The Daily Beast Podcast - Putin Really ‘Turns On’ Tucker Carlson and Co. w/ Charlie Sykes

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Biden is not doing much with Russian sanctions as they now stand, says PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent and documentary filmmaker Simon Ostrovsky, who is also Russian-American. He came on this episode to share what he thinks Biden really needs to bring to the negotiating table with Putin. Speaking of Putin, co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast discuss all the ways they’re sure the dictator turns on right-wingers like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. Plus, Charlie Sykes, editor-at-large at The Bulwark, tries to understand what broke Sen. Ron Johnson’s brain and made it…Trumpy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a fun show we have today. Charlie Sykes, who's the editor at large of The Bullwark, stops by to talk to us about the latest unraveling of Trump's Republican Party. Then we talk to Simon Ostrowski, who's a correspondent for PBS News Hour, who will give us his perspective on Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.

And also, I just want to preview this Sunday as we have a new public free, not behind a paywall episode, coming with Molly. Andy and I talking the news and a blockbuster interview with Barbara McQuaid of the Sisters in Law podcast outlining how to prosecute Donald Trump in an actionable way. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Why is the right worshipping Putin? It's a good question. The first thing you'd have to say is, is the right worshiping Putin? But then the answer is yes. At least a very, very, very large segment of them are. I think what it goes back to is, for me, if you want to get psychological about it, it's the same reason they worship Trump. It's this strong daddy figure that they crave. I don't know what kind of childhoods they had,

but for whatever reason, that's what they want. They love any sort of display of what they perceive as strength is such a turn-on to them. They had four years of applying it all to Trump, and now, you know, he's not the big guy anymore. So they just have sort of transferred it over to. Putin, and it's so gross. Molly, it's so gross. I mean, I think it's interesting to listen to Trump clearly has a schick down with Putin where he's like, you got to hand it to him. Like, no, you absolutely don't have to hand it to the Autocratic dictator. Right. I mean, like, he's like, wow, you got it. He got Ukraine. Well, you know, he's sort of like, like, I think his whole stick is like, I don't really want to handle it to, hand it to him, but let's just do it. I think it's kind of fucked up. This has

begot now another completely insane talking point that has flowered out of this first talking point. Okay, so you have Trump saying, you know, Putin's really a genius. Putin's really figured it out. And then you have people on the right. And this is like, kind of like galaxy brain, beyond galaxy brain, saying, you see, Putin never tried this under Trump. Believe me, I've seen a lot of that. Yeah. Oh, really? Putin didn't try this under the guy who was already undermining NATO and doing everything that Putin wants to do already.

Huh. Shocking. I mean, it's interesting to me. I mean, I think it is worth for a second asking why Putin didn't do this under Trump. I mean, imagine if he had, Trump would be like, okay, he liked it. He used to have it. You know, maybe I didn't know, golf clubs. Golf courses there.

I mean, there's no world in which Trump would be like, you know, we'd be like, you know, have to rally NATO. I do think it is interesting. And I wonder how much of this is actually, you know, Putin knows that there's, Americans have no appetite for war and that this will ultimately be hard for Biden, right? Because he's going to enact these sanctions. Gas prices are going to get more expensive. You're going to have people on the right saying, like, this didn't happen under Trump, even if, you know, the reason it didn't happen under Trump is maybe because Putin loves Trump. Remember, like, I feel like we're not looking at this whole picture, right, which was in 2016, that the Russian Federation, they had troll farms, they influenced our elections, they wanted Trump

to be president, right? So it is worth thinking about like Putin's long game with Trump, too. Well, yeah, and, you know, and he probably felt he had to move now in case Trump gets reelected in 2024 and then he wouldn't want to do it again. So it's not that it's an unfair question and it's not unfair to ask, why did Putin pull shit like this under Obama and now he's pulling it again under Biden, but worse. But he didn't for the four years of Trump. That's a legitimate question. It's just the answers I've been seeing are it's like, oh, he feared Trump. He feared Trump and his masculine masculinity. Yeah. So masculine. And that's when you just start rolling your eyes because it's like, you know what? Again, fair question. Like it should be answered. But that's just clearly not the answer. You know,

And you had Trump basically, you know, worshipping Putin for four years. Bullies love bullies. And Trump recognized that Putin wasn't even bigger bully than him. So he sort of, you know, bent the knee, if you will. If that kept Putin from his little adventures, then it's not a bad thing. I don't, yeah, I don't think he would have kept, it would have kept Putin from taking. I mean, Putin really wanted to take Ukraine. Of course.

