Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it causes some difficulties. But anyway, I think the answer to that is that for Putin, he needs to understand that like Khamenei, he has two options here. Option one, which President Trump has signaled over and over and over again is come sit down and negotiate a ceasefire with the Ukrainians. I don’t want to get into the details and the back and forth about who’s responsible for the fact there’s no ceasefire, Putin or Zelensky. I mean, that’s a whole other debate, and I’m sure you guys have a lot of opinions on that. But path one is sit down and let’s negotiate a ceasefire. Path two is the United States will use American power in order to build our leverage so that Vladimir Putin understands that he has to do a ceasefire. Now, I’m not suggesting US troops, absolutely not. What I am suggesting is, there’s a package right now of sanctions that have ADA co-sponsors in the Senate across party lines. And I think Trump is using that and will use that as a sort of Damocles hanging over Putin and the Russian economy to say, “Look, if Vladimir, we either do a ceasefire or I’m going to have no choice but to have to start imposing much more punishing sanctions on you and on the Russian economy. ” So I think there’s an economic option. I think there’s a military option. And I think the biggest mistake Biden made in this whole war, and there’s many mistakes in terms of signaling not having US credibility. Afghan debacle, which signaled to Putin that he could invade without any kind of American response is he kind of went in and he tied Ukraine’s hands behind their back. I mean, he actually tied one hand behind their back while they were fighting with the other hand. And he refused to give him the kinds of systems that early on in the war would’ve allowed the Ukrainian military to be able to hit Russian forces that were mobilizing on the Russian-Ukrainian border. And I think if he had done that, I think this war would’ve ended sooner. There’d be far less casualties. And I think Putin would then understand maybe I need to strike a deal. I’m not a Russia expert or Ukraine expert. I don’t know what the deal looks like. You keep the Donbas, you keep Crimea, you keep larger chunks of Eastern Ukraine. That’s for smarter people than me on this issue to decide what the deal looks like. But there’s no doubt today Putin thinks that he can just keep fighting, keep killing Ukrainians, keep driving forward. Eventually, he’s going to wear down the Ukrainians through a sheer war of attrition. He’ll throw hundreds of thousands of Russians at this. He doesn’t care how many Russians are going to die. forward. Eventually, he’s going to wear down the Ukrainians through a sheer war of attrition. He’ll throw hundreds of thousands of Russians at this. He doesn’t care how many Russians are going to die. That’s the way that Russians and the Soviets have fought wars for many, many years. Just endless number of Russian bodies being thrown into the meat grinder. He thinks he can continue without any consequences. And I worry that as a result of the fact that we are not showing Putin that we’ve got leverage, it’s made war more likely, it’s made a war more brutal, and it’s going to make a war more proactive.…

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