They say that this is why we should not have any accounting of how the
money is spent. Yeah, Elan, it's judy. And here's the basic
argument. It's that we have to rush resources to Ukraine immediately or they're liable
to fall to Russian aggression. And it's all basically an argument made under the
gun that unless you approve this appropriation of resources and weapons, then you will
allow Russia to win. So it's a kind of moral blackmail. And you
know, every negative story that comes out of Ukraine, every item of corruption
that David and Mike have just pointed to, these things sort of get brushed
under the rug. And if you don't support this, then you want Vladimir
Putin to win. And that's the moral framing here. So the other argument
that you sometimes hear folks make, Elon is that the money has been entirely
well accounted for. And even some of our Senate Republican colleagues, in private
and meetings with a bomb administration senior sorry Biden administration senior officials, will say,
well, well, this has been the most properly accounted for money in
the history of any American conflict. It doesn't even pass the smell test,
and they'll admit to you that it's a complete lie when you push them on
it. But it becomes this sort of sunk cost fallacy where these guys can't
admit that there is corruption, they can't admit that there's no strategy, they
can't admit that this isn't going well because if they admitted that, it would
cause too much psychological harm and it has to cut bait. Well, what
about even retroactive examination. You know, if there's an urgency for the money,
the one can understand, okay, the you know, if your crane's
going to fall a pot without saying the money, then there should at least
be a subsequent accounting and accountability for where the funds are sent and prosecution and
where there is corruption. That's where they fall back on the argument that the
money's already properly accounted for. It's a bit of a logical whack a mole
where you say, you know, and you know, Mike and I and
Josh Holly and I have had amendments to this effect where you appoint a special
Investigator general because that similar figure uncovered a ton of corruption that was unknowned Afghanistan,
and the argument is you need to actually embolden an independent accountant to David's
point, to go in there and look at the corruption. The response you
get then as well, you don't actually need it because the money's already properly
accounted for. I think in reality what's going on is that folks appreciate that
if we did have a Fullthome inquiry into corruption Ukraine, it would completely erode
what little public will existed. So you're always sort of dealing with what seemed
to be bad faith arguments because I think if people dealt with the truth,
then the political support for this thing would evaporate. Say to Elon, this
is the set of Ron Johnson. Can I just add a comment here?
Sure? One of the depraved justifications for all this spending is that it's really
not going over to Ukraine. It's helping build our industrial base and so it's
creating jobs in your state. And I call that a deprave justification because that's
exactly what it is in terms of accountability. I just read your the book
from Walter Isaacson, and I was very intrigued by your idiot index and one
of the things I've one of things I pointed out in to my colleagues and
didn't have much of an impact. For example, the one hundred and fifty
five millimeters shells that Russia can produce about four and a half million of them,
We're not even up to a million a year. Okay, Russia,
they're producing those a six hundred dollars shell, which I would say probably sales
are pretty high idiot index in the US or in the West, it costs
US five to six thousand a shell. So I mean, I've got more
to say, have a different perspective having been to Ukraine a lot, But
I just want to add that in terms of accountability, we spend and you
know, we waste so much money in our military industrial complex, and our
colleagues really don't want to dig into it because they're the ones voting for this
eight hundred and eighty billion dollars. And that's one of the questions I asked
too, is well, why don't what do we get for the eight hundred
and eighty billion dollars? And if we're going to spend sixty on Ukraine,
can't we spend less somewhere else? And that's just not even on the table.
Can I ask a follo up question about the ammunition issue. What we're
talking about here is artillery ammunition. The war in Ukraine is it's a war
of attrition in which the main weapon is artillery. And one of the reasons
why the Ukrainians are losing, really the main reason is that they're massively outgunned
by the Russians. I've seen reports that the Russians are expending something like ten
thousand artillery shells a day and the Ukrainians have at most about two thousand shells
that they can use per day. This is why the Biden administration sent cluster
bombs to Ukraine several months ago, because they said that Ukraine was out of
the one hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery ammunition. I guess, I guess
the Pentagon has been trying to increase production of artillery shells, but we still
produce nowhere near enough. I think we've basically increased our production. I've seen
reports from about fourteen thousand month to about twenty two thousand a month, which
is really that's only a two or three day supply in the Ukraine War,
And like you were alluding to, Senator Johnson, the Pentagon, I think
they have a goal of twenty twenty to get production to about eighty five thousand
shells a month. So we're nowhere close to being able to ramp up production
to the needs of Ukraine in this war. So I guess my question for
you is, even if we do appropriate another sixty billion, you know,
we can print more money, but we can't print more artillery shells. That
just takes years and years. So how is this money going to help Ukraine
to win a war that, again they're losing because it's an artillery duel.