Of course. And the fact of the matter is, I think, if Trump were president now, Putin would still be doing what he's doing is, you know, as far as time. goes, Putin had, under Obama, you know, got into Crimea and had his little fling with Georgia, you know, it could just be that he was just like, you know what, we're going to recharge, and then we're going to go back in a couple more years. And I think, so again, that's whether Trump had one in 2020 or not, my guess is we'd be seeing the same thing now. Yeah, I also think it's relevant and important to, I mean, right now is this very interesting time in American life,

where Americans have almost zero appetite for war, for foreign wars. Right. So this is an unprecedented time in our lives, right? Like, I've never lived in this country and found the sort of culture be as anti-war, both on the left and the right, in a way we've never seen. So it is, it's a very strange time, too, because we have this conflict, you know, not unlike what we've seen with Kuwait. One country went in to occupy another and try to take it over.

and there really is no appetite for intervention. Of course, the irony is, like, America did promise Ukraine that if they gave up their nukes, I mean... I know, yeah. I've seen a lot of people say it was good that Ukraine gave up their nukes, but it doesn't seem like it was very good for Ukraine. At the time, it was definitely a good thing for the world. I mean, so we thought, you know, when that happened, also, Ukraine was under a different government.

You do see a lot of these people. the far right, you know, taking a sort of pro-Pooten stance, which is very weird. And also, we had W. Just the person everyone wants to hear from who you remember. I mean, I think it's important to remember with W. Even though now he's a painter, he has really, he is as much the reason we have Trump as anyone, right? I mean, he had every opportunity in the world to say like, Trump bad, no, no. And at every point, he managed to just not. So, I mean, he did the sort of the very least he could possibly do on that. Absolutely.

Famously, he looked into Putin's eyes. That's right. Yeah. You know, and saw his soul, which apparently was good. So, yeah, he might not be the person to, you know, be jumping in now. But look, at least, no love for W, but at least he's not. Not pro-Pooten. Yeah, I mean, at least in 2022, he's not pro-Pooten.

Congratulations. And the bar is low, Molly. Can we turn this conversation to some unlikely Putin fans? I've now seen Eric Prince, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson basically writing love notes to Putin in the past 24 hours. What do you guys think is going on there? We were just talking about this, that it's actually a really good piece in the bulwark by Will Saladin, about Tucker praising Putin. We know that he has gone, you know, he loves Victor Orrush. He has this sort of thing, but I don't know how it started if it was contrarian or corruption,

probably contrarian because he makes a lot of money anyway. But like he has definitely dug himself into a radically pro-Puton hole. And the other night, you know, he was saying like, how do we know that you hate Putin? Does Putin want to cancel you? Does Putin want to call you a racist? I mean, disgust. Well, I was actually struck when Tucker did his little thing. He was basically using the language that people use to defend sexual predators.

When they say, well, he never did that to me. You know, just drop the fact that he has literally killed journalists and he's got a big love for polonium and all that stuff. You know, on top of everything else, just strictly talking about what he's done to journalists, which not that Tucker's a journalist, but he's, you know, in an adjacent field, I guess. Working at a channel that has news in its name, I guess, makes him adjacent to a journalist. But it really is, you would hear that when people would defend anyone from Harvey Weinstein on down. Like, well, I never saw that part of his personality. He never, you know, he never treated me badly. And it's like, okay, well, that means nothing, you know. And it was, and so that's the same language he was using. And I hate to keep coming back to this because it sounds so pop psychology or whatever. But I remember

saying this when I still worked at Fox and Lou Dobbs had me on his show. And this is when Trump was still running. I literally said on his show what I said earlier that, you know, there's this segment of conservatism that craves this strong daddy figure. And it's just true. And it's just they have this sort of love for the authoritarian. They see that as strength. And then you've got people, there's some really, really bad tweets out there. Folks, if you're going on Twitter, be careful. There are some, there are some takes out there that will melt your eyes.

So Margaret Sullivan wrote a really smart. piece in the Washington Post today. And she talked about Tucker Carlson. The last two days, the Fox opinion hosts have all gone pro-Pooten. I think Tucker has been the worst. Laura Ingram has been the second worst and Sean Hannity also. But one of the things she writes about is there was this judge, you know, one of the reasons why he hasn't been sort of held accountable for his speech, is that Fox persuasively

argues that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrived. with the appropriate amount of skepticism about the statements he makes. So it's entertainment and it's not news. Yeah, which is Fox's literal legal defense for Tucker Carlson, you know, as we know. But the viewers all think it's real. So, of course. And that's all that matters. And that's all that matters.

Like I go, you know, I think we've talked about this. I go back on forth, back and forth on whether Carlson means the stuff he says or whether it's a performance. And the bottom line is it doesn't fucking matter because the viewers view it as real. And that's the only thing that matters. But, you know, I was talking about this sort of Twitter stuff. And you've got just going back to this strong craving this authority figure and strength, Ben Shapiro tweeting, Russia and China are focused on expanding their spheres of influence via aggressive action.

