War in Europe: Putin Launches Full Scale Invasion of Ukraine

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Visit Samsung.com to learn more about Galaxy Z Fold 4. Live from the Fox News Radio Studios in New York City, fresh off the set of Fox and Friends, it's America's receptive voice. Brian Kill Me. Yeah. President Utinov will separate.

This morning, Putin announced a special military operation in the Donbass. Russia has carried out strikes on our military infrastructure and our border guards. Explosions were heard in many cities of Ukraine. We imposed martial law throughout Ukraine. Let's find out what's happening across the world that woke up to just some crazy news this morning.

Let's go to Moscow, shall we, with Amy Kellogg, Fox News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent. And just very quickly, I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead. I forgot to tell you that Brian is out today. Amy, thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. And morning here, I guess it's evening there, correct?

Well, it's afternoon. It's about five o'clock, Mary. All right.

So what is the feel? I want to find out what do the Russians say about this? Like the average Russian, when they find out that their country has now invaded Ukraine, what is the feeling there?

Well, it's hard to generalize, but there are a lot of people who are completely shocked. completely shocked, completely ashamed. And absolutely feeling sick about this. This is not something that. They had hoped for.

This is not something If you're an average Russian, does going to war with Ukraine really make your day? Uh it's just You know, there's so many things people struggle with now. coming out of this pandemic and the economy here has been has been struggling, but it's not bad. This is a Yeah. This is a rich country in terms of natural resources.

So though you can pick apart how it's been managed, it's not a country that is on its knees by any stretch of the imagination. this war, a lot of people worry. And you know, my My sampling of people I've spoken to is obviously not scientific, but a lot of concern that this is going to take them back decades, going to take them back to the USSR. They don't know whether they're going to be able to use their credit cards, whether they're going to be able to travel. And then of course it's absolutely heartbreaking to to see your Slavic sisters and brothers.

Under bombardment. by your own government.

Now that's that's the group of people I've spoken to who, um Who are really upset about this, but there are people who think that it's about time Putin stuck it to the West. And a lot of this, Mary, is about sticking it. To the West and settling accounts in Putin's mind. Because his opening salvo, really, when he announced that this, he doesn't call it a war, he calls it a military operation. It was really that We've tried and they've blackmailed us and treated us so badly.

We've tried to find our place in the world. They've disrespected us and now we're going to throw things turn things on their head and set up a new world order. And that Is very um, that's a very strong message, and there are some people who think, yeah, it's about time we gave back to the west, you know, we hit them back.

So two different camps, um, but it but I don't think anyone is Is probably feeling terrific today. No, I can't imagine they are. And there were a lot of things that you said there. One of the questions I have is: how close are the people of Russia to the people of Ukraine? I would assume that there were a lot of people who have relatives in Ukraine.

So for them, they're bombing their families. How close are they? Absolutely. And this is splitting families. Um Yeah, I it's really complicated with history because when the Soviet Union Union existed, if you were Ukrainian by nationality, that was written in your passport.

Um and if you were Russian by nationality, it was written in your passport. But then people intermarried. And there were Ukrainian nationals living in Russia and Russian nationals living in Ukraine.

So it's all kind of blended, and it's not. if you were Ukrainian and you married a Russian, it's not like if you are, let's say, you're Palestinian and you're real marrying an Israeli. You know, it wasn't a something that could easily provoke. Grandparents or parents. It it it was something that was very natural.

And people probably in the Soviet days didn't even bat an eye over it. Maybe subsequently, when they were two different countries, it could be a you know, perhaps a little There's a divergence a bit in cultures and languages. Ukrainian is spoken in Ukraine, and Russian is spoken here, though they're close languages. Yeah, I mean I don't I don't there's no real and historical animosity between these two peoples. That's the thing.

They're not enemy nations. And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said that last night. We're two different peoples, we're not enemies.

Now, given that Uh how uh w why would Putin do this given the fact that the the two nations are so close, the peoples are so close? Um I can't imagine that he now wants to you know bring the Ukraine as a whole, maybe all of it, I don't know how much back into Russia and he's gonna have people who are Russian citizens and people that are Ukrainian citizens who hate what happened, hate him, and are gonna be working against him behind his back. Why would he even want that now? I mean, he's he's what, seventy-five years old? I don't understand why he would want that.

He's a few years younger, but yeah, he's not a spring chicken. And, um,. I think well, I think the bottom line is, Mary, that The arguments don't all make sense, do they? And nothing really makes sense right now. I've been here for a little while, and I've been trying to interview people with a Russian perspective who I think are somewhat informed.

about the government. I I felt that was useful. I didn't want to give too much air time to people who were screwed. But I didn't want to simply talk to people who were anti- because I felt like those who were sort of in the middle and and who studied Putin or knew the power circles might give the best Information for our reporting. And they all said to me, There's no way he would invade Ukraine.

He's keeping the tanks close by to turn up the heat to get what he wants out of NATO, but it would be absolutely counter to all of his. uh these national security needs and and uh his popularity to to wage war against Friendly people and have body bags start coming back to Russia.

So They and today I said, well, were these people lying to me? And someone said, you know what? No, they were trying to rationalize themselves. And there was nothing to rationalize here. This was not a rational situation.

So that explains the disconnect. And I think you can carry that on to no, we're not going to occupy Ukraine.

Well I they're there. This is only about the Don Bass. We'll know they're in Kiev. They're going to get rid of Nazis.

Well I don't know where the na where the Nazis in the genocide you know, you just can go on and on with the arguments that don't really make sense. No, and there were comments about his speech, not last night, the one, I guess it was Tuesday, where he went on about the history of Russia and the Ukraine. And people were calling it, it seemed like he was a little off, if you will. And they noted that he was wearing, when he gave his speech last night, he was wearing the same tie shirt and jacket that he had on when he talked about the history of Ukraine and justifying why it should be part of Russia.

So the theory being that he already knew he was going to do this, and both of those speeches were recorded on the same night. Are there questions about his mental stability? Because that's what I've seen. I've seen questions about it. Is that what's happening on the streets of Russia?

All over the place. All over the place. But you know, there were questions about President Trump. Yeah, I mean, the thing is that I I I know that It's a question that you want to ask because this is all philological. People are asking it, but I don't know what to do with it, right?

Because as long as he's in power and surrounded by yes men, Um Yeah. People are asking those questions. It doesn't make sense. And I didn't mean to lump him with Trump, but I'm just saying you remember well that when someone starts acting in a way that Is that it? Intimidates or displeases a group of people, they will go there, right?

They will start questioning. And, um, And so that's happening here. It's a different story, but all the same. I don't know what that Does for us because it's not like someone's going to trot him off to a psychologist to get him checked for fitness for the job, right? Right, of course.

You had mentioned USSR. That is one of the theories is that he's trying to build what he grew up under. He grew up under the USSR, and that he's trying to bring these states back in, the ones that broke off when we broke it up. And he's trying to bring all of that back. Could that be the rationale behind this?

He's getting older. He's not going to have a lot of chance to do this.

So he's striking now. Oh, sorry, Mary, I'm getting. I'm hitting someone's Telegram channel in my ear. Oh. Yeah.

hackers, you know, I think I just dreamed on um a telegram channel on my phone. Um but I'll Yeah, basically, I'm kind of getting earpieces that that doesn't happen again. I think that the USSR dream is something that a lot of people talked about. Remember, they were saying, well, he thinks the greatest. political tragedy or geopolitical tragedy.

was the um fall of the USSR. And um and then that was just nice. People said, Oh, no, that's ridiculous. Putin is you know, Putin is a modern enough guy, he understands that that's The cast is a cast. But now it's looking like in fact you're right.

That may be it. I don't And I I don't necessarily see him clawing back places like Tajikistan, which are culturally very different. Um But Ukraine certainly Is a brother nation, and they were part of the same empire for a long time.

So yeah, time running out, legacy, but it's still just doesn't make logical sense. Also in the argument. For better security and better protection from NATO, because if you occupy Ukraine, you're still going to be bordering NATO, right? It's not going to remove. But it's not going to be a no man I don't think it's going to be a no man's land.

And um Yeah, it remains to be seen, Mary, how how Ukraine fights back. It's um certainly an unbalanced fight, but But they're fears. And at this point, they're very nationalistic, and it's one way or another, it's not going to be easy. No, it's not. Amy Kellogg, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

You can find her on Twitter at Amy Kellogg Fox.

So, thank you so much. I really appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you, Mary. 866. 4087669.

If you want to jump in here, coming up in about 15 minutes or so, Jay Newman will be joining us. He is a banker. He's a hedge fund portfolio manager. We're going to talk about dark money and global politics. He has a new book out about that.

And he has a lot to say about why sanctions probably aren't going to work. with Putin, and maybe we're just putting these sanctions on and hurting ourselves more than we're actually going to hurt Putin.

So Jay Newman will be coming up. But I also want to get your input. 866-408-7669. I am Mary Walter, in for Brian Kilmead. Newsmakers and newsbreakers.

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This is the Brian Kill Me Show. There have been at least 20 explosions here in the capital in Kiev. We suspect that it's mainly been military targets, military intelligence, command and control centers. The Russians have said they are using precision-guided weapons. We have not heard any reports of mass casualties here in the capital.

But certainly the explosions are enough to scare the heck out of people. People are throwing what they can in their car and getting out. And the government even just a couple of days ago was saying there will be no wider war. That changed dramatically about an hour before dawn today. That's when the first explosions hit in a series here of four or five.

That was Steve Harrigan in Kyiv, in Ukraine, and I'm with him. I was surprised. I was under the impression that they weren't going to hit Kyiv. They were just going to go for the eastern part of Ukraine, that they were going to bring those two states back into Russia. There was a lot of Russians living in those areas who feel that they should be Russian, that they should be back with mainly, you know, with Russia.

And that's where I thought it was going to be.

