The Daily Beast Podcast - Why We Feel So Connected to Zelensky w/ Margaret Brennan

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has become an icon around the world for his bravery and leadership since the Russian invasion began—and New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast herself has a special place in her heart for him. Zelensky “is my age and a Jewish comedian, so I feel very connected to him,” she says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “My generation, we’ve had a tough time of it. We’ve never really had our moment. So this may be as close as we ever get to our moment.” Later on the episode, Face the Nation moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan joins to talk about the conflict in Ukraine and the exodus of a million Ukrainians. Finally, former presidential candidate Evan McMullin, who’s now running as an independent to unseat Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), comes on talk about his race and the Russia-Ukraine war. 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 Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. 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 an interesting show we have today. Margaret Brennan, the moderator of Face the Nation on CBS News and the network's chief foreign affairs correspondent, is going to talk to us about what's going on with the Russia-Ukraine war. Then we'll talk to former presidential candidate, Evan McMullen, who's currently running as an independent to unseat Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and he's going to tell us about the current state of affairs. But first, unfortunately, our beloved co-host, Andy Levy, was unable to join us today.

But the good news is we're joined by nation columnist and the author of the newsletter, The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer. Welcome back to the new abnormal Jeet Here. Always good to be here. So, war with Canada. Yes or no? It wouldn't be the first time. I mean, there's a long history of this in the War of 1812, which I think in the United States is presented as an American victory. and in Canada as a Canadian victory.

But you guys did pack and build, burned down what is not Toronto. And the Canadians, or more particularly, it was actually the British, with indigenous soldiers, burned down the White House. The only country to do so, so don't mess with us.

I think later on, around the time of the Civil War, there were Finians in upstate New York who wanted to avenge their Irish brothers to strike at the British Empire, the closest part of which was Canada. And there were Finian raids into Canada as well. So it's not totally,

Without precedent. Yeah, it seems like it could, in fact, I watch CPAC because I hate myself. And I actually wrote about it for Vogue, just to plug other things that I worked on that are not from The Daily Beast, because I know everyone loves that. But I watched it and there was a point in which Nigel Farage tried to get the crowd to boo Justin Trudeau. I mean, it was... I didn't see that part. Do you have any success? Because I think it was another point where there was a sitting congresswoman.

who are basically suggesting they should liberate Camelah. Yes, there was, yes. I mean, Nigel Farage is like a fascinating character because he has no business being at CPAC. Also, nobody really kind of knows who he is. So that crowd doesn't necessarily know who Justin Trudeau is, though after this news cycle, I guess they do now. But it was sort of a, they kind of didn't know what to do.

Well, yeah. Although I think he was actually Steve Bannon, who brought Nigel Farage into the U.S. It's like in the 2016, I think, in the Mississippi primary. That's right. The Mississippi primary. Brexit supporting right-wing Britain would get the good people of Mississippi to come out. I don't know what CPAC audience was like.

But certainly the recent truckers convoy, I mean, it had a lot of actual American support that we have the breakdown of the sort of social media crowdfunding campaign. And there were tens of thousands of people that contributed millions of dollars. And most of the money came from Canada, but most of the donors were from the United States. It's 50% for the United States. So, yeah. And one would think, like, well, why are Americans still concerned about Canadian vaccination mandate?

A lot of ways that the sort of political right has been transnational for a while. Yes. I mean, it's ironic that they're the ones that claim about globalist and globalization. But they're a total product of it. We're thinking through why or how. And part of it is these kind of like networks of, you know, crowdfunding, social media. And then the sort of that they're sort of this appetite for endless outrage and indignation. Right.

Like, if there's not enough news to make you mad in America, well, then you have to read about work all letting in Syrian refugees or you have to read about something that Justin Trudeau did. It does seem like there is a kind of segment of the right that is very, very online. But this is like, these are people who are so online that they're following news from Finland, New Zealand. Yeah. Well, no, they were enraged at the Australian vaccine mandates when Australia is a gazillion miles away. I'm curious to know, though, you know, as you're watching these world events,

unfold all of America, or at least not all of America, but certainly I have been, you know, watching BBC International and listening to these people and they're brave. You know, there's been a lot of talk from Zerlinsky, who is my age and a Jewish comedian, so I feel very connected to him. My generation, was also Jesse's generation. We've had a tough time of it. We've never really had our moment. So this may be as close as we ever get to our moment. That's interesting. I mean, I mean, I, I think the one for Vizzo to say is that's just two more in the United States than like anywhere else. That's like if you actually look around the world, in most democracies, there's been sort of cohort replacement. And so South Korea, New Zealand, Finland, you're seeing politicians in their 30s.

Yeah, we're fucked. They just skipped right over us. Whereas like, you know, like in the United States, I mean, like, yeah, you're going to have like these forever drugs that will keep 90-year-olds alive. Yeah, no. I mean, we have a 10,000-year-old president on the right, 10,000-year-old president on the right, 10,000-year-old President on the left. And then, you know, everywhere else, we're completely fucked. So this is our man. So we really need to keep him alive. But he gave us very good speech today. And he talked about how Ukraine is the step towards Russia completely. You know, they're just taking them because

they're in the way of Russia trying to completely steamroller the world. You are in Canada. Must be a little scary being next to America. I am actually very worried about what's happening. with Russia and Ukraine, although not so much for Russia being able to invade other countries. I mean, I think they're having enough trouble in Ukraine itself. It's a way to understand that Russia is a very weak country. I mean, their economy is actually smaller than Canada's economy. Nobody's afraid that Canada's going to take over the world. They're a small country with a lot of nuclear weapons and a relatively large just military.