The West is focused on exploding the gender binary. It's that. It's Lisa Booth on Fox saying, I'm just glad we flew pride flags. I don't even know what that's fucking supposed to mean. Yeah. I mean, I would say that's an interesting phenomenon, which is that. Ben Shapiro has one joke. It's that trans people are bad. He has, right? Because, you know, no one better to pick on than, you know, this group where they have this high rate of suicide or they're,

you know, it's a very tough situation. You have all these people discriminating against you. And then you have Ben Shapiro making terrible, the same terrible joke again and again and again. And this is that joke. Right. But it's also what they believe. They believe that somehow treating gay and trans people with respect is a of weakness. Right. And they think that Putin thinks, oh, I can invade Ukraine because America is, you know, treating gay and trans people with respect. Like in their heads, that is how the world works. It would be like a fascinating psychological study, except it's dangerous and it's harmful to gay and trans people here in America and around the world. And so it's just fucking disgusting, but it's what they do. And Clay Travis, another guy, he says, he tweets,

autocratic leaders believe in hypermasculinity, raw physical power. America has spent decades fetishizing soft, cuddly emotional power. Putin and Xi don't respect it. This is the result. It's like this is how these people think. Right. And it's just, it's so gross. It's basically they're teenagers.

They're all teenagers looking for daddy to spank them or something or to yell at them or to tell them what to do. I also think they want to be right. And they feel like Putin, he has all these. racist tropes that they like. But I think we need to turn an eye to the Louis Gomert of the Senate, one Thomas Tuberville. I don't, you know, whenever I invoke his name, I'm reminded of the time these salad days when I thought that the House was stupider than the Senate and that there weren't as many stupid people in the Senate. But now with Superville and Marsha Blackburn,

I think that that has changed. Tommy Tuberville believes that Putin is invading Ukraine because Russia is a communist country that needs more land. He can't feed his people, says Tuberville. It's a communist country. So we can't feed his people. They need more farmland for farming. I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, I don't even know what to tell you on that. Like, it's not 1960. I just, I don't. They're not even a communist country anymore. Well, that's the thing. The idea that it's a communist country, like if it were a communist country, why are all these right-wing people supporting him? That's really interesting. That would be fascinating.

I mean, I guess Donald Trump and all those people love communism. That's really interesting. I haven't thought of that. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening to behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soledadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's

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Charlie Sykes is the editor at large of the Bullwark as well as the host of the Bullwark podcast and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Charlie Sykes. Hey, thanks. It's been a while. I'm so excited to have you back, but you've been here before.

Anyway, I'm glad to have you back, and I have so many things I want to talk to you about. I kept saying we have to talk to Charlie because in some ways, Wisconsin is becoming the center of the country. It's always been the center of the country. country, Molling. This is not a new development. Let me show you a map.

Right. It is the center. So you have this very exciting Senate race with Ron Johnson. Can you talk to our listeners? Because besides being an incredible pundit and talker, you really know Wisconsin politics in a way that few do. Yes. And have deep regrets about it as well, including Ron Johnson, which is one of my favorite subject. Ron Johnson, the brain has been broken by the Trump era, and he's the most vulnerable

Republican, I think, a Republican incumbent, but he could still win because this is a very evenly divided state. It looks like it's going to be a Republican year, and it's not clear who the Democrats are going to put up against him. So the big question is whether or not it is possible to be too crazy, at least once was possible to be too crazy and too embarrassing for Wisconsin. I don't know if that's the case anymore. We'll find out. What do you think it is? I mean, I feel like Ron Johnson is a pretty good example. Isn't this only his second term? No, this will be his third term.

Third term, right. But, I mean, he hasn't been in the Senate for decades and decades. I mean, what do you think happened to break his brain? I do not fucking know. There was a while when I tried to come up with various theories about it because I was trying to think, how did he get from this normal sort of Wall Street Journal reading businessman from Ashgosh, Wisconsin to Ronanonon? What drew him down those rabbit holes?

I really don't know because the thing that struck me about him in the beginning was that he was not starstruck by being in Washington. He was very, very skeptical of the conventional wisdom and very much his own man. I really thought that he was going to be kind of a maverick in the mode of, say, William Proxmire, our legendary senator from Wisconsin. Instead, he turned out to model himself on Joseph McCarthy, our other legendary senator from Wisconsin. Not great. So he's fallen in with a bad crowd. He hangs within a very sort of extreme MAGA bubble at the moment. Often when you read the craziest things that he says,

it's on a talk show based in Madison, Wisconsin by a host who for years would push gateway pundit-type conspiracy theory. So maybe that's where he's gone. Molly, I don't know. And I've been asked this question. Oh, no, I don't. I can't explain him. Can you explain a little more about this show in Madison, Wisconsin, that pushes gateway pundit conspiracy theories? Look, there's a range of hosts, and of course I was a conservative host in Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

