The President's Daily Brief - December 21st, 2022. Ukraine's Zelensky Is on His Way to Washington D.C.

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

It’s December 21st. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, Ukraine’s President is making a surprise stop in America today, meeting with Joe Biden and speaking with Congress later tonight. I’ve got that update, plus why some of the weapons we’ve sent to Ukraine aren’t working anymore. Second, news this morning out of the Pacific Island nations of Vanuatu and Fiji. I’ve got an update on whether China or America is gaining influence in that very important region.  Third, Joe Biden is refilling America’s emergency supply of oil, although not by very much. I’ll explain how that impacts you. Finally, a warning from America’s utility providers — they say that we’re replacing reliable energy with solar and wind, and that’s putting some parts of America at high risk of blackouts. Later, we close out the podcast with my thoughts on the scandal emerging from Twitter. That company is releasing internal documents showing interference and censorship by the FBI and America’s intelligence community. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's December 21st. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America and the world. First, Ukraine's president is making a surprise stop on America today, meeting with Joe Biden and speaking with Congress later tonight. I've got that update. Plus, why some of the weapons that we have sent to Ukraine aren't working anymore. Second news this warning out of the Pacific Island nations of Vanuatu and Fiji. I've got an update on whether China or America is gaining influence in that very important region.

Third, Joe Biden is refilling America's emergency supply of oil, although not by very much. I'll explain how that impacts. Finally, a warning from America's utility providers. They say that we are replacing reliable energy with solar and wind, and that's putting some parts of America at very high risk of blackouts. Later, we close out the podcast with my thoughts on these scandal emerging from Twitter. That company is releasing internal documents showing interference and censorship by the FBI and America's intelligence community.

But before we get to that, we got to get started with this. Today may be one for the history books. We have reports that Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is supposed to visit Washington, D.C. today. It will be his first official known visit outside of Ukraine since mid-February when the war began. So he's apparently stopping first at the White House to chat with Joe Biden and later to address Congress. Details are a bit sketchy for security reasons, as you would expect. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won't confirm the visit, but has asked that all members of Congress attend an urgent session that will have a, quote, very special focus on democracy, end quote. Well, if indeed,

Zalinski is there. He will have a lot to talk about and frankly celebrate. America's Congress just passed a $1.66 trillion funding bill with Ukraine getting a pretty big chunk of that, $45 billion, in fact. It's 20% more than what Mr. Biden asked for. So of that $45 billion, the biggest single piece that Zelensky is going to get is $13 billion for economic support. In other words, to pay for Ukraine's government workers. their salaries and pensions, welfare payments, and so forth. There's another $4.4 billion for humanitarian needs, including $2 billion or so to resettle Ukrainians in the United States.

There's also a lot of money for military weaponry and training, as you would expect, $9 billion, in fact, with another $11.9 billion to replenish America's supply of weapons that we've actually sent to Ukraine, but now need to restock for our military. And speaking of the weapons that we've already sent, there's something here that you should know. According to the Wall Street Journal, some of that weaponry, especially from our European partners, is stuck very far from the battlefield because the Ukrainians either can't repair it or properly maintain it. So here's what we know. For the past 10 months, American and European officials have rushed in all kinds of weaponry to Ukraine.

And that might sound good, but we should have asked, who in Ukraine has the advanced training or advanced repair facilities for when all that weaponry breaks or needs maintenance? Well, as it turns out, virtually nobody and nowhere in Ukraine does. So the problem is mostly or centrally about heavy artillery. We've got systems now in Ukraine from Germany, Britain, France, and the United States. And virtually none of that weaponry can be repaired or maintained inside Ukraine. It all has to be shipped abroad. So let me give you but one example. The German artillery units, they have to be shipped to the country of Lithuania, 900 miles from the southern battlefront when there's a problem.

And because of that distance and all the logistics that go into that, it's led to less than 50% of German artillery being available on the battlefield at any given time. Now, the Germans tried to address this by setting up a repair facility in Poland. That's a close neighbor of Ukraine, of course. but the Polish government said, okay, we'll do it, but on one condition. Give us your secret or proprietary technical information about those German systems so that our military can fix it. Yeah, fix it. How sneaky. The Germans saw that for what it was, an attempt to steal advanced military technology.