So when I woke up and heard that they were bombing Kyiv, that you were seeing the bombs hitting there, and you're looking at the fires and everything, I thought, holy Christmas, I did not know. I wasn't expecting that. I was saying, oh, it's 500 miles from Russia. It's inside the country. That's not going to happen.

Well, apparently that is happening. Let's get your take on this. A Fernando in Covina, California. Fernando, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi.

Hi, how's it going? I'm doing good.

So what what do you make of all this?

Well The the way to think Putin, in my opinion, first of all, is to become Is to think of him as far as his economy is concerned. If he can't afford to fight a war, then obviously he can't fight it. And the way to sink Putin in that case is the oil exportation business that we ourselves as the United States is providing. We need to become independently or independent, I should say, as far as oil is concerned, just like we were before. open up the Keystone pipeline, matter of fact, open up other pipelines as well and become independent from other countries, not just the Russians, but as well as the Middle Eastern countries.

It takes away his foothold on us From our dependency for other countries, so we can tell him: you know what, we don't care if you import or export oil or not. We've got our own. And what's more is we're going to kill your your import export of the oil business, which is what everybody knows that's what putin's bread and butter is. Take it away from them. And that way he can't afford to to actually fight a war.

that would be great, but it appears that the administration is so beholden to the far left of his party for whatever reason. We just found out yesterday that they're delaying decisions on new oil and gas drilling on federal land. And they are so they're halting new oil and gas leases and some existing ones that are, I guess, up for renewal. And oil is nearing $100 a barrel.

So he's going in the opposite direction.

So, I just think that he's so beholden for whatever reason to the far left in this country, whoever's running the show in Washington, because I don't know if it's, I have my suspicions that it's not Joe Biden. They're having none of it. And I wonder if it's just because they are so far removed. Fernando, thank you so much for joining us. I wonder if it's just so far removed from our lives.

They don't live the life that the rest of us do. They're not out there. They're not paying for their gas to fly back home and everything else. The American taxpayers are.

So for them, I just don't think it's a big deal yet. And maybe that's something that will change when they start to get voted out of office in the midterms. In the meantime, we're going to be paying $5 a gallon for gas. But they like that because they want us out of our electric vehicles, I mean, out of our gas guzzlers, as they call them, into electric vehicles. But here's the thing: how do you think you generate electricity?

Nobody goes past that. Apparently, it magically comes out of the wall, and there are unicorns behind the wall that magically create electricity. In my state of New Jersey, since like eighty per cent of the electricity in this state is generated by natural gas.

So you're you it it it just it doesn't make any sense to me. Let's just quickly go to Brian in Illinois. Brian, we have one minute here. You're on the Brian Killmeat Show. Hi.

Hi. Well, your first Caller stepped on my point, but it's basically a de facto. We are funding. Putin's war by the fact that he's getting an extra forty, fifty dollars a barrel of oil that he's selling. That's a big boon.

And All the sanctions aren't going to help unless we're sanctioning the sales of oil. Wait. Right. And so far, I mean, but don't worry. Joe Biden's going to talk to the nation sometime this afternoon.

They said early afternoon, but who knows? And he's going to tell us what he's going to do. But I've heard a lot of people say, and we'll find out more as the show goes on here. We have a guest coming up in just a couple minutes who's going to talk about some of this. That, you know, these sanctions should have been put in place.

Earlier. We shouldn't have waited this long. Coming up, Jay Newman to talk about Russia sanctions and why Putin may be sanction proof on the Brian Kilmead show. Precise, personal, powerful. Is America's weather team in the palm of your hands?

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The Will Kane Podcast. Subscribe and listen now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com. A radio show like no other. It's Brian Killmead. The administration said the goal of the sanctions is to be prevent and deter a wider invasion of Ukraine.

If Russia does attack, as US specials are warning that they're imminently prepared to do, does that mean that strategy has failed?

Well, I would say as we look at it, we're focused on accomplishing two things. One is implementing serious costs for the actions that have already been taken.

So the actions in the Donbas, and we've taken steps beyond what we did in 2014, which obviously I just outlined at the beginning of the briefing. Second, yes, deterrence is part of our objective. If he goes further, we will go further. We have a range of tools at our disposal. I'm Mary Waltering for Brian Kill Me.

That was Jen Saki yesterday talking about sanctions, and that is a question a lot of people are asking. Should they have been done sooner? What sanctions can stop Putin? Jay Newman is a trader, investment banker, hedge fund portfolio manager. He's the author of a new book called Under Money.

It's a thriller. I love thrillers. It's about dark money and global politics.

So who better to discuss sanctions, especially financial sanctions, than Jay Newman. Thank you for joining us. Mary, thank you. A pleasure to be here.

So all we hear about is sanctions. You know, we're going to sanction Putin, but we had sanctions on Putin that on the Nord Stream pipeline, and Joe Biden reversed that because Donald Trump put it in.

Now Joe Biden has put it back. But is it too little, too late? I'm extremely skeptical that sanctions are going to work for a couple of reasons. One is that Putin was really caught out in 2014. after he took Crimea.

And sanctions really did have an effect on the Russian economy. But what he did was to make dramatic efforts to sanction proof himself. At this point, Russia has reduced its debt It's got reserves of six hundred thirty billion dollars. And it's acting more like a A criminal cartel rather than a sovereign state.

So Russia has been planning this and planning to protect itself from sanctions for years now.

Okay, so what stops Putin then, I guess, is the question. If sanctions aren't going to work for him, because I've heard his economy, and clearly I'm wrong, but I've always heard that Russia is kind of a dying superpower. Their economy is on its way down. And Putin knows that, and that's why he did this now. But if he's made himself sanction-proof, then the economy really isn't on the way down.

So then, what works? What do we do?

Well, it's um it's it's I think it's extremely hard to know what to do. And I want to add one more piece to what Putin and his cronies are up to because. It seems very clear that they've been profiting from all this volatility. We can go back a year when the Russians and the Saudis were pretending to decide who would produce more oil, who would produce less oil, and in the meantime, oil prices were rocketing up and rocketing down. The Russians and his oligarchic friends were trading on all that information.

And even in the last few weeks, Russians have been trading. And in addition to adding to the reserves from the increase in the price of oil, So perhaps reserves are no longer $630 billion, maybe they're $700 billion, maybe they're $800 billion. R the oligarch class. has itself become very wealthy. and therefore, it has a lot of resources to bring to the table.

It sounds familiar. We've been told, as the commoners, you know, that we're going to have to buckle up because we're going to feel some pain to defend democracy. In other words, get prepared to pay $5 a gallon of gas, but suck it up because we're defending democracy. Do these sanctions then hurt Americans more than they hurt the Russians? I think Putin thinks that, and I'm more in his camp than not.

Just some examples. Russia and Ukraine produce ninety percent of the neon gas Available in the world. Neon gas is extremely important for the production of silicon chips. Without Neon Gas, our chip industry is crippled.

So even while we're talking about putting sanctions on Putin's ability to import, uh chips. He could stop chip production pretty much altogether if he gets control over the neon gas production in the Ukraine. And that's before we talk about wheat or palladium or aluminum. It's a very dangerous game of chicken. With Putin, because there are many things that he can do in order to stymie our efforts and to hurt our economy.

The cost could be really dramatic.

So d is there a movement then to push Biden to pull away from the left of the party and re go back to reinstating the energy policies that President Trump had in place when we were energy independent in this country? It's absolutely essential. I mean, the things the Biden administration have done to inhibit the production of shale gas, cutting off the Keystone pipeline, These are absurd, and we're seeing the impact of that in Europe at the moment. I mean Russia through Nord Stream 1 supplies thirty percent of European gas. Over the last several months, That's been cut back by Russia, so reserves are depleted.

So normally you'd have storage for three, four, five, six months. That storage is almost gone. And I would I would say this again. It seems it's extremely clear. That the oligarch class is trading on all this volatility.

So every time Putin does something with advanced knowledge, You know, his friends and family and the Russian state can make money on that volatility.

So it's not just that he's declaring war, it's that he's making money from the whole process and from knowing what's going to happen. Right, right.

Now, the other theory is that Putin is just trying to weaken the Ukraine, crash their economy, which has happened because. Weeks ago, we had the President of the Ukraine telling the West to stop with the war talk because people were pulling out businesses, people were shipping was having a problem because they were trying to get around Russian submarines and vessels.

So putting that stranglehold on their economy weakens them, and then that's what he wants because they'll be less likely to join NATO then, and they'll just cede to his demands to not join NATO, which is at the root of this. It's absolutely at the root of it. And I would really not want to be Ukraine today. Putin has been planning this for a long time. and at least since Crimea in twenty fourteen.

And we'll see where the dust settles. But there are the if we start going down the route of retaliatory sanctions and then Putin sanctioning us or affecting us, affecting our economy. It's a very slippery slope. And that's before we even think about the possibility of cyber attacks, which We know the Russians are extremely good at. It's a real mess.

It's hard to see how it ends well unless somebody starts to back off.

So I ask the question then, as I'm sitting here in the United States, why are we involved in this? It's not Ukraine is not a NATO country. Why is this now America's problem? Why are we also a target now instead of this just being between Russia and the Europeans? The Europeans have far more at stake than Americans do.

So why are we in the middle of this? It's a mystery to me, Mary. I think that the Russian the European should be taking the lead on this. If anything, the U.S. should be in the back seat saying, Ada boy, go for it.

But why are we putting a target on our backs when this is primarily a European issue and they are not taking the lead.

Well, because I think they're used to us not taking the lead, right? You know, we're the policeman of the world. The United States is the leader. And. That's all well and good.

But we're not the superpower we used to be. We've weakened our military military a lot.

So so we are weaker that way. I I just don't think we are the fighting force we used to be, but Regardless of that, I just don't think that we should be the ones leading this fight. It really bothers me, and I think they're just so used to us being the ones to come in and bail everybody out and fight everyone's battles that they don't bother. They're like, oh, the United States will come in. Because especially with Joe Biden, I think Joe Biden is that guy who would send American forces.