First of all, I think we all have to understand that Vladimir Putin will
not lose a swar I stayed bad way as opposed to Ukraine can win.
Vlatdimir Putin will not lose. Losing to Vlatimir Putin is existential. To Vladimir
Putin. They rush is four times the population, they have a much larger
industrial base. Again, I said Russia can produce four point five million of
those shells a year. We're not even up to a million a year.
The average age of a Ukrainian soldier right now is forty three years old.
And David, I heard you quote the Time magazine article. There are other
quotes from some of the tops somestops aids say that even if the US and
his allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, quote, we
don't have the men to use them unquote. So the fact of the matter
is, if you're worried about the people of Ukraine, you have to understand
that probably about one hundred thousand of their soldiers have been killed because there have
been about one hundred thousand Russian conscripts. I take no joy in that forty
thousand civilians, hundreds of billions of dollars of Ukraine has been destroyed. The
only way this war ends is in a settlement. And every day that the
war goes on, more Ukrainians, more Russian conscripts die, more civilians die,
more of Ukrainian gets destroyed. They'll have to be built. So again,
sending sixty billion dollars has added few of the flames of a bloody stalemate.
Makes no sense whatsoever. As evil a war criminals putin is He's not
going to lose this war, and our colleagues here just aren't willing to accept
that reality, and they're living in a fantasy world think that Ukraine can win
this thing. They can't David, that's exactly right. I think that that
is an excellent summary of the situation. When I raised this point, people
of course accused me of being some sort of polity, when in fact my
companies have probably done more to make I mean, undermine Russia than anything.
I mean, SpaceX's has taken away two thirds of the Russian launch business,
the overwhelmingly helped Ukraine. I mean, it's a such an episode accusation.
My concern is exactly where you articulated. If you have an extended war of
attrition, every day that goes by, there are Ukrainian boys that are and
not even boyis Ingmo because they're running out of boys. That you're losing.
Ukraine's losing people every day. And if you're going to spend lives, it
must be for a purpose and not just you know, a mile here,
a mile there. In fact, a mile and back forth. The lines
aren't moving, so just every day people die for what purpose? And as
you said, there is no way in hell that Putin is going to lose.
If he were to back off, he would be assassinated. And for
those who want regime change in Russia, they should think about who is the
person that should take out Putin, and is that person likely to be a
peace neck. Probably not. They're probably going to be even even more hardcore
than Putin if they took him out. So yeah, yeah, So I'm
going to jump in with one freight just point that leaves up where you lined
there was just I think there's an issue with our framing here. I think
most of us here, and it is too bad because I think I publicly
called, and Elon did, and others did. I think JD tried to
get somebody in here to articulate the best of the other side. So hopefully,
for as long as we go, that offer remains open. But with
that being said, I think that the framing even here amongst those of us
who agree on a post using this bill, is a little too charitable,
actually, right, because I think that if there's good number of Democrats,
good number of Republicans whore in favor of more funding to Ukraine, endless funding
to Ukraine, but I think those who are generally against it point to what
we think of as absence of what we will get from the added investment.
Right, that's the argument that goes. Okay, the ROI is lower than
the acceptable level of return for US taxpayer dollars, and what are we getting
in return for the money we're putting it. I actually think that's the wrong
framing. I think it is actually net negative for the United States to continue
funding this war, irrespective of the financial cost, for some of the reasons
Elon just laid out. First of all, if you are shooting for regime
change in Russia, which I do believe is the ideological goal here, the
net result you're likely to get is actually one that is far worse than Putin
who's leading Russia. Play that out and the second result and the result that
you're getting right now in real time. So regime change absolutely, and you're
not supposed to say it out loud, but it's worth smoking out. That
is the only ultimate stated goal of this project. So you're playing for an
outcome that odds are is worse than the one you already have for the United
States. But even worse is what you're seeing in the present is a daily
strengthening of the military alliance between Russia and China, which when combined, is
the single greatest increase for the risk of World War III that we've seen in
the post World War two era, and is a risk that by definition then
increases the risk of the continued existence of the United States should that world war
actually, God forbid transpire. And I'm not saying it's likely to happen.
Any risk or any more than minuscule risk of that happening is an unacceptable risk,
and we are actively increasing the risk of that worst case outcome, not
just through the loss of financial dollars for ourselves, but irrespective of that financial
cost, we are contributing to the increase of that risk versus a diplomatic resolution.
So then the question is, you know, and I know, it's
too bad we don't have somebody from the other side here, But we can
ask the question of why you know, We can ask the same question.
