The Daily Signal - How Ukraine Is Responding to the Whistleblower Feud

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

The whistleblower complaint over a phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine has all but upended U.S. politics. But how does Ukraine feel about all this? Today, I'll speak with our foreign correspondent Nolan Peterson, who’s stationed in Ukraine. I’ll ask him what regular Ukrainians think about this controversy and what Ukraine as a whole has to lose. Plus: Transgender athletes are wreaking havoc on women’s rugby, and no one’s allowed to speak up. We’ll discuss. We also cover the following stories: President Trump suggests arresting Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for "treason" Hong Kong protesters taunt Beijing ahead of China's national holiday Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., resigns amid insider trader scandal The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, October 1st. I'm Jared Stetman. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, the whistleblower complaint over a phone call between President Trump and the President of Ukraine has all but upended U.S. politics. But how does Ukraine feel about all this? Today, I'll speak with our foreign correspondent, Nolan Peterson, who's stationed in Ukraine. I'll ask him what everyday Ukrainians think about this controversy and what Ukraine as a whole has to lose. Plus, transgender athletes are wreaking havoc on women's rugby, and no one is speaking up. We'll discuss. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes

and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Well, President Trump kept his foot on the gas Monday against Democrats calling for his impeachment. Taking to Twitter, the president accused Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, of treason for his. description of Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president. Quote, Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a fake and terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian president,

and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore no relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for treason, end quote. Schiff had recently summarized a portion of the president's phone call while speaking on the house floor. On Sunday, the president had demanded to meet the whistleblower, who originally filed a complaint about the July phone call. Quote, like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser,

the so-called whistleblower, represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way, end quote, which he said on Twitter. He went on to say he wanted Schiff questioned at the highest level for fraud and treason. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if the House voted on and passed articles of impeachment,

Senate rules require the Senate take them up. However, McConnell also said there's no rules stipulating exactly how long the Senate has to take up articles of impeachment, and he didn't say exactly how they'd be treated once they got there. McConnell said in a CNBC interview, quote, I would have no choice but to take it up. How long you're on it is a whole different matter, end quote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an impeachment inquiry last Tuesday, but so far the House has not voted on any article of impeachment. Well, pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong once again over the weekend, this time taking explicit aim at the Communist Party.

The Wall Street Journal reports that some protesters stomped on images of the Chinese president Xi Jinping, while others held up signs captioned CCP Evil Dictatorship Party, with CCP standing for the Chinese Communist Party. Other signs compare the Communist Party to Nazis. The massive protests came two days ahead of China's national day. celebration on Tuesday, which marks 70 years of communist rule in the country. Also, Reuters reports that China has now doubled its troop levels in Hong Kong since the protests first began, with up to 12,000 soldiers now stationed there. Republican Representative Chris Collins from New York resigned on Monday, a day before he was set to make a plea in a case about his alleged insider trading involving an Australian biotech company. Colin's son and prospective father-in-law were also

charge in the case. All three initially pleaded not guilty. The criminal complaint alleges the congressman told them to dump their shares in the company after a failed drug trial. Well, another House Republican from Texas is stepping down. Congressman Mack Thornberry, who serves as the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, announced on Monday that he won't seek re-election in 2020. Thornberry served for 13 terms in the House. His retirement adds to a growing list of GOP departures. law in California will allow student college athletes to receive endorsement deals and get paid, which has been prohibited by the NCAA. Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the law, said,

quote, other college students with a talent, whether it be literature, music, or technological innovation can monetize their skill and hard work. Student athletes, however, are prohibited from being compensated while their respective colleges and universities make millions, often at great risk to athletes' health, academics, and professional careers. End quote. The NCAA, the association that regulates college athletics, said this law and others like it, could give certain states unfair recruiting advantages over others. The California law would go into effect in 2023. And up next, I'll speak to our foreign correspondent in Ukraine, Nolan Peterson. Exciting news for heritage members. Our 2019 Presidents Club is taking place October 21 through

23 in Washington, D.C. This is an exclusive event for Heritage Members to hear directly from our experts and other conservative leaders. This year, that includes Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. To learn more about how you can attend, please call 1-800-546-2843. That's 1-800-546-2843. Well, joining us now by phone is Nolan Peterson. He is our foreign-class. correspondent stationed in Ukraine, where he provides in-depth coverage on geopolitical affairs in that country, all available at daily signal.com. Nolan, thanks for calling in. Thanks for having me on. So Ukraine has been plastered all over the news here in the United States for the last couple of weeks.