But then there were always the ones that were, how can I put this without saying really, really sketchy? Okay, really sketchy. It's a host named Vicki McKenna, who I always kept at arm's length because she just had this pension for pushing the conspiracy theorists, the stuff that you would look at and you go, that's crazy. And I'm saying crazy before 2015. Right. She's become one of his big boosters. And he really, look, he came up as a candidate during the 2000.

in the Tea Party era, very much attuned to talk radio, thinks the talk radio is the genuine voice of the base, and it still may be, given what's happened to the Republican conservative base in Wisconsin. And Vicki McKenna whips them along to many of these conspiracy theories. So look, but I don't know. He's a senior United States senator. I don't think he's a stupid guy. I actually had a really good friend who went to work for him as one of his aides who used to be a columnist for the local newspaper, one of the smartest guys I know. And he apparently also lost his mind. Maybe it's Colonium and the water cooler there. I would check it. You and I, I feel like, have talked about this a lot historically, but not recently, which is I think a lot of us thought that after Trump lost,

the Republican Party would come back to, at least I sort of thought, if Trump loses, maybe the Republican Party will sort of get normal again. Did you think that? I think that I thought there would be a long process. And obviously, look, Trump was a product of a pre-existing condition. I mean, so the dysfunction was there and it was going to be there. And you could see some of it accelerating. But certainly after January 6th, I thought that there would be a moment at which the Republican Party would say, okay, we went on that binge, let's sober up, let's mix the on a metaphor, take the off ramp here. And that there would at least be some movement toward a post-Trump era. Instead, everything has gotten worse. And Wisconsin's a perfect example of that, where we used to be kind of the redoubt of anti-Trump republicanism, at least up until the, primary in 2016. And of course, this was the state where Paul Ryan used to be the rock star here, but Paul Ryan's been displaced, been pushed aside, and it's become increasingly Trumpy. And what's interesting is that the establishment here decided it was going to go along and appease the trumpists. They would throw a little bit of red meat. They figured that they could grow the crocodile

in the bathtub and it wouldn't get big and come out and eat them. And so they would try to appease that the MAGA conspiracy folks out there. And nothing they have done has worked. You had the Speaker of the State Assembly who flew down on a private jet to go kiss Donald Trump's rear end at one point about the election, points of bogus investigation of the election, which nobody seriously questioned. And yet, there's this massive now campaign here among the My Pillow guy, Republicans, to get rid of the speaker because he isn't going far enough. So now the new standard is that you actually have to rescind Wisconsin's electoral votes. And the one guy, the one complete bat-shit crazy guy who's pushing that is on the phone on a regular basis with Donald Trump, Mike Lindell came in and endorsed him,

Mike Flynn endorsed him, and he's running for governor now. And so what's happened is the crazies are on the march. And the establishment, their problem is that they're kind of crazy too, because now they're going, wait, wait, wait, we're pushing this investment. We want to jail election of it. I mean, it's amazing watching, especially if you've known these guys. Yeah. It's, It's so interesting to me that, I mean, I feel like at every point I've said to myself, at least, like, well, this will be the end of it. This can't keep going this badly. These people can't keep doing this. No, but it seems like it just keeps going on.

It keeps going on and it keeps getting worse. The analogy that keeps coming to my mind is watching a group of dope dealers out there constantly feeling the need to sell more potent stuff. And because you have to keep ratcheting it up, you have to keep turning. the dial. So again, Wisconsin has a long tradition of real intense political engagement, but to see the crazy take this a prominent role, and again, at the top of the ticket, you have Ron Johnson, one of the craziest United States senators, a lot of competition there. But he's not out of step with the Republican base right now. Right. I mean, I think that is the thing that's the most interesting. Now, I want to talk to you about what's happening in foreign affairs with this

Vladimir Putin fellow, were you shocked at the Trump interview with Buck Sexton? Okay, now that's a trick question. Because it's a yes and a no. Because yes, it's incredibly shocking that the former president of the United States would come on while Vladimir Putin is invading a neighboring country. And talk about how smart and brilliant and savvy he was. That is genuinely shocking. On the other hand, it is exactly what you'd expect from Donald. Trump. This is a guy who has been sucking up to Vladimir Putin for decades now. This is somebody who, when he was asked, even by Bill O'Reilly, who's pretty deplorable himself. Well, you know, he's a

killer. Well, we kill people too, Bill. Right. Who sided with Vladimir Putin over his own government in Helsinki. So you run down this. This is Donald Trump and the romance continues. So no, it's exactly what you'd expect. And still, Molly, it's shocking to think about this guy coming out with groveling appeasement and watching the whole Maga wing of the Republican Party become, I mean, it's one thing to be anti-Biden, that's what they do. But they become either pro-Pooten or, ready for this, anti-Anti-Pooten, which is, okay, well, we're not exactly pro-Pooten, but, I mean, Putin's no Justin Tudow. I mean, at least he's not, he's not oppressing us.