We can pretend this was a discussion about the border right now and have the
same discussion about why do we have an open border on our southern border.
And I think that there's a deliberateness to all of this, right, And
if you miss I think the deliberate nature of this nothing makes sense. But
I think if you understand that, I think everything makes sense. The question
of David, right, why are we contributing intentionally without accounting for known corruption
there's a certain deliberate goal here, just as there is with our own southern
border right now. Right you can throw your hands in the air and ask
why is it that we are purposefully or why is it that we're negligently allowing
millions of people to cross our own southern border. That doesn't make sense unless
you realize that's actually part of the objective. And I think the same thing
goes for this Ukraine war. And I think that's why JD's finding in the
last twenty four hours is so interesting, is that one of the apparently deliberate
elements here is that and I don't think it's even the main one, but
I think it's at least a feature that reflects a certain deliberate course of action.
Is that they're planning the seeds for what does seem to be the third
impeachment of Donald Trump. And so, you know, I mean, I'm
going to lay out what my actual position is, which probably shouldn't matter because
unlike JD and like Lee and Ron Johnson, who are actually successful in getting
elected to the positions they ran for which I was not, you know,
perhaps my view on this should matter less. But I'm going to lay it
out anyway. I don't think that our position should be getting border security into
the bill as a condition. I think we need to force border security and
not send money to Ukraine without co mingling a compromise on either of those things.
But I think the gambit or the play here that would be interesting,
And I'd love to hear JD's and Ron's and Mike's reaction to this is like,
just I mean, because you guys have a vote. What tonight is
it, JD? Or is it tomorrow night? Right? Yeah, so
just in the interest of the super near term, I mean, here's a
gambit that you know. I don't favor this as a matter of policy,
but I favor this as a matter of negotiation. Is you know, the
play is here. Okay, we had this whole discussion about border funding,
and what I found so ridiculous about that last Border Attached bill is they got
to name it a border bill when actually there was three times more funding going
to protecting the border of Ukraine than our own southern border. When in fact,
even in our own southern border's case, the real failure is the failure
to enforce the existing laws like remain in Mexico, which is still the law
of the land. I wonder if the following would be an interesting wrench here,
and I doubt the other side would go for it, but it'd be
interesting to smoke out what the intentions are, what the deliberate nature of all
of this is, say, okay, here's the border deal. We want
not even more funding. A precondition for passing this is a commitment from the
Biden administration to enforce existing laws, including remain in Mexico, tangible evidence has
table stakes for talking about any further funding to Ukraine. And then on the
funding to Ukraine, it's metered out over time and it is completely discretionary at
the level of the US Commander in chief the US President that they know that
if it's metered out over time, right, it's not going to go out.
And President Trump is able to then be at the table to negotiate an
end to this. He can use the withholding of those funds as one of
the levers and what will be a complex negotiation. To be clear, I'm
dead set opposed to giving another dime to Ukraine. I think we need a
peaceful resolution right now. But pragmatically speaking, I think that's I think the
way we bring the border into This is less about the token funding to the
border, which really I think is likely to go to not be enforced anyway.
If the current administration is not enforcing the existing laws on the books,
I think that biloves us to wonder whether they're going to enforce a new law
that we put on the books to say that's table stakes for having the discussion
is seeing at least existing enforcement of the border laws of our own border,
and if we are going to fund Ukraine and JD. This is the piece
that I think maybe smokes out the gem of a finding that you fed your
team or you found in the last couple of days, is to say that
we're going to meter this out and if there is a new president that is
going to negotiate piece in Ukraine as we think actually needs to happen, then
we're going to actually make this discretionary of that president to actually do. So
what do you think? This is very similar? This is Mike Lee,
This is very similar to what all Republican senators agreed to do months ago.
We're dragging like three months ago was just to say we're not going to give
it another dime to Ukraine until at a minimum such time, we shouldn't even
consider it until such time as the president's enforcing existing laws already on the books
that already give him the power to enforce the border, just as they did
empower Generald Trump to do it, and he used it to enforce the border.
That's what we committed to three months ago. We were then told that
we would see a bill that was being negotiated as soon as it was ready.
That took three or four months to negotiate. We were demanding to see
language the entire time it was kept from us. We saw it for the
first time Sunday night at seven pm Eatern time. It was woefully deficient.
