The President's Daily Brief - June 29th, 2022. A Major Leak from the Biden Administration; Ukraine Can Not Win Without Our Support.

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

It’s June 29th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ First up, an astonishing leak out of the Biden Administration yesterday, saying that Ukraine is not going to win without us and they’re going to have to give up some territory to the Russians. We’ll discuss. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, if you tried to buy a home lately but you got outbid, it might have been because your competition were professional flippers. I’ll explain what that is, the record number of these flips in America, and why that’s a problem for our middle class. Finally, we have pirates in the Caribbean. But not the movie. Actual pirates, attacking oil rigs off the coast of Mexico. But details of these attacks are really bizarre. We’ll discuss them. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 29th. 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. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the President each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, an astonishing leak out of the Biden administration yesterday, saying that Ukraine is not going to win without us, and they're going to have to give up some territory to the Russians. We'll discuss. As always,

I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, if you tried to buy a home lately, but you got outbid, it might have been because your competition were professional flippers. I'll explain what that is, the record number of these flips, and why it's such a problem for our middle class. Finally, we have pirates in the Caribbean, but not the movie. Actual pirates attacking oil rigs off the coast of Mexico. But the details of these attacks are really bizarre. We'll discuss them. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th.

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First up this morning on the PDB, Joe Biden is in Europe this week, meeting today with fellow NATO members on a range of issues, but most especially Ukraine. But the big story out on the war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine is a White House leak, first reported by the press and confirmed by my sources, all of whom share the very same stark assessment. The Biden administration, in short, doesn't think that Ukraine can win. And not only that, but Joe Biden and his national security team don't think that President Zelensky will ever be able to take back all the land that he's already lost. And listen to this.

That's even with the bigger and more sophisticated weaponry that we and Europe are planning to send So the reason for this brutal assessment, or at least a big part of it, is that Ukraine has been deeply bloodied over the past three or four weeks. We're talking casualty rates of 100 to 200 men a day. That's according to sources at the Pentagon. But it's not just the number that are dying or wounded. It's the type of Ukrainian soldiers that are being lost, professional soldiers. To quickly explain here and in very simple terms, professional soldiers are those who have been and a country's military on a long-term basis. That's unlike, say, a mercenary or a conscript or maybe even a draftee.

So when you lose those professional warfighters, these experience, trained, battle-hardened men, it tends to be very detrimental to military readiness. Well, a commander of one of those professional units in eastern Ukraine, when he said recently that he's lost 80% of his professional fighting force, that's 80%. either because they are incapacitated by injury or they are outright dead. In other words, Ukraine is losing the very men that they desperately need to keep on the battlefield and to win.

Meanwhile, we also have assessments coming out of the Pentagon that Ukrainian forces are burning through their equipment and ammunition far faster than we in Europe can replace it all. Plus, the new stuff that we're sending, it takes time to train on because it's so very different than what Ukraine has had to date. and that's all time that Ukraine doesn't have and with men who aren't professional soldiers. So not surprisingly, Russia knows all of this. And that's why they are pressing so hard right now before Ukraine can properly train a new set of men and on this new Western weaponry that we're sending by the plane load.

On top of all of that, the White House is now recognizing that Putin has the money that he needs to win in this war of attrition. Russia is still making lots of cash with its gas and oil sales, especially to China and India. Now, there's some thought that money could get tighter later this summer, but it's looking much better for Moscow than originally forecasted. So you put all of that together, the massive Ukrainian losses of professional soldiers, the fast burn rate of weapons and ammo, not enough time to retrain new men and our more modern weapons. plus Moscow making loads of cash, well, you have an assessment that's pretty stark. But here's the part of this brief that is so critical and that you need to know.

One of Biden's advisors was quoted in the press as saying, quote, whether Ukraine can take back the territories lost to Russia, is in large part, if not entirely a function of how much support we give them. So did you hear that word support? Ask yourself what support means in this context. Because remember, the White House is acknowledging this morning that our weapons won't be enough, all because of the death rates of Ukrainian fighters and the lack of training time on the new weapons. So again, what does it mean when Biden's folks say that Ukraine gets back its territory only with our support?

What it suggests to me anyway, and some of my former Intel colleagues, is that our support is increasingly going to have to be our own troops. First, our covert operators, and then professional fighters in a discrete observer status, all inside the country. And then, in a possible greater escalatory move, we're going to be putting in overt forces, possibly in Western Ukraine or around Kiev. In other words, this isn't a war between Ukraine and Russia anymore. It's a war between the West and Russia and really between America and Russia, because we are

responsible for providing the overwhelming majority of support far more than Europe. That means we're setting ourselves up for an increased risk of direct escalation between Moscow and Washington, D.C. So that's the update, ladies and gentlemen, and it's a very, very stark one at that. Now, you all know why we should care about this development. It's your money that we're spending and it's your children who would have to fight it if it came to that. And of course, there's also the issue of allowing Russia to invade Ukraine without any consequence. What lesson will Moscow learn if they get away with it? Or what lesson will Beijing learn? So those are the challenges and they're big