I mean, they're in Poland, I get it, and they're handling evacuees and all that. I don't think they're going to go into the Ukraine. But I do see us on the brink of a situation where we could be looking at American lives being lost for the Ukraine.

Well, American lines for sure, and the American economy for sure. We're already feeling it. We were facing inflation before this, and now we're Russia and Putin are in a position to cause our costs to go up dramatically in a lot of critical commodities. Yeah, it's all very scary. Jay Newman, thank you for joining us explaining the issue with sanctions to us.

It's going to be very interesting to follow. You've got to check out his book. It's called Under Money. It's all one word. The Wall Street Journal called it lurid, fast-paced, and deeply thoughtful.

It's about dark money and global politics.

Love those types of books. Jay Newman, thank you. Thank you, Mary. 866-408-7669 is the number. Coming up, I want to ask you about Biden's approval rating.

It's underwater, which we know, but does this help him at all? I know some people on the left who are saying, oh, this is going to help the Democrats. How does this help the Democrats? Crushing our economy. I'm not quite sure how that works.

866-408-7669. I'll get your calls coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. Diving deep into today's top stories. It's Brian Kilmead from the Fox News Podcasts Network. In these ever-changing times, you can rely on Fox News for hourly updates for the very latest news and information on your time.

Listen and download now at FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. The more you listen, the more you'll know it's Brian Killmead. I'm close to amazed by how far. Putin seems to have come in making, throwing his lot with the West. He seems to have from all the briefings I've gotten.

Actually stiff armed his military here and stiff armed some of the browns and reds in the in the in his government. uh and out of government and made a very I don't think anybody since Peter the Great has made such a significant, at least initial move, to the west. Ah, that was back in two thousand one when Joe Biden was praising Putin, comparing him to Peter the Great, uh Peter the Great, the first emperor of Russia. He waged many wars and he expanded the nation into a major European power and tried to move his government towards Western enlightenment. But it's interesting because, you know, remember Trump?

He was the one who was in with Putin. Oh, Trump praised Putin. Trump loves Putin. Just a couple of updates. There are reports that Russian aircraft have been downed in Ukraine.

They are denying it, but there are pictures all over social media of downed Russian aircraft.

So take it for what it's worth. It's a fluid situation. And also the U.S. saying that cyber threats still active, still real for our grids, our power grids, and also for banks as well, financial institutions.

So all of that's still at play. If Putin wants to really rope the U.S. into this, and I don't know if he wants to do that. 866-408-7669. Let's get to Bruce listening on the app in New Jersey.

Hey, Bruce, welcome to the Brian Kilman Show. How you doing? Glad you're from Jersey yourself. But I'm just I'm just going to mimic what the last two callers, now it's going to be three of us are saying is he's got a pump or President Biden's got to pump all the oil. Just announcing it will drive the price down.

And Putin's, if you drive the price down from $100 a barrel down to $50 a barrel, no matter how much he's got $900 billion in reserve, they depend on oil and gas. And that's how you're going to hurt them more than these other things. And who, if they're worried about climate change, who do you think pumps it cleaner? Russia? Or our American workers who would be making a good salary instead of Russian workers making a good salary.

I mean, it's like a no brainer. I just can't think how these people are this ignorant. I don't wanna I don't like to call people names or anything. I don't think I'm calling them a name, but they're just not And using any common sense, start saying you're going to pump oil from every well we got. And thanks for listening.

And you got a good show there, too. Thank you. Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate you joining us. And here's the thing, though: this is where the ideology in the Democrat Party, the far left, is bumping up against the moderates because their move, and Joe Biden has made it clear that this is his belief as well.

Their move is to get the U.S. off gasoline. Our state of New Jersey, where Bruce is from, where I'm from, we have Governor Murphy who's saying, you know, I want to be the California of the East. And he wants to push through, and with the Democrat state legislature, it'll probably happen in New Jersey, no houses being built anymore with gas heating or gas stoves and gas ovens and all that stuff. None of that will be available anymore.

But yet, Electricity in the state of New Jersey, almost all of it, the vast majority, so like 80% of it, is generated. via natural gas.

So again, who do you think is going to provide energy cleaner? Bruce made an excellent point. Russia? India China? No, we have more restrictions in this country on the production of energy, on the use of coal and digging for coal and processing coal, and the same thing for natural gas, et cetera, and crude.

We've got the strictest restrictions here. And we enforce them. They don't. But this is about getting you out of your car and getting into an electric vehicle. Because that's what they think is going to solve the world's problem.

Because in their brains, the biggest problem facing us right now is Climate change. I keep telling me, I keep hearing that, you know, Pete Judaj Buddha Judge can't solve the. The supply chain crisis, right? That's a big problem. And we still have the supply chain crisis.

They can't figure that out. But yet they're going to s control the ch the temperature of the world, of the planet? That just makes no sense. They can't tell me what the weather is going to be like in 10 days from now, but they're going to tell me that they can control the climate. I'm sorry, but that's just a disconnect in my brain.

And everyone is absolutely right. We put ourselves in this position with Putin. Joe Biden did it with the stroke of a pen because he had to reverse everything that trumped it. Joe, listening on KFNX in Arizona. Joe, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show.

Hi. Hey, how's it going, Mary? Going good.

So what's your take on this?

Well I mean, I do agree with Bruce. I mean, that's a really good point. We have some of the cleanest plants on the planet. You know what I mean? The only thing that comes out of our our coal plant is water vapor.

Our scrubbers are, you know what I mean? Yeah, and over in China, they have to wear masks around, you know what I mean? Yes, all of their. Writ, you know what I mean, all of their plans. But I did want One point.

I heard I heard um Wayne Allen Root said this yesterday. It's a really good point. Ukraine is Biden's closet full of skeletons. Yes. These Democrats, they think we have a short memory where, you know, I mean, the Biden crime family is.

messing around in Ukraine and China and all this. If Vladimir Putin gets into Ukraine, he gets the inside baseball on the Biden crime family. That's why Biden cannot have. Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. And I've had this discussion with lots of friends.

Joe, thank you so much for joining us. Here's the thing, though. If. They get Zelensky. They have a list.

We know that we've been told that the Russians have a list of politicians and high-profile Ukrainians that they want to capture and/or kill. Right? You know, Zielinski is at the top of that list. If they can get their hands on Zelensky, maybe a lot of Biden's secrets die with him.

So that may not be a bad thing for Joe Biden and the rest of the Biden family. And I thought, wow, all right, that may be something to take into consideration there. And if this were, imagine, and I hate to play this game, but imagine if this was Trump. that we were in this position with. The left would be screaming about Trump being in bed with the Ukrainians, right?

That's exactly what would be happening. I'm Mary Walter, in for Brian Killmead on Fox News Radio. From the Fox News Radio Studios in New York City, giving you opinions and facts with a positive approach, it's Brian Kilmead. There have been at least 20 explosions here in the capital in Kiev. We suspect that it's mainly been military targets, military intelligence, command and control centers.

The Russians have said they are using precision-guided weapons. We have not heard any reports of mass casualties here in the capital. But certainly, the explosions are enough to scare the heck out of people. People are throwing what they can in their car and getting out. And the government even just a couple of days ago was saying there will be no wider war.

That changed dramatically about an hour before dawn today. That's when the first explosions hit in a series here of four or five. That's Steve Harrigan reporting from Kyiv in the Ukraine. Joining us now is Mark Thiessen, former Chief Presidential Speechwriter for George W. Bush, a Fox News contributor and a Washington Post columnist, also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mark, thank you for joining me. Good to be with you. All right, so were we surprised? I was surprised when I saw that they went right to Kiev. I kept being told that Kiev is 500 miles from Russia.

They just want to go for these two states, Eastern, that are close to Russia. They want to bring them back into the fold. I wake up this morning to them bombing Kiev. Was I was I misled on that or were we expecting this all along? I think that this is the worst case scenario and that Putin had planned this the whole time.

He's going for a full decapitation strike. Uh he's going to overthrow the cu uh the regime, install a uh pro-Russian government. And it might not stop there. He could go for the Baltic states, too. This is we are on the verge of a cataclysmic war in Europe right now.

Um and the consequences for us here at home are are are significant. Why now? Why is Putin doing this now? because he senses a moment of American weakness. He said it's no coincidence that this happened just months after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He knows that President Biden is weak at home. I mean, the main tool that we have, short of military action, to deter him, is sanctions. And particularly, the only major exports Russia has that are worth anything are oil and gas.

Well, he knows that Biden has been waging war on fossil fuels here at home and the gas prices are up $1.15 since he took office. Americans are already paying more at the pump, and he's calculating that Biden's not willing to pull the trigger on the kind of sanctions that would raise gas prices above $4, maybe $5 a gallon.

So he thinks that Biden is weak at home. He's weak on the world stage. America is not in a position to confront or stop him. And so he's taking his shot to refer to Hamilton. And guess what?

If he's taking his shot in Ukraine, Yeah. China may decide that this is the moment to go for Taiwan. America no longer has a two-war strategy. We haven't resources. Our defense budget has been declining, and we no longer are capable of fighting two wars at the same time.

And so we couldn't come to Taiwan's defense and also deter Russia from going for the Baltic states.

So this could really escalate dramatically beyond Ukraine very quickly. It's so many questions that I have because I did want to ask you about the Chinese as well with this.

Okay, so he is perceived, he perceives Biden as being weak. And I think he's spot on with that assessment. I mean, Biden came out and told him, we will not send American troops to the Ukraine.

Okay, so now I know what I'm up against. He never, I don't think, I'm not his military strategist, but it didn't seem like a smart move to me when Joe Biden said we will not commit American troops to this. But if Biden is as weak as we all seem to think that he is, Mm-hmm. Does it Putin benefit from keeping Democrats in power? We have the midterms coming up, and we're already thinking that it's going to be a red wave that is going to wipe a lot of Democrats out of power and make Biden pretty much a lame duck.