So they can invade neighboring countries or get only enough to get in Quagmire. What's dangerous is that Putin has, like very explicitly, raises a prospect of nuclear weapons. I mean, he's clearly letting people know that things don't get his way. You know, he's a guy with nukes. On the reverse side, I mean, that both limits what the NATO and other people might want to help Ukraine can do and also has to make us very careful about that trigger. I mean, there's all sorts of talks about no-fly zones.

I think that Biden White House has very wisely said that's not really an option. That's one of the things that could lead to a nuclear war. I think people are too blasé and complacent about them. It's always a problem that these weapons exist and they're so dangerous. But this is really the first time since the 1980s that, you know, like it's a really live prospect in terms of the Soviet Union and the United States. You get these like kind of do your own research guys. I know, I knew where this was going. I'm so happy you brought this up, Chief.

A new type of guy. Yeah. A new type of, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they've already, you know, having done their own research using horse medicine for COVID. But now they're buying it to nuclear weapons. You see these two-year-old research guys saying, well, would nuclear war really be so terrible? I thought one person guy saying, it's really a matter of attitude. Yeah.

I'm sorry, man, but like radiation does not care about your attitude. Follow it doesn't care about your attitude. You know, Noah Smith, who's a calmness at Bloomberg, you know, famously tweets under, you know, the handle no opinion. You know, he was saying, well, you know, I've looked at the recent papers on nuclear winter, and it's not as bad as people think. And this is, okay, there's a scholarly dispute would some of the nuclear winter effect be absorbed by the oceans and by the mountains. Yeah. And, you know, there's different models.

I just have to say, like, this is a dispute one wants to see stay theoretical and stay unresolved. Yeah. Like, the only way you can actually find out which model is true is to have nuclear war. And, you know, then we'll find out if nuclear winter will only kill a billion people or will actually make the Earth uninhabitable for humanity. I don't care either way. Like, I think we should avoid that prospect. It is, it's totally fascinating because I think if you have to say nuclear war is bad, but that's a sentence.

Once you say that, you've lost. In another way to frame it, though, to return to Putin is, I mean, I think that we want to avoid bringing up this as a prospect because that just reinforces his paranoia and also his wagger and threats and really returning to realms where the West does have the upper hand, like economics. I think there have been like a lot of. sanctions now. I'm hoping that we're wishing that they're a little bit more targeted. That will come, but it's actually like much ahead of what one was seeing in the first day or two where people

were kind of stunned in a state of shock. And there were a lot of people saying, you know, they wanted carve-outs. You know, the predict are saying, well, we'll have sanctions, what we want to have Russian money coming into the banks in London. And the Italians, my favorite were saying like, sure, sanctions, but you know, luxury goods. Right. Like, Gucci's kind of our biggest export, right? In a sense, like, I feel like Putin has already lost, Although it could be some sort of endgame where he absorbs, you know, a large part of Ukraine or maybe the whole of it. But, I mean, the whole goal is if it's the goal to restore the Russian Empire, what you're basically now seeing is like a much more unified NATO. You're seeing Germany rearm. France is now announcing further arm spending. Finland and Sweden are, you know, like talking about joining NATO.

If there's no off-rap, if there's no negotiated settlement, but Putin will face is a world that is very hostile to him. And outside of Europe, I mean, if you look at the UN vote, the vast majority of countries voted to condemn. There were a few people that were voted to abstain, which is interesting. And I sort of beat them as a country that want to... North Korea. He voted to support Russia's shockingly. Yeah. If I were you, I would, you know, maybe unfriend him.

Don't eat any snacks, he brings you. Yeah. But I mean, it's basically, yeah, yeah, North Korea, Belarus. There would be very few countries. Syria. Yeah. I think Atria was maybe the only one in Africa. Anyway, very, very few countries supported them. A few abstained, but the vast majority went against it.

And even the abstainers, I mean, I read China's position from their very statements and from the abstaining is that they don't approve of the takeover. They do want some sort of settlement or negotiations. And they're handling, I think, to try to be the mediator in this. So I just think like where Putin is diplomatically is not. And then just like economically, like, you know, once the sanctions start to bite. And the fact that he's receiving a lot of opposition in his own country. You know, like there have been a lot of protests. Protesting in Russia is a much more serious thing.

It's a high-stakes scandal. It's a high-stakes scandal, yeah. And there have been like six or seven thousand people arrested. Like those are people who are really putting their lives on the line. And he shows the severity that he's doing to take them down. He's separating kids from their parents if the parents protest. But also seeing like business leaders protesting. and oligarchs, you know, like, and one reads the sort of political situation.