Last week, of course, we saw the whistleblower complaint, which alleges that the president tried to use military aid money to essentially twist Ukraine's arm and get them to investigate Joe Biden's son. We've also seen the transcript of the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky. And it's not clear from that call that there was an explicit quid pro quo, and the Ukrainian president denies that there was any pressure put on him by Trump. Of course, this is a raging partisan controversy here in the United States over the president's use of power. But, Nolan, I want to ask you about things in Ukraine. How are the people that you've talked to responding to this story?

Well, I think the view from, you know, the Ukrainian government is that, you know, they're worried that what has typically been an issue of bipartisan consensus in the United States, which is the need to support Ukraine and its ongoing struggle to resist Russian aggression, you know, that bipartisan issue is suddenly at risk of becoming sort of, you know, a debauching, you know, a partisan dividing line in Washington now. And so I think that within Kiev's government halls, they're really nervous about making a decision which could irritate either the Republicans or the Democrats,

not knowing, you know, obviously in some point in the future, there will be another Democrat president, whether that's in four years, eight years, 12 years. Who knows? But the fact is Ukraine wants to bank on having U.S. in the long run. And so they're nervous that what they do now could have long-term repercussions, potentially painting Ukraine in sort of a negative light for one of America's political parties. Yeah, President Zelensky has been very quiet after this. Is he taking any domestic flack from people,

or is this something that they're blaming on Democrats or the media here in the United States? Zelensky is the most historically popular president that Ukraine has ever had. And so far, right, for the moment, it looks like his popularity is undamaged by this issue. I think, you know, Ukraine, you know, in the last generation, they've been through the collapse of the Soviet Union, the chaos of the 1990s, the revolutions, in the 2000s, and the war with Russia. So they're used to chaos, especially political chaos. Also, you know, the country has been fighting against corruption for decades. So I think here the notion of, you know, sort of allegations being tossed about in this political scandal is not necessarily anything unknown to Ukrainians. And so I think most people in the street, I would argue, would probably just sort of shrug their shoulders and say, well, that's politics.

But I think, you know, when it comes to people in government and people in the military, there is a very strong sense of concern that this could potentially drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States. As for Zelensky, for now, it looks like he's coming out of this relatively undamaged. But then again, we haven't seen any real fallout as far as U.S., you know, any reduction. in U.S. aid or any reduction in sort of U.S. support for Ukraine, if that were to happen, I think that Zelensky would probably see some sort of dip in his popularity. Well, in your recent reporting at the Daily Signal, you've noted that Zelensky has been in talks with Russia for a peace deal after several years of war in eastern Ukraine. Could this new episode throw a wrench into things?

Is there a concern that that peace deal could now be thrown into doubt? And that was the first question that came to my mind when this happened, when the Trump-Biden controversy first came to the four, was, you know, does that, does this scandal, if you want to call it that, does that reduce Ukraine's negotiating leverage with Russia? And just for some context, there's a four-way negotiating framework called the Normandy format that comprises Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany. And that's sort of been the go-to negotiating avenue or, you know, architecture to try and resolve the war in Ukraine since 2014. So when Zelensky came into office, he came in the office on a perceived mandate that he was going to end the war. Among Ukrainians polling shows that the war is their top concern right now. So most Ukrainians want to see an end of the war. And Zelensky has really sort of added energy into rejuvenating that Normandy format process to find his political solution to the war.

And right now, it looks like sometime in mid-October in Paris, those four countries are going to meet to try and negotiate some sort of way forward to reach a peace deal. Of course, you know, this whole political controversy involving the Trump-Zolensky phone call, it's going to change the, the dynamic. I think that among the Ukrainian politicians, experts, and military members with whom I've spoken, their biggest concern wasn't necessarily that Russia will see this as a sign of weakness on Ukraine's part. But if there is any sign that Ukraine is losing the backing of the United States, that could embolden Russia to try to negotiate harder terms. Right now, like I said, doesn't look like the Ukraine-U.S. relationship has, has frayed necessarily over this. There hasn't been any tangible reduction in U.S. support or pledged support for Ukraine. But I think the risk

