The Megyn Kelly Show - The Truth About Russia and Ukraine: Narratives, Moralizing, and Humanitarian Crises, with Rod Dreher and Michael Repass | Ep. 276

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

We look at the truth of Ukraine and Russia, from all angles and both sides. Megyn Kelly is joined by Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative, and retired major general Michael Repass, to talk about the narrative about Russia and Ukraine in the mainstream media and the costs of countering the narrative, the power of "good intentions" when it comes to foreign policy, the ruling class push for war, the result and effect of moralizing on the crisis, what's behind the coverage of Russia compared to China or Saudi Arabia, the complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine, corporations becoming moral arbiters, how "cancel culture" plays into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the case for a limited no-fly zone over Ukraine, the ramifications of war with Ukraine, the actual effects of sanctions on Russia, the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and one that might be in Russia, the state of Putin's military, Putin's war strategy, the truth about NATO, America's involvement in Ukraine's past elections, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. As Vice President Kamala Harris heads overseas to address the war in Ukraine with some of our allies, we're going to take a deep dive into what role the United States should play in this evolving crisis. The stakes are extremely, extremely high if we get more involved. And it should not be done because the paper makes you feel something. It should not be done because cable news pundits have an opinion, God forbid. It should be done because we're being super thoughtful about it. And we genuinely believe it's in the best interests of the United States.

There is no disputing that the Ukrainians are suffering and we all feel for them. Russia did invade a sovereign nation and millions have been forced from their homes. But are we getting the full story? Are we being misled? Are we being fed propaganda? Should America get involved militarily? And what are the risks to us, to our sons and daughters, if we do? And if we don't, these are serious questions that we are going to raise in a thoughtful discussion with two men on opposite sides of the spectrum today. I'm going to be getting a fair and balanced presentation. Next hour, I will be speaking with retired Major General Michael Repass. And you'll find him fascinating. But we're going to begin with somebody I've been dying to interview for a long time now. His name is Rod Dreher. He's Senior Editor at the American Conservative and author of

Live Not by Lies. Rod is currently in Hungary. Rod, thank you so much for being with us. Megan, it's a treat to be with you. Thanks for having me on. Well, I think you're brilliant. I read all that you write and I consume it voraciously because you have such a different take on certain things and you're unafraid and you have been throughout the whole woke crisis that we've been dealing with. You've been very brave. You call it like it is. And so I was particularly interested to see how you would feel about Russia, Ukraine and what's happening. And you haven't disappointed. So let's get into it. You you from a piece that was posted on March 1st. There's this. So many people seem desperate for World War III. So can we talk

about that? How is that happening? Why is that happening? I think it's happening because people are desperate for narrative. We're desperate for the moral clarity that believing that there is a good side of the white knights on one side and the evil Darth Vader people on the other. And we're being driven by passion. We are being set up, I believe, by the discourse that's coming out from our mainstream media. And if you in any way dispute the leadership of Washington, if you dispute anything that is proposed, like the no flies on that sort of thing, you are immediately jumped on and accused of being a Putin apologist, you're carrying water for Putin. I got to tell you, Megan, I remember back in 2002, after 9-11,

as our country was marching up to the Iraq war, I was living in New York at the time. I was working for National Review Magazine. I had been in New York on 9-11. I saw the South Tower fall in front of my eyes. I was so hyped up with moralistic fervor. I wanted some Muslim country to pay for what happened on 9-11. But if I had admitted that to myself that openly, I would have immediately seen that this is no cause to go to war. So I didn't do that. What I did was open myself up to any propaganda that came from the U.S. government and other hawks that justified war. And I even remember writing for National Review, well, we may not succeed in democratizing Iraq, but gosh, we sure need to try. I believed in the power of our own good intentions as Americans, and it led to a disaster. I'm frantically trying to avoid the same thing happening this time around, but so far it seems like I'm losing. And I know you've written about how you would have thought that around the narrative that we're the leader of the free world. We have an obligation to step in, put total faith.

And no one doubts the abilities of our guys in uniform, our guys who actually would be serving and executing such a mission on the ground or from the skies. It's the leaders. It's the, I don't know, are the NGOs who try to push wars on us over and over and sort of try to pull the levers behind the scenes. It's guys like Millie, you know, who are more worried about white rage than they are about actually winning. You know, there isn't that much pause. There's like a small pocket of pause. But for the most part, we seem to be gearing back up, do we not? Yeah, absolutely. And it is unnerving if you live through the post 9-11 atmosphere in this country. I remember David Frum, who at the time was a George W. Bush speechwriter, he wrote a cover story for National Review that came out just before the war started in 2003, denouncing Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan, and other people on the right to criticize the war as, quote, unpatriotic conservatives. And it turns out Buchanan, Novak, all of them were right about the war.

But who's now one of the cheerleaders for we must get involved now to stop Russia? David Frum. A lot of the same people are still here saying it again. And so many of us seem to be willing to listen to them because we see on TV these atrocious images of Putin's troops bombing the Ukrainians. Nobody denies that this is horrible. But what, as you said at the top of the show, the important question, the most important question is, is it in U.S. national interest to get involved with a nuclear,

trying to fight a nuclear armed superpower? These questions seem almost treasonous to the ruling class. And by ruling class, I mean the Democrats and the Republicans. I mean the big business, the entire blob that is dead set on managing this discourse. It's not just about, well, did Putin invade a sovereign nation? Of course he did. We know that. And you are no Putin apologist at all in any way. I've read all your stuff. It's not about whether he's good or bad or what he did is good or bad. You're real clear on those bad and bad. But that doesn't answer the question about whether this is in our best interest to get more involved than we are right now can i spend a minute on from uh i'm sorry not in front but

on david brooks because you you pointed out his writings in a piece you wrote recently this is how he's writing about this situation this is i think i'm assuming this is right after we saw the unified european, you know, sending weapons and cutting off relations and so on. He writes, there's been a restored faith in the West, in liberalism, in our community of nations. There has been so much division of late within and between nations. But now I wake up in the morning, pick up my phone and I'm cheered that Sweden is providing military aid to Ukraine. And I'm awed by what the German people now support. The fact is that many democratic nations reacted to the atrocity with the same sense of resolve.

He goes on, this week we saw that foreign affairs, like life, is a moral enterprise and moral rightness is a source of social power and fighting morale. And you see it a bit differently. You don't quite see it as just a moment to wave the flag and feel good about this international unity in disgust. Yeah, that's right. And David Brooks is a friend of mine. He's a good and decent man, but I think he's deeply wrong about this. I think that moralism, when it's completely divorced from realism, can be a source of great destruction. I saw a couple nights ago, Stephen Colbert went on his show and he said that, yeah, the price of gas is going to go way up because we've cut

off Russian oil, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for a clean conscience. This man makes $16 million a year. It's not going to matter to him if the price of gas goes up. I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana most of the time. It really matters to people in Baton Rouge and South Louisiana where we have to drive long distances to get to work, things like that. But these people who are part of the blob, part of the ruling class, they don't care. They don't seem to care. Or rather, they're so blinded by their sense of moral righteousness that they're not thinking about the morality of doing this to their own people. This is what upsets me so much, Megan. The same class

that did not see Donald Trump coming because they had lost touch with the American people. And look, I'm part of this class too, don't get me wrong. I didn't see Trump coming, but he came and he didn't come out of nowhere. In a similar way, Vladimir Putin in Russia did not come out of nowhere. He came out of the chaotic and destructive 1990s after the Soviet Union fell apart. We sent all these American experts over there to help Russia get itself in order, become a free market democracy and all that. And it turned into total chaos. The Russian people love to have Putin come in, a strong man come in and set everything in order. Again, I think Putin's a bad man. But if we don't stop and think about how these things came to be in our world, we're

going to keep plundering into one destructive war after another. And this is why I know you must have seen the things that Professor John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago Foreign Policy, said. He's getting pummeled. Right, he's getting pummeled because this man said, pointed out how the West has pushed and pushed and pushed Russia on Ukraine. And now Russia is pushing back and we're shocked. This came from nowhere. I mean, it's just crazy. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't do anything. And Putin kept saying, if you keep pushing me, this is what I'm going to do. And we didn't quite believe him. And now he's doing it.

