

Why is it disloyal to side with Russia, but loyal to side with Ukraine? They're both foreign countries that don't care anything about the United States. China, which is the actual threat. Why would we take Ukraine's side? Why don't we on Russia's side? I'm totally confused. Putin so much. Has Putin ever called me a racist?

Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? As he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? I should say, for the record, I'm totally opposed to these sanctions. And I don't think that we should be at war with Russia. And I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine. That is my view. But I'm serious. And I don't tell you why.

And why shouldn't I root for Russia, which I am? And here's the thing. It's easy for the right, from Trump to Tucker and right on down the list to pretend that authoritarianism is fine when it's creeping. When it's just moderate enough that their enablers could still point to those rightfully freaking out and say, look how alarmist they're being, listen to their hysterical comparisons to World War II in the Holocaust. Whether it was Putin or Trump or any of these other far-right nationalist leaders, they always towed that line. But now, now you see what autocracy is. This is the natural conclusion. When you have Trump and Tucker

cheering on Putin and saying that he's a genius and we should side with Russia, only to watch Putin bomb the shit out of a sovereign country because he's got delusions of grandeur and feels entitled to Ukraine, you get a glimpse into what they're actually for. This is what it looks like when you give the game away. I know what it sounds like sometimes, trust me. I know that after four years of waving our arms and ringing the town bells about Trump that could feel like we're crying wolf,

but this is what far-right authoritarianism is. For the first time in U.S. history, we didn't have a peaceful transfer of power. We're witnessing the biggest war in Europe right now since World War II. This is why it's so important to snuff it out of the beginning when you first see the flames, not when the fires already engulfed the House. So with that said, I'm proud to have sat down with the President of the United States, the person who is able to defeat Donald Trump here at home, and who's found himself fighting yet again to make sure that democracy wins out.

We're here today in the White House. Thank you, President Biden, for taking the time to speak with me. Well, thank you for wanting to speak to me. Of course, of course. So this is the first interview you've done since your big announcement that you've nominated Judge Katanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. You've had a number of qualified candidates to choose from. Why did you ultimately go with her? Well, several reasons. Number one, I committed two years ago that if I got elected president, I would name the first African-American woman to the Supreme Court. because I think the court should look like the country. I think it should reflect the country. And by the way, our administration

is the most diverse administration in American history. We actually, I pointed out to me, if you look around, you can see, but there's more women in my administration than there are men. The point is that I want to bring the country together. And number one. Number two, she's brilliant.

She is absolutely brilliant. And she graduated Magnum Cum Laudey from undergraduate school. She was editor of Law Review in law school. She clerked for the Supreme Court. She's been confirmed by the United States Senate for three different positions. And so, and she has real character. I think character matters. I think it's a, and I think background and being able to understand perspectives

about other people in the country matters as well. They tell me, I don't know for a fact, they tell me I presided over more Supreme Court justice than anybody living because I used to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee and I voted on an awful lot of judges. But she's incredibly qualified, and she has a disposition that is one that can put litigants at ease

and she, for example, this is a woman who was a federal public defender on the sentencing commission. She was a judge, but she also has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police. So I think she has real balance, real character, and I think she'll add a dimension to the court that is going to make it even better. Well, no, despite these qualifications, we've seen the usual opposition from Republicans, Lindsay Graham, came out recently and said that this is a win for the radical left, which is ironic considering he himself voted to confirm her just eight months ago to the appeals court. Now, what's your message to these Republicans who seem to be settled in their opposition before even speaking with her?

I've been around a long time. Unfortunately, we become so politicized in this country that I wish it would be different. Lindsay used to be a close friend. And I just wish they'd give a chance. There's no basis for that assertion, but it's what it is. Looking overseas, obviously we're seeing now that Russia has invaded Ukraine in defiance of not only Ukraine's sovereignty, but also warnings from the international community. And yet, at the same time, we have someone like Donald Trump who's come out and praised Putin's

savvy and genius just in advance of him attacking Ukraine. Other Republicans have rallied to Putin's side as well. What's your message to Trump and others in light of Putin's attacks? I put as much stock in Trump saying that Putin's a genius as I do when he called himself a stable genius. Well, no, in terms of these sanctions, you know, we've seen sanctions get imposed on Putin after Georgia in 2008 after Crimea in 2014, election hacking in 2016. Nothing like this, though. Look, you have two options. start a third World War, go to war with Russia physically, or two, make sure that a country that acts so contrary to international law ends up paying a price for having done it. There's no sanction

that is a median. It's not like you can sanction someone and say, you no longer are going to be able to be the president of Russia. Yeah. But I think. I think these sanctions, I know these sanctions, are the broadest sanctions in history and economic sanctions and political sanctions. And my goal from the very beginning was to make sure that I kept all of NATO and the European on the same page. Because the one thing I think that Putin thought he could do was split NATO, creating a great aperture for him to be able to walk through. And that hasn't happened, if you notice. It's been

complete unanimity. The opposite. Exactly. And Russia will pay a serious price for this short-term and long-term, particularly long-term. And I think it's not only in Europe, but in the Pacific, Japan and South Korea and Australia. I mean, so it's, I think if the democracies of the world hold together, I think it increases the prospect that we're going to have less chaos rather than more. I think that's the ultimate irony here is that if Putin's goal ultimately was to undermine NATO and look at what's happening now, NATO is more unified than ever. Well, beyond that, not only NATO's more unified,

Look at what's going on in terms of Finland, look what's going on in terms of Sweden, look what's going on in terms of other countries. I mean, he's producing the exact opposite effect that he intended. And but all I know is that we have to stay the course with the rest of our allies. And in the meantime, we're supplying defensive weaponry and economic assistance to Ukraine. And I think it's important that we stay the course. And I think it's important, too, that finally we have leadership here that's showing that it's important to focus on protecting democracy as opposed to autocracy. Well, you know, you obviously have heard things I've said before because I've said at the outset of my presidency that there is a genuine, we're at an inflection point in world history.