And they said, okay, no thank you. So off to Lithuania, all of that artillery goes. For what it's worth, the American-made Haimars artillery system has been holding up pretty well so far. No real maintenance needed. But when that date comes and it will, it too will have to be shipped abroad. One final thing to note here, a Ukrainian artillery crew member was asked what kind of artillery system he and his crew would prefer based on this repair and maintenance challenge. And he said that while he loved the advanced stuff from the West, he actually likes the old Soviet stuff. And that's because, as he explained, quote, my Soviet equipment had a battery and some

light bulbs to fix, end quote. I like all the fancy Western stuff with the smart technology and the advanced computers. He just wanted the old stuff. He's here to fix and put back to work. Anyway, it's something to remember as we talk about all this very heady stuff later today with Zelensky and DC, billions of dollars for freedom and liberty. No doubt we will hear all those kinds of things. Meanwhile, the guys on the front lines are looking at the U.S. Pentagon and saying this morning, thank you for your space machines, but they're a little bit much. What do you have with just a couple light bulbs? And by the way, if you serve the military, you know that this is not the first time that guys in the field complain about the dummies at headquarters.

All right, let's move on. For our second brief this morning, we're going to shift gears from our battle in Europe to the battle for the Pacific. As PDB listeners know, that's our focus here on the PDB of whether China or the United States is going to win the war for influence and control over the Pacific Ocean. And that's really important as we look at the very real possibility of a war between our two nations. And of course, all those little island countries in the Pacific would be critical to base troops and planes and supplies in the event of war, just like they were in World War II. So we've got two island nations to talk about this morning.

The first is the country of Vanuatu. So to refresh our memories here, you might know of this country if you've ever seen the musical South Pacific. There was a World War II military base on that island, especially to Santo Naval Base, and it was the setting for the book which later became the musical South Pacific. Well, unfortunately, Vanuatu over the past decade or so, has fallen under the influence of China. They owe Beijing about $130 million for infrastructure projects, leaving that country firmly in the grasp of China's debt trap. Well, some good news here to report, or at least good if you

want America to win in this Battle of the Pacific. So our allies in Australia just signed a security agreement with this country, Vanuatu. It'll include humanitarian assistance, police and defense train border security, and, listen to this, maritime patrols to keep those Chinese fishing ships far from Vanuatu's waters. So those ships, as you all know, are destroying the country's fish stocks. So interestingly, the foreign minister of Vanuatu was asked if he would be talking to China about cooking up a similar security agreement, and he said, no, this one would work just fine. Well, let's see how that plays out in Beijing and what they do to do. to collect on the $130 million that they're owed.

And that takes us, of course, to the Second Island Nation in the Pacific that we're here to talk about, and that is Fiji. So last week, I told you about how that country had a very important election between two different gentlemen. One is the current prime minister who's been in charge for 16 years, and he is a fan of China. The other guy is a fellow with a nickname of Rambo. He and his coalition prefer to support deal. United States. Well, the election wrapped up and the results came in on Sunday after a few hiccups,

which we talked about last week. And the winner, my friends, is Rambo. All right. Come on, Rambo has to win. That's just how it works. Anyway, Rambo and his friends managed to pull out what was pretty much a squeaker, actually. It was tied on Monday, but then a very small party decided to throw its support in Parliament to Rambo in Friends. So now he will be Prime Minister. By the way, Rambo is 74 years old, and he really is quite the character. For instance, he had a campaign ad where he was in a wrestling uniform, and he looked at the camera and said, quote, somebody asked me the other day, Rambo, do you ever lift, bro? And I said, I used to, but I'm more interested now in lifting up the standard of this country, end quote.

Oh, this guy. Anyway, one last thing. Rambo used to be prime minister 20 years ago. He was involved in a coup at the time. Actually, two of them. And that's where he got his nickname, leading two revolts. Now he's back leading the country, although legitimately. So look at that.

See, my friends, who says international affairs can't be fun? By the way, I really need to meet this Rambo guy. Who wants to come with me? All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a quick break. For my paid subscribers on the Apple platform, no ads for you. For everybody else, not to worry. back shortly. And when we do, I've got two more critical pieces of news for you. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB. I've got two more critical pieces of news for you this morning.