There's some members of the Duma who had actually voted for the war now saying, well, we voted to protect the little statelets, not to invade Ukraine. So I just think politically the situation is not great for Putin. I mean, it's not, I think it would be very hard to depose of him, but I think that there's unhappiness coalescing. He never mobilized the population for this. Like usually people remember the Iraq war, like months and months of propaganda to get people, worked up. There was really none of that. And I think that maybe the majority of Russians is kind of

passive going along with it, like just not to rock the boat. But there's no like, you're not seeing counter protest. You're not seeing like people out on the street saying, yeah, let's invade Ukraine. I think he was calculated. And I think, you know, our best hope is that that sort of mobilized population in Ukraine that's making its unhappiness known can somehow find some sort of political form. And that makes Putin do a walk back. Now, having said that, I mean, I don't want to get into like a sort of, you know, psychological reading. But he's changed a little bit. He used to be very calculated and very careful about his aggressions.

I mean, there was aggression, but like of a limited nature. What he's doing now and the way he's behaving is not, it's very terrifying. Let's talk about that because Macron has kind of been on the forefront of talking to Putin. He went to Putin and tried to sort of convince him not to invade Ukraine. And he's been sort of the loudest European leader, don't you think? Yeah, I don't know. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I also trying to play, I think the same role as trying to, like, if there is negotiations to be the kind of mediator. He's the one who's keeping the lines of communication open. But in this case, it was actually like Putin, who called Macron. He, like, called him up and talked to him for like an hour and a half. And then it was like, you know, just like, everything is going according to plan. Which, I mean, like, I think you don't necessarily say that if everything is going according to plan, right? Yeah. You could read that. You could say you could, it could be the sincere or could.

be that he's trying to cheer himself up. Also, it's just, you know, he's going to, Macron came out of this very pessimistic, saying that, you know, things are going to get worse and that Putin is committed to, like, taking over all of Ukraine. The sort of unhingedness of the phone call, but the fact that he's trying to justify himself

to the president of France, there's at least a kernel of a way that maybe this guy can be reached. It seems to me, like, what I was surprised by was, Macron, he's the leader who seems the most worried, and he's the one who spent the most time with him. Yes, yes. I think that's right. That's right. Yeah. The conversation is very disturbing, you know, based on

Macron's own reports. So it does seem like Putin is kind of digging in his heels. I think the best that we can hope for is that with the sanctions biting more the Russian population will come out and posing this. It's not like they were mobilized to support it. So I'm thinking a population that was not on board already is already passive and then is going to have to make sacrifices. I don't know. I feel like it's a very, that might be, that's the only sort of path I'm seeing towards some sort of settlement. And if there's not a settlement, it's going to be very incredibly horrible for the people of Ukraine. Yeah. Because the Russians will, Putin will unleash, you know, the forces.

And while the Russian military has had trouble and setbacks and bogged down, I mean, they do have the superior forces. And as we've seen in, you know, wars in Chechnya and elsewhere, they're willing to be very brutal. And if there's this path of, if it's impossible to get Putin to go back to negotiations, it's going to be a very long and nasty war, very tragic for the people of Ukraine, but also a war that will completely isolate Russia and make it like a kind of pariah nation. They can't sell iPhones. There's no Apple pay. I mean, it's really, I think it's important for all of us to remember that a lot of the people

in Russia are not there by choice anymore, right? They're ruled by a pretty scary dictator and they don't have a lot of freedoms. So I think always so important with situations like this to remember the humanity of the people. No, absolutely, absolutely. I absolutely agree. And that there are many of them where like quite bravely standing up for this. The worst case scenario is a kind of a huge tragedy for Ukraine and also for the people of Russia with all sorts of possibilities the nastiest sort of weapons being used. I spent a little bit of time talking to Matt Dust, who's the foreign policy advisor for Bernie Sanders. And he had a lot of thoughts.

The priority we're giving to refugees has to be there. There's already a million refugees. There's potentially many, many more. You know, the sanctions that are there, we have to have them. And we also have to make sure that they're targeted, that they really are affecting the people who can, like, are the most responsible and can push Putin. I mean, there's a lot of things that can be done. You know, when I talked to Matt Dusk, the other point he made was that we have to, avoid the kind of dumb rhetoric that we're seeing.

Like Sean Hannity was saying, well, why doesn't NATO just like bomb and then, but don't take responsibility and then Putin won't know who did it, right? Oh, yeah. So some guy out of the blue just came into Ukraine airspace and bombed the convoy. Who could that be? It's like, you know, and then no-fly zone, all the talk about kind of military tactics that A, won't help Ukraine and B will unleash untold horrors on the world. I will end with this with maybe just saying, I'm really glad Joe Biden is in the White House.