Wouldn't he want to maintain that? And so maybe do small incursions and smaller movements because he could take more and more and more over time in little bites as opposed to this one. Big full-blown war that's going to hurt. It's got to hurt the Democrats a lot here, and he may lose that. Joe Biden as that friendly power.

Yeah, I think I think he's just sensing he has a window. and he's going to take it. And if that window closes, you know I mean, again, Biden's going to be in office for even if even if Republicans take back one or both houses of Congress, Biden's still president for three more years.

So he's got this window and he's moving on it. And I'll tell you, this is this might not stop in Ukraine. General Jack Keene, I interviewed him on my podcast, What the Hell is Going On this Week, and he said that everyone thinks, well, the Baltics, you know, because when Putin when Putin gave that speech the other night, he said that all the countries that were for part of the former Soviet Union, he denied that they were independent nations.

So Ukraine used to be part of the former Soviet Union, so therefore it's a part of Russia. That also applies to the Baltic states to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Everybody thinks, well, okay, they're NATO allies, so there's nothing there's nothing he wouldn't go after them. Jack Keene ran a war game with as part of a congressional commission, and it was the the war game was about a Russian invasion of the Baltic states. And he said that the Russians were successful and took over the Bolts in three days, and we were unable to stop them.

So we're not in a position to stop him if he decides to go for the Baltic States, though we would then be at war with Russia. Because of Article 5 of the NATO Charter. But he could go for more, and he could threaten Poland. There's a lot he could do. This is.

Very, very dangerous situation, and that's why we can't project weakness on the world stage. Yeah. Well, that ship has sadly already sailed. How much, if at all, does the Biden do the Biden family connections with the Ukraine play into this? Is there a fear?

Could that be playing in on Biden's part of a lot of the Biden family secrets being laid bare? I don't think that they're worried terribly worried about that. That's not I don't think that's making decision decision making on terms of how he's handling this. I mean, this is a this is a Russian invasion of a largest country in Europe, a democracy, in perfect democracy like many like many are. But it's it's a it's a massive national security crisis that's bigger than all that.

Let's talk about also the oil and gas part of this and the sanctions. And a lot of people saying, okay, so Biden made us, we were energy independent. We no longer are. We actually import fuel from Russia, so we are dependent on that. And we're going to see the prices go up here.

At the same time, yesterday, we find out that Biden is halting oil and gas leases now because of a ruling that they lost earlier in February. And it's going to, that ruling affects at least four federal agencies.

So instead of pushing forward and allowing these leases to go through, the Biden administration is now halting them as we see oil and gas reaching almost $100 a barrel. Why, in God's name, would they be doubling down on that? What is the thinking that is happening? They care more about climate change than they care about Ukraine, or they care about gas prices that Americans are. At the bump.

It's just that simple. I mean, in his speech on Monday after this invasion started in the Donbass region, Biden said, as we respond, this is a quote: my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the bump. No, he's not. Literally the weekend the weekend before, he barred any new federal drilling on federal lands. If you're doing everything in your power to protect consumer prices at the pump, you should be drilling everywhere.

He should be reversing his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline would allow us to bring in 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta. We only get 538,000 barrels a day from Russia, so it would more than make up for any loss of exports from Russia. Why have we not approved the Keystone Excel pipeline? It's just mind-boggling.

You cannot. wage war on fossil fuels and prevent Vladimir Putin from waging war on Ukraine at the same time. What is the thinking on the Democrats side? I do want to get to China, so I'm going to go quickly here, but what is the thinking for the Democrats? They already know that their prospects for the midterms are very bleak.

Are they just committing suicide? They have to know when people are paying $5 a gallon, they're not going to vote for the party in power. The problem is that the the the Church of Climate Change is a cult. And they're members of the cult and they've drunk the Kool-Aid. And so they look at it and say, well, it's bad what's happened to Ukraine, but climate change is an existential threat to humanity, so that's more important.

We can't stop dealing with climate change just because Putin you know Putin invades Ukraine. Uh they they're they're just they've they've drunk the Kool-Aid. And it's disastrous. We should be doing an all of the above energy approach. We should be sure, we should be producing getting investing in renewables, but we should also be drilling as much as we can because we we ha we're in energy like think about this.

We're an energy superpower now. We were when Donald Trump was in office, right? The Democrats in the Cold War We were a nuclear superpower, which was most of it was important in our confrontation with the Soviets. And what were the Democrats for? Nuclear disarmament.

Right? That was the big movement: we have to have nuclear disarmament. That's what the left was like.

Well, now they want energy disarmament. Energy is the is the is a tool of national security, and they're unilaterally disarming us of one of the most important tools we have short of war in protecting American national security and defending democracy around the world. It's it's just insanity to me. Very quickly, in the time we have left, you mentioned the Chinese and the Chinese saying that Taiwan is not you is Taiwan is not part of is part of China, that it is not a separate entity, and we know it has existed since 1949 when the government To escape the communist forces, and they've been there ever since. Is that a shot across the bow from Beijing?

Or is that something that's maybe just thumping their chests? I don't know.

Well, you know, it's interesting. The Chinese Foreign Minister at the Munich Security Conference issued a statement in defense of national sovereignty and saying that we can that one nation should not be able to violate the sovereignty of another nation, including Ukraine. And everyone thought, oh, isn't this forward looking? Isn't this a tilt towards the United States? That's really great diplomatic victory.

No, it's not, because they considered Taiwan to be inside their sovereign territory. right? That was a warning to us. Don't you interfere with what we do in our sovereign territory. That wasn't a pro American, anti Russian statement.

That was a pro China taking over Taiwan statement.

So they they believe that China is that Taiwan is an integral part of China. And if they move on it to reunite the reunite it, they they're warning us not to interfere in their internal affairs. Wow, I just don't think that the current administration, and I think it would be a strain for any administration, but the current administration can handle all these moving pieces. Joe Biden, as we know, is not the best at foreign policy. He's been criticized by some in his own party for his inability to be able to handle foreign policy.

But I honestly, I don't know if he's actually running the show. When it comes to foreign policy, there are so many voices that have input into it that could actually be something good, I think, in this situation. Mark Thiessen, thank you for joining me. Take care. 8664087669 is my number.

If you want to jump in, I said, I don't understand why the Democrats would be doing this now. And Mark said, you've got the Church of Climate Control. But his approval ratings are underwater under the Russian-Ukraine conflict, as they are in so many areas. Are they just committing suicide? 866-408-7669.

Your call's coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. Challenging conventional thought and wisdom. You're with Brian Kilmead. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead.

It's hard to be ready for things like this. By the way, it's not about only Ukraine. I think that we are moving. It it can it can finish uh the th uh third world war, with the third world war. It's uh absolutely clear.

So the danger is for the whole world, and Putin is not going to stop.

So I don't know what to add. Putin is mad. He is Hitler of twenty first century. He should be stopped now or he will go forward. He will not stop on Ukraine.

Sorry, but he will not stop. That's Alexei Goncharenko, who is the Ukrainian MP. And that's what we were just hearing. from Mark Thiessen saying, you know, this may not stop. At the Ukraine, there is nothing to stop him from continuing going on and taking back the rest of those breakaway countries, Moldova being just on the other side of the Ukraine.

And the reason I know about Moldova is because 90-day fiancé, one of the guys who one of the Americans brought over, is from Moldova. And I was so curious as to where it was, I actually looked it up at the time on the map.

So that's how I know. which is very scary. And you've got, you know, rumblings from China saying, well, you know, Taiwan is part of China. It is not an independent country. It's not an independent state.

It's part of part of China. And and China and Putin are very, very cozy. And that puts us in a very, very bad position. I want to get to your calls, but before I do, I want to say hello to KLIK in Jefferson City, Missouri. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for having us. We do appreciate you having the Brian Kilmead Show. Let's go to Florida. W O K V Steve. You are on the Brian Kilmead Show.

Hi. Hi, how are you? Great. I'm doing good.

So, what's your take on this? Um, I think it uh, when the president comes out. today to speak to the American people. Yes, he does. In a position of strength.

Okay. and declare we're reopening the Excel pipeline. We're opening all the federal lands for exploration and drilling again of. Gas and oil. And hopefully he told the G6 today.

That I will supply. The United States will supply you with the gas you're losing from uh what we're getting in uh you're getting from Russia. Otherwise, Putin's just going to keep marching. Yeah. doesn't care about the sanctions.

feel that his people starve to death. before he gives up any land that he thinks he should have. Do you think that will happen though? Uh well, I uh I doubt Brandon is going to come out at noon and say anything other than. We're going to stick to our sanctions, and the American people are going to have to suffer.

uh to defend uh freedom. I think you're right, sadly. I do, because I think that, as Mark Thiessen said, that this is the church of climate change, and they worship the church of climate change, and it's a belief just like a religion to them. And it is so strong, and for whatever reason, Biden has decided to appease that part of his party, the far left. The only good thing that I see about this, and thank you, Steve, for joining us.

The only good thing that I can see coming out of all of this is that, I mean, it just sinks the Democrat Party even further because, you know, they did it with their kids in school, and I kept saying this is a silver lining. Because it doesn't matter whether a candidate has a D or an R after their name and whether the voter has a D or R after their name. When you're talking about my kids All bets are off. And I think it's the same thing when I'm trying to put food on the table, but gas is costing me $5, $6 a gallon. And I can't get food and I can't get supplies, and we're starting to look like Venezuela.

There's a lot of people who are sitting on the fence who are not far left, who are saying this has to change. And you've got his approval rating, a poll yesterday released by Politico Morning Consult showing 40% of voters approved of Biden's management of the conflict.

Now, that may have changed today. 10% disapproved. 35% said they strongly disapprove overall. Uh, the poll gave him a negative approval rating, 44 to 53 percent. 58 percent saying they felt Biden would be responsible if uh it increases American gas prices.

