The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | May 18th, 2024: Moscow on the March & US-Israeli Split

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: The latest news out of Moscow, including the reshuffling of Putin's cabinet and the ongoing corruption scandal. An insightful analysis with George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War on the situation in Russia. A deep dive into the recent news from the war between Israel and Hamas with David Adesnik of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. An investigation into the seedy financial underbelly of the southern border crisis and its broader impacts. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. 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

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Now, for those of you listening to the podcast, a quick note that this program is also available on video, on the first TV, and on our YouTube channel at President's Daily Brief. Now, let's get briefed. We'll kick things off today with the latest news out of Moscow, followed by some analysis with George Barrows from the Institute for the Study of War.

Later on, we'll be joined by David Adesnik, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to discuss the most recent news from the war between Israel and Hamas. You may have heard about that. But first, today's spotlight. Vladimir Putin has officially commenced his fifth term as president of Russia, but who's counting, with his presidency in recent years, of course, being overwhelmingly defined by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Now, recently, Russia has launched a new offensive in northeastern Ukraine, and today, I want to highlight some recent indications that Putin is committed to a prolonged conflict. Firstly, there's been a significant reshuffling of his cabinet. Shortly after Putin swearing in, the Kremlin announced that he would be replacing his longtime ally, defense minister Sergei Shogu, who served in that role for over 11.5 years.

Putin isn't a leader who's known for making dramatic changes in his inner circle. He likes to keep himself surrounded by loyalists, and he and Shogu were even known to vacation. together. Well, that's romantic. Now, the former defense minister isn't going far. He'll remain in Putin's administration as the secretary of Russia's Security Council, and that's roughly analogous to the U.S. National Security Council, which advises the president on national security and foreign policy issues. Nevertheless, many view the new position as a demotion, indicating that Shogu may have lost Putin's

confidence over the course of the war, and that he plans on taking things in a new direction. The man tapped to replace Shorgu, this is interesting, as defense minister, is a civilian economist named Andrei Belosov. Now, just like Shogu, Belosov has no prior military experience. Before being chosen for his new role, he actually served as Russia's first deputy prime minister. And you might be wondering, why would Putin appoint an economist as defense minister? Well, it's a good question. At first glance, it seems like an unconventional choice.

But considering the current state of the war in Ukraine, it may well make sense. As an economist, Belisov brings a unique skill set to the role. His expertise in resource allocation and economic strategy is invaluable for managing the military's budget and optimizing expenditures. Now, while Belisov might not have any experience on the battlefield, and by might, I mean he doesn't,

his background enables him to conduct cost-benefit analysis, and who doesn't want that, and understand the economic dimensions of Russia's current war. With his long-term planning abilities and insights into international trade, Belisov is well equipped to develop strategies that are sustainable in the long run. His appointment signals a shift towards a more economically integrated approach to Russia's defense policies. And this shift in strategy is clearly what the Kremlin is intending.

Shortly after Belisov's appointment was announced, Kremlin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov told the press, quote, today, the winner on the battlefield is the one who is more open to innovation, more open to implementation as quickly as possible. It's natural that at the current stage, the president decided that the Ministry of Defense should be headed by a civilian, end quote. Well, clearly, someone's been reading business books.

The second sign is the growing purge of Putin's Ministry of Defense. Russia recently reported that a second senior Russian defense official was arrested on bribery charges, signaling a widening of the biggest government corruption scandal in years. As we've reported, Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, the 55-year-old chief of the defense ministry's main personnel directorate, was detained in a raid on a suburban Moscow villa. According to reports in Russian media, agents of the Federal Security Service stormed the property early in the morning, breaking down doors and windows, how rude, while Kuznetsov was asleep. During the raid, authorities seized gold coins, luxury items, and over 100 million rubles in cash,

which is about a million dollars. Who does this guy think he is? New Jersey Senator Bob Medendez. The investigative committee, Russia's top criminal investigation agency, reported that Kuznetsov has been charged with accepting an exceptionally large bribe, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. The bribe was allegedly received during his previous tenure as head of the military general staffs directorate responsible for preserving state secrets. You can't fit that on a business card,

a position he held for 13 years. The general's wife, who has also worked in various defense ministry roles, was reportedly interrogated as part of the investigation as well. Now, this latest bust comes just two weeks after the arrest of another deputy defense minister, Timor Ivanov. They are dropping like flies here. Ivanov has been accused of accepting massive bribes valued at more than one billion, I think you have to say like this, one billion rubles.

And that's roughly, if my math is correct, $11 million. All right, coming up next, we'll have more on this with George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War. Stay with us. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me now is the Russia and geospatial intelligence team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, George Barros. George, thank you very much for joining.

I got, first of all, applaud your bravery. This is the very first episode of the PDB Situation Report, so you have no idea what you're getting involved in here. Well, thank you very much for having me, Mike. I'm always happy to share our insights and talk about Putin's war in Ukraine. Excellent. Well, I'm glad you call it Putin's War. Sometimes it seems as if people are a little confused over who started this thing.