In fact, he didn't even match the description of what we had added to
begin with. It didn't do anything to harness the fervor in favor of Ukraine,
aid to leverage that to put us in a position where Biden was forced
to secure the border, and so we demanded that it do so before we
proceed. What's tragedic here, Vivik, is that although every single Republican senator
agreed to that, and every single Republican senator a post cloture on the motion
to proceed to this a couple months ago, with that commitment under in mind
that we made to each other and to our voters, team of our Senate
Republican colleagues have now backed away from that and have supported cloture at various stages
of this bill, supporting this bill without anything, without any commitment, without
any promise, without any leverage over the President, without conditioning the release of
any Ukraine funding on this, even though a majority of our conference supported that
and expressed that apparently they were directed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell not to
even bring this up in the conversations. The fact that we learned only recently
this is exactly why we've got to get out of this. This is exactly
why we have to oppose quoture on this, and we have to defeat this.
So we look at the incentives, But why did these guys do it?
Fidelity does matter more than the facts and the internal reward from committee chairs
and Pentagon elites to fill the void after Afghanistan. This is fertilizer for the
ego of a precious few around here. Look, we don't say no anymore,
in part because we've just taken to this nasty habit of printing money like
there's no tomorrow, and it's yes to the foolish and yes to the frenzied,
yes to the blind. We need to reset, and not a minute
too soon. We need Senators to become aware of and willing to exercise yet
again, their privileges, their prerogatives under the Senate rules. I've been working
on a project to inform them of that, and I'd love to talk about
that on another occasion. But look, no, no, it is absolutely
the position. But I think if you're to just smoke out and isolate this
sort of new issue, which I find pretty fascinating in the last day that
Jaden, that memo that JD put out, what do you think would be
the respon? I mean, I guess you guys have time to try it.
You're in a position to say, all right, if the funding is
if no, our position is we think a piece deal needs to be negotiated
now. But that's up to the US president and that isn't happening. We
are hopefully going to have a new US president in about eleven months, all
right, so that funding is sufficiently metered out, then most of it doesn't
go out the door in the next eleven months, and if the next US
president is at the table, then at least he has the flexibility to use
this as a lever. What do you think would happen. Do you think
that those colleagues would say, oh, this urgent funding for Ukraine is so
important to achieve our goals, which I haven't disagree with, but they would
say it's so important to achieve our goals that we're going to say yes,
and that yes, that's that important that even if Donald Trump can revisit this
when he's the next president, he has the total discretion to do that.
Make it discretionary rather than non discretionary. What would they say, you know,
no, we're not going to go for that. They and they rehiques
to do it as long as they have an open opportunity to do this at
a lower price, as long as they don't have to jump through those hurdles.
The Democrats are never going to have negotiate on that. And as long
as we've got eighteen Republicans or more than ten in the current climate, on
this bill, then we are never going to get to that moment because they
can get what they want more cheaply from them. And that's why there's a
net what these guys are doing. There's both a procedural answer and a substance
answer to your question. To Mike's point, the procedural answer is that you
can't even force the debate that you're suggesting unless some of these eighteen Republicans flip
and join with the majority of the conference. So long as they're willing to
end debate with the Democrats, which is what tonight's vote is, you don't
even get an opportunity to present this to the conference, to force the end
of votes and so forth. So really, this is why the vote tonight
is so important. Is you're just trying PRISTI give some space to breathe for
the argument that we're making now substantively. Do I think they accept the argument?
I actually don't think that they do. The vacant The reason is unfortunately
quite simple. There is a sub set of the Republican Conference that it's terrified
that Donald Trump actually means what he says, and that when he is the
elected president in January twenty twenty five and takes office, he will enforce some
measure of diplomacy and bring the war to a rapid close. I actually think
the intentional thing here is to handcuff him as much as possible. And I
think I made this observation before you joined VIC, but I'll repeat it because
it's important. The Washington Post is openly reporting administration officials leaking that they want
to handcuff the next president. That Biden people are terrified that Donald Trump will
win and that he will not pursue Biden's foreign policy or the Neokan foreign policy
on Ukraine. They are trying to constrain him substantively. I don't think they
would take the deal because they want to do the thing that we're terrified they're
doing right, And so that's why I think it's at least worth smoking that
out so everybody can see it in plain sight. You'll have to sort of
publicly expose the eighteen Republicans rather than doing it procedurally with how the mechanics work
in the Senate. But that's the point I was making JDS with respect to
both the border, where part of what they're doing to borrow Elon's language is
they're importing votes and stopping and want to stop the export of votes. That
explains what's happening in the southern border debate. And here with respect to Ukraine,
it is about actually constrain the degrees of freedom that Donald Trump will have
as the next president in negotiating an end to this war. And so when
you see that, it's actually each of these seemingly separate and otherwise inexplicable policies
like how could this be the policy in our southern border? How could this
actually be the position that we're taking to Ukraine to fork over more money without
an iota of accountability for the one hundred billion dollars that we've already sent.