for Ukraine would, if it seems like it's lost the backing of the United States, that could sort of provoke Russia to seek harsher terms in the negotiated peace settlement. Yeah, and of course, an interesting piece of this is that the president did put a temporary hold on military aid money to Ukraine during the period where he made that phone call and then released those funds weeks later. The president gave a couple reasons for that. He said one of those reasons was that European nations haven't done much of anything to pitch in and help Ukraine counter Russian aggression. Is that accurate? Yeah, well, I think, you know, definitely when it comes to military, U.S. is way out in front of Europe. The EU has given Ukraine billions of euros worth of loans. In fact, the EU has given more loans to Ukraine than any other nation ever outside of the bloc, the EU. So the EU has done things to help Ukraine's economy rebound from the revolution.

But when it comes to military aid, the U.S. stands alone. And also, but, you know, U.S. aid to Ukraine is really a pittance compared to, say, U.S. aid to Israel. So I think, you know, Ukraine is grasping a straws a little bit as far as getting military aid from any country. That being said, Ukraine is the world. world's 12th largest weapons exporter. So Ukraine doesn't necessarily need as far as, you know, quantitatively American weapons to fight this war. I think, you know, one comment I've seen from particularly a lot of democratic lawmakers is that, you know, there would be Russian tanks rolling

through key if it weren't for U.S. military aid, making it seem like somehow, you know, Ukraine was teetering on disaster without that U.S. support. That's certainly not accurate. Ukraine, fought back the Russian invasion, 2014, successfully because of the bravery of its soldiers who fought with limited means, limited technology, very bravely to repel that invasion. U.S. military aid certainly gives Ukraine a technological edge on the battlefield. Most importantly, it sends a really strong message to Ukraine's soldiers and civilians that they have the backing of the world's most powerful military, that of the United States. Right. But the notion that Ukraine is somehow incapable of defending itself without U.S. military aid is not accurate. But I think, yes, Trump cited corruption as a reason for withholding the aid. There are concerns, of course, about where some of these U.S. material may go. But Ukraine has so far, I think, demonstrated it's been a responsible. recipient of U.S. military aid, particularly with the lethal weapons, including the javelins. Yeah, can you talk a little more about corruption? I mean, is this just a massive problem in Ukraine,

in the government that's been there for a long time, and other signs that Zelensky is cracking down on it? Because in his phone call, actually, with the president in the transcript, had said that he talked about draining the swamp in Kiev. Is that happening? Yeah, I think, you know, one problem for Ukraine's post-revolutionary government, has been the fact that, you know, there are remnants of the old regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian, former Ukrainian president who was ousted during the 2014 revolution. You know, his, you know, his old political allies, many of whom remained in government after the revolution.

So Yanukovych left, you know, the head of the snake was cut off, but the body in many ways still remained. So since 2014, it's been an uphill struggle for Ukraine to root. out that sort of endemic corruption. The country has made measurable progress. I think that there's a long road ahead, but I mean, I've lived in Ukraine for more than five years, and I can tell you it's a totally different country than it was in 2014. So there has been a lot of positive progress made on fighting corruption. So I think if anything, Ukraine should be rewarded for what is done. I think that obviously the United States and the EU,

would do well to keep holding Ukraine accountable to that positive progression. But I think, you know, Ukraine at this point is a success story. And that sends, in my opinion, a strong message to the Russian people that if you choose a pro-democratic, pro-Western future, you can get good things too. Ukrainian is now can travel throughout the European Union without a visa. Russians can't. you know, Ukraine's economy is slowly rebounding from the revolution and, you know, basically democratic values and freedoms are on the rise in the country. So I think that the mood in Ukraine is one of advancement toward a more democratic future. In contrast with that of Russia, which,

you know, the recent protests this week show that I think the Russian people are generally discontent with their lot, their political lot. In Ukraine, corruption is still an issue, but without a doubt the dynamic is moving in a positive direction. And so I think that it would be a shame to sweep the rug out from beneath your feet at this moment, right when they're at the cusp of striking a peace deal with Russia, right as they're starting to get the ball rolling with fighting corruption, now is the time where I think America's consistent, durable support is more important than ever. Well, and of course, Zelensky kind of represents that wave of the future, being a young, a young charismatic leader in juxtaposition to the old Vladimir Putin, who's more evocative of the KGB. Talk a little bit about how Zelensky rose to power in Ukraine and the establishment that came before him. What led to his rise? Just, you know, from my personal opinion and observations, I think that many Ukrainians were a bit jaded by the slow progress of reforms after the revolution.