And they've been very good about avoiding the worst sort of militaristic rhetoric and being having their eyes on the prize. And it really, really rallied the Europeans in a way. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, like, it's a grim situation. I'm grateful that I think the United States and other Western governments, I think, are doing the best they can. Yeah, I think that's right. Thank you so much for joining us, Jeet. Oh, thank you.

moderator of Face the Nation on CBS News and the network's chief foreign affairs correspondent. Welcome to the new abnormal, Margaret Brennan. I'm definitely living the abnormal. It's become my normal. So thank you. We're very excited to have you. I was hoping we could just talk about what's going on in Ukraine. It's very hard to sort of process all this information. Can you kind of give us a sort of a little explainer? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty fast moving on the ground right now in Ukraine. it's pretty terrifying if you are a Ukrainian because you have an incredibly powerful military descending upon your country with no promise from any Western country that they will come to your

defense, but that they will help your military defend you. But the force is overwhelming. This morning, for example, one of the most chilling things I heard was from the United States ambassador to the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He gave a speech saying that the United States is credible information that Russian forces are creating lists of Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following the military occupation. So the United States has intelligence indicating this that they are trying to make public and share with other countries to try to investigate human rights abuses that haven't yet taken place, but the world expects them to. It is pretty terrifying if you are in Ukraine. A million Ukrainians to date have fled the country into surrounding ones, into the NATO member states. That is the fastest evacuation thus far of flow of refugees in a century where we have seen some massive refugee exodus from war zones. And all of this is happening and destabilizing potentially Europe. And this is going to have massive implications for the global economy and the global balance of power, which is why it matters to the rest of the world outside of Ukraine. The United States, as you know, is not sending combat troops.

President Biden has made that clear. Can you explain to our listeners? This seems like a very different refugee crisis than what we've seen previously. Like Poland is opening its borders to these refugees. Can you explain a little bit how this is different than other refugee crises we've seen? Well, this is controversial because it gets at how the European countries surrounding Ukraine are opening their borders to take in refugees from the war zone from Ukraine at a time when they have tried to close their borders to refugees from active war zones in Syria were really,

destabilized countries like Afghanistan and some countries in Africa. In fact, in Poland's north, there is a wall being built to keep out those refugees. Refugees have been weaponized by government, particularly in Belarus. And so those coming from war zones from Muslim majority countries, those who are brown or black have had a different experience than those being welcomed from Ukraine, who are largely Christian, some Jewish, but largely Christian, white, European, There have been charges that this is based in racism. The European governments, Poland, for example, would argue no, it's because they are our European neighbors.

They're not coming from zones where terrorism, for example, is the threat. You know, that rings hollow for Syrian refugees, for example, in 2015 and to now who we're seen and treated as a threat rather than welcomed as just fellow humans. So it's a complex thing. And for Ukrainians, it's also frustrating, you know, some of my colleagues on the ground in Poland who've talked to European refugees to UK. Ukrainians, they say, you know, the Europeans are not coming to help us. Ukraine and the government that came to power after 2014 and their Revolution of Dignity, as they call it, they were vying

to join the European Union and be welcomed as full members of that European community. They've been vying to join and be welcomed into NATO, and those doors have been not open fully to them. It's interesting to hear some of the European governments say they welcome fellow Europeans as refugees, but haven't fully allowed them to be members of a club that they would have to act. defend with military force. I know there were a lot of African students who were having trouble getting to the border or through the border. Is that still happening? You know, I'd have to defer to those on the ground. I know some of our reporters have said they have seen a difference in those who were prioritized in lines, for example, to get out. There have been charges of racism there, but it's not

clear to me. I know the reports you're talking about. I've seen them. Yeah. It's such an interesting time in American life. You know, I come from a family. My great-great-grandparents were all in Ukraine and left when they were being murdered by the Cossacks. So I didn't realize there were so many Jews still in Ukraine. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, the president of Ukraine is Jewish. The defense minister is Jewish. Yes, I think that resonated for people outside of Ukraine when they heard the phrasing that Vladimir Putin used when he said he was justifying this military aggression with the claim he was denotifying Ukraine. So it's interesting that that resonated for people.

It is also interesting that it hits a certain court with people where they feel a little guilty, perhaps, or you hear what President Zelensky has said, and he is saying it intentionally, when he says to the European government, you all like every year to say never again. You all say that this is something you would never allow to happen again on the continent of Europe.

And he's saying it for a reason because he is calling upon the institutions that were set up. I mean, the entire global order that you hear President Biden talk about as a reason to be invested in this conflict, that it's a defense of the global order. He's talking about NATO, but he's also talking about all the institutions that were set up. The United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, all these things were created after World War II's to prevent World War I and World War II from ever replicating into World War III. And that's the irony of it all. There's amazing diplomatic work being done to keep allies in line, to move in lockstep. But I'm keenly aware.

That doesn't mean a whole lot for someone in a bomb shelter right now. Yeah. It's interesting to me because we saw in 2015, the right wing has been very, very anti-NATO, shockingly anti-NATO in my mind. And now we're really seeing why we have NATO. Do you think that there will be a sort of about phase in the right-wing? media. Well, you know, it's interesting because so much of the problems with these institutions, and let's be honest here, they are a bit rusty and rickety, and they have needed refurbishment.