So, the only positive I see here is the Democrats being so tone deaf, they don't see what this is going to do to them coming up in 22 and in local elections as well. Coming up, Dr. Nate Zinzer will be joining us on how battle-testing your Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. And I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kill Me.

Joining us now is Dr. Nate Zinzer. He's the author of a new book. It's called The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance. And boy, what a day to have you on, Dr.

Zinzer. Thank you for joining us. Perhaps. Dr. Zinzer is the director of West Point's Performance Psychology Program.

So, super interesting to have you here today because you get, you train the nation's future leaders on how to have a mindset that prepares you to go into battle. You also train athletes that we know the names of to be able to perform under stressful situations. And yet, you say that the average person can also learn how to do this. What is the difference between those of us who know how to do those of us who don't know how to do this and those who do? Um I think the answer to that is simple exposure to some very important effective thinking habits, and anyone can cultivate those habits.

We tend to put, you know, our Olympic gold medalists and our outstanding professional athletes on some kind of pedestal, thinking that they are, you know, remarkably different human beings from the rest of us, when the truth of it is they are. Extraordinarily talented human beings, but they are still human beings and they've got fears, doubts, worries, just like the rest of them. And so if we can Each Ourselves teach our children how to think effectively.

Well, maybe they won't be the next LeBron James. Because they don't have that kind of genetic talent, but maybe they can be extraordinarily great at the things that they are talented in. We saw that. Of course, what comes to mind is Simone Biles, right? She wound up not competing because of some mental health issues that she was having at the time.

So, what I mean, what happened there, and was that the right thing for her to do to pull out, or was there a way she could have handled that in order to compete?

Well, I don't know Ms. Viles, um personally, so I can't Truly speculate, or true, you know, I can't be definitive about that. She felt that she was not in the position where she could compete. effectively And it was in her own best interest overall to withdraw from that competition and prepare for some other ones. Um That is a simple fact of being human.

Sometimes we're not at our best. There are times when we have to step up and do it. The Olympics Is again a game, it's an athletic competition. It's not Life and death. It's not the battlefield where you really have no choice.

But to be as effective as possible.

So I truly understand the pressure that these Olympians are under, and I truly respect their decision. Yeah. step back a little bit and gain some perspective on themselves.

Now you talk about that Feeling you get in your gut before for some people for public speaking, for an athlete before they go out on a field, for a commander before he goes into battle, that feeling that we get in our guts. And the difference between, I guess, that makes a person successful is they embrace that and they use that uneasiness that makes a lot of other people just flee and not be able to perform. How do you learn to harness that and make it work for you as opposed to working against you?

Well, I think the key is to understand what is actually going on in your body. as you feel that Not in your stomach? Have you feel the perspiration, the shaky limbs? What's really underlying that? And that is the simple fact that your body is undergoing a biochemical shift that is designed to energize you and actually give you an opportunity to perform well.

What you do, unfortunately, is interpret those physiological signals. as an indicator that we're not prepared. or we won't do well. When actually, those signals are simply telling us that our body is going into an elevated state to help us make that speech, play that game, give that presentation. And if we start with that understanding, then we can change the narrative that we tell ourselves about those physical symptoms.

Instead of saying, oh gosh, I'm so nervous, we can say, wow, I'm excited, my body is turning on. That puts you in a whole different emotional state and will allow so much better your talent, your training, your knowledge to come out on demand. I just find the whole thing so interesting. One of the other scenarios that I thought of when I was reading this is that, you know, I wonder if this work for phobias?

So many people have phobias. I hear so many young people talk about anxiety. I have anxiety. Everybody's got anxiety now if you're under the age of 40. Does it work for things like phobias?

And does it also help understand then people who may. deal with anxiety and have a problem with that. I think it can help. Definitely. That feeling of fear and doubt and worry.

which we sometimes use the label anxiety for. Uh that fear is the result of In many, many cases, not certainly not in all cases, but in many cases, it's the result of just repeated thoughts that we have about things. We ruminate about the difficulty we have with a particular class in school, or a particular task at work, or a particular personality that we have to interact with in our work team. And it's that repetitive thought. that basically produces a mood or an emotional state Of irritation and worry.

So, if we can get a hold of those conscious thoughts. And this is a standard practice. in psychology. If we can get a hold of those conscious thoughts, we might alleviate a lot. of those uncomfortable feelings.

Now, there are certainly cases where some deep-seated trauma or difficulty. may have happened in a person's past. And then we might have to dig a little deeper. But even in those cases, eventually, you're just going to have to get a hold of how you think, what you remember, what you say to yourself all day long, and what you picture about your future. And everybody can get a hold of that.

better and better and better with practice. And one last question. Can parents use the advice in this book, The Confident Mind, to help their kids as they're growing up in athletic performances, but also in school to get a hold of this? Oh, absolutely. I think it is.

crucially important for parents to model the effective thinking. practices that I recommend so that there are children who are very empathetic, who who absorb everything that mom and dad do, so they get a sense of it. And then you can also very carefully communicate to your children. About the progress they're making emphasizing that rather than emphasizing the setbacks. You can teach your child to maintain A optimistic Sense of who they are and what they have the potential to be rather than feeding to them.

memories of disappointments and reminding them about how hard it can be. You've got to balance those things out or else your child develops an opinion of him or herself That is probably going to lead to, as we've been discussing, fear, doubt, worry when it comes time to take the test or play the game. Yeah. And and and what you talk about is you talk about the Taking away the importance, the implications of winning or losing, and taking your thought process away from that. And it's no longer about that.

It's about, hey, I can go do this. I will hit the ball. I will, you know, get that good grade. And it's a very different way of thinking that I think a lot of us currently think. It's a different mode than the way a lot of Americans think.

So the book is The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance. You can follow him on Twitter at DocZinzer, Z-I-N-S-S-E-R. Thank you so much. This is truly great on a day like today when we're talking about all these military events happening, and you happen to train a lot of those West Point grads in how to be a good performer.

So thank you. And thank you. Best of luck to all your listeners out there. Thanks, Dr. Za Nate Zinzer.

Your call is 866-408-7669. That is the number on Mary Walters sitting in for Brian Kilmead. Educating, entertaining, enlightening. You're with Brian Kilmead. Breaking news, unique opinions.

Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Joe. Ukraine is never coming in NATO. We knew that they weren't coming in NATO. That's the reason why we said we're not going to fight for them. We're not going to fight for them now or later.

If we had taken Ukraine and NATO membership off the table, Then there would have been a chat of actually avoiding this altogether. But instead, we kept saying, No, the door's open, nobody's going to tell us not, but we're not going to fight for them.

So now Ukraine is on their own. Nobody's fighting for them, and there was a chance to prevent this bloodshed, and we didn't even try. That was Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis retired on Fox News at night. And a lot of this does go back to NATO and membership in NATO. In 94, we had well, back in the 90s, Vladimir Putin said, I don't want NATO countries, these former Parts of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union, I don't want these countries becoming part of NATO.

I want a buffer between NATO countries and And my country, and we gave him that promise, and then we went back on that promise. And there was a big push by Bill Clinton to bring these countries into NATO. And I understand where Vladimir Putin's like, I don't trust you when it comes to Ukraine. If you say they're not going to be in NATO, I'm really not trusting that right now. And he wanted that.

back. And he may go further, as we keep hearing. He may go back and take some of these other countries, but then you bring NATO into it. Depending on the countries that he goes after to try to bring them into the Soviet Union. It's a big, big mess.

Eight six six four zero eight seven six six nine and you're hearing a lot of analogies to Hitler with the Zudentenland and the start of World War Two.

Well, they're Germans Th this used to be part of Germany. I'm just bringing them back to the fatherland. It's the same language that Putin is using. Let's go to Dave in Lincoln, Nebraska, listening on KLI. And hi, Dave.

Hey, good morning. Um I just wanted to say that I think it's time to be proactive rather than reactive. And what I mean by that is I think before Putin takes all of Ukraine, and then decides that he wants to move into Hungary and Romania. Why why aren't NATO countries sending cruise missiles into Moscow right now. Why you know, do you really think that Stopping the flow of natural gas on the Nord Stream II from Russia into Germany is gonna stop putin.

from continuing his march across Europe. You know, it's time to get Proactive rather than reactive. And then the other the other comment I had is what's going to happen to the billions of dollars of weapons that we sent over? Two. Uh Ukraine.

you know, w if the country is taken over by the Russians, Aren't they just going to fall into the hands of the Russians? Very similar to what happened in Afghanistan? Afghanistan. Yeah. Well, from what I understand, from what I've heard, and those are all great questions, which obviously I can't answer those questions.

I don't know why we're not doing some things. And I don't know if, you know, having Europe start launching missiles into Russia and go for full war in Europe, bringing millions and millions of people into it. I don't know if that's such a good idea. On the other hand, I look at it and go, hmm, Chamberlain. You know, oh, sure, take Czechoslovakia, but leave everybody else alone.

That didn't work out too well.

So so And and and is Putin that guy? How far will he go? I I don't know. Only people who are close to him can answer that question. I d I don't know if we really want to go to that point.

As far as the weapons, he is apparently told, and we know that he told, any Ukrainian who wants to stay and fight, he'll give you weapons. And in a way, that's a good thing, because he knows that if Putin starts to come for him, because Putin wants to take the whole country, they have a list of politicians and elites in Ukraine that they want to quote unquote capture and/or kill. And you know that the president of Ukraine is at the top of that list.

So he's protecting himself. With Ukrainians who are very nationalistic, who are willing to fight for the country, who have been training to fight citizens, ordinary citizens, and he's handing them guns, going, okay, take what you learned.

So he will at least have that ability of having an armed citizenry to help protect the country and help defend the country.

Now, how many of those are our weapons? I don't know.

But is that necessarily a bad thing in that situation? It doesn't sound like a bad thing. But again, I can't answer that question. There's a lot of unknowns here. Aurelio on WPTF in North Carolina.

You're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. A great show.