Let me start at 30,000 feet, if I could, George. Give me your assessment of where we are right now. how is Ukraine doing? Are they losing? Are they holding out of the stalemate? What's happening? Sure. Right now, the situation for the Ukrainians is pretty dire. They're not in a good place. That's because the Russians right now, they have the initiative, the strategic initiative across the entire theater. Ever since fall of 2023, after the Ukrainians unfortunately did not achieve their objectives with their summer counteroffensive, the Russians, they took charge of what's going on. They now are able to conduct offensives wherever they want, along the 600 mile long front line.

And what we're seeing now is the Russians have, after the course of the last six months of waging a really slow grinding war in eastern Ukraine, they've now opened a new front as of just six days ago in the northeast and Harkev. What we think the Russians are trying to do with this new front is fix Ukrainian forces, that is get them to pivot away from the east

towards the north in order to thin out Ukrainians and facilitate some potential opportunities for a new Russian breakthrough. Okay, talk to me about that a little bit about the manpower issue and who's got the advantage there and how difficult this is for Ukraine. Sure. So right now the Russians, I mean, they've always maintained a material and manpower advantage of a significant magnitude over the Ukrainians. Russia's a substantially larger country. They have a much larger Soviet inheritance of different equipment. But we still think the Ukrainians

can fundamentally win. The Ukrainians have challenges that they have to deal with. They have much fewer munitions that they can have that they need to pull in. from the West to be able to overcome these numerically and numerically superior Russians. But the Ukrainians are taking necessary steps. They just passed a mobilization law, which lowers the mobilization age, which comes into effect this Saturday, which will help the Ukrainians recruit more military age fighting men to offset the shortage. And of course, with the U.S. Congress having passed the supplemental spending bill, U.S. aid and munitions are being rushed to the front line now. I will say it's going to be quite a while until the front line stabilizes because it's going to take a while for that aid to actually reach the front at scale.

George, I want to rewind just a bit there. Go back to something you said at the beginning of that last answer, which is that we still think, or there are those who think that the Ukrainians can still win. How do you define a win in this conflict? Sure. I define a win as the Russians actually leaving all of Ukraine and Ukraine's territorial integrity being restored back to its three 2014 borders. I don't think it's going to happen very fast. I think we're actually in the middle of what's going to be a long and protracted serious war.

The Russians are certainly setting conditions to wage a long-term war. And really, there's no way that we can have an off-ramp until Putin understands that the map can get worse for him. Otherwise, he's only got the incentive to keep conquering more. And Putin keeps articulating that he's not just interested in, Eastern Ukraine. He wants all of Ukraine. He just back in October said that Kiev is a Russian city, that Odessa is a Russian city. So, you know, Putin just sacked his longtime defense minister, Sergei Shwegu, of 12 years, and put in a brand new man, Mr. Beluuzov, who's got a very

strong reputation as a strong technocrat. He's an economist. And around that change, there have been several senior deputy defense ministers who have been arrested for raft and corruption and bribery. We're having now some really serious audits at the Russian Ministry of Defense to really fine-tune that organ to be able to get the material to the front lines at scale for a long-scale, protractive, long war. So when I say the Ukrainians can win, we're talking about a long-term strategic vision. When we look at the Western and also Asian, with the South Koreans and the Japanese coalition that's supporting Ukraine, our GDP trumps the Russians. It's like 30 to one. what the North Koreans and the Iranians bring to Russia, it doesn't really benefit a whole lot. And China's been reluctant to fully come on in and support Russia at the full scale.

And I think they'll likely remain to sit so on the sidelines. So really, so long as the West is committed to supporting the Ukrainian, so long as Ukrainian men have the willingness to fight for their country, there's a path for victory. So in talking about that and talking about the Russians leaving all of Ukrainian territory, you're also talking about Crimea. I mean, do you see that as a, I mean, the likelihood of this scenario where at the end of the day, you've got a complete victory, essentially what President Zelensky had talked about in the early days of this conflict, where they get everything back. You do actually see that as a potential scenario here for an ending. That is my definition for what Ukrainian victory would entail.

I do hope that the Ukrainians can't actually get to that with time and resourcing and skillful campaign design. I think if we're going to talk about the bare minimum requirements to get to a better end state, the Ukrainians at a minimum must liberate southern Ukraine, the territory that the Russians currently occupy in Zaporizia and Herzon Oblasts. Because if the Russians manage to maintain that, then they have a giant lodgment within continental Ukraine that they can use at a future time, even if there is an armistice, even if there is some sort of deal to just project to cross the main Nipro River and be able to seize much more of Ukraine. The reason why the front line in Ukraine looks like what it does now is because the Russians

weren't able to cross the river, but if they managed to keep what they have in the south, they'll be able to springboard right across that river whenever Putin decides to restart this operation in the future. Could be in a decade. I'd like to remind the listeners that, you know, speaking of Crimea, this war began back in 2014 when the Russians first got Crimea, and they used the peninsula as a lodgment to get what it has now. if they use what they have now for another lodgment a decade from now, they'll probably be able to get a lot more.