First, an update on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with Joe Biden agreeing to fill it back up at some point anyway. But first, let's quickly refresh our memories here of what this strategic reserve really is and why we should care about it. So quick history. Back in the 1970s, Arab producers of oil cut their production, all because at the time, the U.S. was supporting Israel in a war there. Well, President Nixon at the time instituted a rationing program to try to manage the fallout of that decision by the Arabs. Well, all of that wrecked the U.S. economy, and it woke Americans up to this very real threat of being reliant on foreign oil. Leaders in D.C. decided we needed an emergency supply of oil in case

there was another crisis like this ever again in the future. So America built the world's largest emergency reserve of oil and actually some old salt mines in Texas and Louisiana. So over the years, it's been used and frankly abused for things less than an emergency, like selling that oil to pay for social spending. So that takes us to this summer when Mr. Biden decided to sell a record 180 million barrels of that emergency supply to help lower gas prices. Now there's not much evidence that it actually did that. In fact, buyers of the oil included the Chinese government. But regardless, we are now down 180 million barrels, and that takes us to this morning's update. Late last week, the Biden administration announced a very tiny purchase of

three million barrels to replace the 180 million that they sold. Biden's team also announced plans to purchase more when prices for oil drop down the road if, of course, they drop. The timing of all of this becomes really important, because if we are 180 million barrels down, and a crisis were to happen, say, I don't know, a war with Russia or China? Well, that puts us in a pickle and a really bad one. So let's see how fast Biden can refill those old salt mines and at what price. I'll keep you posted. Speaking of energy issues, boy, do I have an important update on dirty green energy,

especially if you are in California or the Midwest. So I understand this brief, we need to talk about an organization that you probably have never heard of, but man, they have a super important job. It's called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC. It's a non-profit made up of America's utility industry, and they work together to make sure that the bulk power system in North America is healthy and resilient and reliable. Well, late last week, these folks at NERC came out with their annual report of energy production

and the electricity grid. And that report was a bright red light flashing. saying, yeah, we have a problem. First, they said that California is at a high risk of electricity shortages and blackouts because they're moving so much of their power production to solar and wind, all while shutting down coal and natural gas. That means that they're adopting unreliable, intermittent sources of energy at the very moment when demand is spiking.

And part of that demand spike, according to NERC, is because the state of California has mandated that all new cars, be electric by the year 2035. And that means electric vehicles will be increasingly gobbling up and gorging themselves on unreliable solar and wind power, leaving the whole state then at risk for an energy crisis. The folks at NERC also found that the upper Midwest, they're in trouble too. Actually, for some of the same reasons as California, but also because they're rushing to shut down coal and natural gas plants without replacing them with really anything at all, although at least not at the same levels or capacity.

That's why NERC put the upper Midwest in the same high-risk category as California. So for everybody else, especially out west, but also Texas and the New England states, you too are adding lots of unreliable solar and wind power. But if there's a little slice of good news here for you, you're not quite as vulnerable, except when you have extreme weather events,

like a heat wave, or shall we say, a cold snap. you know, like the one we're going to have this week. And it's because of that possibility that you all are what the NERC is calling an elevated risk for blackouts. By the way, the only region looking any good right now is the southeast. All in all, folks, if I could just offer one piece of analysis and opinion here, this issue, this NERC report, is precisely what I have been warning about for many months now. Whatever your individual views might be of dirty green energy, regardless of you,

you love solar and wind or you hate it or something in between, this stuff is not game ready to power a nation. Maybe as a supplement to some homes or businesses or farms and ranches off grid, but not factories, not entire cities. Well, that's what the people at NERC are telling us this morning. And yet we're just marching ahead with it anyway. So folks, that's why if there were ever a time for you to figure out how to get involved with local utility regulators, this would be it. The time to prevent disaster on this is right now. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude your morning brief. But I've got one more thing before I let you go. We'll be right back. Spring is the season everyone refreshes everything except their blinds. People put it

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Plus, save $180 on a DeWalt 12-inch dual-bevel sliding compound mitersaw. Now just $449. Our best lineup is here it lows. Vela through 5-6, wall supplies last. Selection varies by location. Welcome back to the PDB folks. I've got one more thing before I let you go. So for the past couple of weeks, the social media company Twitter has been releasing internal documents

about its relationships with the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. military. the FBI and other intelligence agencies. And it's a really important story because, as PDB listeners know, Twitter is where 13% of us get our news. And that's pretty incredible if you consider that all the newspapers in America combined are the source of only 7% of our news. That's according to the Pew Research Center back from a 2021 study. Plus, as I briefed you all before,

the real key to Twitter's relevance is that journalists and reporters, rely heavily on Twitter to do their jobs. They scan the platform for stories and sources that they later reshape and reshare with you on their mainstream outlets like The Nightly TV News. In other words, even if you don't have a Twitter account, you should absolutely care about what's going on at Twitter. And has there been a lot of stuff going on at Twitter? When the new CEO of Twitter Elon Musk took over, he promised to release internal documents

showing what he categorized as political bias in banning certain people and stories from the platform, like the Hunter Biden laptop story. Plus, he said, the U.S. government was engaged in likely unlawful or unconstitutional suppression of speech. Well, I wanted to give you a status update on those document releases. Look, they continue as of today, so I'm going to come back to this later and in much greater detail. But here are the three things that I'm seeing so far. First, we now know that Twitter worked very closely to help the U.S. military build out its propaganda campaigns. The Pentagon coordinated with Twitter on building fake accounts and amplifying messages designed to denigrate countries like Russia and China and other adversaries.