Right. And when I make this kind of argument, some of my critics say, well, you have to understand Putin invaded a sovereign nation. Yeah, he did it. He was wrong to do it. But guess what? We threatened nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis because we quite rightly did not want Soviet missiles in Cuba. This is how Russia is thinking. You don't have to agree with them, but you do have to understand what Russia is thinking, what your opponent is thinking in international relations, so you can avoid war, so you can manage these conflicts with wisdom and restraint and prudence. And right now in the United States and in Western Europe, especially in the U.S., we see wisdom, restraint, prudence, the idea of trying to understand the opponent as treasonous, as unpatriotic. This is going to end in disaster.

Understand is not the same as excuse. Understand is the route to wisdom and the route to being able to do better and handle the next conflict better, never mind this one. But let's spend a minute on that because it is true, we would not, you've made this point a few times in your writings. We would not allow China to partner with Mexico and put threatening missiles, nevermind nuclear warheads in Mexico pointed at the United States. We would not allow that. That would be really clear for us. And that's kind of how Putin sees Ukraine and its closeness, its growing closeness with the West. That's right. That's right. And if you look at it from a foreign policy realist point of view, you understand immediately why no great power could tolerate this. And I don't know why it is so difficult for us to just see that this is how the world works. We don't have to like it,

but we have to deal with it because Russia has a big army and Russia has nuclear missiles. But this is what happens when you moralize everything. It doesn't bring moral clarity. Rather, it fuzzes things up so you don't have to deal with messy facts. And similarly, with the second order effects of what we're doing with these sanctions that are going to bankrupt Russia. I agree that we have to have some kind of response to Russia. We have to make Russia hurt for what it did. On the other hand, how on earth can we see completely obliterating the economy of a nation of 140 million people that already hates us? What good is going to come out of that? People don't seem to be thinking about it. If we look back to World War II, as everybody

wants to do, the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I put punitive reparations on Germany. Germany couldn't pay it. The chaos and the suffering and the economic depression that came to Germany gave rise to Adolf Hitler. I fear, if Putin goes down because of this, and he might, because Russian history shows that when there is a major loss in war, Russian leaders tend to fall. We may wish we had Putin back when we see who comes in after him. We did. We utterly humiliated them after World War I and devastated their economy and their military. And that's ultimately what led to Hitler, you know, rising up and finding a scapegoat group and saying, you know,

he would switch it around, he would restore national pride in Germany, and so on and so forth. So there is a real danger. And you know, you hurting Russia is not a real thing. Hurting the Russians is the actual people. And so like I think about, okay, imposing these crippling sanctions on, for example, the oligarchs. I'm okay with that, Rod. I'm like, I'm fine. They're close enough to him and they made their money corruptly. Great. Do I care if one of them loses their yacht or their luxury property in London? Not even a little. But the Russian people, I got to know somewhat my few trips over there over the past couple of years, and they're lovely and they love America.

And they don't like the fact that our leaders get into these skirmishes, to put it lightly. They want to know more about us and our way of life. They're curious. They love to visit America. They love it when we visit Russia. And we're treating them effectively like they're calling the shots here. Yeah, exactly. And you've seen this insane anti-Russian sentiment with people like the opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera being sent away because she refuses to denounce Putin. And you're saying Russian. She denounced the war. She denounced the war, but she wouldn't denounce Vladimir Putin. That's her home country. That's her president. Exactly. I don't think anybody should be compelled to denounce their own country or president in a time of war. It would be wrong to make Americans do that, even if we did oppose our war. But, you know, all this crazy anti-Russian fanaticism is everywhere now. It is causing us to become maniacs and not think clearly through this.

You know, I remember, Megan, going back to the Iraq thing again, we were told all the time by our media and by our president, don't blame all Muslims for 9-11. And you know what? They were right to say that because this was a very tempting thing. I wrestled with this all the time in my heart back then because I was so angry over 9-11. But it was important that we had to realize that you can't blame an entire people for the actions of a few. Do you remember, too, that we traded with Stalin during the Cold War? We did not treat Russians this way, even when the communist totalitarianism ruled that country. And we were toe to toe with them with nuclear arms on both sides. We still found ways to trade with Russia and to have cultural exchanges with Russia and to recognize the good that's in the Russian people, even though they were ruled by an evil government.

Why can't we do that now? And we're not pausing at all to think about the fact that we're creating a next generation of enemy. You know, the Russians a month ago didn't see us as the enemy. And I don't think Americans looked at the Russian people that way either. But you raise an interesting point, one of your pieces about how in the same way, I mean, the Russians right now are being, they're being manipulated by Putin and his, his PR propaganda, you know, they're basically all Western media has effectively been kicked out of Russia, because they just passed an emergency law saying, you know, if you say anything that sort of disparages Russia's role in this war, you could be in trouble. You could

go to jail. So CNN and other organizations that had presences in Russia have pulled their journalists fine by Putin because he likes to control the media anyway. And the, you know, RT, all these things, these are state run news operations over there. So he controls the narrative with the Russian people. That's why they do believe that they're going in to fight Nazism and so on. They're not stupid. They just don't have access to all the information that the world does. Fair point. I get it. But too few of us, even in the wake of Russiagate and the COVID lies, aren't pausing to ask whether we, too, are being manipulated by propaganda. Oh, boy. Yeah, you're absolutely right there. Just before we came on, I saw that YouTube had pulled an Oliver Stone documentary about the 2014 coup that the United States helped organize in Ukraine.

I've not seen this documentary, but I would like to see it now. I would like to know their point of view, but now you can't see it because it's off of YouTube. We see this happening over and over and over again in our free country. I thought one of the things that made us better than the Russians was that we believed in freedom of speech. We believed in freedom of information. We trusted the American people to see claims being made in newspapers, on the internet, in media, and judge for themselves. I watched RT, Russia Today, last week before it was taken off the air here in Europe, just because I wanted to see what the Kremlin was saying. I know it's state propaganda, but I wanted to find out what the Kremlin's line was so I could better understand this war. I don't have that opportunity anymore

because it's gone. And yet somehow Americans believe that what we get in the New York Times, CNN, and all of our media is somehow free of taint and free of a narrative being spun. And boy, that is so dangerous. If COVID didn't teach us that, then maybe we are ineducable. Mm-hmm. Why? That's a basic question, but why? Why do you think the media, you know, the New York Times, CNN and so on, why do they sound so very pro-war? You know, because I remember back in the day

when we had 9-11, when we had international conflicts, it was more the Republicans and Fox News leading the charge for greater military action. After 9-11, everyone was uniformly, almost, in favor. So why? Why is it that, you know, this organization that we think tends to, it does tend to lean left in its politics, become, they sound more like, you know, warmongers is too harsh, but definitely pro-military intervention than we might expect. Yeah, that's an important question. I think there are several answers there. First of all, the four years of the Trump administration with the fake Russiagate story worked all the people on the left. And of course, the mainstream media is heavily on the left. That's not even controversial to say. But I think it's also the case that even though Vladimir Putin and the Russians do bad things,

so do the Chinese. The Chinese do terrible things, but we don't have the same. We're not lining up a big business and woke media to attack the Chinese or the Saudis. The Saudis are even more anti-gay than Vladimir Putin is. Why are we going after Putin? I think not only is it the Trump that we blame him for Trump, but I think the fact is that the Russians are Europeans. They look like us. And I think there is this sort of implicit racism in the way the media attacks these things. The Russians are Europeans and they're Christians. And so we hold them to a higher standard. I think everybody ought to be held to the same standard. I'm not saying we ought to go easy on Russia, but let's be fair and let's think about our biases and why it is intolerable when some

countries do it. But we turn a blind eye when other countries like China do it. That's fascinating. Now, forgive me, but you sound a little like Nicole Hannah-Jones, who's been saying, even Joy Reid, I know, who's been saying, we're only interested in Ukraine because they're white. That's our racism. We're only interested in Ukraine because they're white. That's our racism. We you know, we're only interested in them because they're white. And I remember, I mean, I was talking about this with somebody yesterday on the air saying I was at Fox News when the Syria war broke out, the civil war. And it was a nightmare. And, you know, the chemical weapons and the whole thing. And we covered it as our lead night after night after night. We were very interested in what was happening in Syria and the refugee crisis that followed. And those two morons just weren't paying attention because they see everything through the lens of race. So they were probably figuring out how to tear down more monuments to Abraham Lincoln. But it's interesting that you you're making kind of a similar point. Yeah. You know, I gosh, I hate the idea that I'm on the same side as those people. But I'm trying to

think about why it is that you get in trouble if you called it the COVID, the China virus. That's racist. That's racist. But it's open season on the Russians. Everything the Russians do is horrible. We shouldn't even try to understand it because if we understand it from their point of view, we're giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I'm trying to make sense of this too, Megan. And that's one of the only things I see what you're saying. So in other words, to put it a different way, if if the invading country had more people with brown skin, and the and the victims of the invasion were still the white Ukrainians, and there are black Ukrainians too, you think the media would be covering it differently.