There has been a lot of progress made, and Ukraine has made some real leaps and bounds. They have religious freedom, for example, from the Russian Orthodox Church first time centuries, which is a huge step. I mentioned the fact that Ukrainians can travel without a visa, the EU now. Ukraine has done a lot to decentralize power from the central government and giving local towns and other cities control over their own budgets in a way that they've never had in the post-Soviet or Soviet era. And so you're starting to see infrastructure improvements in cities that you've never seen, you know, in living memory. So I think that there was measurable progress, but I think people just want they wanted things faster they wanted things now particularly the younger generations who are constantly exposed to Western lifestyles Western expectations of economic opportunity than the older generations and I think there was a bit of a I don't have any data offhand to to justify this but just from the you know

sort of the street level perception of living Ukraine, it seems like many young people were excited by Zelensky because he offered, you know, that fresh face, you know, he's a young president and he is going to kind of give new life to that dream of the revolution, which was a pro-Western future that I think maybe some of the young people felt like former president Petro Poroshenko didn't deliver on. To Poroshenko's credit, however, He walked into the Ukrainian presidency in the wake of a revolution in which Ukraine lost Crimea, it lost its Dumbos territory. Its economy took a huge hit.

And also Ukraine's been embroiled in a trench war now for more than five years against Russia's invasion forces in the Dombas. So I think the war certainly sucked a lot of energy out of those post-revolutionary reforms. And I think now with the war, you know, with sort of a light on the horizon of potentially some sort of solution, I think there is sort of a re-energized feeling in Ukraine that there can be some follow through on some of those post-revolutionary changes that weren't realized in the past five years. Very interesting. Well, Nolan, I really appreciate you calling in from Ukraine. And thank you for all your coverage.

on the ground there. You can follow Nolan's coverage at the DailySignal.com. Appreciate your time, Nolan. Thank you so much. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Well, it's no secret that transgender athletes, that is biological males, identifying as women, have moved into women's sports.

We've seen them outperform women in track and field, cycling, and weightlifting, but a report out of the UK takes things to a different level. The Sunday Times over the weekend reported that referees and women's rugby leagues were leaving in droves over the inclusion of male athletes. One anonymous referee said, quote, being forced to prioritize hurt feelings over broken bones exposes me to personal litigation from female players who have been damaged by players who are biologically male. This is driving female players and referees out of the game, end quote.

Another referee said, if you even ask the question, you were told you were a bigot. The person added that they had seen five different women's players with beards over the course of half a season. One transgender player named Kelly Morgan has had huge success in the women's league. Morgan told the Sunday Times, quote, I do feel guilty, but what can you do? I don't go out to hurt anybody. I just want to play rugby. End quote.

So, Jared, progress is finally here. Aren't you so stoked about it? There is something incredible about a lot of these transgender athletes still having beards while doing this too. But yeah, it's really kind of getting to the point where if this continues, I mean, are we going to have women's athletics at all? I mean, at some point, it just becomes a situation where, well, okay, we're going to have to just blend both the leagues because, well, we can't say that this is a man and this is a woman. So, well, I guess just everybody's going to have to play together, which, of course, for a lot of different sports, frankly, that means that we're basically going to be purging women from these leagues.

I mean, that's just going to be the reality of this. And if that's really progress and how progressive see it, I really don't see it that way. a lot of, there are a handful of feminists who actually are against this, and I think they have a good reason to be, which there is kind of a, I don't know, there's a philosophical problem there, because if you say you celebrate women, you want women to be, you know, placed, you know, kind of as something different from men, this philosophy just doesn't lead to that. And it leads to, in many cases, putting women in actual physical harm's way. Yeah, what I find interesting about this is that the feelings of like a handful of athletes who are biologically male but identify as female

are being treated as more real than the kind of common sense reaction of most of the women and the real world effects on the women in the league. Like that's what I find so interesting is that the feelings of a few are just like this one referee said. are being valued over the real world effects on the rest of the women. I mean, they're very physical effects, you know, especially in rugby. It's not just like basketball or something, you know, where it's no contact. It's this is, this is you get crushed and you get broken bones. Yeah, it's a lot different than when somebody beat you by 10 steps in a race or a marathon.