So at a bare minimum, the Russians have to be pushed back to Crimea. And by the point that we're talking about that sort of end state, really for the termination, it's just a couple more steps of extra planning to finalize the seizure of Crimea. Yeah. No, it's interesting that you bring up the 2014 annexation of Crimea. It created very few ripples in media. And certainly nobody was out in the streets of America waving Ukrainian. flags and saying we stand with Ukraine. But I think there are a lot of people that I talk to,

and this is the next question that I wanted to throw your way, who basically say, well, why do we care? If Putin just wants Ukraine, why does it matter to us? He'll stop when he gets Ukraine. That's what I hear constantly. And so why are we sending money? Why are we worried about this? And what's your answer? Yeah, well, that's the thing. Putin doesn't want to stop at Ukraine. Putin is demonstrated in a lot of his senior speeches to the Russian people. Really, the barrier to knowing is speaking Russian and listening to Putin's speeches. He's made it very clear that he has revanchous territorial objectives

to reclaim what he calls Russia's lost historical lands. He defines that as all the territories of the former Soviet Union and the territories of the former Russian Empire, which include the Baltic states, our NATO allies, which includes parts of Western Finland. Finland just surged to join NATO for a reason, or part of me, eastern Finland, and also parts of Eastern Poland. So, you know, Putin is setting these conditions so that once he completes the operation in Ukraine, he'll then be able to take his combat-hardened, combat experience Russian military

that knows what it takes to fight high-intensity modern war in a modern setting, which, by the way, no NATO military right now has no kind of experience in what to do. Putin at this point will have completely optimized the logistics of his economy and defense industrial base for full-scale mobilization. He will have optimized at this point the system per force generation to bring hundreds of thousands of forces into the Russian meat grinder and find a way to keep it sustained. Europe is not prepared for this. The United States is not prepared for being able to deter and if necessary defeat and attack on NATO's eastern flank, which really is our Achilles heel. And so if Putin is successful in Ukraine, it's not going to end there.

It's going to, you know, if the Russians get a permanent presence in Ukraine, NATO forces are going to be tied and bound to protect Romania and Poland. We're not going to have the same kind of flexibility to be able to surge to protect a larger, longer flank that we have in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I think it's much more likely that we'll be able to avoid a very dangerous scenario that would require American service members' lives at risk to defend our NATO allies if we decisively defeat the Russians now, stop the Russian advance in Ukraine, and prevent Putin from orienting his next sights on another target. Yeah, I think I understand exactly what you're saying, and I think not to oversimplify this,

but a lot of times the argument seems to be split between those who believe Putin will stop at, you know, the borders of Ukraine and those who are convinced he won't, and that he means what he says sometimes when he talks about reconstituting in some format, former Soviet Union. I mean, he's already making noise in Georgia. They're already engaged in a variety of disinformation campaigns and there to influence that government. Obviously, Moldova is an issue. So, yeah, I take your point. Now, they're talking about this latest offensive, and you brought it up in the northeast, but there are some estimates saying maybe 50 square miles of territory. The Russians have gobbled up in this early days of this new offensive up there. What's your take on

the success of that offensive, what's your take on the impact that the delay in delivering weapons had while Congress was discussing or arguing or complaining about what to do? Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven? People always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4.00. Quiet. No. Krisby, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. VALY3-26. VALY-3-26 participating stores only while supplies lastly app for full terms. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

Yeah, absolutely. So right now it's very early to tell about how. this offensive is going. The Russians have only committed no more than one-third of the prepared operational courts that they prepared for this offensive. They have in a ballpark of area of 50,000 troops in Belgarod, Kursk, and Bryansk Oblasts in that southwestern corner of Russia. And so far, we're seeing maybe a couple regiments have been deployed so far to Ukraine on the Harkey front. So, you know, the vast majority of the prepared force is still waiting in reserve to be committed. So we shall see. I'll say that over the last 40, eight hours the tempo of the operations have slowed. But I think the Russians are being successful

in pulling Ukrainian forces up and fixing them. We've seen elements of at least two different Ukrainian brigades, one that was previously operating in the east near Bakhmud redeployed to that area, and then elements of a different Ukrainian brigade, the 72nd Air Mobile Brigade, they deployed from the Southern Zabreja line as well. So, you know, this operation, if its intent is indeed to thin out the lines and pull more guys up to that open new front, it's having that intended effect and we'll see how the Russians might exploit that. With regards to the second part of your question about how the protracted aid debate affected this, you know, there's two big effects that it had. The first one is the battlefield effect. The Russian command is smart. They are learning

from their mistakes and they anticipated this window of opportunity, I think, in October 2023 when they realized that the resupply and the aid debate was going to be a protracted, you know, messy ordeal on Capitol Hill. And they started immediately setting conditions to understand that, okay, the Ukrainians are going to run critically low in material in spring 24. The aid is probably not going to be there in a timely fashion. And so what we can do, we being the Russians, is accelerate our offensive operations, put as much pressure on the Ukrainians as possible, because the Ukrainians simply don't have the artillery shells or the vehicles to be able to do anything about it. So this offensive that we're seeing now in Harkeep, it's not like it was a

surprise. I don't think Putin decided, you know, a month ago or two months ago, we're going to do this. We started seeing the evidence of the redeployment several months ago. I mean, we knew that the Russians were gathering a force and harky, even that they had this campaign design. And so it's something that the Russians coped up and exploited, and now that they're actually reaping the benefits of those seeds they sowed. The other point that I'll act with regards to the protracted aid debate is that it inadvertently had a negative effect on Ukraine's ability to address the manpower problem. Right now, Ukrainian morale is not where it used to be. The Ukrainians are not willing to, they're less willing to sign up to join the military than they were a year ago.