In other words, it's just so easy to hate Vladimir Putin and his people, most of whom are white. Yeah, and because Putin is affiliated with white conservative Christians. We saw on Sunday the patriarch of Moscow, Kirill, and by the way, I'm an Orthodox Christian. So this guy is in some sense, part of my own church. Kirill gave this really shameful sermon talking about how the war in Ukraine, part of it is part of the international fight against homosexuality. We're going to keep Russia from being queer, keep the Donbass from being queer. Well, I think that was just embarrassing. And that's the best I can say about it is that

it's embarrassing that he said that. On the other hand, right after the war started, the head of MI6, the British secret top spy agency, put a tweet out saying that the most important difference between Vladimir Putin and us in the West is that we support LGBT rights. Now, why is it that if the Russian Orthodox patriarch, who's maybe under Putin's thumb, or at least he's closely aligned with Putin, if he brings the culture war, the LGBT culture war into an explanation of the conflict in Ukraine. It's evil. And we get hysterical about it, but the head of MI6 comes at it from a progressive point of view. Well, then that's just awesome. It just shows how much farther advanced we are in the West. That's a kind

of double-mindedness and hypocrisy that I think is blinding us to some complicated realities about this war. We just put it on the board. Let's leave it up there. Put it back up, please, so we can read it for the audience watching this on YouTube. And for those who are listening, it reads as follows from the MI6 guy. With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin, none more than LGBT plus rights. So let's resume our series of tweets to mark LGBT blah, blah, blah, blah to say, I'm turning into a Marxist, it sounds like, but this is what I see from both the Republicans and the Democrats, this need to just throw everything we have at Putin just to see what sticks.

And I'm afraid it's going to lead us into a bad place. I tell you, Megan, when I'm sitting here talking to you from Budapest, capital of Hungary. Hungary borders on Ukraine. Here in Budapest last night, I went through one of the main train stations, and you could see bedraggled refugees coming here from Ukraine. The Hungarians are reaching out with other Europeans to help them. It's a very, very sad thing. When you talk to Hungarians about what's happening here, they're scared to death. And they're scared not because they love the Russians. I mean, this was a country that was occupied by the Soviet army for 40 years and invaded in 1956 to put down a revolution. They have no love for the Russians, but they're scared

that Western Europe and the United States, the NATO countries, their NATO, is stumbling into a war with Russia, a war that if it is fought, if it goes beyond Ukraine, it's going to be fought on their own land. The place I'm sitting in right now, my apartment in central Budapest, was where the worst fighting of World War II took place when the Germans and the Red Army faced off against each other in the final days of World War II. These are people, the Hungarians, who grew up on stories of their parents and their grandparents surviving that war, surviving starvation, surviving the death camps, and on and on. It matters to them in a way it can't possibly matter to Americans who are sitting

on the other side of the ocean. And just being here among these people and trying to understand from their point of view and through the stories of their families, what it means to have a war fought on your land has been really clarifying for me. And it was interesting. We can get into this, but there was just a poll out about how do you feel about the possibility of American troops going over to Ukraine? I mean, who would you support that? And the more money you make, the more supportive of that you are, right? Because it's probably not going to be your kid who goes. But those who make the lowest money in America on balance are not in favor of it because they know it's going to be their kids. It's going to be their kids and their sons, their daughters, their husbands.

It's going to be them. And all these people sitting in Washington and New York in the think tanks talking abstractly about what's going to happen, it's not going to be their kids, by and large, that get sent into a war. It hasn't been their kids, by and large, who were sent off to Afghanistan and Iraq for the last 20 years. My brother-in-law had to spend a year of his life in Iraq. One of his friends from my hometown in Louisiana, a town of 2,000 people, he came back from Iraq and he can't go back into his church. His wife told me, I don't know what happened to him. All he can say is what I did over there, God can never forgive. I mean, it's just heartbreaking. This was a kid who played

baseball on my team when I was a kid, ordinary people being sent into these wars to serve their country to do what they're told, and they're coming back broken, maimed internally, maybe and their bodies too. And look, sometimes we have to go to war. But by God, we got to we ought to think about it. And we're not thinking about it. Well, I mean, just to jump back, it's like, I think after 9-11, that was one of those moments, I definitely think we needed to respond. Did we need to have a 20-year war in Afghanistan and then go invade Iraq? No. Go hit Iraq? We did not need to do that. And that's more clear now in retrospect. Some people were fortunate enough to see it clearly at the time. But I think, you know, given the right provocation, the right moral justification,

those numbers would be very different, you know, across the board. Rich, poor, middle class wouldn't matter. They'd all say, yeah, let's go fight the way it was after World War Two during World War Two, where, you know, people were lying about being and what love of country required of them. This one is far murkier. And we are smart to stop and pause and figure out whether, you know, what the balance is in terms of our interests and theirs and our commitment to be a leader of the world and to protect those who are too weak to protect themselves and so on. Thing is, they're not NATO and we don't have any deal. OK, stand by. There's so much more to go over with Rod.

I'm going to ask him, is there a red line, you know, that Putin could cross that would justify American intervention for him? And later we will be joined by a top military guy for his response.

He's a bit more hawkish. So you get both sides presented today. Rod, so let's talk about the unique position of Ukraine and why it matters. That it's not like England, you know, an island with water around it. It is right on Russia's border. And you write, frankly, about the unique position that puts them in and the fact that as much as we'd like to say they're pro-democratic and they want to be a free country and they want to join the EU and they want to join NATO, and it's not for Vladimir Putin to say that they cannot. Again, it's a little more complicated.

A little more complicated. Yeah, the name Ukraine comes from the Russian word meaning on the border. It's on the baptism of the Prince Vladimir of the Kievan Rus, as it's called. All of this is ancient history to us, but it's not to the Russians. They see Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, as that's their national Jerusalem. That is a city that means the world to them. Again, it doesn't give them the right to invade and take Ukraine over, but it's really, really complicated. And not only for national security reasons, but for cultural and religious reasons. These things seem completely blind or we can't see them as Americans because we tend to look out at the world and think the

rest of the world is just like us. But it's just so foolish because the Russians feel so passionately about Ukraine. And I think I respect what the Ukrainians are doing. Zelensky has behaved heroically. But it's not like Ukraine is this plucky little country that has never had an oligarch and has never been involved in anything bad. It's being picked on by big bad Vladimir Putin. It's just not the case. We like to see Zelensky as Luke Skywalker and Putin as Darth Vader, but that's just not how the world works. And if we insist

on imposing that narrative on this complicated part of the world, we're going to get into serious trouble. I have to say too, Megan, that I think that cancel culture has become a part of the world, we're going to get into serious trouble. I have to say too, Megan, that I think that cancel culture has become a part of our own response, America's response to this. Our elites especially have gotten so much in the habit of when they see somebody that, and something that offends them morally, of wanting to smash it, to X them out, to exile them from their purview and send them to the margins. Well, I think that partly explains why so many businesses and institutions have been trying to get rid of everything Russian, as if any connection to Russia makes them impure. This is what worries me too,

when I see what businesses have done to Russia. In two weeks, we made Russia a black hole of the world economy. I really do believe that in the end, what's being done to Russia today is going to be done to dissidents in this country some point tomorrow. All we have to do is look back at what Justin Trudeau did to the people in Canada who supported the truckers. He went after their bank accounts. That could happen here too. And I'm afraid that we're setting ourselves up for that. I mean, that worries me too, right? I worry about that myself. But I also see, you know, if you're starting at square one, there's a very clear difference between being non-woke in America and being Vladimir Putin invading a sovereign nation and killing civilians, right? So it's like, it might be hard for some people to make that leap when we're talking about a slippery slope.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I don't want to make a direct comparison there. But if we think about how businesses prior to all this, in England, for example, banks were refusing to do business with people who they consider to be white supremacists. Well, if I ran a bank, I wouldn't want to do business with people who they consider to be white supremacists. Well, if I ran a bank, I wouldn't want to do business with a white supremacist either. But where do you draw the line? Do people who are bad actors in the judgment of financial institutions and companies, do they have a right to participate in commerce? This is a question that is live in China with the social credit system. And I just worry about this. Maybe I'm worrying too much about it. But when I hear Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, but when I hear Elizabeth