This is somebody actually slamming into another person. And especially when you're talking high levels of sports, I mean, that could be, I mean, that could be, you know, putting somebody in the hospital or worse in a lot of cases. I mean, is that really what we want in society? But you hit the nail on the head. I mean, we're basically putting on a pedestal the beliefs and feelings of one person over potentially very many people. But, you know, I think it does play into, especially how the, you know, the hard left sees the world. And just, you know, there's oppressor classes and oppressed classes.

If you are in one of these oppressed classes, depending on where you are, in that hierarchy of oppression, your voice matters more than others. Your lived experience matters more than others. And unfortunately, it ends up in situations where I have to say a lot of people are going to get hurt by this. I mean, it's just reality, and it's going to damage the integrity of a lot of these sports. And leave it so that there are a lot of now women out there who are very good athletes who will be left on the sidelines, won't be able to play for either the fact that

a man took their place, which is an interesting commentary. itself or can't play because they fear that they are actually going to be seriously injured. Right. Yeah, I think it's interesting how some defenders of this kind of thing will say it really doesn't make an impact on women. Like, you know, they'll say it's such a few, the amount of biological men going in are so few won't really make a real world impact. But we've already seen some students in high school lose scholarship opportunities as we've covered at the Daily Signal, a female track athlete missed out on. the ability to be scouted for college and get a scholarship.

We've seen these trans athletes win in weightlifting. I mean, literally, I think everyone is thinking in their mind. This is absurd, but nobody wants to say anything. And this is sort of where the PC left is so small. The true believers are so small in number, but they're able to win by keeping everyone else silent for fear of, being called out. And this is where I really respect people like Pierce Morgan in the UK, who is a very much a liberal, a man of the left, but he calls out on this and says,

this is ridiculous. And I would hope that you have more common sense people who are able to just speak out on this because eventually it will affect everyone. Yeah. And the bottom line also is these are competitive. sports. This is not just people playing on the weekends, you know, sometimes you get kind of like mixed leagues. But these are supposed to be competitive sports at the highest level. And, you know, we've created men to women's sports so that we can appreciate male and few male athletes who are great at what they do. We want to see the competition and the integrity of that competition is so important for the sport. Changing this so that you basically have a lot of men invading the women's

sports damages the competitiveness of that sport and it damages the kind of the reality that we see on the field. And I think that's a sad thing. You know, we make it worse for everybody, which, you know, I think where a lot of these policies end up. It just makes things worse for everybody and we're forced to accept things that just aren't true, which, you know, we live in a free society. People are going to start to figure out, well, there's something wrong here when we see this man, you know, going into a women's sport and clobbering these other women, so it's not right here. Yeah, I mean, I just have to think that if this occurred on a mass scale, people would be fed up and say no more. You can have your ideology, but as soon as they start affecting my life, and especially if you're a female athlete, you know, and it's really affecting your life, you know, that ideology needs to be blocked.

For sure. I think we're going to see that especially as this reaches the kind of higher level competitive sports like rugby, like, like the Olympics, like things like this. I think people are going to really start to open their eyes to stuff that's been going on in high schools and now colleges and a lot of other competitive sports. People are going to watch an Olympics in the future where it looks like, hey, you know, there's a man competing with women and winning a lot of these competitions. Well, and that's what I'm interested to see is in the Olympics you've got every country you can think of. most of these countries, I would think, are not very warm to the idea of switching your gender and competing against athletes of the opposite sex.

I would just be curious to see how that goes down. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it'll get. Again, there's, of course, you know, there's exceptions. Like a few years ago, there were somebody who did have an issue where they were kind of between genders and actual, like, physical problem. But those are the exceptions. Those are not the rule. And I think what this is saying is that the rule should simply be if you identify as one or the other and take the right hormones and have the right testosterone levels, it's okay. But I don't think the science really backs that up.

And I think that's where it's unfortunate, where you're going to have a lot of skewed competitions. And at one point, do people start to push back on that and say, you know, we want this to be a fair competition that we can watch and protects our athletes and, you know, makes us something that we. can watch and enjoy. Yeah. Well, we'll leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or PIPA. And please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Lauren Evans and Thalia Ramprasad. For more information, visit

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