Thank you. I want to start off by saying that we're in the position that we're in now. Because of political game, thank you. And what I mean by that is they hated President Trump so much. That they just said anything with his name on it, they was going to overturn.

They didn't decipher what was good, what was working, what was bad, what we need to get rid of. Very true. And so when they overturned the energy policy and we no longer were energy dependent, I mean, energy independent, now we have to total to all of these other places, you know. And another thing that I didn't hear anybody mention, what happened when we didn't get to the bottom of the scandal with President Joe Biden and Bo Biden and the scandal with Ukraine.

So since we never got to the bottom of that, we don't even know what that relationship was. You don't know what kind of deals was made and all of that. And then I hear a lot of people saying that, well, we should be sending missiles over there.

Well, news flash, Ukraine is not a member state. You know, I think at periods, one of the things that President Trump was doing was focusing on our national interests. you know, um, and and putting the sanctions on um on Russia, that's like saying, Okay, I'm about to I'm about to punch you and I'm about to punish you and start punching yourself in the face. You know, um when we w when our when our gas prices continue to they already are is are crazy now.

So when they continue to elevate and go up, it's not them who we're punishing, it's the citizens of the United States who's being punished and what is our return on investment right there. Yeah. Those are, listen, those are all great questions, and thank you for bringing up, again, I appreciate that, that you bring up. Ukraine is not in NATO. We are not obligated under any obligation to come to the Ukraine's aid.

Aurelio, thank you for joining me and making that point. I think that's a really good point. You know, when the last caller said, why aren't we, you know, why isn't Europe shelling Russia? They're under no obligation to defend the Ukraine, and Putin wants to make sure that that never will happen, should he want to take it. He did not want Ukraine in NATO.

He wanted a buffer around his country of countries that are not part of NATO.

So they are under no obligation to do so, which again makes me ask the question why is the United States getting so involved in this? Why are we getting involved in this? This is Europe's problem.

So, there are so many unanswered questions. We will keep you updated with changes throughout the show. I promise you that on the Brian Kilmead show. From the Fox News Radio Studios in New York City, fresh off the set of Fox and Friends, it's America's receptive voice. Brian Killmead.

We are learning right now that Russian troops have entered the Chernobyl zone of northern Ukraine. This is significant because it is a direct pathway to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Reports do indicate they are facing some fierce opposition from Ukrainian forces. And this does come as we are still following that story taking place just about 15 miles from the Ukrainian capital, where Russian forces reportedly took over a military airfield. We saw some video earlier of helicopters.

That were targeting the airfield as they tried to take it over. And Ukrainian forces say they have shot down three of those attack helicopters. That was Trey Yankst in the Ukraine with his latest report there. Joining us now is Daniel Hoffman. He's a former CIA station chief, served in Moscow, Iraq, Pakistan, South Asia and Europe.

He is a Fox News contributor. Daniel, thank you for joining us.

Okay, my pleasure. We're hearing what's happening here. You just heard the latest update from Trey Yingst. It looks like they are looking for a direct path to Kyiv. We know that the Russians have a list of people that they are looking to capture and/or kill.

I would assume that Zelensky will be at the head of that list. If they capture and kill, basically assassinate a foreign leader. What happens? Where do we go with this? And how involved does the US have to be?

Well, Russia, listen, has already shown a complete Disregard for international law by invading Ukraine on a pretext. and violating Ukraine's territorial integrity. did that in twenty fourteen when they invaded Donbass and illegally annexed Crimea. They violated the UN Charter by massing seventy thousand troops on Ukraine's border back in April of last year and then 200,000 in anticipation of this invasion. Those are extrajudicial killings.

And I have no doubt that there's a long list of those senior Ukrainian officials. I would also believe that the United States government, our intelligence community, is actively collecting intelligence, indications and warnings and designed to to to help those uh those folks stay out of harm's way. As this unfolds so rapidly, and we have, I think, Putin going so much further than a lot of people thought he was going to go. You have China now coming out and saying that Taiwan is not an independent state, that it is part of China. This seems to be spiraling out of control very, very quickly.

What is the U.S.'s role in this? Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Why are we involved?

Well, listen, you know, when I first. started serving in the US government, uh it was shortly before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And back then, we thought we were headed for a post-Cold War New World Order where countries respected the sovereignty of other nations. And that's why President George Herbert Walker Bush built a global coalition to confront Saddam Hussein.

Now, I'm not arguing we should. Send our troops to Ukraine. But we could have done a lot more. uh to shore up Ukraine's defenses over the past roughly decade. And right now, because we didn't do that, we're paying the consequences.

And it only emboldens our adversaries. For sure, China is watching very closely. at the extent to which the U. S. led NATO alliance is unable to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Uh and that carries with it all sorts of challenges because China is um Has been active in seeking to penetrate Taiwan's air defenses. Taiwan spends roughly a billion dollars a year scrambling their jet fighters in response.

So, listen, the world that we are at a very perilous inflection point right now in the world. And what we need is U.S. leadership. We need someone, we need the president to be. Standing up on the bully pulpit the way President Reagan did and very carefully and succinctly outlining U.

S. strategic interests and why all of this matters to us. Ukraine was a buffer between Russia and Europe. And let's all remember, Europe has a GDP of about $15 trillion. If there's one lesson we learned from a previous century, it's that when conflict, military conflict erupts on that continent, economies suffer.

That's a direct interest to the United States. And of course, if Russia takes Ukraine, as we looks like they will, that will have implications for Turkey because Russia will control the Black Sea.

So this seems, again, as from a layman's point of view, this seems to me to have come out of left field and it's happening so quickly. Were we asleep at the wheel here? Was Europe asleep at the switch? Were politicians, NATO in general, just ignoring the signals coming from Putin, or did he just surprise everyone? No, he didn't surprise anybody.

Remember, he he masked these troops, you know, Six, seven months ago on Ukraine's border.

So, but but even before that, Um recall that upon becoming Becoming president of Russia, Vladimir Putin has launched successive wars, successful ones. First he defeated Chechnya. Then he moved on and defeated Georgia in 2008. Annexed Crimea and illegal, you know, and invaded Ukraine in 2014 and then. uh dispatched Russian troops overseas.

To fight for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in support of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. He's won all those wars, and that gave him, I think, a measure of hubris about what he could accomplish in his own backyard. Uh We've had lots of intelligence. In fact, this administration, the Biden administration, has been running like a live Twitter feed declassifying intelligence about Putin's plans and intentions, thinking wrongly that, that might deter him from taking action against Ukraine. We were absolutely wrong about that and wrong about the sanctions.

Punitive economic measures have never changed Vladimir Putin's calculus. You need strong diplomacy and you need the right military tools. Again, not U. S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, but more military assistance that President Zelensky has been asking for and which we have not provided to the extent that we should have.

So Why have we gotten this wrong for so long? That's a great question, and historians, I don't think, will be very kind to successive U. S. administrations who put A reset with Russia to go back to the Obama administration, or good relations with Russia ahead of. Shoring up Ukraine's defenses as if those things were mutually exclusive.

We could have provided Ukraine with the military and other assistance that they needed to defend themselves while concurrently seeking to engage Russia. In fact, That would have been a much smarter thing to do. That's how Russia operates all over the world. You know, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow more than he ever visited the United States. Why is that?

Well, he needed to visit Moscow because Moscow has been providing aid and assistance to Israel's primary foe in the world, Iran. We felt like we couldn't help Ukraine as much as we should have out of concern that there would be impact, collateral damage to whatever efforts we were trying to deliver on Russia. That's a failure on our part because we forgot that Vladimir Putin served in the KGB And he's a lot more like Yuri Andropov than he is like Boris Yeltsin. And I think that was a strategic failure, but again, a success of U. S.

administrations. Yeah, it's it's the blame goes back decades when it comes to all of this and NATO in 94 with the expansion of NATO, despite Putin saying that he didn't want that. I want to play a cut here for you. This is Cut Nine, Eric. It's Jennifer Griffin on Fox News at night.

Now, Jennifer Griffin. Is an excellent reporter, and she is a reporter. She is not an opinion person. You know, she doesn't give her opinion, and she's very sober. I want you to hear what she had to say about Vladimir Putin.

This is a man. If you look in his eyes, this is somebody who has gone completely mad. What we are seeing tonight is. a moment in history, something we have not seen for generations. War on the continent of Europe, a sovereign country being invaded by a nuclear power, Putin has gone completely mad, and I've heard that assessment from others as well.

Are we dealing with someone who is out of control?

So, Jennifer is one of the best in the business, and it's an honor to be her Fox News colleague. I think. That's a question for the U.S. intelligence community. I'm sure that.

President Biden has a whole lot of requirements that he's issuing to the To the IC right now, and one of those is what are Putin's plans and intentions? And what is Putin's calculus? I mean, I I still believe that he is a coldly calculating intelligence officer. He's winning right now. I show me anywhere where Vladimir Putin is not winning right now at this particular moment.

Now I don't rule out that he may have overstretched. General Keene has been saying that. We just were talking about that on doing a T V hit together. And I would recall, and I'm sure Vladimir Putin is very much aware that the First World War resulted in the collapse of the Tsarist Empire. That General Secretary Brezhnev, in the last couple of years of his life, decided to invade Afghanistan, and that drove a few more nails into the evil empire's coffin.

So Vladimir Putin has to be concerned about the potential that this This attack on Ukraine could result in a very bloody insurgency and result in Russia spilling a prohibitive amount of blood and treasure. All of that is possible. But remember that Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia. That means Putin is willing to pay just about any threat, any price. And it's not that Ukraine is an existential threat because of any military prowess, far from it.

It's because Ukraine is seeking to build a democracy with ties to the West. And nothing has ever scared Vladimir Putin more than liberty, freedom and democracy. Those are the things that will rip apart his regime and which most threaten him because he denies all of that to his own citizens.

So, where do we go from here, I guess, is the question. It's been handled wrong, as you noted, by successive presidencies. This is go back decades. We've misjudged at most every term. We have the hand we have now.