He's not a dictator. I mean, there's no parody of it because that's pretty much what they're saying. And yet Tucker Carlson, who is channeling Russian propaganda nightly on Fox News. And for some of us, that's a pretty remarkable development. What do you think about that? Like, last night, Tucker Carlson did this soliloquy where he said, how do we know Putin is really bad? Let us challenge our notions.

I'm just asking questions kind of thing. Do you think Rupert Murdoch is okay with that? Do you think Lackland Murdoch is okay with that? Or do you think that Tucker Carlson is just beyond the control of anyone at this point? Well, there was a period where I raised that question seriously. Would Rupert Murgaatk continue to tolerate the racism and the disinformation and the lying? I wrote an open letter in Politico magazine to Paul Ryan, who's a member of the Fox board saying, OK, Paul, if you ever want to draw a red line, this would be it.

And this was months ago, this was when Fox News was peddling the big lie about the election, when Fox News was peddling disinformation about the coronavirus and the vaccines, that disinformation that might be killing people. This was when Fox News and Tucker Carlson were pushing the great replacement theory, which five minutes ago was recognized as a virulent white nationalist, white supremacist meme. And if he was willing to tolerate all of that and look the other way for all of that, why would this be any different? So clearly, he's given a green light to Tucker Carlson,

and Tucker Carlson is not alone on the right. in showing that, in fact, they kind of have a soft spot for authoritarianism. Hey, who knew that, right? Who could have got it? They actually kind of like authoritarian. Well, and they also want to go to war with both Canada. And, I mean, the interesting thing about that statement, too, was Trump went all in with the propaganda about peacekeepers and then was like, maybe we should send peacekeepers to our

southern border. So half the party wants to invade Mexico and the other half wants to go to war with Canada. Yes. Okay. you can't make that up. Part of Donald Trump, and I want to quote Tim O'Brien from Bloomberg, it says you have to understand that he's a seven-year-old who really just gotten big. And there's a part of him that's really, really kind of excited by all those tanks and soldiers and everything. And he wish he could have parades and wouldn't it be cool if you could have Vladimir Putin's

army and all of those missile systems down on the Mexican border? Wouldn't that be good? That'd be even cooler than a wall. And you get that sense. of sort of the excitement that he has about that sort of thing. This is a guy that at one point in 1990, remember that Playboy interview that he gave where he was contrasting the Soviets with the Chinese and he was saying that Michael Gorbyshov was disappointing because he just hadn't been oppressive enough. In contrast to the Chinese who had showed real strength when they acted in Tiananmen Square. Oh, Jesus. This guy has had this soft spot for international thuggery, violence and cruelty for a long time. And yet I feel like this is an old story here, right?

I am not breaking any news for you. But here we have Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and Donald Trump calling into the Clay and Buck Show. I mean, seriously. You're the former president of the United States and you're talking about international affairs on the fucking Clay and Buck show. Or is it the Buck and Clay Show? He also does bar mitzvahs and weddings. No. This is what we have to deal with.

But as you know, Molly, a client. with a flamethrower, still has a flamethrower. Okay. But I mean, you don't see a world where, like, Republicans, you don't see a world where they say, well, like, this is too much. We got to. No. We've played this game too much.

We've seen this again and again and again. I know that probably Mitch McConnell is lying there in his emperor Palpatine bed, you know, thinking, shit, I had a chance doing the impeachment to end this. I didn't do it. Fuck. But that was it. It's not going to happen. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. It's good to be back. Thank you. Simon of Strosky is a special correspondent for PBS News Hour. Welcome to the new abnormal, Simon. Thank you. I'm so excited to have you here. And so you have a long, long history covering Ukraine, Russia, separatists, all of it. You're in America right now. You're watching this. What is your sense of what's happening?

Well, what's happening is a total and utter catastrophe. which most of us outside of the intelligence community couldn't imagine was possible just a few weeks ago. There was so much talk of this being Putin posturing, setting a high negotiating position to work down from so that he could exact some kind of concessions from the West from NATO, from Ukraine, whether it was about the Minsk Accords or whether it was about NATO expansion. And now it turns out that actually all he wanted from the very beginning, was to essentially conquer Ukraine and to wipe it off the map, which I think is the kind of behavior that we haven't really seen since the Second World War. Although people keep saying that

these events are unprecedented. They're not totally unprecedented. I mean, we saw Russia invade Georgia back in 2008. And you were there, right? I was a journalist in the South Caucasus region from 2004 until 2007. I wasn't in Georgia in 2008. Right. The point I was trying to make was that Russia remained a member of the international community. It didn't become a pariah even after it occupied a large chunk of Georgian territory. And I think that set the stage for what happened in Crimea in 2014 and eastern Ukraine in 2014