In fact, President Obama had some of the very same criticism President Trump's administration put out there in terms of NATO and the need to renew and revitalize the alliance, that it was sort of taken for granted and that the U.S. was relied upon to often corral projects. He put it in far more diplomatic terms than President Trump, who was, you know, sort of black and white, like, we may pull out, right? But the overall point is that these are a bit rickety. And they do need revitalization. The irony of it all is you're only seeing that happen in a time of absolute crisis. And it is interesting and ironic because you had the United States government out there declassifying intelligence for weeks and months saying to European powers, this is going to

happen. This is what Vladimir Putin is lining himself up to do. And, And I remember talking to European diplomats, you know, from Germany, from the United Kingdom, from France, from so many allies. And even those who aren't NATO countries who said, we see the same intelligence. We don't doubt your intelligence, but we just doubt that Vladimir Putin would ever go ahead and do it. And it took Vladimir Putin going ahead and doing it to see this incredible revitalization of the alliance. President Biden does deserve credit for the leadership in trying to keep the allies in lockstep with the United States, not moving independently. example, but let's be clear here. It was Vladimir Putin who unified NATO because he terrified Germany. He terrified the surrounding countries by bombing a European capital. I mean, it definitely seems like

we've seen a real global political shift. And I've been interested. How much credit do you think that Biden can take for the kind of rallying of NATO feels like the international community has been completely in lockstep with the exception of North Korea? President Biden and his administration have spent a lot of time on the diplomacy and trying to keep the alliance in lockstep because that's how they want to create the sort of bright line, this wall and show of force that NATO and the allies can't be divided by Putin, which ultimately would be his dream, right? So keeping the alliance together is something that the diplomats have put in a lot of elbow grease on. I am just keenly aware that, you know, I can talk at length about the artistry of the diplomacy, but that means nothing for someone in a bomb shelter, for the woman giving birth in a subway right now. And that is always the tough thing when you talk about diplomacy that is not backed up by the credible use of force. And it reminds me of what it was like covering Styria.

Let's go into that more. First, I want to ask you, it seems like there's a pretty big line in the sand here. about what that would mean. I mean, I feel like the American media is sort of grappling with the concept that we're watching something terrible, but if we get involved, that could open the door to things that are much, much worse. Right. I mean, you hear that from officials of Pentagon, from the state department from elsewhere, that Vladimir Putin, and he knows this well, that this is like a dance he's doing with Europe, but it's also one he's doing with the United States, though it's 5,000 miles away. He is using the fact that he has forced to,

500 nuclear warheads the largest nuclear force in his world as just a threat. And that is a useful one. And it's one that is keeping the United States from even considering intervention in Ukraine at this point. The president has made that clear. I mean, he led the State of the Union talking about this and made the point that the United States is not going to send combat troops. He's not going to risk going head to head between two nuclear powers. He's drawn a very bright line to say, but if you go farther towards the West, if you touch one of the countries that we are treaty allies with, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, you know, any of the 30 NATO members, then that would mean force. That's where the forces that the United States ascending are going

to shore up that wall. But the Ukrainian president has said, hey, guys, we're not a buffer zone. We're people. Right. Right. No, I mean, he's been interesting because his speeches, and I've watched a bunch of his speeches with, you know, with translation, and he's such a gifted orator. Russia has an incredible propaganda machine. I mean, we were here for the 2016 elections, right? We've seen it. He's broken through some of that, which has been kind of amazing. It is. And in a way that, I mean, I covered 2014 when Russia first invaded Ukraine under the Obama administration. I spent a lot of time doing this, like chasing around John Kerry, who was Secretary of State at the time, when he was going to meet with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign

minister in different capitals trying to negotiate with him to stop. At the same time, there was the backdrop of the conflict in Syria where Vladimir Putin's government was backing a war criminal using chemical weapons against his own people. And the United States did not intervene with force. The message has been sent for years now that the United States, whether it was under President Obama, President Trump or President Biden, doesn't want to once again deploy U.S. combat troops into a war zone. And that's fine. That is the state of the American mentality right. now. But I'm also mindful that the American people do react to what you're saying there to those calls to that sort of value system to say they don't like seeing a bully. And for 20 years,

they've been hearing Vladimir Putin's a bully. And this time they are seeing just egregious examples of, you know, going into Ukraine. It wasn't an aerial campaign in 2014. It was this insidious seizure of Crimea and parts of the east of Ukraine that probably just didn't resonate with people the way this really muscular invasion does. Americans, when you poll them, are never pro-foreign intervention. They just aren't. They don't like seeing this. They don't like hearing echoes of 1945.

And they don't like hearing that there are lists of Ukrainians to be sent to camps. That means something that gets at the core of people. And I just wonder where this goes next. Yeah, it's so interesting to me as someone who has sort of watched this during the Trump administration, certainly in a place where America, Americans were completely in both parties against foreign intervention. And now we see this carnage and it's very hard to sit on our hands. I mean, you can wind back the clock of all the human rights abuses that Vladimir Putin has been directly involved in.

And the American people didn't want to get involved in Syria. The American president, President Obama didn't want to get involved in Syria. There were foreign governments like in France who, and I hear this from French diplomats, that they were willing and ready to go. The Kingdom was not to intervene back then. But seeing those pictures of women and babies gas to death by their government did resonate with the American people, but they stopped short of it of an intervention. And I wonder now, because I ask the U.N. ambassador to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, I should say last Sunday and faced the nation, about the reports of potential chemical and biological weapons being used in Ukraine and what would happen. And she said nothing's off the table with this guy.