I would note that exactly this time a year ago, May 23, there was a huge volunteer wave because the Ukrainian morale was high. They came off of two very successful counter-offensive operations in 2022. The operation that liberated Herzon, the operation that liberated Harcath. And they were enthusiastic about all this, you know, this wave of steel that was coming from the United States and Europe, and they were really optimistic about what they could achieve with their 23 operation. Now, after the 23 operation failed, and then there was this, you know, really, you know, yucky partisan protracted debate on Capitol Hill about the aid. It made the Ukrainians feel like they're abandoned, and it really had a negative effect on morale.

And morale, it's not just about vibes. It is a key constituent combat power component. Your ability to have strong morale actually is a key derivative that supports whether or not your population can support more force generation. And, of course, the morale is affected by the arms. And so if we really want to get serious about helping the Ukraine, both in terms of the firepower and the force generation, we're going to be. would have been a lot better if we were more timely with the A passing.

Okay. Now, you look at some of these issues, right? You look at the willingness of the West to stay in this for the long haul. If we're going for that win that you described, that means reclaiming all the territory, including Crimea. That's a key component, obviously. You've got to maintain that support level. And we've already seen how it can be somewhat fragile, right, here in the U.S. anyway. We all seem to have attention deficit this. order. And you look at the manpower issue, you look at the morale issue for Ukraine. If it's not, you know, I realize this is a tough question to field, but if it's not that complete win, right, what do you consider to be the most likely scenario outside of that for ending this

conflict? Yeah. Well, most likely or what I would hope would happen short of that. Let's go with what you assess is the most likely. I want to take out. I want to take out. I mean, because we all admire and support the courageousness of the, you know, the Ukrainian people and what they're doing and the understanding that they're fighting a communist dictator who's looking to expand his turf beyond Ukraine. But I want to take all that out and say based on, you're completely immersed in this, right? This is what you do. So, you know, based on your assessment and everything you've seen so far, emotion away from it,

what do you think is the most likely ending or scenario? Yeah, absolutely. Oh man, I think what's most likely is Europe is going to step up. They're setting all the conditions to start being serious about their defense. The Europeans have taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees. Ryan Mattel, the Germans, you know, arms company. They're going game busters and opening up and breaking ground on a whole bunch of new factories, gun factory in Romania, brand new 155 millimeter shell artillery grounds factories in Ukraine.

The Europeans are getting serious about defense. but we break around a new factory doesn't reach output material capacity output for at least two to three years. I think as long as the United States plays a strategic bridging role for the next two to three years until the European industrial base actually starts to be able to take some of the load off of the U.S. The Ukrainians will be able to stay in the fight. I don't think that the Ukrainians are going to allow there to be any major strategic holes that the Russians will punch in their lines. and I think the Ukrainians have a decent shot of being able of actually conducting a series of operations to improve the map for them.

I think what we'll probably see is if we have skillful design and we make the right decisions to allow the Ukrainians to fight back, I hope at a bare minimum the Ukrainians will be able to reconquer and liberate the rest of the South, Zaporizia and Hearson, push the Russians at a minimum back to the sea, get them back into Crimea. that way the Ukrainians, if they have to then at that point really stop and stop for some sort of negotiations, they can at least have that strategic buffer of 60 kilometers for them to fall back to the river to defend the river, the Neapro River. The key thing for the Ukrainians is they have to be able to keep their sea lines communication open so that they can keep doing trade with the rest of the world to be an economically financially stable state

and not be a ward of the international community. And to do that, they need to defend the river. But to defend the river, they can't sit on it like they do now. They actually have to have some fallback space. So I really hope they'll push hard and get the Russians back into Crimea. And last question, George. Again, I know this is a bit speculative. In your assessment, what would push Putin into deploying tactical and nuclear weapons on the battlefield?

You know, we can never completely outreel the risk of Putin deciding to deploy tactical. nuclear weapons, but I actually think that the risk is extremely, extremely low. We've actually put a lot of thought into this because there's a place and in a time in Russian military doctrine to do that. And crudely speaking, the two conditions when the Russians would do that just don't materialize and they don't actually fix Putin's problems. The first case is the Ukrainians present to Russia a really juicy target where they can destroy a tremendous amount of manpower material with one decisive blow.

and it's a real win. But the Ukrainians, because they're not a massive military, because they're distributed across the 600-mile-long front line, they don't really present that juicy target for the tactical nuke. The second case, which has to do with how you do maneuver warfare in Russian doctrine, is when you have the lines, you drop the nuke to create a hole, and then you take your prepared maneuver force to then get up and suit up in their seaburn suits and in their vehicles which are rated to be protected against the contaminated battlefield,

and then you maneuver to exploit the hole in the line, get into the adversary's rear, and that's how you restore maneuver to your battlefield. The problem, Mike, for the second case, is that, you know, even if the Russians drop the nuke, their infantry are in no kind of condition to actually do the exploitation phase, the entire point of it. We see Russians on the battlefield now running around in ATVs and golf carts and old BTRs and armor personnel carriers pulled from mothballs from the 60s and 70s that were, you know, rapidly refurbished to go in. The current volunteer army that the Russians have, they've not had the kind of training necessary to be able to, you know, have the high level of command and control cohesion to do the exploitation through, you know, through the contaminated battlefield.

