The President's Daily Brief - May 25th, 2022. North Korea Sends Missiles Towards Tokyo. COVID Variants Are Getting Weaker, Confirmed.

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

It’s May 25th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, Joe Biden is back in DC after his big trip to Asia. North Korea gave him a parting gift as he left: three missiles. I’ll explain. Your second brief, Ukraine’s President is saying that the only way its war with Russia ends is through diplomacy, not the battlefield. We’ll talk about the implications of his assessment. And as always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Should you be worried about COVID variants? A new study answers that question without a doubt. We’ll discuss what scientists found. 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 May 25th. 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, Joe Biden is back in D.C. see, after his big trip to Asia, North Korea gave him a parting gift as he left, three missiles. I'll explain.

Your second brief, Ukraine's president is saying that the only way it's war with Russia ends is through diplomacy, not the battlefield. We'll talk about the implications of his assessment. And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Should you be worried about COVID variants? A new study answers that question, without a doubt. We'll discuss what science.

scientists found. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. First up this morning, Joe Biden is home in D.C. after about a week away, he spent time in Asia meeting with his counterparts discussing China, trade, and of course, North Korea. That country has a nuclear weapons program, long banned by the world, but doesn't matter. They have 30 to 40 nuclear warheads and a robust bunch of missiles with a very long reach. And it was some of those missiles that North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un decided to use to send a message to Joe Biden. Hours after the president left Japan to head back to the United States, North Korea fired off three missiles towards the capital city of Tokyo. No word yet on a type of missiles fired. That's actually very important, but I'll provide you an update on that

whenever we learn more. But the point here and the reason that you should care is that whatever the missile, North Korea has all of us in its crosshairs. First, we have about 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, all of whom are in artillery range, no nukes or missiles needed there. Second, we have another 50,000 military personnel, give or take in Japan, all of whom can be hit by North Korea's short-range ballistic missiles. And finally, we have 330 million Americans, that's all of us here in the United States, who can be hit with North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those are also called ICBMs for short. Now, there is some debate about which of North Korea's ICBMs can actually hit us. Some very fancy people argue that it's just Los

Angeles or maybe just Seattle, perhaps a touch of Denver, but most informed people say that we should assume that the North Koreans can hit all of us with two missiles in particular that they've developed. So that means that everybody from Miami to Maine, from Hawaii to D.C., everybody's in their crosshairs. And by the way, the nuclear bombs that they have, they're big boys. They've done tests that match the intensity of the Hiroshima bomb. And another test was 10 times bigger than Nagasaki. As you can probably guess, these kinds of weapon programs are really expensive to research and operate and tests. And if you're wondering where North Korea gets the money to do all of that, considering that they're the most sanctioned nation on the planet, well, you may recall

that I gave you that answer in a previous brief. It's China. North Korea does about 90% of its official trade with China. And then they, they, send their hackers and cheap labor all across the globe to rake in additional cash or just steal whatever else they might need. All right. So the bottom line is that the number one priority for the North Korean leadership is to build and expand and maintain all of its nukes and missiles. The goal, the only goal, is to target the United States and their enemy South Korea. To be clear, they will absolutely starve all of their people if they have to in order to support these programs. And by the way, they've done that and years gone by.

North Korea is not messing around when it comes to its WND. So if you were driving to the White House this morning, hopping off of Air Force One, only to learn that North Korea gave you a little parting gift in the form of three missiles, you have only a couple very bad choices to choose from in terms of your response. First, you can shrug it off. Kim Jong-un probably won't use those nukes or missiles unless he's provoked. Probably. This is the least risky option in terms of ratcheting up.

pressure that could cause war in the region. The second possible response is blow up some stuff in North Korea, but do it covertly. I'll let your imagination run wild with what that might look like. Now, depending on the targets and how it's done, there's a low to medium degree of risk that these strikes could spark war. Then again, you would be downgrading North Korea's WMD capacity so that they couldn't kill us. Third, and finally, you could blow up stuff, and then you can put your name on it overtly. That sends a message to Kim Jong-un that you are tired of his stuff, and you're sending a signal to both him and his backers in China that on your watch, North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program will end. The Kim family, okay, maybe they could

keep running the country, I suppose, but not with nukes. Now, the biggest risk with doing this response is that, well, it involves the highest chance of sparking a war, but you get rid of the threat, probably. So you make the call. First option, shrug it off. Second, you blow up some stuff covertly. Third option, you blow up some stuff and you let everybody know about it. So there are your options. Choose wisely. Your second brief this morning, Ukraine's president, Vlovimir Zelensky, made a very surprising assessment late last week that the only way that the war in Ukraine ends is, quote, at the negotiating table, end quote. Zalinski was speaking to his countrymen on national television when he made that comment. Now, his overall view was that Ukraine