When the United States is looking at scenarios of those kind of weapons, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States said that vacuum, were being used. The Pentagon says they still can't confirm they were used, but they can confirm the equipment's been moved into Ukraine. So what happens next? Is there a scenario like that where there is such massive, egregious human rights abuses, violations of the Geneva Convention that changed thinking to create, for example, a humanitarian corridor. It's something I talked, HR McMaster, the retired general who was on our program the other night about, you know, what's next there? It seems alike, and again, I think that it's very hard to trust the reporting here,

but it seems like some of these oligarchs are not pleased with Vladimir Putin. You have reports now of, you know, the French government seizing yachts. And, you know, certainly the Justice Department says they're going to do things like that go after. The misters, the children, the things that oligarch get to do and stash around the world, look, the bet is that ultimately that will put pressure on Vladimir Putin. There's a real question mark over that because it's at what point does enough pressure get exerted on Vladimir Putin who doesn't seem to be pressured or bullied by anyone. I also just have to remind myself to put that in practical terms. Look, I am fascinated by the fact that corporate America is also sort of leading its own pressure campaign.

The gas companies. Yes. You know, financial firms and the like, a visa, a MasterCard, American Express talking about ending some business enterprises too. that's fascinating to me. But again, it comes back to what's happening on the ground. When does any of this practically make a difference to stop the Russian military in its track? I have not heard anyone put a date on the calendar for that. And until we see that, it's worth watching and it is an amazing thing, but it doesn't stop and help people on the ground who are dying now. And that's my question is, when does this practically make a difference with the ability of the Russian military to continue carrying out a campaign? I want to find out the answer to that.

Yeah, me too. Thank you so much, Margaret Brennan. I hope you'll come back. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is, I can't believe the time just flew by. Thank you. Evan McMullen is a former 2016 presidential candidate and is currently running as an independent to unseat Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

Welcome to the new abnormal, Evan McMullen. Hi, Molly. Great to be with you. I wanted to talk to you for any number of reasons. The first was that you did a really good ad. You are right. running against Mike Lee in the great state of Utah. Can you talk to us about this ad that you did? Absolutely. I mean, in general, I'll just say, look, we've got a far right senator out here in Mike Lee who tried to overturn our last election.

You know, every so often tries to shut down the government, voted against Putin sanctions, voted against helping the Ukrainians. I mean, he's just really somebody who's been a destructive force in American politics since he was elected. and he's been in the Senate now for about 12 years, and it's time to call him home. Only 34% of Utah and support him. And so we've got a great opportunity out here to do it. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that. This whole Russia-Ukraine situation has, I think, made clear the fight that the world is having now between democracy and authoritarianism. And here in Utah, we've got somebody who has stood on the side of Putin and on the side of efforts to overturn our own democracy. And, because of that, they're unpopular, and we have an opportunity to replace him. And so we did an ad that highlighted the fact that Mike Lee had been one of only two senators to vote against Russia sanctions after 2016. He and Rand Paul were the only two senators to vote against those sanctions. He then traveled to Moscow a year later, met with the Kremlin and talked about lifting sanctions. He defended the illicit withholding of military aid to Ukrainians as they were already fighting off

Russians in 2019. And more recently, he's argued against basic internal NATO deployments that are intended to secure our allies in Europe. And, you know, these aren't NATO deployments into Ukraine. They're NATO deployments around Europe to ensure that our allies are protected. So we did an add on that, confronting him on that issue and offering a better way forward. And that's what we're doing with the campaign in general. So he was on that July 4th trip to Russia. It wasn't. It wasn't a July 4th trip, actually. It was a different trip. He and a handful of other senators wanted to travel to Russia in 2018, I believe that's when it was. Interestingly, Moscow denied all of the other senators' visas, but gave a visa to Mike Lee. And I think it probably had

something to do with the fact that he had been one of these two senators who voted against sanctions. And of course, you know, that was, you know, Mike Lee said he was going to Russia to talk about religious liberty. But later the Russians sort of blew that out of the water by exposing the fact that they had talked about lifting sanctions and Mike Lee didn't deny it. So it was a different trip, but obviously very interesting that the Russians denied all the other senators. They were quite upset about it. But for Mike Lee, they rolled out the red carpet. What do you think is going on there? Well, I think what happened is that Mike Lee, keep in mind, he campaigned strenuously against Donald Trump on the floor of the Republican National Convention in 2016.

He called for Trump to get out of the race after access to Hollywood. And on election day, he announced that he had voted for me. And he had been sort of quietly, privately, supporting never Trump efforts before that. But then publicly said so on election day. But after that, he changed. There was a great change in Mike Lee. I mean, he was always from the far right, I think.