And it's an extremely difficult maneuver warfare. And, you know, we see most Russian attacks occurring in a much lower level at the company, Blatoon level. you know, cannot rule it. Putin could always decide to do that, but there's a specific tactical objective associated with the use of bomb, and the Russians actually can't follow through in either case with how you try to exploit it. And then, of course, it opens up the retaliation that the United States and the rest of NATO have always sort of obliquely warned at us. If you do that, there's going to be really bad consequences. And I do believe that those threats are real. So I believe at the end of the day that mutually sure destruction logic that kept us safe during the Cold War, I think that's still valid.

I think Putin is he doesn't want to commit a form of elaborate suicide and he knows that you drop the bomb, but it won't actually achieve his military objectives. Okay, well, if you can have an upbeat view on the use of nuclear weapons, I think that would be it, right, that we're still in that position. And Emmanuel Macron has talked about possibly utilizing France's nuclear capabilities in support of the Ukrainian effort, which is interesting. He's obviously been taking Roids or something because he seems very tough lately. And that's a whole other subject for a different time to talk about how the EU and NATO are in support of all this. But I got to tell you, George, I really appreciate your time.

George Barrows Institute for the Study of War. and I'll let you know this. You're the very first guest here on the Situation Report for the PDB. So no matter what else you do in your lifetime, this is what's going to define you. We'll send you a plaque and an award. There'll be a little ceremony. It'll be very exciting.

But I wanted to thank you very much for joining us today. Well, thanks so much for having Mike. It's a purpose to be your first guest and hope to come back sometime soon. Absolutely. You can count on that. Thank you. All right. Well, a major split, as it turns out, is developing between,

Washington and Jerusalem over the ongoing offensive in the city of Rafa. When we come back, I'll be joined by David Adesnik from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and we'll be talking more about that. 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. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report.

I want to now shift our focus to the Middle East and take a look at the latest on U.S. Israeli relations and the debates heating up Israeli politics. Joining me now is David Adesnik. He's the senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. David, thank you very much for joining us here on the PDB Situation Report. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. Now, there's so much to talk about here. I mean, obviously this has been a complicated, complex, layered problem.

since the beginning of time. But if I could get your assessment to begin with, of the current state of U.S.-Israeli relations? Well, the thing that probably confuses me the most is that if the U.S. is fully committed to defeating Hamas, which it says it is, why does it seem to be directing most of its verbal fire at the Israelis? There seems to be this dispute over how much or what to do in Rafa,

of what's appropriate for the day after the war. And just going with a basic principle that you have to put pressure on your enemy if you want them to do anything, I guess when I listen to senior administration officials, I'm not clear what pressure they're putting on Hamas. And I know this is speculation, but why do you think that is?

Well, I think it's a mix of two things. I mean, there's been a lot of coverage of the electoral pressure that the apparent calculation of the administration is that there's enough Arab-American votes and some critical swing states like Michigan to hurt them. I'm not a mind, I'm not a partisan politics expert, so it's hard for me to speak to the weight of that. What I see on the other end is the administration really seems to put a lot of faith into the numbers coming out of Hamas-controlled entities in Gaza,

alleging that roughly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in this war. If you looked at the recent report, the State Department did, on whether Israel is using American weapons responsibly. It actually says in there, we know these are coming from Hamas-controlled sources, but because international organizations, meaning the UN and certain NGOs, believe they're credible, we're also going to treat them as credible. And in my view, that's a major mistake. Yeah, I mean, I have seen recent UN numbers cutting in half the number of fatalities

amongst women and children. That received no coverage whatsoever, basically. They just released this and said, well, sorry, we've got to revise our numbers downwards by half, and yet nobody really picked up on it because it doesn't seem to fit in with this narrative.

I know I'm going to be moving around the place here a little bit, so please keep, you know, understand that there's so many different areas here that I want to talk to you about. But when we're talking about the numbers, the fatalities, the numbers, what we've heard a lot from international community and certainly here in the U.S.,

even during the campus protests, is the term genocide thrown out and used in terms of, you know, what Israel is doing in Gaza. Talk to me about that, how you perceive that terminology, what you think is right or wrong about the use of genocide in this case. Yeah. Well, I guess just to begin, I'd say it's outrageous from the outset, whether you've studied the Holocaust that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews or genocide. in Rwanda in the 1990s. I mean, those were cases where there, you could see the motivation was simply to kill as many people as possible. They killed hundreds of thousands or six million. And we see this in other cases of genocide, Stalin starving 10 million Ukrainians. And it's just,