And some of it, I've got to tell you, was just completely ridiculous, like allegations that Iran was harvesting organs from Afghan refugees. And look, while you might think that that's not a big deal, or maybe you're not. even good. One problem is that those messages that just go abroad, you know, they don't stay abroad. They get picked up by those journalists that I mentioned earlier, and they see that back into the minds of Americans, some of whom believe it's real. In other words, foreign propaganda operations become domestic news. That is bad and very unlawful. All right. Second, we now know that the FBI and the intelligence community had a team of some 80 agents on a task force designed to look for foreign propaganda and election interference. But what these Twitter documents are showing is that the

FBI ended up targeting not just foreign propaganda or election interference, but rather free speech. As just one example, they were targeting accounts for cancellation for the crime of spreading jokes. Jokes that the FBI deemed, well, not funny. One woman joked that she was a ballot counter and that she wouldn't count your ballot on election day unless you were wearing a mask. Okay, that's a silly joke, I guess. Her whole account was full of that kind of stuff. Yet the FBI told Twitter that those jokes and her free speech had to be taken down.

Meanwhile, another man joke that Republicans should vote on election day while Democrats should vote the day after. Okay, that's silly, funny, I guess. not to the FBI. They demanded that Twitter take it down. And Twitter did. The point is that the FBI is policing jokes. They're policing free speech. And that is wildly dangerous. That some unnamed, unelected bureaucrats could use the power of the badge and decide what's acceptable speech. It's just, in my view, unconstitutional. Finally, and here's the big one, folks. These Twitter documents suggest that the FBI was involved in election interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

So here's why. Throughout the 2020 election, the FBI was briefing Twitter and Facebook, by the way, that they suspected that there would be what's called a hack and dump operation targeting Hunter Biden, who of course is the son of Joe Biden. Now, a hack and dump operation in this case would be some foreign adversary like Russia or China hacking hunters' electronic devices and then. sharing that information on Twitter or Facebook, all to embarrass or otherwise smear Joe Biden to damage his chances of winning.

But what's curious and what's unclear is why did the FBI believe that? Because based on a deposition given by FBI agent Elvis Chan, in fact, just last month, the Bureau had no specific intelligence at that time to say that the Russians or the Iranians were going to hack and dump on Hunter Biden. So why was the FBI so worried about that, especially Hunter Biden? And why were they spending so much time warning Twitter and Facebook that damaging information on Hunter Biden might be coming? Hmm.

Well, whatever the answer might ultimately be to those questions, it had another effect. According to the documents released by Twitter, it created an atmosphere of, shall we say, pressure at these social media companies, almost a hysteria, that anything related to Hunter Biden would almost certainly be a hack and dump operation. Well, then when the New York Post published its expose on the Hunter Biden laptop, well, that FBI campaign to create an atmosphere of pressure and hysteria, it worked. Twitter called it disinformation, hacked materials, and they banned the story.

They killed it. Now, here's what's interesting. Leading the charge inside of Twitter to ban that story on Hunter Biden was Twitter's General Counsel James Baker. And Mr. Baker was also the former General Counsel of the FBI. The same General Counsel who was knee-deep in the Trump-Russia investigation before he left. At any rate, we now know that Mr. Baker was arguing with Twitter employees initially, and they actually said, we should let the story run.

But Mr. Baker said, no, it should not. Here's also something interesting. he was on the phone with FBI headquarters as this debate was happening, although we don't know the exact content of those calls. One final thing to share with you. The FBI paid Twitter at least $3.4 million as compensation for Twitter employees responding to all the FBI's request. So said differently, Twitter was incentivized to do exactly as the FBI wanted them to do.

To include terminating Twitter accounts for sharing bad jokes. Yeah, that's true. but more importantly, to ban stories or speech that the FBI didn't like. So, my friends, I will keep you posted on this as I learn more. And I want to be careful here, but what I'm seeing so far is very concerning to me. When a government security services and intelligence agencies start pressuring media companies to ban or favor certain speech or to protect or damage certain candidates, no matter the reason or rationale that they're doing it, that creates a problem, doesn't it?

Because what history shows us is that when that kind of interference is left unattended, democracies die and in its place, tyranny is born. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth.

And the truth shall make you free. Good day.