Tulsi Gabbard: recommendation

Transcript context

…What’s the role of the US president perhaps to bring everybody to the table? Do you think that the US president should sit down with Zelenskyy and Putin together? Yes. Yes. In an ideal world, yes. This should have happened long ago. The question of whether or not President Biden is the right person to do that at this time when all of the statements and comments that they have made, the Biden-Harris administration has made from the beginning of this war essentially point to their objective being to basically destroy Russia, and that’s one of the reasons why they have supported both the continuation of this war for as long as it’s lasted, as well as why they have thwarted efforts towards peace. Whoever that most effective neutral broker is, that’s the best person to do this. The Biden-Harris administration, I think the role that they have to take is actually encouraging Zelenskyy to sit down and begin this process. Those kinds of engagements are the most, to me, the most powerful exercises of diplomacy that can’t be matched, especially when our president’s foremost role and responsibility is to serve as commander in chief, and I wish that we had leaders who were more willing to engage because I think we’d make a lot more progress more quickly to find areas both of mutual interest as well as to help de-conflict and de-escalate areas where there is tension or disagreement or adversarial interests. Well, some of it is basic human camaraderie. People call me naive for this, but sometimes, just knowing that there’s a human on the other side. Even when it’s in private, if you look at Zelenskyy and Putin for example, just humor. Both are very intelligent, witty at times, even funny people. Yes, this is wartime. Yes, a lot of civilians and soldiers are dying. There’s hate, but if you can look above it all and think about the future of the countries, the flourishing of the people and the stopping of the death of civilians and soldiers, then in that place, you can have that basic human connection.…

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