It occurs every three or four or five generations, fundamental change taking place in the world. And the combination of the fundamental change is taking place. For example, you're going to see more change in the next 10 years than we saw in the last 50 years. And it's because of the nature of science and technology and movement. And a lot of the autocrats and President Xi, I've spent a lot of time, time with President Xi of China. He's one who believes that things are changing so rapidly, democracies don't have time to reach consensus. So autocracies are going to be, are going to rule. Well, this is a good lesson in disproving that theory. And speaking of that, moving, looking

back inward at home, you know, we're in this rare sliver of time where Democrats have unified control of government in the House, the Senate, and the White House. And yet our agenda has been moving slower than we would have liked. What's your message to Democrats who say that, you know, that our elected officials can't deliver? And so what's the point of showing up to vote? Well, two things. One, I think the biggest impact on the psychology of the country has been COVID. Almost a million Americans have died of COVID. And so I think it's hard for people to get their arms around the fact that we have the fastest growing economy in 40 years, way to are actually up, not down. Unemployment is the lowest has been, it's under, you know, it's just

incredibly low, and it's around in the three-point range. We find ourselves in a position where it's hard to fully appreciate that when you wake up in the morning and wonder out whether or not your uncle, aunt, mother, father, son, daughter, who has COVID, they're going to be okay. And as Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, points out, I think one of the significant things we're going to find 10 years from now is a phenomenal negative psychological impact that COVID has had on the public psyche. And so you have an awful lot of people who are notwithstanding the fact that things have gotten so much better for them economically that they are thinking, but how do you get up in the morning feeling happy, happy that everything's

all right, even though your job is better, even though you have more income, even though, and then on top of that, because of COVID, supply chain's been so interrupted that now you have inflation. And inflation is a, for example, one third of all inflation a month ago was the price of automobiles. Well, why did they get so high? They don't have the little computer chips. They don't, you know, we invented them here in the United States and went to the moon, we don't make them much anymore. We're starting to now. But what happens is when where they're made in parts of Southeast Asia and Taiwan and other places, and we don't get them to us quick enough and can't get there, everything slows up. The same way with, you know,

you have from Ukraine to Russia, you know, wheat and all those products. The generic point is I think that it's a, we're gaining control of that. We're going to get there. But it really is disquieting for people. But I can tell them that hope is on the way. We have more tools now to deal with COVID than we've ever, ever had. We have ordered millions of pills, over 20 million pills that fires will come up with, even if you haven't had a vaccination, and you get COVID.

You take the pill. You're not going to go to the hospital. And shots in arms. and the ability to have boosters. And so I think we're going to see things changing, but it's difficult, especially for people who have, get up in the morning and sit down to breakfast and sit across from an empty chair.

Now, in a broader scheme of things, what do you hope that your legacy is going to be? When your grandkids are reading the history books and they read about you, you know, we look and see that Lincoln freed the slaves, FDR's New Deal, Obama had the ACA. Trump had his own legacy, but we'll keep it up.

feet here? What do you hope that... Well, first of all, I don't think in terms of legacy. I think in terms of the needs immediately. I ran for president, really and truly, and even my supporters were not critical of, but thought of reasons I exposed, I laid out why I was running, maybe they weren't such a good idea. I said I was running for three reasons from the very beginning. One, to restore the soul of America, his idea of decency, honor, treating people with respect, literally, literally treating people with respect. And second reason is to build the backbone of the, rebuild the backbone of the country, which is a middle class, working class folks.

This trickle-down theory of economic growth left an awful lot of Americans out. And I've never seen a time when the middle class is doing well, that the wealthy don't do very well, and the poor have a way up. And so that's why I focused on how to change the circumstances and opportunities for working class and middle-class people. And the third reason was, which I got a lot of criticism for, was saying I had to unite the country. We can't be a divided country. We can't be sustained and do the things that have to be done if we remain divided based on ethnicity, based on politics.

It can't work. And so there are the three things. I hope my legacy is that I was able to restore some decency and honor to the office. I was able to bring the middle class back to a place where they had real opportunity. given an even chance to succeed. And I was able to reconstruct our alliances which had been frayed so badly, internationally, and that I was able to bring people together,

bring the politics of America together. And I think we're making slow progress on some of these things, but I think that's what we're moving. I hope my legacy is that I restored the soul of this country. I was able to give the middle class, and we were able to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down,

and they were able to unify the country again. We'll leave it there. Mr. President, thank you so much for taking the time, and it's been an honor to speak with you today. Thank you. Thank you again to President Biden, and look, for all of you who take the time to listen to this podcast, I owe you a huge thank you.

That I was able to sit down with the president is owed entirely to the fact that you guys listen every week and that you trust my take. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. So thank you, thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie,

interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.