Warren. We talked about yesterday about how Michelle Malkin got banned by Airbnb, she says, because of her association with a guy who does appear to be affiliated with a, he himself is a white supremacist. All I know is that he's said absolutely hateful things about Ben Shapiro and and mocked shooting Ben Shapiro with his yarmulke on. Not a good guy. This guy, Nick Fuentes. Right. But so she's got an association with this guy and she refuses to condemn him. OK, that's Michelle's business. That's Nick Fuentes business. But Airbnb is saying she she's not allowed to do business with them. I mean, that does scare me. They call Tucker a white supremacist and he's not. Is he next to go? Like, obviously, they've thrown the racist word against me, against half of our country at this point. How far like how far could they take that? Right. If these companies get to decide if they're the moral arbiters of us all. Yeah, exactly. I'll give you an example too. Ryan T. Anderson is one of the prominent, most preeminent Catholic intellectuals in the US. He wrote a book about transgenderism. It came out two or three years ago. It was critical of transgenderism, but it was compassionate and

learned and intelligent. He found out one year ago exactly that Amazon had stopped selling the book. They didn't even notify him. He just found out because one of his readers discovered it. When Harry met Sally. Yeah, when Harry became Sally. They told Ryan that we're not going to sell books that depict transgenderism as a mental disorder. Now on Amazon today, you can buy Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, but you can't buy Ryan Anderson's book. Isn't that weird? And here's the thing too, Amazon has a right in a free country to sell or not sell whatever it wants to. But because Amazon controls something like 80% of the American book market, if they decide that they're not going to sell a certain type of book,

like a book that takes a certain stance on gender ideology, then those books are not going to be printed because no publisher can afford to do that. This is the kind of thing I talk about in my book, Live Not, Buy Lies, the soft totalitarianism coming in when you have all the companies and all the institutions playing off the same ideological playbook, they can bring a world of hurt to people they consider to be dissidents. Right. And they're just gearing up. I mean, to see soft little doughy Justin Trudeau unleash the measures he did on those truckers was stunning. And not just the truckers, but just any random civilian who donated $25 to them. It was stunning. So if you don't think it can happen here at home, it's already happened in a more liberal country with a very weak leader who somehow, I'm not saying I respect

it. It's disgusting, but somehow found the nerve to actually unleash those kinds of tactics on his own people. And here in America, we've had even more practice over the past two years in the wake of the Black Lives Matter thing and the trans stuff and all the banning and the canceling we've been doing. We've got way more practice. We're getting in our 10,000 hours just about every month here in America in how to hurt people whose views we disagree with. Right. And we're training ourselves to be illiberal. I mean, I say liberal, I mean, liberal in the broadest sense, in which we respect classical liberal values like free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We are supposed to respect hearing other people's point of view and trying to reason through that. All of that is being thrown out the window in

this moralistic fervor. And it's happening with wokeness, which has become the successor ideology to liberalism within American institutions. And I think that we can see the moral panic that has been unleashed against all things Russian. They're even kicking Russian movies out of film festivals here in Europe, in Glasgow and Stockholm. I think this is part of the same thing. We have thrown aside the liberal instinct that tells us, and when you and I were growing up, we were taught that, wait a minute, you have to be tolerant of other people. You've got to give other people their say. You never know. You don't know everything. They might have something to teach you. All of that is gone now. What about the, you wrote something about how, you know, on the left in general, there's a belief, never let a crisis go to waste, right? The Saul Alinsky and Barack

Obama belief and so on. And I wonder about this because somebody was making the point recently that it just happened to be coincidental that COVID necessitated all the school reforms that the unions had been demanding for years, right? Like they got these huge cash payouts to pay for all these necessary precautions, but really payouts to pay for all these necessary precautions, but really they just used them for all the things that these far left unions had wanted for years. Okay. So coincidental how it worked out. So what about that, right? Do our, our Democrat leaders in the white house on down, this is a crisis. We're looking at, you know, potentially $7 gas. They're already seeing almost that number in California.

It's over four on a national average, highest it's ever been. So what do they do with that, Rod? Well, I'm not sure if there is a plan in place here, like some of the more conspiratorially minded people say, but I think what we're going to see is the further ruin of the middle and the working classes. And it's going to see is the further ruin of the middle and the working classes. And it's going to make everybody more dependent on the government and for our livelihood, for just survival.

And this is what I don't understand about what Joe Biden is doing with the price of gas and with all of these sanctions that is going to make life a lot harder for ordinary people. It's going to cause a lot of civil unrest in this country. I mean, you look at this country, at how divided we already are, and it becomes since Trump years, since, you know, with COVID, with Black Lives Matter, all of this stuff, we are at each other's throats in some ways. We're looking at the crime explosion in cities.

All of that stuff didn't just go away, Megan, because Putin invaded Ukraine. I think some of the things that Biden and our leaders are doing or calling for is actually going to make it a lot worse and a lot more difficult to handle these things once the price of basic goods, of food, of gasoline goes through the roof and people start going bankrupt. Who does this benefit? That's the thing that I worry about. And it's a huge distraction. It's a huge distraction. And Putin's war, you know, what's happening in Ukraine now, we're all focused on that. It's bumped everything off of the, you know, front pages. I'm not saying this is why the United States is reacting the way it is,

but you do have to keep an eye on that because there are some massive battles unfolding right here at home on the domestic and political front. And Joe Biden has been losing them. And he's well aware of that. And his poll numbers have gone up over the past week a bit, not hugely, at least according to one or two polls. But, you know, my concern is what's happening to our kids in schools, what they've done to us through the covid restrictions and people losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their entire businesses. What's happening with inflation, which already we saw the White House yesterday try to blame the gas prices on Vladimir Putin. And when Peter Doocy said they were high before he invaded Ukraine, there was total denialism, Rod. I mean, they're going to try to blame everything that's, you know, the State of the Union as we approach the November midterms on Putin. Right. Yeah. And I'm afraid, too, that the Republican Party is going to be lulled into

a sort of numbness or this with with the whole attack by Putin and trying to blame Biden and all this. And they're not going to stand up for their own constituency. Tucker last night on his show was laying into the Republicans saying, why are you being warmongers on this? It's the people who vote for you in many states who would be sent over there. It's the people who vote for you who look to you to stand up for their economic interests, but you're not doing it. And I think that what we could see, Megan, depending on the economic fallout, we'll probably see the Republicans take Congress back again. I hope that happens. But if they don't take Congress back and do something for ordinary people for once, who knows what's going to happen after that? We could see real civil unrest in this country. So, I mean, we are facing an energy crisis. I mean, we had Michael