if you look, say, at the U.N. the U.S. report, I'm sorry, on Israel's use of weapons, right? It talks about and affirms things we knew about already, but it's a good reminder. Israel has a complicated process in place for lawyers to actually be part of the targeting process to tell their troops what can and can't be hit. We've seen evidence of where bombs have fallen. It's actually published by critics who say too many bombs are falling near hospitals. And as I made the point, well, what you've seen is they're avoiding hitting the actual hospitals, in contrast to say Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who just bombs the hospitals directly

or what Putin's doing in Ukraine. So just the idea that there is a plan to wipe out the Palestinian people is it's insulting to the intelligence and it should simply be dismissed. Yeah, I mean, typically, I think in the past anyway, you know, genocide is referred to a group, their efforts to erase, remove another group, right? And you've got a case of the IDF here battling to destroy Hamas, right, a terrorist entity, not not the Palestinian. people. But that doesn't matter because it's obviously it doesn't. A supposed genocide begin with the alleged victims murdering 1,200 of the oppressor, right? It's not as if Israel said, okay, today we're going to start a war to go and kill Palestinians. The ceasefire that everyone seems to be demanding was in place on October 6th, and then Hamas decided

to murder people. Are you surprised at the speed with which the narrative turned to Israel and war crimes? or genocide after the 7 October attacks? Maybe my expectations are too low, but the fact that it even took, you know, two months or so is sort of shocking. I mean, there was different parts of the sort of the opinion machine moving at different speeds, right?

So President Biden came out in full solidarity and stuck that way for a few months. Some of the self-appointed human rights organizations, which do great work in other countries, but treat Israel as a punching bag, you know, by week two, they were already going against it. And the media probably took a little longer. But, you know, it's hard to know what the benchmark should be. If 1,200 people are murdered when you otherwise have a ceasefire in place, you'd hope there'd be extra sympathy,

and maybe we saw some signs of that. When we look at what the objective was, immediately after the attacks, Netanyahu and what would become its war cabinet, they talked about the destruction of Hamas. what does that mean to you when you hear that? And I'm excited. I think some people listen to that and think, okay, there are no more Hamas fighters. They're done. Other people hear that and think, okay, maybe they're talking about the ability of

Hamas to govern. What do you see as a pragmatic approach to this? Well, I think they have to effectively be shut out of the Gaza Strip. I mean, if there's a Hamas in exile, I mean, Hamas will always have a place in the various Iranian and Canada. around the region, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, etc. The question is, are they going to be in position in the Gaza Strip or potentially the West Bank, less likely, but in Gaza to mount the same kind of attack they did on October 7, right? They haven't been ashamed to say in interviews, there's Hamas senior leaders. We want to do this again and again and again until we destroy the state of Israel, right? They don't have a compunction. They don't have shame in that regard. So what has to be done is reverse the Israeli policy of tolerating. them, of attempting to coexist with them in the hope that just their ambitions will moderate over time, regardless of what they say. That was tried now for effectively 15 years and failed.

And the only reason it might be achievable is really if you think about how limited Gaza is as a space on most sides surrounded by Israel, by water, or an eight-mile Egyptian border, right? There's a tremendous challenge, like with U.S. operations in Iraq. I spent four months, you know, with the troops there supporting their efforts around 50. 15 years ago. And you could see it was almost impossible to stop things coming across hundreds and hundreds of miles of the border with between Iraq and Iran or Iraq and Syria, right? Gaza's a different kind of problem. And that's why it's not unreasonable to speak of shutting Hamas out of there. Yeah, we haven't seen, I mean, we've, we obviously, we've seen a lot of urban combat over the past

two decades when you talk about Iraq and Afghanistan. But not to this level of complexity that the IDF is facing in their move into a place like Rafa, their work up north. Now, I guess going back to the point about, you know, can you degrade, destroy Hamas sufficiently so that they no longer have the ability to govern or be an influence of any sort, we're already starting to see some elements of Hamas reconstituting up north where the IDF had previously cleared those areas. How do you see this? And again, I realize this is a big playing field here when I ask a question like this. But how do you see this playing out over the course of the next couple of months?

Well, a lot of it is, I think, to be up to Israel to commit the necessary resources. I mean, this was sort of reminding me of the drama I saw, you know, as an analyst during the Iraq war. I mean, again, in research institutes other than the little time I spent downrange. But America was always hesitating to put in enough troops with the right strategy to turn the tide. And eventually in around 2006 and 2007, we finally did it. I think Israel is under a lot of the same pressure. You know, people are highly motivated and convinced of the justice of the cause, which is different from the U.S. war in Iraq.

But the fact is the economy is very dependent on having enough workers, and it's hard to take tens of thousands of people out of the workforce in a population of, you know, 10 million in Israel. So I think there is still an effort to try to hope that simply targeting the Hamas forces without really, you know, as they say, you want to clear and then hold and then build. There's a clearing going on, and it's not clear about the holding part. So Israel may have to do more, but of course we also need the sort of diplomatic pressure that would come from the U.S. lining up clearly with Israel.