This is where we are. We can't go back and change anything. You said sanctions don't work. They don't hurt Vladimir Putin. He knows they're only going to hurt Americans because we are no longer energy independent.

So, he can cut off what he's giving us. He can cut that off. We're going to have prices go through the roof to heat and cool your home and drive your car and to get goods, etc. Where do we go? What is the best option at this point for America?

Well, we are playing a losing hand right now. There's no question about that. Uh we have failed to deter Vladimir Putin. From invading Ukraine and once again violating Ukraine's territorial integrity. And what Vladimir Putin is doing is anticipating on his chessboard what our next move is.

And the Biden administration had said that they would provide assistance to Ukraine so they could mount an insurgency. And Vladimir Putin has already issued a state an official statement that if anything like that ever happens, Russia will respond with the most serious countermeasures. What Vladimir Putin knows is that insurgencies depend on safe haven. We know that. In Afghanistan, the Taliban had Pakistan.

In Iraq, the Shia militants had Iran as their safe haven. And so there are a number of NATO members on the border of Ukraine. Um Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania. And Vladimir Putin wants to ensure that there is no safe haven for Ukrainian fighters in those NATO countries. That's where we could be headed next.

This isn't don't expect a resolution to this crisis anytime soon. I'm sorry to say that the darkest days may very well be ahead of us. I don't think Vladimir Putin is planning on deescalating this anytime soon. I think things are only going to get a lot worse. And again, whatever economic measures we'd like to take, they aren't going to do any they're not going to do enough to change Putin's calculus.

So we could basically, in a nutshell, be heading to full-blown war on the European continent yet again.

Well, I think all parties are going to want to avoid that. That would be Extraordinarily destructive. I mean, it's as bad enough as it is right now. You may be looking at. At massive numbers of refugees fleeing Ukraine and obviously lots of economic hardship, which, you know, remember on top of the COVID.

Pandemic than that China caused, you know, this is another a shock to our global economy that that we certainly don't need. But we're getting it, thanks to Vladimir Putin.

So You know, the question of whether we do see more expansion of the war beyond the borders right now of Ukraine, I mean, that would be a horrific consequence of this, and I'm quite sure that. That there will be a lot of discussion, diplomatic negotiations, seeking to avoid that. But make no mistake, we're on the precipice of just that. and miscalculations. Once the war starts, I mean, listen, all whatever plans you had, they don't really apply anymore after the first shots fired.

And we've seen a lot of shots fired already in Ukraine. And that's going to present an extraordinary challenge for the Biden administration, which has been focused on build back better and COVID relief. And I'm not saying that those things aren't important. Infrastructure matters. But when you turn your head away from Afghanistan or from Ukraine and some of the other threats that we face, the wickedly challenging complex threats for our national security, they're going to bite us in the rear end.

Let me just very quickly, in thirty seconds, because we're really up against the clock here, can China pressure Russia to back down? No, nor would they. But I will tell you just very quickly, this wasn't just about NATO and the United States. Vladimir Putin is delivering a message to the Chinese. Ukraine's number one trading partner is China.

And Vladimir Putin is telling the Chinese by this and by his deployment in Kazakhstan, you can take your Silk Road and do what you like with it, but I own this geographic space. And someday down the road, when China and Russia are no longer Strategic allies, but the long-term and the adversaries, we know they're going to be, that's going to be an issue. But this is Vladimir Putin's message to the Chinese as well. We shouldn't. you know, fail to take advantage of that.

Daniel Hoffman, thank you for joining us today. It just gets scarier by the minute, and we will keep everyone updated. Thank you so much. 866-408-7669. Your calls, and then we will be joined by Harry Kazianis from the Center for National Interest on the Brian Kilmeet Show.

Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmead. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. A few months ago, when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al-Qaeda.

He said Russia. in the 1980s or now. Calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. Good times. Remember that?

Barack Obama 2012 telling Mitt Romney that the 1980s want their foreign policy back, and the media all laughed and chuckled. And what a. What an old man Mitt Romney is. He's, you know, he's not hip and young and cool like Obama. Yeah, that didn't age well, did it?

I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead. 866-408-7669 is the number if you want to get in on this. Alex, listening online in Mountain View, California. Alex, you're on the Brian Kilmead show. Hi.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. I want to say that the current autocratic government of Russia exists and has existed for the last two decades because the majority of Russians support it and maintain it. Therefore, they're responsible for the actions of that government, just as the Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were responsible for the actions of their government in nineteen forty five. That means that Western sanctions and Ukrainian military operations should in fact target Russian civilians. When enough Of them have Suffered and died as a consequence of war, then they'll force Vladimir Putin to stop his aggressive behavior toward other countries.

Well, I I I I hear what you're saying, Alex. I don't necessarily agree with all of it because I don't think that they have fair and free elections in in Russia. And so I don't know if those peop I don't know if those citizens of Russia actually really do elect their their leader. I don't know if they really do elect Putin. um or did elect Putin, so so I don't know if that's fair.

You know, people could say the same here. And there are plenty of people who disagree with this administration or disagreed with the last administration, but we do tend to have a peaceful transition of power. We want to maintain a peaceful transition of power.

So I don't think it's fair to hold the populace responsible for what the ruling elite do. And in this country, as they have in Russia, we do have a ruling elite class, whether we want to admit it or not, but we do. And they live by a different set of rules than the rest of us. They are allowed to do things we're not allowed to do. And I do think they're the ones who should be held responsible.

Coming up, Harry Cazianus, Senior Director for the Center for the National Interest. He has an excellent piece talking about Biden ramping up U.S. energy production. That is the one way to make Putin pay. That's next on the Brian Kilmead show.

The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead. Our economy is roughly 15 times larger than Russia's economy. We're the most powerful economy in the history of the world. And to impose sanctions on financial institutions, to cut them out of the monetary system where the American dollar is used, is literally to cut them out of commerce around the world.

And so I believe we ought to be putting strong economic sanctions. We ought to be arming Ukraine in a very real sense. And lastly, we ought to be moving resources through NATO to our NATO allies in the region, because my concern as Putin moves across the landscape in Ukraine with ambitions that I think go well beyond these so-called separatist areas, that it likely won't stop there. That was former Vice President Mike Pence on with Sean Hannity last night on Mary Walters sitting in for Brian Killme. Joining us now is Harry Kazianis.

He is the senior director for the Center for National Interest. Harry, thank you for joining us. Hey, great to be with you.

Now, I told everyone you have a really interesting article up called To Make Putin Pay, Biden Must Ramp Up U.S. Energy Production. And that's what we're hearing from a lot of people saying the way to get around this is to become energy independent once again. Why don't you reverse all the EOs that you signed, reversing everything Trump had done, in order to give us a shot here at not having to bow down to Putin? But it doesn't seem as if anyone thinks that Joe Biden will actually do that.

Do you think Joe Biden will do that?

Well, he has to or he loses he's definitely done in the midterms and done in twenty twenty four if he does decide to run again. Look, the United States has the ability to pump easily 14 to 15 million barrels of oil per day. Right now, we are only producing something like eleven. During the Trump years, we were pumping around thirteen million barrels of oil per day. We have almost unlimited natural gas.

We have something like, depending on the expert that you talk to, somewhere between fifty to one hundred years of natural gas. We could easily be sending much more to Europe. We wouldn't be able to replace everything that the Russians give them, but a huge chunk to make things a lot easier for them. And I think it's absolutely ridiculous that President Biden is so handcuffed by the progressive left that he's not able to change course. He needs to do what Bill Clinton did back in the 1990s and realize that these far left agendas are really alienating the American people and change course and move to the center.

That's really the only thing he could do at this point.

Well, you see this divide in the Democrat Party where you have the far left of the party. Nancy Pelosi kowtowed to them when they first came in. I remember AOC staging a sit-in in her office like the first day, and she allowed her to get away with it. They never slapped them down. They never got them in line.

And now you're seeing this takeover of the Democrat Party by the far left. Whoever is running the show for Joe Biden, which there's somebody behind him who has a big hand in what is happening policy-wise, either doesn't see the divide in the party or is welcoming the divide in the party. And they, as a previous guest said, you know, they worship at the altar of climate change, and it is like a religion to them.

So they would much rather have us spending, you know, $10 a gallon for gas because it would get us out of our gas cars and we're going to go into electric vehicles. And electricity is made by magic and it's free.

So they would rather have that. And we even heard, who was it, Kamala Harris, the vice president, saying, we're going to have to suffer. There's going to be some pain for us. Americans for a war that's happening in the Ukraine.

So they're preparing us for this. They're accepting this. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense. Look, I think like a lot of Americans, we're pragmatists. I mean, most Americans aren't very political.

They try to stay in the center. And I think if you look at this issue, I do believe there is some sort of man-made situation that is increasing the climate. I'm no science expert, but I think that seems like a logical argument. The question here is, what do we do about it and what can we do about it? And is this really the time to be arguing over climate change when we have war in Europe, when we have gas prices that could hit $5 or $6 a gallon, when we could go back to oil that's $147 a barrel, which was the record back in 2008?

I think Americans realize that sometimes you have to put these kitchen table issues first and think a little bit more about the short and medium term and making sure that people have jobs, that we don't have 15% inflation. I mean, those are the things I think that matter to Americans right now, especially when we're just coming out of the COVID pandemic when millions of people lost their jobs, millions of people couldn't pay rent. Couldn't pay mortgage. I mean, the Americans are really just getting back on their feet here. And I don't think they want to get hit with another whammy like this.

So I think Joe Biden needs to think about these things. He needs to make a pivot. And it's going to be very interesting to see what he says in his State of the Union address coming up. I think that for him is a marquee moment where he's got to make that pivot, or otherwise, he's done.

Well, he's giving a speech today, sometime this afternoon, and I think he he has to make say something then. I think that ha is more important than not waiting to the State of the Union. This has to happen now before we see Putin in Poland. or one of the NATO countries and now it's American lives on the line. No, you're absolutely right.