could be victorious against the Russians on the battlefield, but ultimately, quote, it will only definitively end through diplomacy, end quote. So that, of course, begs a question, what's the status of peace talks? Unfortunately, there's been no officially recognized meeting since April 22nd. Russia blames Ukraine for that, and Ukraine blames Russia, but regardless. But let's actually step back for a second. Because if we really think about what Zelensky said, it's kind of a big deal. You and every American, through our politicians in D.C., just gave Ukraine 40 billion an aid, on top of the 10 billion plus that came from different months of support. It's the most that we've given to a single country in recent memory. Now, a big chunk of that aid is in military weapons,

of all kinds, guns, ammo, missiles. The United States even passed a lend lease agreement that says that we can give Ukraine any weapon we have in our arsenal except for nukes. And that's really interesting now, isn't it? Because Zelensky just said that only diplomacy will end the war, not weapons. So what's going on here? What exactly is the strategy? Well, here it is. Zelensky wants more weapons because he's trying to make Putin bleed. And by that, I mean, bleed so badly and for so long that Moscow will finally come to the negotiating table. In other words, Zlinsky is trying to kill so many Russian soldiers and destroy so much Russian equipment that Putin and his advisors can no longer afford to keep up the fight.

The hope is that Moscow will start to run out of money to fund the war and they won't have the people, the fighters, to keep up the war even if they did have the money to keep fighting. And it's at that point that Putin will obviously come to the negotiating table, or so Zelensky thinks. Moscow will sue for peace. But how long will all of that take? How much money will we have to spend? How much of our equipment must be sent until that precious day that Russian blood and destruction convinces Putin that, yep, it's time for a settlement.

Now, nobody knows the answer to all those questions that I just asked, not in any perfect sense, but for everybody that I've spoken to, they usually give one response. It's going to be a long time, years. So if you were president this morning, this is how I think you should consider all these new developments in Ukraine. now that Zelensky says that diplomacy is the only way this war will end. On one hand, you can follow Zelensky's argument of a years-long war until the Russians so bloodied finally come to the negotiating table. But that's going to be very expensive, and there are going to be many more $40 billion aid packages

that you're going to have to sign. You're going to push America further into debt, and you're going to stoke a financial crisis here at home because of our out-of-control spending. It'll also be very risky, militarily speaking, because the longer that this war drags on, the more opportunities that there are for miscalculations on our side and the Russians. I briefed you previously that we have directly or indirectly shot down Russian planes. We've killed Russian generals. We've sunk Russian ships. Russia is targeting us, too, by the way.

Certainly they've targeted the weapons that we've given the Ukrainians. I briefed you on that previously as well. And with all those American and Russian missiles flying at each other or interests, one is bound to hit something that it shouldn't. And then there will absolutely be calls for war. So that's the cost of Zelensky's plan of a long, drawn-out battle. Now, there's another option, and it's a tough one. And it's to convince both Putin and Zelensky to accept a peace deal.

Frankly, neither of them will probably like it, but it will end the war before we get to that dangerous point of no return. where we had these accidental bombings. So what could that peace deal look like? Well, I'll see the details for another brief, but in short, Ukraine has to be independent, not aligned with the West, maybe, just maybe something really bold, like turning Ukraine into a country without a standing army. It's security guaranteed by a very delicate agreement between the U.S., Europe, and Russia.

It'd be sort of a Switzerland of Eastern Europe. But regardless of what we come up with, solving this war in Ukraine is going to take some very creative and very risky diplomacy. But as Zelensky himself has now acknowledged, it is the only way that this war will ever end. 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. the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com,

only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. UN must be 21 to enter. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put this one on your radar. COVID is having a revival of source in the U.S. The Omicron variant and its sub-variants are driving an increase of cases and hospitalizations lately.

especially in vaccinated people. And that's a really curious development, one that I've briefed you on before. It has to do with the lack of previous infection to COVID. In other words, there's a degree of natural immunity that some folks just don't have. At any rate, there's been a big debate about whether the Omicron variants are as deadly as early strains

and whether one sub-variant is deadlier than another. Well, we have an exhaustive study out this morning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their partners in Japan. They've settled the variant debate, and here is what they found. Omicron, no matter the variant, causes less severe illness compared to all earlier strains, and that includes Delta and the original Wuhan strain. It is more transmissible, that's true, but far less deadly.

Plus, what's even better? Existing therapeutic treatments like monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs all remain effective against the two Omicron subvariants. So look, the bottom line here is we have really good news. COVID is doing exactly what virologists have long anticipated. It's going to take a few years to mutate and bounce around, but then settle into a virus that, while absolutely serious in some people, is a very manageable disease. 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.