So Hamas doesn't think that its best option is to prolong the war as much as possible until Israel has to stop fighting. Do you think that's where this is going? Do you feel as if what's perceived as a rift between the Biden administration and the Israeli government right now, is Hamas reading that? And more to the point, I suppose, is the Iranian regime, their sponsors, are they reading this as they've got the upper hand now and they just have to buy their time and eventually they will be able to reconstitute within Gaza?

Yeah, your point around Iran is very salient. It's essential to remember Iran trained, equipped and funded Hamas. This is not a war of Israelis and Palestinians. This is one front in Israel's regional war. against Iran, which is also on the northern front. They're also trying to subvert Jordan. They're in Syria. They're even using the Houthis to attack the Red Sea, a sort of innovative approach. But, you know, if the question comes down to, what is the prospect of actually doing this and winning in the end? I think Hamas probably does see that it really has an option there, right?

If you look at its demands and negotiations, right? When they talk about it, it's we want Israel completely out of Gaza, we want not a ceasefire that's permanent, effectively an end. And of course, our condition is that we continue to exist in Gaza and have a role. In other words, effectively, they want to go back to October 6th, which is victory for them, you know, aside from the damage they've incurred to their forces. But, you know, for them, in some ways, it is the ultimate victory to be martyred for the cause. Losing troops doesn't matter. If they don't face a strategic defeat, it's a victory in many respects. And I think they'd see a prospect of that at the moment. What do you make of the disputes that are kind of bubbling away a little bit under the surface?

A couple of them have surfaced, actually, in recent days, within the Israeli War Cabinet. Well, I think one of the issues there is the difficulty of both handling their own domestic coalition, keeping enough of their members of the Knesset or Israeli parliament on board so the government stays where it is. You don't want to have a governing crisis in the middle of a war. And at the same time, I think the defense minister, Mr. Gallant and the sort of opposition members of the unity government like Gantz, they appreciate the importance of doing the utmost to preserve the U.S. relationship at the same time. So, you know, all the headlines recently have been that there's a divide, that Netanyahu won't

talk about the day after, whereas Galant and Gans are more willing to say it's time to start developing a plan. I see a fair amount of correctness in Netanyahu's point that it's exceptionally difficult, if not impossible to talk plausibly about the day after while Hamas still has control of a part of Gaza and a prospect of victory. I mean, who rationally is going to commit to being part of a new order in Gaza if they don't know that Hamas is gone? It's just putting your own neck on the chopping block. There's certainly a virtue of planning. I think we have seen from American operations in the past. If you don't do sufficient planning, you're going to have a problem. But at some level, it seems like it's an argument

that's more for show than anything else in some ways. Showing America that there is disagreement in the Israeli cabinet makes it seem like they have a toehold and it can push their agenda and they're going to stay engaged rather than becoming, you know, sort of more truculent. Yeah. To your point, it does seem like it's a bit of a bit of a show on the U.S. side as well, where Secretary Blinken and another is talking about the day after the conflict. it almost seems as if they're trying to put up a front saying to their voters, right, to their base within the Democrat Party, you know, look at us. We're doing everything possible to stop this. I mean, essentially playing both sides here, right? Also talking about their ironclad supposed

support for Israel while, you know, withholding weapons, pressuring them to find a way to get a permanent ceasefire. Going back to Secretary Blinken, if I could, he's been pushing for some time now, this idea that the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, would be the ideal solution for future governance. What do you think about that? It's quite unrealistic. I would say that, right, it would be one thing if the U.S. was talking about the importance of a plan for the day after, if there was some reasonable plan that the U.S. was putting on the table or that anyone could put on the table. But if you look at the basic options that are there, each one has massive drawbacks. So even when they talk about the Palestinian

authority under Abbas, who's in his late 80s, sick and unpopular as well as corrupt. You know, the question is, what is their capacity to even come in? America talks about a revitalized or a reinvigorated Palestinian authority. I mean, that's a bit like, you know, talking about a reanimated skeleton, that it doesn't have any muscles, it doesn't have any skin, and you're trying to get it, put it in place to do a job. It can't even do in the area. It does control, right?

The West Bank is hardly a model. It's a place where the Palestinian Authority has lost control. and terror groups, including Hamas, were beginning to flourish quite a bit. So then look at the other option. Do you want a permanent Israeli military occupation? Even Israel doesn't want that. And sort of the third pole or the third leg of the stool, people say, well, what about maybe a new set of locals, Palestinians backed by the international community or, you know,

Arab Gulf states? Well, why would they want to get themselves into that kind of trouble if they didn't have to? I mean, they have some interest in stability. But, again, diplomatically, they'd just be putting their necks on the chopping block. if not putting their troops lives on the line. David, if I could. Last question. Sure.

Your best assessment for where this conflict stands, let's say, one month from now. Well, I think we are going to move toward an Israeli operation in Rafah. There's a compelling logic to it, which is you want to go after the last sort of preserved significant formations of Hamas forces. You know, they've been sort of creeping toward that confrontation. Perhaps they can iron out the differences with the United States that it, you know, eventually if there can be an agreement that Hamas is basically just trying to delay in itself is resisting a ceasefire, America will finally say, all right, you can't use these particular bombs, you can't use that particular resource.