It's actually all explained through I think a simple version of politics, not Republican
versus Democrat politics, non Trump versus Trump politics in Washington, d C.
To say that, how do we a minimize the chance that he's elected president?
That's what the border policies are about, and how do we actually ensure
that the degrees of freedom, if elected, are as constrained as they possibly
can be before he assumes office. And I think that when you just try
that filter on right as like a lens, let's just say, it's like
a different lens with like a different you know, filter. To me,
at least, that seems like a more parsimonious explanation of what's happening, and
if that is correct, right, it sounds rather you know, conspiratorial and
far fetched to somebody wh's hearing it for the first time, but it actually
just makes sense if you look at why exactly they're operating the way they are.
It's advantage, it's advancing a political incentive. Then I think the question
is how do you most effectively at least smoke that out so everybody can see
it, actually name that problem, and then I think it becomes very difficult
for those eighteen Republicans to continue to hold on to their position, which was
far less grounded in anything else other than being terrified of really changing the world
order. After you know, Trump is able to negotiate an end of this
war Bible, let me quit clarify this, Okay, Mike laid it out,
but just very simply, when we entered this thing, McConnell, whose
top priority was is funding for Ukraine, but public opinion and the very strong
political rhetoric that we ought to secure our own border before we spend sixty billion
dollars to secure Ukraine's was effective, and so McConnell finally switched and said,
okay, we got to let Democrats know we're serious. We're going to defeat
cloture on this bill, and we're we're going to demand the borer of security
is going to be attached to funding for Ukraine. Then secret negotiations occurred on
an issue that the public supports Republicans on, and we end up with this
monstrosity of a bill and the immigration bills, not a border security bill.
But during that timeframe, we repeatedly talked about making Ukraine funding contingent on border
metrics, you know, just like performance measurements in business. Right as the
border was secured, you'd get five billion dollars a month. I mean,
we had it all laid out, had a proposal, It had a great
deal support in our conference. But what Mike pointed out is unbeknownst to us
at the time, McConnell told Langford that's not even on the table. He
on his own, using his own authority, without telling the confidence, even
though he knowed that knew the conference supported tying border security or Ukraine funding to
actually securing the border. McConnell just took that off the table, and that
moment of leverage we had where we could use Biden's desire for Ukraine funding to
actually force him to use his executive authority to secure the border has been lost,
and that is why so many of us are speaking out against McConnell.
He was such a breach of his leadership position and it's such a just a
horrible thing to do to Americans who want a secure border. But that's where
we're at. So again, I think it has been smoked out. Now
the action moves to the House and I've been talking to the Speaker and to
Chairman Jordan. We need the House to step up the plate and say that
no, you're not going to get any funding for Ukraine until we secure our
border. They've got to stand strong, and as the messaging now has,
most of public pressure asks be directed toward the House. So Ron, I
want to jump in and go back to some of you and Elon were discussing
earlier, just because I think it gets to the strategy of where do we
go from here in Ukraine. And you know, it's always challenging to psychoanalyze
people, but I think much of what is going on with Ukraine policy is
you're trying to insulate neocons and liberal internationalists and the Biden administration from actually dealing
with the consequences of their decisions. And so if you just go back to
sort of eight nine, ten months ago, the consensus in the Biden administration
I spoke about this privately with Secretary Blincoln, was we are going to put
the Russians all the way back to the nineteen ninety one borders. The counter
offensive is going to be wildly successful, and that's what we're trying to do.
Of course, that didn't pan out. So now what is their argument
for the strategy. The argument for the strategy is that if we throw enough
money and resources and weapons at Ukraine, they will somehow reach a point where
the Russians are tired of fighting and we'll come to the negotiating table. And
of course we've learned pretty conclusively that they were. The Russians were at the
negotiating table in April of twenty twenty two when Blincoln and Boris Johnson refused to
negotiate with them. So we're witnessing the complete collapse of America's strategic capacity in
the defensive word. I mean, can you imagine in World War Two if
you had a president the United States saying we just want to throw weapons at
an ally until hopefully, maybe someday they can get their enemies to negotiate with
them. It's shocking that's where we are, and it's why, frankly,
I agree with Favek that it's not just diminishing returns. We're at the point
of negative returns with money spent in Ukraine. I am sort of okay with
saying no to both Ukraine, yes to the border. I recognize that we
have to have some negotiation here, but we really have to be honest about
how insane this policy is and completely divorced from strategic capacity. If your explicit
strategy is weight vladre Putin out until he comes to the negotiating table. When
you are outmatched in manpower and weaponry, you're clinically insane. So JD,
let me add one more piece of information. Because I was Chairman of the
European subcass End Formulations or ranking member for periody ten years, so I've been
over to Ukraine a lot. I was the only member of Congress that went
to Zelensky's inauguration. I returned a few months later with Senator Murphy and talked
to Zelensky at that point in time, Zolensky wanted to do a peace agreement
with Putin. This was when Putin already illegally an ex crimea and was in
firm control of eastern Ukraine. He knew at the time there was no way
he was going to dislodge Putin. He knew it wouldn't be popular, but
he wanted to do a peace agreement. His position's even worse right now.