Schellenberger on the show yesterday saying, you know, the worst since 1973. We are now facing a global energy crisis, which is the worst we've seen in about 50 years. The time to solve it was yesterday, a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. Not now. You can't. That's not something you can turn the spigot on and off also all that easily. So I wonder what you think we should be doing in response to Putin. Right. Because Biden pulled the 7 percent of oil exports that we get from Russia are no longer going to get that. He refuses to drill domestically more or make it easier for us to become energy independent again. More nonsense from the White House about renewables, which are not not going to get it done. But we still live in this fantasy world of saying it is it is and we're good people. We're going to save the world. So but what what should he have done when when Putin invaded? What do you think the correct response would have been? You know, I actually liked what Biden's initial response to it. He's

seen measured and careful. I do think that we have to have sanctions at some level, sanctions the hell out of the oligarchs. I'm all in favor of that. Make Russians pay or the Russian elites pay a certain price and certainly make it absolutely clear to the Russians that if you go one inch over the red line of NATO borders, there will be war. And we have to have, that has to be a credible threat. But I am not an economist. I don't really know to what extent sanctions really do affect the behavior of regimes, of authoritarian regimes. I've seen research saying that they actually don't do a whole lot. They make the person imposing them feel good, but they don't do a whole lot. I think the thing that concerns me the most, Megan, is we can't have a fair discussion and an accurate and informed discussion about sensible and effective things that we could do to punish Russia for what it's

doing because of this moral panic and the censoriousness of our media and of our ruling class. There is zero chance we should be doing anything that could cost American blood and treasure without being extremely thoughtful about it. You know, we got into we've we should have learned that lesson by now. And, you know, Congress is the one that's supposed to be able to declare war. Let's see what they have to say about it. You know, let's let the American people weigh in on it. Joe Biden is not a king. And before we start World War Three, we really do need to be thoughtful about whether it's in our best interest. That's all you've been saying. It's a smart point. And you, Rod, are always well worth the read. Thank you for coming on. Please come back.

Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Megan. All the best. And don't forget, folks. Thank you for coming on. Please come back. Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Megan. All the best. And don't forget, folks. Wow, that was great. You can find The Megan Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel, 111, every weekday at noon east,

and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. There you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. There you can find our show yesterday that I was referencing. You can find the original interview I did with Michael Schellenberger, the author of Apocalypse Never. That was episode 94 for Climate Dummies. It's a great primer. He's

so easy to understand. You will feel so much smarter after that hour plus. And you'll find all of our archives there. More than 270 shows. You'll love it. So it's a fascinating discussion with Rod Rear. And I think, you know, his urging is to not let one's emotions dictate one's response to this. Because while you may be upset seeing what's happening in Ukraine, and I think we all are, there could be a lot more upset coming our way if we see American blood and treasure being spilled on the streets of a country that's not in NATO

and that we don't actually have an obligation to defend. Now, that doesn't speak to our moral obligation but that's more complicated as we discussed with rod the media seems to be beating the drumbeat uh for us to do more and it's interviews like this that make us want to here is a former ukrainian lawmaker on msnbc i understand it's horrible there are a lot of americans out there who are sorry who are saying they want a no-fly zone as well but again far, what we're hearing from officials, they don't want to start another world war. There is no explanation. I'm asking Biden, I'm asking Congress, please help our nation. This is about humanity.

I'm sorry. It is heartbreaking. Should we do more? What's the case for doing that? Up next, Major General Michael Repass. He's retired now, and he's got some strong thoughts on what our role in this ought to be. Don't go away. My next guest supports the calls for limited no-fly zones across Ukraine.

Michael Repass is a retired U.S. Army Major General. He commanded special operations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and later saw the deployment of U.S. Special Forces across Europe. He's the CEO of Able Global Solutions, and for the past few years, he's provided advisory support to the Ukrainian military on a U.S. government contract. Welcome, Major General. Thank you for being here. Hello, Megan. It's nice to be here. I look forward to the discussion today. Okay. So what's your best case for the no-fly zone? Because our last guest and many people, including even Michael McFaul, who was the former U.S. ambassador under President Obama to Russia,

and he's been very tough on Russia. Even he said that that's a bridge too far. We're talking about the beginning of World War III. We cannot do that. Okay. So the first thing I want to say is that all the easy solutions for anything that we're contemplating doing in Ukraine are just not there anymore. The time for doing easy stuff was two weeks ago. Everything from here on out is going to be high risk and very difficult to do. So that's the first thing. So in regards to the no-fly zone, there are a couple of things that are being said about them. The first one was General Breedlove, Phil Breedlove, who was the former commander of NATO, Supreme Allied Command Europe. He laid out the case for no-fly zone in a foreign

policy piece. And I understood his argument, and he articulated it very well. As a career airman, he has probably the best understanding of what it would take. And what it would take would be, in the ideal case, would be a very strong commitment of the Coalition of the Willing to set up the fly zone, to support it, and to sustain it over 24-7 for an indefinite period of time. It's a tremendous commitment of air power, logistics, and it does put the airmen and people that support them in harm's way if they do that. One of the things that he identified up front was very honest about it. He said to properly do a no-fly zone,

you have to take out anything that would threaten the aircraft, specifically radars, anti-air missiles, smaller caliber guns, things like that, that would interfere with the execution of the mission. So that's a difficult task. And he pointed out accurately that many of the radars and sensors that we'd be talking about are, in fact, based in Russia. So if you have to take those air defense assets out, both the radars and the launchers and missiles, they could potentially be inside of Russia. That obviously would be a horizontal and vertical

escalation in intensity and would accurately point out that potentially escalating into World War III here, as some people have said. On the other hand, I think there's a different possibility out there that serves multiple purposes. I think that there's a scaled down version of this that can be worked out by the UN, Russia, and Ukraine, and any of the interested parties that are willing to support the idea I'm about to propose here. So first it would take a diplomatic agreement to establish some safe zones for refugees and civilians to enter into. We've done this before in other places. We can talk about that historically in a moment.

And then there would be a humanitarian safe corridors where people can get out and then sustainment in the form of food, medicine, relief supplies, et cetera, could be trucked in or brought in by whatever means, by sea, by air, whatever is allowable in the negotiated agreement. As part of that negotiation, there would have to be rules established where air defense assets controlled by Russia would have to either be put in check fire or not be allowed to engage. And that would have to be a voluntary commitment by Russia. Really what it would do is it would put the UN uh whatever means of conveyance or moving through those uh those safe zones on the ground air or uh by sea and then uh protection of the civilians in both the safe areas and safe uh alleyways or uh corridors that would be established so i'm not i'm not looking for a maximalist no-fly zone. I'm looking

for a limited no-fly zone, struggling on a humanitarian basis. It is not risk-free. Let me jump in and ask you, why would Russia agree to that? Russia that's been pretty indiscriminately bombing targets that have civilians at the heart of them. He's been killing civilians there. And some sort of attempts at civilian protections over there have already fallen through and he hasn't honored them. So why would he agree to them? And why, even if he agreed to them, would he then honor the agreement? Okay, great questions. First off, by approaching him with this proposition, I would make him state to the international community why he is not in favor of a humanitarian solution for noncombatants. Make him do it.

So he has to justify why he our capabilities in most of the Western nations and NATO and some of the eastern powers as well, like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea. I think these other countries could also contribute to this effort as well. And I think on a large international scale, you have an obligation to prevent the massive humanitarian disaster that's building in Ukraine right now. I agree with you, but I don't think Vladimir Putin, he doesn't seem to care at all. I agree with you. So why would he agree to this? Because we are now putting our boot on his neck. These sanctions that have been imposed are starting to bite and they're going to have an effect. I would like to talk about the sanctions later if you want to get into that. But I think there are things that he's going to have his own humanitarian disaster before too long, just to cut right to the point here on sanctions.

He has already started limiting what people can buy in stores and so forth. In a few weeks, he's going to have another issue on his hands where he is going to start running out of food and medicine and things that are critical for him to run his society. Then the people are going to start running out of food and medicine and things that are critical for him to run his society. Then the people are going to understand what the effect of these sanctions are. This has never been done. Look, we are in unprecedented territory. This has never been done before, Megan. What's going to happen in Ukraine will precede the disaster that's going to happen in Russia by a month or two.