But he had opposed Trump, I think because he thought Trump would lose and it was safe to do so. But once he won, most people understand that Mike Lee saw in that an opportunity, and that was to become a Supreme Court justice. And that's what Mike Lee. That's crazy. What Mike Lee wants most is to become, or has wanted most, is to become a Supreme Court justice. And so when Donald Trump was elected, Mike Lee saw opportunity there that he could be potentially nominated to the Supreme Court. And I think that's why he did such an about face. And so he started spending more time with Trump and Javonka and became very proud of that fact and talked about it and bragged about it in Washington. You know, Utahans hear stories of this sort of thing from Washington about Mike Lee. But over time, he became one of Trump's closest allies. He became in 2020, he was his co-chair, the co-chair of his reelection committee here in Utah. Ultimately, he helped advise Donald Trump's efforts, overturn the election. He laid in the race in 2020. He was campaigning with Trump in Arizona to an audience of

members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. And he compared Donald Trump to Captain Moronai, who is this revered, righteous military leader from the Book of Mormon that really all members of the church respect. And that's an esoteric issue maybe for the rest of the country, but not in Utah and not for members of the church. And so that's still remains one of the biggest issues that he faces is just that that about face, that abandonment of our principles and our values in service of his own self-interest. And obviously, it hasn't worked out too well for him. He's very unpopular out here. But I think that's what drove his change and his willingness to appease and cater to Putin in the far right. And by appeasing Putin, he was

catering to the far right. And that was, I think, what he thought he needed. needed to do in order to pursue his own political ambitions. So he's not a Mormon? He is. But he just doesn't, I mean, I've just sort of chocked. Well, he, in fact, he is a member of the church, and he's actually the son of a very prominent member, Rex Lee, who is the former Solicitor General of the country, very, very well respected and regarded even today.

But Mike Lee has offered a very different kind of service, one that I think. has become quite dishonorable and a lot of people recognize that departure from from his father's service you and I are both in the CIA um and no I'm just kidding but you were you've done a lot of work in the CIA and also in different conflict zones we're watching what's unfolding right now what is your read on what you're watching and is it very horrible to watch it and to feel like you know what's happening and not be able to help. Yeah, well, it's very difficult, frankly, to see something like that happening and not to be able to help there on the ground.

I mean, that is really, really difficult. But I know that fighting the political fight here that we have for our values, for American democracy, is a part of a broader fight between the rise of authoritarianism and aggressive dictators around the world and the rise of an anti-democracy movement here in the United States and what we hope for, which is a strengthened democracy in a healthier country. And so, you know, I'm fighting in that way still, and it's an important fight, especially with Mike Lee as my opponent. But yes, it's hard not to be able to. I mean, I'm hands on. I like to be where the fight is. And it's tough not to be able to help there directly. But I know we have

good people in the U.S. government who are working hard on that front. And thankfully, our allies are joining, have joined, and the coalition against Russia's hostilities is growing far faster and more broadly than I ever imagined, frankly. I think it's a great success and votes well for the future of American leadership. It's going to be awful for Ukrainians for some time, I'm sad to say, and I hope that the international community will be strong enough to sustain its pressure on Putin and the whole Russian country to withdraw from Ukraine so that we can get back to peacetime or something less than all-out war as soon as possible. I mean, it just seems like we're watching this terrible humanitarian crisis and there's nothing we can do.

Well, I think there are things we can do. The New York Times and some other publications have released a small list of NGOs that are doing great work and are trustworthy in Ukraine, where if you want to support their humanitarian efforts, you can. Otherwise, I think what people should do is reach out to. to your members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, and even if you think your member, your senators, or your representative is already good on this issue, still reach out to them because they need to know that this is important to you. I mean, there are so many other things, so many other important things to focus on. If this is a priority to you, call and let them know that it is, write them, call them, meet with them, let them know that it's a priority that they

stand with the rest of the international community in support of Ukrainians' fight for freedom and against Putin and other such dictators who seek to deprive free people of their basic rights around the world. I think that's critical. That political activity can have a tremendous impact. It can mean the difference between Ukrainian grandmother fighting Russian soldiers in her village with what she needs to be effective and her losing her life. And so do that. Reach out to them, let them know that it's important that that they're, the U.S. stand with the Ukrainians in the right way. I want you to talk to us about what the options are, because it seems to me like there aren't a lot of options on the table. Well, there aren't a lot

of great options, but that's often the case with war. I mean, war is the result of everything else failing. And so it's not a surprise that the options within war are not great. If the options were great, we wouldn't have the war. So we've got a situation here where, you know, the U.S., and I agree, I don't want to see U.S. troops in Ukraine, but at the same time, I want to do everything we can to support the Ukrainians. I don't want this to escalate out of control and become a broader war in Europe or globally, certainly. And so we have to be very careful about what we do. You know, there's been some discussion of a potential no-fly zone that America and its NATO allies and others would enforce. You know, I'm nervous about that, frankly.

Right. You know, a no-fly zone requires you to shoot the enemy. aircraft out of the sky. And that can be, that can cause escalation that we may not be able to control. So I'm nervous about that. But at the same time, we, in my view, we can't just let the Russians drop area munitions and, you know, cluster bombs and other other weapons designed to, at least and use the way they are to kill civilians in mass. We just cannot allow that. So what do we do? Well, what we do is we make sure Ukrainians have the weapons they need to knock those aircraft, out of the sky and to protect their airspace and to otherwise persuade the Russians that the fight is is not worth the effort. And, you know, there are things we can do from the outside, yes, sanctions,

breaking apart, taking away Russian oligarchs assets. What that will do is fracture Putin's support within the regime. You know, all of these things, frankly, we're now doing a lot of these things. I wish we would have done them a long time ago. I've been talking about this stuff for years. You know, it's certainly with the oligarchs, but now I think is a clarifying moment for the world. And what I'm describing is happening and it's what I think should happen. But it's not going to end anything very quickly, unfortunately. This is going to go on for a while. Are there people working behind the scenes in ways we don't know? I am not a part of that world now. So I can't say authoritatively, but I can speculate. Yes. Well, that's what I was helping. And I would speculate that absolutely, I would imagine that

there are CIA operatives and other special U.S. operators helping the Ukrainians, making sure that we get weapons to them that they need, making sure they know how to use them effectively. I would imagine that we're providing intelligence, detailed intelligence on Russian troop movements and intentions. And I would imagine we're certainly doing all of that. I don't know authoritatively. I don't know period. Right. Right. You're speaking theoretically from your own experience. in previous things. In this kind of situation, that's exactly what we're very likely to be doing. Do you see a world you've been in countries that have had regime change?