So I just point that out, that Zolensky wanted peace. I don't think
yeah, I think it's just tragic that the US is using Ukraine as the
pawns in their proxy war with Russia and Ukraine's being destroyed as the resulted.
That can I just as me to that. I'm old enough to remember when
the Senate and Congress passed the first one hundred and thirteen billion dollars for Ukraine,
and I remember very clearly that what was claimed about that funding is that
it would be used by the Ukrainians to evict the Russians from their territory,
that there would be a successful spring or summer counter offensive and the Russians be
pushed out of Ukraine. That was the objective, and that money was spent
and the Ukrainians were defeated in the counter offensive. It completely failed. Now
they're out of soldiers, were out of artillery ammunition, and the lines are
buckling, and like Jad said, were there's no clear objective for this new
sixty one billion dollars. No one is now claiming that this money will succeed
in getting the Russians out of Ukraine. No one's even proposing that victory in
this war isn't objective anymore. All they're saying is what we see to appropriate
this money because we want to avoid defeat, or we want to get to
a negotiating position with the Russians, which like you guys are saying, we
had at the beginning of the war, we had an Istanbul, a draft
agreement that was signed by the Ukrainians. David R. A. Kamiya,
who is a leader of the Ukrainian delegation, said they had a deal.
Alexei Aristovich, who worked for the Zelenski at that time, said they were
popping champagne bottles because they had a deal. And then Boris Johnson flew into
Kiev and all of a sudden the deal fell apart. So it seems like
all we're trying to do now is appropriate money to get back to the place
that we already had for free at the beginning of this war, which is
a negotiation with the Russians. I guess my question for all of you centators
is could we get a real investigation, like some congressional oversight, a congressional
investigation of what exactly happened in that sort of March April period at the beginning
of the war where again they had a draft agree in Istanbul and then Boris
Johnson came in and the Ukrainians walked away. I mean, I would love
for the congress field to ask real questions at the Administration in its oversight capacity,
asking what was your involvement and sabotaging that deal? Yeah, David,
so obviously that's suppoor congressional oversight. But we have to be honest here about
how many of our colleagues seem dead set against real oversight. And you know,
Ron john I'm very curious to your sort of take on this because I
have a number of conversations with colleagues with Department of Defense officials, and it's
really weird to me how they simultaneously say we know where all the money is
going. And also we refuse to do any independent oversight. You know,
if they know all the money is going, then they might as well just
acceed to the independent oversight, because it would make people like me much more,
you know, at least sympathetic to the fact that we knew where our
resources were going, even if I don't agree that they should be going there
in the first place. But I'm just curious, Ron, why are they
so resistant to this. We've tried to do it, We've tried to force
amendment votes. They are dead set against oversight. I don't get it.
Well, they don't want to admit they're wrong. I think an awful big
push of this administration is just get Ukraine past the election. You know,
House Republicans would have to be doing the oversight. You know, I'll use
COVID as an example. Nobody wants to admit what a miserable failure I response
was COVID. No nobody wants to admit that the vaccines that they pushed on
their constituents, that they did videos recommending mighty killed some of their constituents.
Sin. The same dynamic is curring here with Ukraine. Nobody wants to admit
that we completely wasted over one hundred and ten billion dollars. So the way
you don't have to admit failure is you keep pushing more money, pretending that
it's a success. So I got I think it's just that basic human Tennessee.