So I think he's going to have his own humanitarian disaster on his hands building. Why will they be running out of food and other supplies inside Russia? Well, the sanctions have been rather brutal, I would say. They've cut them off from all imports. He imports a fair amount of fresh fruits, vegetables, agricultural products, et cetera, from the South Caucasus where I'm located now. He gets a lot of the food stuff from Eastern and Central Europe. He, I should say Russia and Ukraine grow about 25% of the world's wheat production or grain production. There's nobody harvesting the wheat right now when it comes into play or planting it in Ukraine

here shortly. And I think you're going to have a hard time planting it in Russia as well. So the wheat production is going to go way down, way down in the near future. So there's an impending, I would say, agricultural challenge that he's going to have. I don't know how long he can last without imports of food and sustain the population with what they have. The Russians are a very hardy population. They can eat black bread and drink vodka, you know, till the cows come home. But it's going to put a severe pinch on the middle class and the upper class. Can China save him from that? You know, we've talked about China saving him from the

pinch of our oil sanctions, you know, in terms of backstopping or buying. Can they save him from that, from the agricultural disaster coming his way? Well, China's been clever by half. They embarked on this massive campaign to urbanize the rural population. So they built these megacities out there on what was the little fertile land that they had. So they have essentially lost a lot of their farmland, and they are now a significant importer of food. China cannot feed itself, much less feed its next-door neighbor. They're not in a position to help, right? And India's not going to either.

And there's a question of, yeah, I guess who could and who would step in. But how would it work? Because, you know, we just talked to our last guest about how Vladimir Putin is revered in Russia. I'm sure the current action is causing questioning because we've seen the protests in the street and thousands of people getting arrested because they're not allowed to protest in Russia, unlike here. But they're being fed propaganda. So their natural inclination is to love him because he stood up for Mother Russia and he's made Mother Russia stronger and he stood up to the evil West and so on. And they're being fed propaganda about why this is a justified war. So when things go south inside Russia's borders, how does it work that the Russians rise up? It's hard for me to picture them rising up against Vladimir Putin in a way where he would listen to them. Yeah. So rise up in sufficient numbers to,

you know, convince him to change his ways and to do something differently. Difficult problem for sure. And I think you've hit the nail on the head there is how he controls the information and what the society understands on mass, if you will. So here's a bit of good news. So I learned last night through a very good source that has contacts in Moscow that CNN and BBC are getting through episodically, not on broadcast, but on their apps. So that information is getting in episodically. It doesn't get through all the time. They're able to block it somewhat on the internet, but generally the internet's still up. It's being filtered and screened, but CNN and BBC are still getting in. BBC has reinitiated its world service on long-range AM radio.

They're doing a broadcast into Russia again. I would hope that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty would start broadcasting again into Russia, just like the old days, because there's still a large AM radio capability and an audience in Russia. By that, on the same line of communication, long wave, correction, short wave transmissions into Russia via ham radio operators would be helpful as well. There's an effort afoot now to mobilize ham radio operators to communicate person to person into Russia and inform them what's going on. They have no idea what the cashier figures are. They have no idea that they're campaigning outside of Donbass.

So the more information the media can feed into Russia, the better off we as the West will be in Ukraine directly. So is that, I mean, do you think that's the plan that, because, you know, I was talking to a guest yesterday saying, what's the plan? You know, I realize we've all unleashed sanctions unlike we've ever seen before. We the West, you know, America and European allies and beyond. But what's the plan? You know, Biden said, wait, President Biden said, wait, wait for a month. And you're talking about how things might look different inside of Russia in a month.

But then what? Because my feeling is, you know, I don't know Vladimir Putin, but I've spent a fair amount of time with him. I've interviewed him a few times, but my feeling is his tolerance for human suffering is much greater than any of ours. And that's being evidenced in Ukraine. And I think it'll be evidenced

when his own people start to starve. And so, like, what's the next thing that needs to happen? Yeah, so as I understand it, And so what's the next thing that needs to happen? even further. I don't know what that would entail, perhaps more sanctioning of oligarchs. One thing I think we should do is whatever assets we seize or whatever assets we seize, they should eventually go into a trust fund for rebuilding Ukraine. So the oligarchs are basically paying for the destruction of Ukraine, the rebuilding. So their planes, their yachts, their ill-gotten goods should go into a trust fund, in my opinion. I think that's great.

I'm sorry? I think that's great. But keep going because you're getting to, you know, how do we get Putin to change his position? Yeah. How do we get his attention? So I think he's going to be somewhat shielded from anything we have to say or do. It's not going to be, there's very little that we're going to say or do that's going to get his attention. Things at the UN, things in an international forum, that will get his attention and try to convince him otherwise. What would have the most effect is to mobilize his own population, his population, to continue the protest. I saw the leading edge today. I've got

a video of a conscript's mother who's proclaiming loudly in a city hall meeting that they've been lied to and that her son is in combat in Ukraine. And so if you remember back during the Afghanistan campaign, when Russia was there during the 80s and into the 90s, it was the mothers, it was the war mothers that were tired of what Russia was doing there. It demanded that they end the war in Afghanistan. So the first thing is you can mobilize the population at home. The thing that's absolutely going to get his attention is the significant losses that they're encountering every day inside Ukraine. He thought it'd be a cakewalk like it was in 2014, but they are getting ground up in Ukraine by the Ukrainian armed forces,

the territorials and the irregulars. Isn't that, can you spend a minute on that? I know you're a military guy. Most of us aren't, though a lot of my listeners are. It's been extraordinary to see because we think of Putin as like the big bad army guy. He's got these military forces that will crush. And it turns out, you know, the more I listen, the more I learn. He of course has the nukes, but the actual state of his military is perhaps less than robust. And not only that, they seem to be getting outmaneuvered by the Ukrainians, which has been a surprise to most of us, though I understand not to you. Right. So I've been asked this question multiple times.

Are you surprised how the Ukrainians are performing? No, I'm not. You know, the commitment by the United States and our NATO partners to go into Ukraine after 2014 and say, oh, Russia has got our attention now. We've got to do something different. And Ukraine resolved that they would not be a cakewalk for Russia should they invade. So over the past, we'll just call it seven and a half years, the United States in a heavy NATO contention have been in Ukraine,

training the Ukrainian armed forces and reforming how they do business, how they're structured, training them on weapons and tactics, and really creating a new army out of the remnants of what the Ukrainian army was circa 2014. It was basically, I would say, an incapable military force. So when they invaded Donbass, it was really the civilian mobilization that came out there, saved the day and stopped the attacks with the uniform military in Donbass. So they have moved on. They, the Ukrainian military, have moved on. They're well-trained, as I mentioned, but more importantly, they're superbly led. The generals, and I've met these guys, the generals are no-kidding warriors. They've been through multiple combat deployments in the Donbass area.

They all know each other extremely well. They're colleagues. They grew up together through the ranks. They serve each other and they trust each other implicitly. So that's part of the magic I think of what's going on Can I just interject with a quick question if you could just a short answer on this one but I am curious why do we have such a different result

versus with the Afghanistan armies that we trained they fell apart so fast and these Ukrainians that we trained, right? They fell apart so, so fast. And these Ukrainians who we trained are fighting this noble fight and fighting it really well and winning it against an incredible enemy that's very well organized and well-funded. So Ukraine has a modern society.

They have a cohesive understanding of what nation is. They're not a tribal formation, tribal grouping of no central identity. They're far from, they are the counterpoise to everything that Afghanistan was sociologically. Specifically, they have a very strong Ukrainian identity. They, in fact, were the predecessor to uh the the russian uh the russ if you will uh when you know kiev was a thriving city uh when moscow was just a little village and so you know uh vladimir putin's got his history inverted and inverted and perverted as i

say so so the ukrainians, they know who they are and they know what they're fighting for. The will of the people is to defend their homes and their homeland. They have no place to go. And an invader comes in there and tells them, you know, leave or die. And they choose to stay and fight.

So the significance is fairly profound in the will of the people to fight. In Afghanistan, you had a different story altogether with the tribal structure. It was one tribe over the other tribe. You just had a different dynamic altogether. So I think that's part of the reason for sure. We've been talking about how in general, the Ukrainians are outmatched by Putin's military prowess, and that they're likely to lose given the relative situations there. We're not actually putting boots on the ground, not actually open military anyway, and neither is Europe. But is that true?