I think what he has to say, I think, is very clear. One, he's kicking Russia out of the global financial system. He can't be afraid to kick Russia out of SWIFT to make sure that they can't do transactions in dollars. You know, Putin has to learn and understand that there are consequences for what he does. And we have to assure that Xi Jinping doesn't want to move on Taiwan or the South China Sea or in the East China Sea or other areas.

And I think the other thing he needs to announce, just like we were talking about, is that the United States is going to start pumping oil like crazy. I mean, that is, of course, a long-term challenge. It's not going to be easy to get all those oil rigs back online. You know, tens of thousands of oil workers have left those jobs and moved into other places across the country. But we've got to start getting back into those spheres.

And then finally, look, we have to have a foreign policy that has the ability to focus on China as well as Russia. Those are the two biggest threats. I think it would be smart for the Biden administration to announce that and to make sure that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And that's going to mean there's going to be times we're going to have to focus on one. Authoritarian government versus the other for a little while, but we have to be able to do both.

We can't have this choice where we're doing one or the other, because the other one will just take advantage.

Now you say that Putin wants to damage the Ukraine. He doesn't want to destroy and conquer it. Do you still feel that way this morning? I do, with all my heart. Because think of it this way: common sense tells us that Vladimir Putin's country is just a big gas station.

Their demographics are terrible. Alcoholism is rampant. Their quality of life, their life expectancy, they're in the toilet, to be honest with you.

So, Vladimir Putin cannot swallow Ukraine whole, he would basically die of geopolitical asphyxiation. You know, in the short and medium term, gas prices and oil prices will keep him fat and happy for a little while, but we all know the market comes back with a roar, and those prices will not stay high forever.

So, two, three years from now, yes, he could have a huge chunk of Ukraine, but does he want to really sink billions of dollars fighting a counterinsurgency when the United States knows how to play that game in reverse? Look what Ronald Reagan did in Afghanistan when the Soviets went in. Yeah, they took most of the country, but we started giving them a Jahideen Stinger missiles and all sorts of small arms and heavier arms. We bled the Soviet Union pretty badly. I don't think Vladimir Putin wants to make that mistake.

I think he's going to go in, he's going to do a lot of. Damage and he's going to make it so the West does not want to touch Ukraine when it comes to NATO or the EU. But if he conquers that country and takes it by whole, I predict it's the end of Vladimir Putin's regime. Not right now, but two to four years from now, very possible.

So you don't think that as they head to Kyiv, which apparently that is exactly where they're going, is going to Kyiv, you don't think he tries to get Zelensky and capture Zelensky and maybe kill him? If he did that, I think Russia ends up becoming the roguest of rogue states, you know, starts to go up there with like Nazi Germany. And I think at that point, if Putin was that stupid, the entire international community would organize him in a way that hasn't been seen since the end of World War II. If that man is that stupid, then he would be essentially ending his rule. Again, not right away, but the amount of military pressure that would be placed on him, the amount of forces that would be realigned to Europe to take him on, I mean, U.S.

military budgets would go back up. Our country would go start going very close to a near-war footing. If Putin makes that mistake, He will not be able to keep up that tempo. Again, Russia's a gas station. If those prices go down, he can't keep it up forever.

And we have to keep that in mind.

So, so much to unpack, and this has been happening and coming. This has been coming to a head for decades. And Putin chose now. We can argue over why he chose now, maybe because he sees weak leadership, whatever it happens to be. We're here, and we can't go back and undo anything that got us here.

So, the only way we can do is, instead of placing blame, is to move forward and to look forward. And I hope you're right. I really do, because yours is one of the. the most, I guess, conservative. Opinions that I've heard, and I like that.

I don't like to think that we are heading to full-blown war on the European continent. Again, that's not something I want to see in my lifetime at all. And I honestly don't think anyone wants to see that in their lifetime on the European continent. Harry Kazianis, thank you so much for joining us. The article is called To Make Putin Pay, Biden Must Ramp Up U.S.

Energy Production. It is a great take. Thank you. Thanks for having me. 866-408-7669.

Let's get some of your calls in here on the Brian Kilmead Show. Coming to you on a need-to-know basis because Mandy, you need to know. It's Brian Kilmead. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin! It's Brian Killmead!

Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history. There you go. Vladimir Putin on Tuesday saying you come to Ukraine's aid, we're going to make you pay for it. I'd like to go to Cut 11, Eric. This is a Ukrainian MP, Alexei Goncharenko, on Fox News at night last night saying, We need the help.

Are we ready? We are ready to fight. We have we received a lot of military equipment last time, but this equipment, everything is about fighting on the land. But which is very important, I sorry for repeating, but what is very important is the skies.

So we need this assistance now because Russia is, you understand, it's much more powerful in the skies.

So we need just non-fly zone just to give us opportunity to fight on the land. That's what is very important for the moment. Yeah, but they're not a NATO country, so who's going to give them that no-fly zone? Not our job. I don't want to see Americans die.

with enforcing a no-fly zone over the Ukraine. I don't think it should be our job. Maybe people maybe some of the European countries, it's closer to home for them. It's much more their problem. I mean it's our I mean, it it's our problem too, but they are much more uh at risk of some kind of imminent invasion from Russia than than we are.

Geography 866-408-7669 is my number. Let's head to Georgia and say hello to Jeffrey. You're on the Brian Kill Me Show. Hi, Jeffrey. Hey, thank you so much.

I couldn't have designed the segue into my comment by that little news media piece about the universities and wealthy students. You'll see what I mean in a moment. You know, I saw on a bumper sticker the other day on a vehicle, critical thinking is the United States' second national deficit.

So you asked the question, why have we gotten to where we are today? You asked that general rhetorical question. You know, what has happened in this country, and it's for a long period of time, both Republican and Democratic parties. Is that now policy is driving intelligence rather than in our own lives, it's good if we can think before we make various actions and decisions in our lives. Right now, in the United States, we have policies, and they're driving our intelligence community is taking a back seat to our policymakers.

And I'm going to say why the university comment was important. Many both of our policymakers, our journalists and people who are driving the foreign policy of the United States have come from what I call the poison Ivy League schools. And these schools are getting, just like your little news comment made there, wealthy students. They're being engineered and guided by various conditioning thoughts of that have infected our foreign policy And the results are situations varying from the takeover of Tibet. The Vietnam War.

Cuba, the the horrible situation in the Middle East. Afghanistan, the situation in Europe where we've allowed NATO companies. Countries to become involved with Russian oil, on and on and on. Yeah. And you make a good point about this woke ideology, Jeffrey.

Thank you for that. The military is gone woke, right? We're having all our soldiers are being subjected to all this critical race theory. And if you're white, you're a horrible person. Instead of fighting as Americans, they're breaking them down into classes as they are doing with the rest of the country.

It's easier to conquer if you're divided, right? But if you're in a foxhole, you don't care the color of the skin of the man or woman next to you, right? Because you're fighting for a common goal. But the woke left is trying to defeat that. And it has seeped into our military and it has seeped into their training.

And it is a very bad. Bad, dangerous thing, in my humble opinion. I think it's bad and dangerous, period. But especially in our military. Let's go to New York and Bob listening on W A B C.

Hi, Bob. Yes, good afternoon. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. You know, I don't see Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, I see him as a bully.

Beliefs are weak.

Okay, Donald Trump was a bully, also. And I'm not going to, but I don't want to digress too much.

Okay. But this is This is what the way I see it. What's the difference? You know. If Joe Biden was so weak, you know, how come he took out The leader of ISIS.

That really didn't get, that's not getting a lot, that didn't get a lot of attention. You know, everyone pivoted away from that. Because it was a sinusoid.

So, my question here is: a hypothetical, I'm going to answer it. What's the difference? Between Any of these madmen, Osama, the leader of ISIS, and Vladimir Putin, well, Vladimir Putin has showed his true colors, and apparently there isn't. And you know what I would do? You want to know his sign of strength?

I would send in the drones. I would triangulate that. He looks like the shark from Jaws, that animal. He is a war criminal. And you know what?

If we took him out. Nobody, everyone in Russia would thank us.

Okay. Well I I just don't think that that's something that Joe Biden's going to do, number one. And number two, I I think it inserts the United States into a battle that right now is not ours. Right now it is not our battle. Right now, this is this is Ukraine and Russia, and then the surrounding countries, and more so, Europe.

It's their battle. I don't know where the U.S. has the right. to and the left loves to talk about morals. Are we morally right to go in and take out, you know, Vladimir Putin or start inserting ourselves into fly over Russian airspace and start killing people?

I would think that the left would think that that's a terrible, horrible thing. It's morally repugnant.

So, and they're always talking about morals and what we're morally obligated to do. Yeah. That's such a good idea. Quickly, Jason in Galveston, Texas. We have about a minute.

Jason, you're on the Brian Kilmeat show. Hey, thank you. I'll be quick. I have a girlfriend who lives in Moscow, I've known since high school, and she's lived out there for a very long time. And she calls me, and we've been talking, and she says, Well, you know, the world looks at the United States as the police, you know, law and order.

They have a Constitution, they have Bill of Rights. And they've watched the Democrat Party for the last six years break laws throughout the country, rip up everything they know about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and attack. and get away with it. And and and they think and she thinks in her her her her group and their little town that they they live in that that was that was pretty much what kind of set them off is, Hey, why do I have to Follow the international law when the police are out. Jason, I don't mean to cut you off.

I'm so sorry, but we are up against the clock. I apologize for that. I think Americans look at the Democrat Party and say, hey, they're getting away with a lot. How come is this? I think that's a question a lot of Americans ask as well.

I'm Mary Welcher. You're listening to the Brian Kilmey Show. Put the power of over 100 meteorologists and the worldwide resources of Fox in your hands with the Fox Weather Podcast. Precise, personal, powerful. Subscribe and listen now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.