You have to agree to these conditions on aid, but we are finally going to let you go after the last Hamas holdouts. Now, I'm not saying that's a certainty by any means, But talking to Israelis, whether they're more inclined to support Netanyahu or more inclined to support the opposition components within the unity government, they all tend to agree. You have to hit the last major formations and you have to secure the Egyptian border with Gaza where, you know, for a decade and a half, there's been a growing smuggling problem. The Egyptians are partially complicit, according to what we know. That's the lifeline in terms of money, in terms of weapons. If you can really seal that off, then you can play the game for time and start to choke. choke off everything Hamas needs to thrive.

Okay, David, I lied one last question. Okay, I know I said the previous was the last, but here you go. If you had a minute to sit with President Biden and give him your best advice on what to do, how to handle this issue, what would you tell him? Well, I think I would say, Mr. President, I'm not the guy to be giving you the political advice on how to get reelected. But what I can tell you is if you really believe these numbers being put out by Hamas control, authorities, check again. You just saw the UN lower the estimate by almost half of the number

of women and children who have been killed. If that number was your evidence for why you're putting pressure on Israel instead of directing every bit of pressure you can against Hamas, think again. Even if you believe that the ministry, the Hamas health ministry in Gaza does a good job of some things, they have all sorts of unidentified, 10,000 unidentified victims. They say are who's, you know, the fact that they died is based on, quote, reliable media sources. You've got to have your people check. Please have this, you know, whether it's the CIA, the defense intelligence agency, go in, don't just believe the UN has compromised, its own facilities had Hamas server farm and command center under it in Gaza.

Get Americans on this and listen to their answers. Well, thank you very much. I think it's excellent advice. David, a dozenic Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Listen, I don't think this problem is going to be solved anytime soon, so I suspect that we will be telephoning you again. But thank you for sharing your expertise. I think I can handle that. I'll just need no extra surprise questions at the end. You have to tell me the number and stick to it.

Excellent. I promise the next time around. Thank you, David. No problem. Thank you. All right. After the break, I want to bring you a story about the seedy financial underbelly, that's scintillating of the crisis at the southern border. Stay with us. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Now, the last thing I wanted to cover today is the financial underbelly of the southern border crisis.

And when was the last time you heard anybody say financial underbelly? While the headlines often spot like drug cartels and their illicit billions, a new investigation by Madeline Rowley for the free press shines a light on a different kind of profit-making, this time involving non-profits and government contracts in the midst of an ongoing migrant surge. Last year, a record 130,000 unaccompanied kids crossed into the U.S., sparking not just a crisis, but a cash flow for some pretty savvy nonprofits.

These groups hired to settle these young migrants have seen their bank balances balloon. That's not easy to say. Their bank balances balloon thanks to fat government contracts. Now, we're talking about three big players here. Global Refuge, Southwest Key programs, and Endeavors Inc. Their revenue, get this, jumped from $597 million in 2019 to a whopping $2 billion, that's with a B, by 2022. And guess what?

Well, this will surprise you. Their CEOs are now raking in the big bucks, with Southwest Key's head pulling in over $1 million annually. It's a nonprofit. And here's where it gets, well, a little bit bizarre. Endeavor's Inc. spends some of that taxpayer cash on things like pet therapy, gardening sessions, and music jams. They even paid a music therapist half a million dollars in 2021. A music therapist, half a million dollars in 2021.

Now, despite past dramas with misused funds and sketchy behavior, Southwest Key programs hasn't missed a beat, bagging even bigger contracts that nearly doubled to $790 million last year. Because, you know, it's government contracts and there's no reason why sketchy behavior should stop you. The math here doesn't add up, all right? Take global refuge. In 2019, they spent $30 million.

Follow me on this. They spent $30 million to house over 2,500 kids. Fast forward to 2022, and they're spending $82.5 million for just $1,443. kids. So more cash for way fewer kids. Hmm, that's that's right sizing your bottom line. All this cash flows from the federal government's Office of Refugee Resettlement, also known as ORR. Their budget, well, it's ballooned from $1.8 billion in 2018 to a giant $6.3 billion in 2023. And next year, well, they're looking to spend even more around $7.3 billion, mostly funneled to these NGOs.

Now, in addition to these massive budgets and lack of oversight, there's a real problem with how things are being run. Lacks safety checks have let adults pose as kids and landed some children with dodgy sponsors. Critics are worried, of course, that loosening the rules further could make things worse, risking kids' safety and wasting even more money. So as we watch these nonprofits and the government handle this huge challenge, one big question hangs in the air. Will these revelations somehow push for tighter controls and smarter spending? No, of course not. It's Washington, D.C. That's all the time we have for the inaugural edition

of the PDB Situation Report. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And to listen to the podcast of this show ad-free, become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting pdb premium.com. I'm Mike Baker. Until next time, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile Bill. Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news. Bring your AT&T or T Mobile Bill to Verizon

and we'll give you a better deal. So get away from that unfortunate phone bill and get to Verizon. Run, ride, canoe. Whatever it takes, we'll be here. Bring your AT&T or T Mobile Bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal

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