What part of that? That they're likely to lose, that they're likely to lose, the Ukrainians. Boy, it's hard for me to be objective because, you know, I'm not objective when it comes to some parts of Ukraine. I try to be, but I would say it's possible that they could lose. It's very possible that they could lose, if you will, whatever that means. But I see no possibility that President Zelensky is going to say, okay, I'm done here. Ukraine quits. we surrender i i see no possibility of that happening it's not in their dna and i i just don't see the path to that outcome if i've told people this is if there's one ukrainian with one rifle and one bullet there's going to be a fight and that's what it'll come down to the last person is willing to fight so uh but But Putin recognizes that it's going to take destruction of the cities.

And this is really what his strategy is, if you will. I'm segwaying into this. I hope you don't mind. Yeah. So his strategy is to destroy the cities. We've seen this before in Grozny, in Homs in Syria, and in Aleppo. Destroy the cities. Specifically, you start with destroying the

public utilities, the sewer, the water, the electricity, and the communications. You create a humanitarian disaster. Then you allow the civilians to leave. Whoever's left alive, you allow them to leave because the city's uninhabitable. So they leave, and the city, once it's surrounded by this time and anybody that's left on the inside is considered a combatant. So you solve a tremendous problem for the Russian forces. They don't have to decide who's a combatant and who's a non-combatant because anybody left inside that cordon is considered a combatant. And that's what they've done systematically. And that's the campaign they're on right now. They've been doing this for four or five days now, destroying the cities.

And that's exactly where this is headed. Well, why wouldn't they be more in favor of letting the noncombatants, the civilians, out and letting them out safely if that were their plan? Yeah, I really can't answer that, Megan. They want to inflict maximum punishment and create a humanitarian disaster because not only does that destabilize the situation inside Ukraine, but it also has the knock-on effect and the derivative benefit to Putin of destabilizing the economies and societies of Eastern and Central Europe. But it also upsets, to put it mildly, the West and makes us more and more likely to get more involved, right, to create a no-fly zone. I mean, you've got people over here in America who are normally pretty dovish when it comes to the prospect of war saying, we've got to do it. We have to do something. We can't just sit by. We're the leader of the free world. And I realize there are all sorts of consequences to our doing that. But, you know, his civilian casualty rate is right at the heart. That plus Zelensky's leadership of

our wanting to intervene. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Megan. There's historical precedent for everything you just said. If you look at the end of the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, the huey cry that went out on Saddam extracting vengeance on the Shias down south in the marshes and down south by Karbala and Najaf and so forth. Oh, we've got to have a no-fly zone down south. Okay, so that went up. And then he took on the Kurds up in the mountains, and they were saved by the 10th Special Forces Group and some other people that went up there and saved, you know, a million and a half dying Kurds that were freezing

and starving and, you know, dying from dysentery up in the mountains. So we instituted Northern Mille-Fly Zone as well. So the policy was preceded by a tremendous humanitarian outcry in the case of Gulf War I. Fast forward, we're into the early 90s now. You have a huge humanitarian disaster brewing in Bosnia. Those refugees ended up in Central Europe, Germany, where I lived at the time and worked, in other places. And they quite frankly overwhelmed the social system and were incapable of, you know, were unwilling to sustain the refugee population in the Central European states. You know, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, et cetera.

It overwhelmed the social system there. So it basically pled with NATO, hey, we got to come up with a solution here. And the international community got mobilized around the Dayton Peace Accords. And we went in to stabilize that situation. But in the interim, there was a no-fly zone in these U.S. safe havens that were put up

around Srebrenica, Zenica, and some of these other places to protect the Muslims. That ultimately failed. It led to increased violence. It led to a bombing campaign by the Coalition of the Willing, to include NATO. And it ultimately led to a coercive campaign that brought the three principles of Bosnia to the negotiating table to come up with a solution there. So my point is this, is that humanitarian disasters precede policy decisions for a more

direct involvement. And that's where we're at now. We're on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. We already have 2 million refugees into Eastern Europe, Polandand slovakia hungary and romania they're already there um you're going to have many many more than that i think you're going to have two or three times that easy in the next couple of weeks here uh it is going to overwhelm the social systems in those countries uh so something else is going to have to be there. So I want to talk to you, though, you mentioned NATO. And there's a real question about were we was NATO too provocative toward Vladimir Putin was even Ukraine too provocative with respect to its desire to be a part of NATO to be a part of the EU, too provocative towards Putin, not to justify anything he's doing, to be clear. But was that

played incorrectly? You know, do we underestimate his anger over that possible relationship and so on? I want to ask you about that next. I'm going to squeeze in a quick break, pay a bill, and we'll come back with that with former Major General Repass. Major General, let me ask you this about NATO. Our previous guest was Rod Dreher, who I really like, and he's not pro-U.S. involvement in this. And this is from a piece that he wrote. I'd love to get your reaction to this. He writes, despite assurances to the contrary, NATO is not a defensive organization.

He says, even though American memories are short, people elsewhere remember the bombing campaign against Serbia and the removal of Gaddafi from power in Libya. What NATO is, in fact, is the military arm of U.S. hegemony, which means dominance, a hegemony that has seen it expand eastwards towards Europe, right up to Russia's very own borders. And he talks about how Russia has been invaded several times from the West since Napoleon first crossed the border to enter imperial Russia soil in 1812. Russia has sought buffers to its West ever since. And he writes that NATO originally set up to counter the USSR's expansion into Europe was left without a raison d'etre, reason to be, forget my French, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. Nevertheless, it pressed on eastwards. And he's trying to help us understand. He's not holding water for Putin. He's trying to help us understand why Putin

doesn't like NATO and why there is a legitimate question to be asked about whether nato was too provocative in its expansion to him and how one could understand how he could never tolerate a ukraine his immediate neighbor joining that organization your thoughts so that's uh that's a i would say a an argument that has been discussed quite a bit here lately. But at its root, it gets into this discussion of does Russia deserve to have or should they be allowed to have a sphere of influence? So let's go back to World War II.

At the end of World War II, the United Kingdom, Japan, and a couple other imperial powers got rid of their imperial possessions. You get into the 50s and 60s, and the European powers got rid of their colonial possessions in Africa. They decolonized, if you will. So you move forward and essentially what we had in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall going into 1991-92 was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the Soviet Union. So these spheres of influence in the 19th century just disappeared. So what Mr. Putin wants to do is he wants to go back to the previous era, the century of bad imperialism and reestablish his sphere, so that everybody in that sphere is, I would say, they defer to Russia's priorities and preferences on who they can associate with, the means of their economy, and who makes the decisions on how things are going to be run in a given country. So if you ascribe to a sphere of influence, then you will ascribe to Vladimir Putin being upset at NATO for expanding eastward.

So I want to point out a couple of fallacies in that argument. NATO didn't expand eastward in the construct that we went out and grabbed these countries. These countries voted through a democratic process to join NATO. They asked to be part of NATO through their elected officials. And in many countries, they held a referendum to decide if the people wanted to do it or not. So that was a democratic process by which people were brought into the NATO fold. That's not the situation that we see unfolding in Belarus and in Ukraine, where Putin is taking over the, in the case of Ukraine, trying to take over the country by the force of arms and coercion, and in the case of Belarus, a corrupted election, subversion of legitimate political opposition,

followed by putting in his special security services to arrest and undermine any legitimate opposition. So the methods by which we, respectively, NATO and Russia, are extending our frontier, so to speak, as described by the person you just read from, one is a democratic process engaged in by public discourse. The other is a subversive and coercive practice done by the force of arms, essentially. All right. Let me ask you a question there, because there's no question that we have been engaged in Ukraine, that we had some hand in some of the more pro-Western moves that they've made in Ukraine since 2000, the various revolutions that they've had over there putin calls it a coup so to some american pundits the replacement of the pro-russian leader and uh with a with a more pro uh democrat pro-democracy leader and basically the allegation and putin's made this to me personally is um that we don't have clean hands when it comes to messing with Ukraine, that we behind the scenes have been trying to force them to be more pro-Western, more pro-liberal.

And he's been trying to force them to be more pro-Russian. And we were perhaps kind of winning. And then he did this. Is that not true? Do you? I mean, we have had a hand in trying to manipulate Ukraine and its outward facing intentions. So Mr. Putin has never demonstrated any direct involvement of the United States or any other democratic nation in the Maidan events. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm saying he's never demonstrated where we were involved with that. He just threw it out there as if it's a fact and provided no evidence of it. So you deny it.