Nobody wants to admit they're or wrong. And again, one of the
ways you do it is just do keep doing the same thing over and over
again and hope nobody really causy on it. Yeah, I think that's exactly
right. I mean, again, no one is even proposing that victory is
the objective here. No one's claiming that we're going to win the war because
of the sixty billion, or that Ukraine will push the Russians out of their
territory. No one is even bothering to articulate an objective here other than not
losing. You know. But again, even if we appropriate this money,
the Ukrainians are losing an ammunition war. We can't produce enough to solve that
bomb for them in any reasonable time frame. And moreover, they're out of
soldiers. You know, there's videos on Twitter that I'll post in this room
of Ukrainian men being literally rounded up off the street. I read a case
of guy in his fifties went out to get a haircut and he was impressed
into service, and the next week he ended up in the front lines in
Ukraine. This is what's happening right now, is people are being rounded up
off the streets to fight in a losing war, to keep it going for
just a few more days or weeks or months, so that the people went
to this point don't have to take any accountability for the failure of this policy.
There's one point I would add to if that makes it even worse,
David, because this bill allows an additional seven point eight billion dollars in presidential
draw down as shorty to set our own weapon stockpiles over there, and it
simultaneously lets the Department of Defense enter into contracts for another thirteen point seven billion
dollars. That's over twenty billion dollars in weapons we're going to send over there.
That thirteen point seven billion. A new contracting authority does not require the
Biden administration to prioritize our own weapons needs. Remember, we've depleted a lot
of our own stockpiles to use for our own national defense in anything that might
happen that might require us to use them. So not only are these weapons
as we stand today, those weapons are probably four or five years away from
being produced for US even if we don't pass this bill. If we pass
this bill, it could easily stretch years beyond that for some of these weapons
systems with a really long production time. That's deeply concerning because that directly impairs
our own national security. Yeah. Absolutely, And CSIS, which is a
military think tank, to an excellent report talking about the long lead times required
to replenish our arsenals of all these weapons. And we have substantially depleted ourselves
by giving so much to Ukraine. Like you said, even if the warst
stopped today, it would take us years to replenish all these thought piles.
So you know, I continue to give whatever little we make ourselves. Now
we're jeaparizing our own security and the story of other allies who we may have
long standing commitments to. David, I want to pick up on that point
because I don't think people realize how extraordinarily the defense industrial base is in our
country. But you know, Ron talked about this a little bit, But
if you look at the most critical weapons supplies for any potential conflict, whether
it's in Eastern Europe or Asia. There's a lot of overlap. It's not
complete, but you need things like javelins, you need patriots, you need
tomahawks, you need those are the missile systems you need one hundred and fifty
five million meters artillery shells. All of these systems are incredib stressed by the
Ukraine conflict, and all of them we're depleting. Even with the sixty one
million dollars worth of investments contemplated in this bill, we're all contemplating spending down
those resources much faster than we can replenish them under any scenario. It's especially
troubling if you start to look into the supply chain stuff. I mean,
I know you guys know a lot about this, but solid rocket motors,
which are one of the critical components of any of the missile systems that we
use, they're under an incredible amount of stress. We cannot possibly make enough
of them to support the missile systems necessary in Europe and to provide for our
own contingencies if God forbid, you know, some conflict erupted in East Asia
or somewhere else. So we're actually creating the circumstances where a work could break
out in some part of the world and we couldn't fight it because we don't
make enough bullets and we don't have enough missiles. And this is particularly pertinent
to the argument that Ukraine advocates make that if we somehow give up in Ukraine,
then she is going to march right into Taiwan. We're going to sort
of promote an aggressive China by not continuing to fund Ukraine indefinitely. One of
the classic formulations of foreign policy, to Terrence, is that it's a combination
of resolve and capacity. These guys are all talking about resolve, about bumping
out our chests and demanding that the Chinese do this or that, and showing
that we are going to be with Ukraine for the next five years if it
takes that long, the next ten years, if it takes that long,
the Chinese don't give it. Damn how much we thump our chest. They
care about whether we have capacity, whether we have munitions and missiles and bullets
that we would need. And that's where this war is such a huge train
on resources. Where As we speak, sending the critical weapons of war to
another country knowing that we can't replenish them ourselves fast enough. It's the height
of insanity. He Jadi. Let's go back to Elon's idiot index. I
wrote some figures from Hika for twenty twenty two defense spending. So the US
spent eight hundred and seventy seven billion dollars, China two hundred and ninety two
billion dollars. The next thirteen countries combined two hundred and seventy three billion dollars
less than the US did in total. So how well are we spending that
to produce a military industrial complex? You know? How effective are we?
What are we spending the money on? You know? My final point here
too is retrospectively going back and taking a look at all these foreign entanglements.
Fifty eight thousand Americans dead in Vietnam because the DOMINOI effect, right, if
you don't stop them there, they're going to take over the world. Fifty
eight thousand Americans. I was just recently Hanoi. What wonderful people. We
never should have been bombed Vietnam. What came of Afghanistan? Of Iraq?