when I was a reporter there for Vice News from the very beginning. when rather soft sanctions by the standard of the sanctions that are being deployed today were imposed against Russia, setting the stage for what happened overnight, which is an invasion from multiple points around Ukraine, targeting military infrastructure. Unfortunately, they've already been a lot of civilian casualties as well, because Russian weaponry isn't exactly the most accurate. Some kind of a blitzkrieg that Putin's been planning for a long time in order to, retake Ukraine in order for him to satisfy, it seems like, his pride. It seems to me, and again, this is like really not my wheelhouse, but it seems to me like

the Biden administration did as best they could with the, you know, they kept trying to give out information. Do you feel like they had good information and do you feel they did, gave it out in the right way? I think so. I think that the Biden administration was getting this intelligence that was telling them that the Russians were preparing to do exactly what they're doing now, but we're at the same time hoping that it was a bluff and trying to call that bluff, call it out and get it out into the open in order to essentially prevent Russia from doing what it was planning and to rally support with the European allies. I mean, I think that, you know, when they first said that war was imminent and it was going to happen in the next couple of days,

they were essentially throwing down a gauntlet to Putin saying, you know, hey, buddy, we're not going to give you what you want on NATO. The ball's in your court. You know, if you want to invade and be viewed as the 21st century's next Hitler, then that's on you. And I think they were probably expecting with everything to be laid out like on a silver platter that the Russians would decide that this is something that they couldn't do. because they would face international combination from everybody about what they were planning. And that was the calculus that a lot of Ukraine and Russia watchers thought that the Russians were operating under. I think the bigger problem here is that the Biden administration never had the leverage and the deterrence that it actually needed in order to stop Russia from doing what it needs to do, what it wanted to do. because it's very difficult for the State Department to go sit down at a table with the Russians

and tell them and negotiate a deal with them when the worst thing that they can threaten is economic sanctions and isolation, when Russia has already been sanctioned and it's so isolated already. You know, they have to be able to have the threat of some kind of punitive action. I'm not saying here that America should go to war with Russia. But in order for America to be a credible negotiator with the threat of something behind its back, you know, the people sitting across the table from America need to believe that that's a possibility. But not only is a direct confrontation, a fight with Russia, not a possibility. For politicians in America, it's not even possible for them to threaten a military confrontation.

Because that's where we are two decades after September 11th, after the George, Bush administration spent all of our capital fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq. You know, the American public is so fatigued by those unending wars, which we've only recently pulled out of, that the Russians know that the Americans are never going to put any skin in the game. They're not even going to threaten to put skin in the game. So that's a very difficult position to negotiate from. Very few tools in the box. Right. My question is, though, you could. kick Russia out of the international banking system, right? I mean, that could happen. Biden could do that.

I mean, is he waiting for bipartisan sanctions? Like, it seems like there are a stronger route of sanctions. I mean, they could seize. I mean, there are all these oligarchs living in London and New York and Paris. I mean, you could get very aggressive with their stuff, which they would not like. I mean, don't you think that is at least a way to sort of get in there? I think those sanctions are coming and they've already begun to start deploying them. I'm not up on what are the latest banks that have been hit today as opposed to yesterday when it was VEB Bank and I think Promsiaz bank that were hit, you know, the fifth largest bank in Russia and then I think the eighth largest bank in Russia. I think the larger problem here is that the people who are calling the shots in Russia, namely Putin and the Siloviki, the security people, the security ministers and the defense ministers and the intelligence directors and so forth, you know, they're not very exposed in the West. And if they are in terms of assets that they have there and their entire political.

careers depend on loyalty to Putin. And their assets are in Russia and they are an elite in Russia. And sanctioning them is not going to strip them of their elite status in Russia. Banning visa travel isn't going to do anything either because they've already been sanctioned. They're not trapped. These aren't, you know, your Roman Abramovych's of the world who don't wield the kind of influence you would expect an oligarch to wield because they're not true oligarchs anymore. Right. I mean, you know, an oligarch is a very rich. person who also wields political influence in a country. The Roman Abramovych's and Deripaskaskas of the world don't have that kind of influence in Russia anymore because Putin took it away from them. So the

people who do wield influence there, they are essentially immune to anything that the sanctions could do, but they're the only ones who matter. So I think that, you know, any kind of sanctions package has to bank on going further than hurting the elites. It has to be, I think the calculation is that we're going to have to hurt the public in order to try to generate some kind of grassroots opposition to the regime. But, you know, I think even that is a pipe dream. Right. I mean, and I also feel like haven't the Russian people gone through enough. I mean, like, we see, I mean, you've been in Russia in the separatist areas and Ukraine.

I mean, the people of these countries don't want this war. It's very difficult to. I mean, is that true? That's a question. I think it's very difficult to make any kind of a generalization like that because, you know, the polling that takes place in Russia can be highly inaccurate because people are afraid to say what they really believe. And then, you know, it might be the case that many people buy into the propaganda that's, on TV in Russia day in and day out, which is portraying this conflict is something that's been instigated, not by Russia, but by Ukraine itself and by the West. And so in the view of somebody

who watches Channel 1, day in and day out, this is something that the West is responsible for, and Russia's hand was forced. And therefore, you know, the brave leader Putin is doing the right thing to protect them from the evil imperialists around the world who just don't want to let Russia get up from its knees. I mean, there are people in Moscow marching last night. I mean, marching tonight. There's a couple of thousand people who marched in Moscow and maybe roughly the same amount of people marching in St. Petersburg and a few other large cities around Russia.

