SEN. TED CRUZ: Joe Biden surrendered to Putin, waved the sanctions that had worked, and that is why we’re facing the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is because of Biden’s weakness. Let me tell you how that phone call should go: Biden should tell Putin the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is dead.
BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. Some tough words from Ted Cruz there about how Biden is handling the situation of Russia massing troops — a hundred thousand plus is what they are seeing come together — massing troops on its border with Ukraine. This is raising the specter of a Russian blitzkrieg, if you will, a lightning strike invasion to topple the government of Ukraine, replace it with some Russian-supported stooge, and throw the whole region in turmoil.
There could be a few million refugees. When you’re looking at a situation like this, would the Ukrainian people rise up and wage insurgency? Would the Ukraine people largely accede to this? Depends on who you ask. Just before we get into some of the broad dynamics here tomorrow, a friend of mine who’s been covering this for, first The Daily Signal and now for Coffee or Die Magazine, is out there in Ukraine.
Nolan Peterson will be calling us from Ukraine. He’ll be joining us on the show tomorrow and telling us what’s really going on? What are people there saying, like, what are the folks who are now being called up for their civil defense forces, what do they think about the prospects of a full-scale Russian invasion. So, Clay, we’ll have somebody to bring real ground truth. He’s also been on the eastern front and the Donbas region, that breakaway region of Ukraine.
It’s all very complicated ’cause, Clay, there’s a lot of Russian speakers in particularly eastern Ukraine, much of the wealth country, much of the industrial might of the country is in the east. There are Russian sympathizers, obviously Crimea was already picked off by Putin years ago. Under the Obama administration that occurred.
I do think it’s fascinating that this is all happening on Biden’s watch. Wasn’t there this Russian stooge president for four years, the so smart and honest media told us? Almost like he wasn’t gonna mess when Trump was in office and now Biden’s around and there’s a new sheriff in town; he’s not scared of anybody.
BUCK: I think we’ll do a lot of diplomatic demarche. We’ll be upset. We’ll do sanctions. We’ll talk a lot about this. We’ll try to create some kind of a, you know, multilateral, international commission for the restoration of — you know, that kind of stuff. I don’t think the Biden administration, I don’t think the American people quite honestly, have the stomach to do — or the will, the desire — to do more than that.
And, you know, we’ve done this thing before. We can either learn the lessons of the last 20 years or not. We don’t need to be rebuilding other people’s countries for them. We don’t need to be defending other people’s countries for them, necessarily, and we need to be very clear about when and why we would do that. But, Clay, some people will say we would have a major military response in Ukraine. I doubt that highly. I doubt it.
CLAY: Yeah, and the other question I think a lot of people are gonna wonder about — and we’ll talk about this tomorrow — what’s next if Ukraine gets invaded?
BUCK: Oh, my.
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