What's again? The proxy war is destroying Ukraine. This isn't for the bent
for the Ukrainian people. They are being destroyed in this process. So we
as Americans, you know, listen, we are the good guys, I
have no doubt about that. But we are far from perfect. And what
we don't do we don't do oversight, but we don't retrospectively take a look
at what our actions actually resulted in because we really don't want to own up
to the reality of that situation. Well, and to the point about destroying
Ukraine, Ron, I hate when people don't talk about unintended consequences in war.
One of the unintended consequences of this conflict is six hundred and fifty thousand
Ukrainians left at the beginning of the war. Those are largely the wealthiest people,
the people who would have gotten conscripted to have the resources and the connections
to avoid it. The death toll, if you combined civilian and military deaths,
is approximately four hundred thousand according to smestimates that I've seen. What does
it do demographically to a country to be depleted of four hundred thousand, mostly
young men, to the point where you're now tapping into middle aged men to
support your man power needs. Yeah, I sort to think about I'm a
conservative. Most of the people hosting are involved in this call or conservative like,
what does it do to your country? What would it do to America?
If we took four million prime age mid and suck them out of America
and threw them into space, it would radically transform our politics, it would
radically transform our economy. It would completely deathamate, I mean a generation of
young people. So just in moral terms, it's a disaster, and no
one's talking about it. Everybody's acting like the Ukrainians are gung ho to fight.
The data doesn't suggest that no. I mean, all the Ukrainians who
are down hoo to fight volunteered in the first year of the war. Now
they're rounding people up off the streets and it's very sad. I mean,
it's very clear that the people who are being conscripted and impressed into service right
now are they're not looking to fight. And it's the people who are the
poorest who have the least ability to bribe their way out of being conscripted or
bribe their way out of the country. And the people with money have already
left the country. I've seen estimates that something like ten million Ukrainia already fled
the country. They may be down to somewhere under a population of thirty million
are ready, and a huge percentage of them are pensioners, maybe as many
as half of them are pensioners. So we have with this war, I
think, pushed the country to the point of demographic collapse. And one of
the reasons for friction between Zelenski and Zelutiony is that Zelensky wanted Zeluzi to go
in front of the Rada, their parliament, and push for this new mobilization
bill. But the mobilization bill is very unpopular. Obviously, the people who
are there do not want to be conscripted, and so this was one of
the huge points of friction is that Selutioni did not want to do it.
Zelensky replaced him, and now it looks like they're going to push for this
new round of conscription and mobilization and it has no real chance of changing the
outcome of the war here. I mean, it's very clear that the Russians
are domin They have a lot more soldiers, they have a lot more weapons,
they have a lot more artillery, and they're going to win the war.
It's just a matter of time now. But Zelenski and Biden both have
the same incentive, which is to keep this thing going as long as possible
so they don't have to acknowledge the failure of their policy, and the hardship
here is going to fall on you every day, ordinary Ukrainians. You are
now going to get grounded up and press them to service and sent to the
front lines where they don't, you know, sadly last very long. So
this is where this policy of appropriating more money not with any objective of victory.
No one is even seriously arguing that this money is going to help Ukraine
win. The argument is just, well, we don't want Ukraine to lose,
so it's just this deferral of the inevitable. And the one thing they're
not willing to do is negotiate. They're just not willing to do what they
always should have done, to do what they frankly sabotaged in the first few
months of this war, which is negotiate as settlement. That's what needs to
happen here. Well, what needs to happen is we need all the listeners
on this spaces exchange here to contact their house members and make sure this thing
stops. I really do want to thank Elon for opening up X and making
it a platform for free speech again. I think there's been an excellent discussion.
David, thank you for moderating it. I certainly want to thank Jay
and Mike. They've been tireless being down the floor of the Center trying to
stop this. But in the end, it's we the people. It's going
to take public pressure. I think I'm afraid it's too late here in the
Senate to get through to these seventeen eighteen Republicans that are joined the Democrats to
prolong this war. But I think we can get to the House, get
them to stop this and insist on securing our board again. I just want
to thank Elon. I want to thank all of you guys for this opportunity,
and it's been an excellent discussion. Yes, he us welcome, and
I think the arguments were very well articulated by a number of people who spoke.
So hopefully the public, recon public is able to listen to this and
indeed contact their elected representatives. I think the really important thing to bear in
mind here is that the spending does not help Ukraine. Prolonging the war does
not help Ukraine. This is very important to appreciate. I think it's fantastic,
Like America wants to be the good guy. You know, that's actually
pretty rare. We actually care about whether we're the good guy or not.
Most countries don't