And, you know, we've heard like 2,000 people have been arrested. Yeah, I mean, that seems very brave in a country like Russia. Yeah, this isn't a million-man march that we saw before the invasion of Iraq. Putin will arrest you for doing things like that. in a way they won't in the states. I mean, the stakes are much, much higher for the Russian people, right? Absolutely. And I think there are tons and tons of Russian people, of course, who would never want war.

And they see this as a very shameful day. And that this is going to be a stain on Russia's history forever. I mean, that was the thought that I woke up with this morning when I started scrolling through my Twitter and looking at videos of Russian attack helicopters flying over an airfield outside of Kiev. It was just this profound feeling of shame because, you know, I'm Russian myself. I've lived here most of my life, but I was born in Russia. And I was just wondering, is this what it felt like to be German in 1939 when your country goes and attacks another unprovoked? I mean, it's how we feel.

I'm telling you it's how I felt what in the Gulf War, with the second Gulf War. Like, we protested in the streets because we couldn't believe that our leaders were invading. And it just was so insane. So, I mean, I relate, I think. Well, I mean, it's awful for me as a Jewish-American Russian. I've had to feel shame for a lot of military conflicts that have taken place. And maybe more about your general feelings about shame. But yes, I mean, ultimately, it's the leaders who are doing this.

It's not the people fall, which I think it's important to remember. I mean, even if there's a lot of violence happening. But I just want to get back. to Ukraine for a minute. You see all these videos and pictures of people of a lot of people who are reservists. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about that? Because I read somewhere that the reservists are between 18 and 60 years old. Military reserves, they get called up in emergency and extreme situation like this one. And, you know, in many countries that face a persistent military threat, men of fighting age, which, you know, can vary in some kind of.

countries it's 40 years old and some countries it's up to 50 years old. I guess in Ukraine it's up to 60. I didn't actually know that. It's anybody's guess how effective these essentially, you know, partisan groups are going to be. I want to be hopeful and I want to think that Ukraine is going to be able to put up some kind of a resistance to this onslaught and that the Russians are going to be surprised by the level of resistance that they end up facing because they've been locked in a room, I mean, the leadership with each other in an echo chamber of their own delusions for so long that this is going to be a slap in the face to them. But I've learned over years of covering this war and covering Russia for that matter that that kind of hope only leads to

disappointment later on. When I was covering Crimea in 2014 at the very early stages of that crisis developing, I remember being led into the Ukrainian naval headquarters. and Simferopol by the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Navy, who wanted to show me that the Russian military had taken over parts of the headquarters and that there was a very tense standoff inside the complex between Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who were on opposite sides of the complex of buildings.

And, you know, he was giving me a tour and showing me that the Ukrainians had locked down their weapons into lockers in order to prevent some kind of. kind of a provocation from happening or somebody accidentally firing a shot because it was very uncertain days and they didn't know which way this would go. But he was outraged at the fact that the Russians weren't admitting to their participation in this. And these, you know, very well-equipped Russian commandos were claiming to be people's defense units. You know, I just remember how angry he was at what was going on. And he, we went around the back of the base because the front gate was

being held by both protesters and the Russian military. And we climbed over a wall and some Ukrainian soldiers helped me over and we jumped down into the courtyard and then started doing this tour and filming and he was showing me all of. This was a, this was a person that I felt that I understood. And a couple of weeks later, Crimea was annexed and Russia declared independent first and then annexed Crimea. I was already on the Ukrainian side of the line of control. And I found out through Facebook that this man had switched sides and joined the Ukrainian Navy, sorry, the Russian Navy. That was shocking to me at the time. And, you know, these days I've learned not to be shocked. I'm very pessimistic and I'm not saying that that is going to be a pattern

that is necessarily going to be repeated. But I think, you know, when your family lives in a place and the consequences of not falling in line are so severe. I believe the stories that have come out about the Russians having put together lists of people that they're going to arrest when they take control of cities. Oh, I believe it too. People who have been vocally supportive of Ukraine and critical of Russia's campaign in Ukraine, journalists, human rights activists, artists, musicians, whoever, you know, people of any prominence. Basically, everybody except for the Babushka who sells kilbasa at the local store,

I think they're willing to arrest and put those people in jail and worse. Yeah. And the humanitarian catastrophe that is going to unfold in slow motion after Russia starts taking over these cities is going to be so terrifying to behold that it's, that you, I won't be able to condemn anybody for making the decision that that Ukrainian naval officer are made back in 2014 when he joined the Russian Navy because it's very scary. All right. So my last question for you, because we're almost at a time, where do you see this ending? Like, does Putin take, I mean, I've now seen some military people say, well, maybe Putin takes

half of Ukraine. Maybe Putin takes the, you know, Putin takes all of Ukraine. I feel like I understand the question. I feel like it's like a version of the question that everybody is always asking about Putin, which is what does Putin want? Right, which nobody knows. And I disagree with that assessment, Molly. Right.