Do you see a world where the people are able to take their country back from Vladimir Putin? Yeah, I'm bullish on Ukraine and on the prospects for freedom in Ukraine, frankly. But I think it's going to take a long time. and it's the destruction going to be terrible. There's going to be a tremendous loss of life. But the Russians are demoralized. They're not well supplied. They're not well trained.

They don't have a good cause to fight for. And the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. And frankly, this isn't new to them. They've been fighting for their freedom really since their independence. And they've got a lot of powerful friends. And I think what's going to happen is Russia has overstepped. I think Putin, a lot of the times these dictators become so isolated over time. because everyone's afraid of them.

So they don't get good advice, they don't get good information, and they start to make really bad decisions. And I think this was one for Vladimir Putin. I think it has and will very much weaken him. We could talk about that. But he's overextended himself and the Russian army in Ukraine, and they're going to pay a heavy, heavy price. They don't have the troops to occupy Ukraine,

especially not with a very motivated and hopefully well-suffer. supplied guerrilla force, which is what I think the Ukrainians will become. It'll become less army on army and more. It already is becoming this and more Ukrainian guerrilla force on, on Russian army. But I think Ukrainians will be able to fight that fight very effectively. There will still be tremendous losses on the Ukrainian side, but so will there be on the Russian army side. And over time, my money's on the Ukrainians. Oh, what a hard, horrible thing to witness, though. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank 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 of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast 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. Jesse Cannon.

Molly Jock Fast, I am back because poor Andy Levy can't join us today. But you know what? You sound really jacked up, man. But yes, continue. I am back with the fury of someone who's been sitting here listening to YouTube, express your Fury, and now I'm ready to express mine. Jesus, just express it slightly softer. Who is your fuck that guy, loudo?

My fuck that guy is a nice little guy from Santa Monica. I'm, of course, talking about a man who is no friend of mine, Ben Shapiro, who's very angry that all his life, he was never very accepted, and he showed it yet again by, for some reason comparing Joe Biden to Kirk Cobain as if that's a bad thing. You know, he basically said that Joe Biden's state of the union address was like Kirk Cobain putting the gun to his mouth for America, which I think could be the dictionary definition of hyperbole. But I want to say, like, this is his cultural blindness. You know, this guy is very weird because of how scorned he was as a child. And he doesn't get that Kirk Cobain is a beloved figure, a defender of transgender and gay people at a time when almost no one was a kind, empathetic person who made millions of people feel better.

and most of all was one of the biggest game changers of all time. And I hope that Joe Biden has seen and lives up to that. And for that, I say, I kind of agreed, Ben Shapiro. Asperationally, I hope Joe Biden is Kirk Cobain. So do you want to know who my fuck that guy? I got a feeling I got a sneaking suspicion who they might be. So give it to me. You know what's interesting to me is during Biden's State of the Union address,

which I, again, I wrote about this, but I actually thought it was really pretty good for him. And he did really a pretty good job. And he talked about a lot of things. And there's really interesting and important framing here about Democrats fighting for democracy in a world that is teetering on the brink of autocracy. But of course, you can't have an event in Washington, D.C. without Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boper showing up. And they had shown up in order to get attention. It's like the entire GOP has become a stunt. driven organization. So you had the two of them with their backs to Biden as a way of showing their displeasure. And then as Biden's talking about burn pits and how his own son died at 46 of brain

cancer, they start heckling him. And it's like the idea was that they would get attention and that they would get people, you know, would rally around them. But what happened, which I think is sort of basically how they are is that instead they were sort of just really embarrassing and it was like yet another really embarrassing moment in what has been a string of really embarrassing moments and you know it's embarrassing because they didn't even try to fundraise off of that so wow i didn't realize that and i mean but 80% of this organization is them fundraising so uh fuck that guy you know what i kept thinking about with it was that, you know, when we saw Marjorie go speak at the white supremacist rally last week, that was because Kevin McCarthy didn't punish Congressman Dentists for doing the same

thing the year before. And because Joe Wilson got no punishment for yelling, you lie at Obama, now we have these two hootin and holler and like when Kid Rock comes on at the Buffalo Wild Wigs. I mean, I would say that certainly there has been a lack of accountability on the GOP side and they don't have any. But, you know, if they start punishing people, that's the base. Right? They've worked so hard to try to keep these people on board. So for that, I would like to say a hearty, fuck you to Lauren Bobert and... Alpha Maga Cairn? Martree, Taylor Green, yes, MTG.

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