ones. The question is what should we do about it all? We spoke of this last Friday on the PDB about your ideas for getting Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table. There weren't a lot of easy or good solutions and most involved pretty bold risks, but there's one solution that some of you actually came up with, and it's being discussed in the White House and the intel community as of this morning, and here it is. Zelensky should redefine for his people. He said, what a Ukrainian victory looks like, namely that parts of his country are gone forever. That's going to be a tough sell for lots of reasons, and it'll have very far-reaching consequences. But that is the leading idea as of this moment in the White House, because it gets us to an uneasy

settlement in the fastest time. One final note here, and it's one, I guess I should say, it's one of hope. There is the slimest of possibilities that, once again, Ukraine, will shock the world and somehow defy the odds. They did it when they initially defended Kiev, after all, and the Russians retreated. That was partly because of Ukrainian tenacity, absolutely, but it was also because Russia botched its initial approach. And now they seem to be learning from it. So ultimately, we can hope for Ukraine to rise up again, but candidly hope generally isn't a good strategy in war. So the bottom line is that while you will see lots of headlines this week about the big NATO summit, you know, for instance, Turkey is now backing NATO membership for Sweden and

Finland, and that's a good story and we'll probably talk about it later. But as important as all of those other stories might be, you now have the biggest story of all. I'll keep watching it as always and with great concern. Coming up, a closer look at what's on. my radar. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USAA.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put these two on your radar. First up, a sobering bit of news if you're trying to buy a home. One in 10 houses sold in America in the first quarter of 2022 was flipped.

meaning that it was bought and sold within a year by a buyer who had no intention of keeping it, only to make a profit. That number, by the way, one in ten houses flipped, is the highest number in 22 years. The cities most affected by this flipping include Phoenix, at the very top of the list. They were at 18.7% of all home sales being flips. Next, Charlotte, North Carolina, you all came in at 18%. Tucson, 16, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Florida, also at 16%. So why does this matter to folks like you or for America?

Well, these flippers normally put up an all-cash offer, and they outbid normal folks who want to make these houses, their long-term homes. These investors, some of whom are big institutions, like private equity groups, they have snatched up so many houses that it's actually helped increase the average price of homes in America. That number is now at a record $407,000.

And that is actually pushing up rents because when folks can't afford to buy, they rent, or at least most times. And that means more rental demand, which usually leads to higher rents. And that is exactly what's happening. The median U.S. asking rent just passed $2,000 a month for the very first time in May. And that number has risen 15% over the past 12 months. Now, there's some data suggesting that the housing market is starting to cool off, and that's because rising interest rates are shutting down demand, actually with pretty surprising speed.

I'll give you an example in Phoenix. As of June 5th, 22% of new home listings had price cuts. A year ago, that number was 7%. The bottom line is I'm going to be doing a lot more on this subject in the future, specifically this issue of big institutional investors buying up, single-family homes and preventing normal folks from buying. Because that has a major implication for middle-class American families. And that's because home ownership, as most of you know, is how most families build wealth over the decades. They raise their kids and they eventually

retire. They leverage then the amount of money that they've made in those homes that they bought years prior. But for now, know that this issue is on my radar. And frankly, I think it should be on yours too. Finally this morning, a very strange case of pirates in the Caribbean. Again, not the movie, but actual pirates attacking actual targets in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. So here are the very strange details on this. About two weeks ago, 10 pirates dressed in military camo and armed with assault weapons went to a Mexican government-owned oil platform and they held it up. The pirates kidnapped six workers, and they held them for about three hours. They stole dive gear, some communications equipment, and the personal belongings of some of the crew members

anyway, wallets and purses, that kind of thing. This is the second such attack on a Mexican-owned platform, the same group, same tactics, stealing the same kind of stuff. There was also an attack against a government-owned ship not too many days prior. Now, to be sure, piracy in the region isn't new, obviously, but the nature of these recent attacks is. I spoke with some old friends of mine in the business, and they agree all this is very odd, and here's why. These kinds of attacks are very high risk, storming a platform way above the ocean with a group of heavily armed men, uncertain of whether or not the people that you're attacking have

weapons to fight back. And then, once you subdue everyone, you take their wallets and some dive gear. It's just not normal. For what it's worth, the mode of attack fits what Mexican cartels usually do. But the loot in this pirate attack, well, it just doesn't fit normal cartel activity. So there are a lot of rumors swirling around on what exactly is going on here. Two leading theories are, first, it's a bumbling group of attackers who don't know better. And the second is, in fact, this might just be one of the cartels, but they're not after purses and dive equipment.

Instead, they're sending a message. to the oil company, to the Mexican government, or specific personnel. And it's also possible that there's some very specific high value items that are being targeted for theft, but we just don't know about it yet. Anyway, enough speculation on this, but it's a very strange story, and I'm going to continue following it, because depending on where this goes, it could escalate into other attacks, including on U.S.-owned oil platforms, and that would be bad news for you at the pump.

regardless, I will keep you posted. 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.