I think Putin wants as much as he can get. Putin is going to take as much as he can get away with taking. Putin has to be stopped. He's not going to be stopped on his own. If he can take Kiev, he'll take Kiev. People are thinking like, well, is he going to sort of leave a rump Ukraine that's cut off from the sea and sandwiched between Russian-controlled territory, Belarus and Poland, like the sort of island of territory in eastern.

Europe, turn Ukraine into a smaller Poland. I mean, sure, if the Ukrainians stop him there, that's what he'll do. But otherwise, he takes it all. Why wouldn't he? If he can, he will. In Russian, there's a saying that you can grab anything that isn't fastened down well. And I think that's that's Putin's M.O. If it's not bolted down, he'll take everything, including the kitchen sink. Yeah, I think that's right too. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm so sorry that you have to watch this on television. Yeah, you and me both. But thanks for the invitation.

It's been cathartic speaking to you. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from the Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer

Checking in on the movement of the radical right Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player To catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Is your fuck that guy? Uh, my fuck that guy for today

is Kyle Rittenhouse. You may remember Kyle from killing some people. But not murdering them. Just killing him. He was found not guilty of murder, yes. Right. And with that new lease on life. Yes, he just went halfway across the country with an AR-15 or whatever his weapon of choice was. And yeah, anyway, he's now, he tells Tucker Carlson that he and his team are launching the media accountability project as a tool to hold the media accountable for the lies they say and to deal with them in court. He's suing LeBron James, noted member of the media. Or at least he said he's going to sue LeBron James.

Right. The problem here is this is a kid, and this is a kid who is getting very, very bad advice from people who honestly do not understand the First Amendment. And he's going to find out very quickly that he, that nothing LeBron James said, is actionable in court. It's just, you know, it's fuck that guy to Kyle Rittenhouse,

but it's also fuck the people around him for letting him go out there. and do this and basically putting him, you know, making him basically a sacrificial lamb for their completely idiotic politics where they think the media is the enemy of the state and they love saying stuff like that. Of all people, Tucker Carlson knows that it's really hard to sue the media and win. So, you know, he should have been the first person telling Kyle, you know, hey, this isn't going to work for you. But, you know, on the other hand, he's probably going to raise a lot of money off of it. And it won't matter that there are no successful lawsuits. So I guess it is

going to work in that sense. And that's probably the only sense that matters. So fuck that guy and all guys like him. Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny. Because it, you really do, you see all these people on the right who are so excited for someone like Kyle Rinn has to sue the media. And it's like they don't realize that Fox News actually, like if you're going to go and look for malicious intent, right?

Yeah. It doesn't end well. No more ripe environment. But maybe with all that money, he can get a better fashion stylist, because that's tie was something. So my fuck that guy is, I want to make a point here and say that we don't really know what's happened with the New York City criminal investigation of Donald Trump. And so my fuck that guy is not necessarily Alvin Bragg because we don't know what happened

with Syvans. We don't know exactly why these two lawyers resigned. This is the charges against the Trump Organization, cheap financial office. or Alan Weisselberg and who is going to go on trial this summer. This is about giving the IRS false, like low estimates on the worth of his properties to avoid paying taxes. These two prosecutors resigned. The question is we don't know because they're not talking yet, but the feeling is that

Bragg is not going to keep going with this inquiry and that then Trump will have escaped criminal charges, at least in this jurisdiction, right? there's still Georgia, you've got to find me votes case. There's still a bunch of other cases. And then hopefully there's this guy called Merritt fucking Garland,

who we hope is got a master plan to lock Trump up because for his, because otherwise, this was not good. So I'm not going to say it's Alvin Bragg, but I am going to say, like, this guy needs to be held accountable. We all know he's done all

these crimes. Like, somebody has to be the first person to hold this guy accountable. And you see the civil cases is ongoing, and Tish James continues to work hard, and now she's going to have these people. And remember, Tish James decided not to run for governor so she could finish this case, which is really unusual in our politics to have somebody put the job before the ambition. And so I really do hope that these people who have been installed to uphold the rule of law actually do that, even when the guy is famous.

Yeah, I mean, look, as you said, thank God for Tish James, and hopefully something will come of that. And Molly, I do think you just need to be patient with Merrick Garland. You know, I've noticed a lot of times you seem to be getting angry at him. And he has a plan, Molly. You have to trust the plan. That's all I'm going to say. Jesus Christ.

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