I don't know whether it's true or not true. I just know he's never provided any evidence of it. And I haven't seen any myself. That's not something I've personally explored. What I do know is I've met the Maidan crowd. I've met them. I've talked to them. I've had dinner with them. And I know that- This is the revolution that led to the ouster of the old pro-Putin guy and the installation of the pro-Western guy. Go ahead. Yeah, correct. I'm sorry. Just to back up there. In the fall of 2013, there was an election that was widely understood to be rigged by none other than Mr. Putin. So he's talking about Western intervention in an election that he rigged to begin with.

You got to hand it to the guy. I mean, he's, oh my Lord. So he's, he's complaining about the rigged election that was nullified by the Supreme Court of Ukraine. So. This is how it goes. I mean, you know, that's what they call whataboutism, right? It's like you say, well, you're doing this bad stuff. And he looks at us and says, well, what about you? You did bad stuff too. And, you know, this could go back for decades.

Yeah. Okay. So we'll end it there then for the sake of this one. But just moving forward a couple of months. So finally, the population had enough of this with the corruption, the widespread repression of the Western-leaning segment of the population, which was probably split at the time 60-40. The majority of the population wanted to be more EU and Western leaning. The 40% at the time, which is now probably 5% or less, wanted to be more pro-Russian. So that culminated in the demonstrations at Maidan Square, Freedom Square in central Kiev,

where Russian-inspired and Russian-led, in some cases, forces fired on and killed a large number of citizens that were demonstrating in Maidan Square. That ultimately led to the president at the time fleeing to Russia for refuge. He didn't go to Switzerland. He didn't go to Belgium or France. He went to Russia. So we know where his leanings and the source of his power was at the time. Sure. So the evidence in that regard speaks for itself. I don't have to prove anything. So that stands alone, and it's a priori evidence that he was into this up to his elbows. You're dropping some Latin on me.

Okay. A priori is taking me back Dropping some Latin on me. Okay. A priori is taking me back. You dropped French on me earlier, okay? Yeah, but I barely did it. I didn't understand it. All right. Anyway, so I've met with these people, and they're truly democratic aspirants.

And at some level, I would call them true patriots of the Western liberal tradition in that they want to have a representative government. They want to have inclusion. They want to have an open society where people can speak their mind and they can do what they please and make their own fate and decide their their their station in life then and that's that's the crowd that's in their parliament known as the rata that's the the crowd that's in government and so that those are the people that that mr putin is is trying to throw out of power and i don't understand for the life of me why we would oppose or we would stand back and allow that infant of a democracy to be snuffed out in the first years of its life. To me, democracy does not end at the borders of NATO. I think we collectively, as the, I would say, the Western liberal tradition nations, not necessarily ending at NATO's borders, but I think we have a moral obligation and certainly a political imperative

to help these burgeoning democracies, these budding democracies, to flourish and grow and help them along the way and encourage them into living a democratic and principled society. So, okay, but let me interject and say to the people who would respond to that by saying that we tried that under George W. Bush and it didn't work and we're war weary now and we've lost faith in our ability to execute and win, to win wars. We tried it. We tried it in so many places.

And we no longer believe that we're good at it and we don't want to start another conflict or get ourselves involved in another conflict. What's the answer to that? Well, having served 33 years in the military, multiple combat tours and numerous contingency deployments, I understand war weariness very well, more than a lot of people. So I understand that sentiment to my core. I've buried many of my soldiers in gut-wrenching funeral ceremonies, and that's left an indelible mark on me that i'm i will never step away from but that said there are certain things that are that are bigger than me bigger than self and bigger than you know my comfort in my way of life and having a democratic nation struggling for its freedom and struggling for its future is bigger than my creep ass and it's bigger than than some of the other

self-centered ideas that I've heard coming out of various advocates pro and for what's going on right now. Wow, that's quite an answer. That's a really good answer, Major General. First of all, let's just pause and say, I'm sorry that you, I'm sorry you had to bury so many guys. And I'm, you know, we watched it and it's different when you know them, when they're under your command. And I'm grateful to you for your service. And I'm grateful to you for your insights on it. You know, I'm not really taking a position on this. I can see the concerns. I understand the weariness and the reluctance to get involved in yet another.

It's like, oh, my God, you know, we've lost so much already and we just withdrew from Afghanistan and in disgrace, you know, in a way that people felt just awful about. And I think that there's hesitancy in trusting Joe Biden to command it. And even some of our generals, you know, who have sounded very political lately and not just like the old, you know, grizzled guys who we think are just about winning wars, you know, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. I think strong skepticism is absolutely warranted. I think our Congress needs to get involved and make decisions here, you know, instead of us just going off at the, you know, under the War Powers Act or something like that to do something. I think this needs to be, you know, we're either all in or we're partially in, but I think the people need to have a healthy degree of skepticism

and they need to express their concerns to their elected officials on how this is going to go down in the future. We're either going to let it die, which would be a tragic shame, or we're going to do what we can to sustain that democracy into the years ahead. I think right now we're giving them a fighting chance and they're doing rather well. There are other things that we can do that would be more active. But in my view, I think you're right that we need to have a high degree of skepticism and introspection on whether we want to get involved in another war. That decision is not to be taken lightly. I'm not advocating the best we can to enable another country to free themselves from tyranny, free themselves from oppression, and to build their democracy the way they were doing. most of Europe, most of the world to do more than they planned on doing and gave an address. I think it was yesterday. That's being compared. I mean, of all things to Winston Churchill, when you're getting compared to Winston Churchill, you're doing well. And at the famous Dunkirk speech, this is Churchill 1940. Just to remind our audience before we play Zelensky,

we shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and the oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. So good. And here was Zelensky getting a standing ovation before an international audience. I think it was yesterday. Listen. We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight till the end at sea, in the air. we will continue fighting for our land whatever the cost we will fight in the forests in the fields on the shores in the streets Please make sure that you do what needs to be done and what is stipulated by the greatness of your country. Best of all to Ukraine and to the United Kingdom. before the british parliament you know major general they say television is about moments a moment that makes the audience feel something and connect with the story that they're hearing that's what zalensky does he delivers these moments that make an international audience feel something and want to help him. But will it be enough? Do you think there will be more from the international community when it comes to helping him fight for his freedom and his country's freedom? So first off, what a tremendous wartime leader he is. A guy that I know very well, look at me, he says, he's not a politician, he's a leader. It's like, okay, he's made that transition because of the national emergency and the circumstances he finds himself.

So what a great, great wartime leader he's turned into. I know that the members of NATO, not NATO as an institution, but the members of NATO have individually spared no effort to empty their armories for relevant weapons systems, javelins, Stinger missiles, small arms, all manner of weapons, helmets, protective vests, etc. And they are supplying the means of war to those that are seeking to defend their frontiers. So I think as long as we continue to enable them to fight, the Ukrainians will fight to the last man, as I mentioned before. But proportionally, I think they have numbers in attrition on their side. 41 million people. If 10% of the people fight. So you got 4.1 million people that are out there with a weapon in their hand, willing to do something bad, visit violence and destruction upon the Russians

to give them a bad day and send them back home. So I feel very confident that as long as we supply them, as long as we give them the ability to defend themselves, we can do better, like providing them an air defense system, potentially humanitarian safe zone, that they will continue to resist. This is not over, not by a long shot. Thank you so much, Major General Ray Pass for your thoughts, for your service. We appreciate it.

What a day. You know what? You're not going to get a discussion like that anywhere on cable news. It's not possible. You can't go in depth in that forum and you can't like, there are certain POVs, points of view

that you're sort of pushed to offer up when you're in that line of business. And here we can do what we want. So we appreciate the forum and we appreciate you guys making it a possibility for us. And we hope you appreciated the show and the info today and in all days and tomorrow. Don't forget to tune in because we have Senator Josh Hawley who's here. We're going to talk Russia, Ukraine, but also he's meeting with Joe Biden, Supreme Court nominee today. So we'll get his take tomorrow. Meantime, to talk Russia, Ukraine, but also he's meeting with Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee today. So we'll get his take tomorrow. Meantime, download the show, please,

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