Krystal & Saagar on The Media's Gaslighting Over Corruption in Ukraine

that we've been gaslit in this conflict is like, and it just came out. I don't know if you saw this, you probably did, that Zelensky fired a bunch of his cabinet officials over corruption. And it was like they were taking these fancy vacations to Europe. One of them was accused of basically overcharging the military for meals. And remember, I mean, the amount that we have sent to Ukraine and propping up, not only their military, their government, their economy, etc. When they're taking that money, that's like coming directly out of the US taxpayer pocket. And nobody reported on any of this until Zelensky fired people. And then it would then we were allowed to be like, yeah, there's some problems with corruption. There may be a little bit maybe we should like worry a little bit about where the weapons are going and what exactly is happening there. But before then you weren't allowed to say it. Even better, the times actually changes headline. They were like Ukraine goes corruption drive. And it was like Zelensky aims to stamp out corruption just to make it a little bit less like the appearance. I have some fun numbers for everybody. This is from a past monologue I've gone USA currently at $100 billion is double what the entire rest of the world has given to Ukraine in one year surpasses what we gave the Afghan military in 20 years. The total amount to Ukraine now exceeds all US military aid to the country of South Vietnam between 1956 and 1975. Wow. $100 billion. And listen, I think what Russia did was wrong. I think it's an atrocity. I think the Ukrainian cause is just, but the total lack of debate, the lack of willingness to say like, Hey, when we got into this, what you sold to the American people was you're going to provide defensive weapons only so Ukraine could defend itself. Now we're sending tanks. Now we're sending it just came out longer range missiles out. These were things that were totally off the table. And then suddenly step by step by step, not only are they on the table, but you're not allowed to question it. You're not allowed to say, Hey guys, are we setting ourselves up for world war three here, which is something the president himself was talking about not very long ago and yet no debate. And that's the thing that, you know, however you feel about Ukraine conflict and you know, the buildup to it and how we got here and all of those things, I think at the very base level, the total lack of an ability to have dissent and debate and understand the potential consequences of what we're doing. That is fucking terrifying because we are talking about a nuclear armed superpower that we are engaged in a proxy war with. And you're basically not allowed to say, Hey, how does this end? What do we need to do to try to get to negotiated settlement here? How do we avoid having a conflict with this nuclear armed superpower? World war three seems like a bad thing to have on the table right now. And you guys are one of the few voices of reason that will say that, that agree on both sides of the fence. And this is, this is a thing that I, there's a lot of videos out now and I don't know if these people get these videos, but I get them. I get these videos of horrible war encounters in, in, in Russia and Ukraine. That's horrendous. And it brings me to this thing that I think about a lot because I think about things that other people do for a living and their jobs. And I think about like, they live in a world that I don't understand. You know, there's like the, like I'm fascinated by professional chess players. They live in a world that I don't understand cause I don't play chess. I love the fact I kind of know how the pieces move, but I've really only played like maybe 10 times my whole life. Yeah. I, there's a thing that people have. It's a quality of being a human being. You only know what you know. And other things become like these sort of like, uh, ethereal narratives. They're not necessarily real and war is one of them. Yes. War is one of them. There's a thing that people, the way my friends who've served talk about war is so titanically different than the way people who ideologically support or disavow it. Like you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. If you say there's no need for a military, you're crazy. We are going to get subjugated. Someone will come here with men with guns. If you take away all the guns that everybody has and no more military, we're fucked. And if you don't think that it's cause you've never gone to the dark parts of the world or you've never gone on telegram. I'll send you some videos. I saw a guy get killed with a hammer yesterday. I, this is so important for people to understand, which is that we are 75 years removed from what war on the European continent actually looks like. And you know, Joe, I'm the same way. I've been on fucking live leak, you know, since I was like 12, which probably for you, what are you watching? I'm like, what? And she's like a beheading or something. My wife, they come into my office and I have to pause videos and I'm like, you really want to see this? They always say, I can't handle it. I can't handle it. I don't do, I don't do well with blood. The point though is that, you know, we have to try and convey this to people and just say like, Hey, when you're on Twitter and you're like, Hey, you know, fuck you. You know, anybody who's against an air of you're like, this is not a joke. Like hundreds of thousands of Russians are dead. Hundreds of thousands are Ukrainians are dead. Millions are displaced. We have no idea what the end game is like. And you know, this is what Crystal was saying. I have this thing where, you know, the fight club line, like on long enough timeline, I'm like on a long enough timeline, Ukraine is getting everything that it wanted. So originally it was like no fly zone. And Biden was like, I'm being responsible. I'm saying no. Well, first they ruled out Patriot missile systems. Patriot missile systems are now on the way to Ukraine. They ruled out tanks. Now tanks are on the way to Ukraine. Right now there's an article talking about how F-16s they're thinking about sending Pentagon F-16s. Biden says no now. Right. Exactly. He was saying no to tanks. Right. Like five days before they send tanks. Here's a thing. He doesn't remember that though. You're right. You got to dig deep too. Like for example, originally we're like, we just want Ukraine to take back what it originally lost. And listen, if I was Ukrainian, I'd be pushing for the same thing. Absolutely. I have a hundred percent sympathy. They are not in the wrong here. They've been invaded by a foreign and aggressive power. That said, like we got to think about what's best for us right now with, there's a New York times article about US warms to helping Ukraine take back Crimea. I'm like, well, hold on a fucking second. I'm not saying it's just that Russia took Crimea in 2013, but they formally annexed it. And if you ask people in Russia, Crimea is Russia. So if they use, if Ukraine uses a Pentagon provided F-16 to bomb Crimea, now what? Like now that's a violation of Russian nuclear doctrine. They've updated their nuclear doctrine, by the way, to not even say it's defensive. They can say they can use it in any capacity that Vladimir Putin wants to. That was a significant change. If you look in the history of the way that the great superpowers actually consider their own nuclear first strike use. It's something that is considered ironclad and then boom, it changes like that. You're not even going to hear about this. I was heartened a while back when there were some leaks that came out of the Biden administration that he at like a donor event in San Francisco or something said basically like, we're, you know, we got to make sure we avoid World War III. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the, he was like, we got to avoid nuclear war. We got to avoid World War III. And I was like, hey, good. He's thinking about that. That caution that existed at that point seems to be totally out of the window. And if you read, you know, the official sort of like state paper, the New York Times about the administration's thinking, they're like, well, you know, Russia said this nuclear stuff and it didn't happen. So they must just be bluffing. It must just not be real. And it's like, okay, number one. Was there a timeline before they could press the button? Oh, they didn't blow up the whole world yet. So we should be fine. I mean, that's insane. Number one. And number two, the idea that Russia hasn't escalated in response to our actions is just not true. They've been striking critical energy infrastructure, including, you know, in and around Kiev, which was an escalation. They went through with a conscription that there, you know, was very politically dicey for Putin. There's rumors that they may go through with another draft. So the idea that they just like took all of this lying down didn't escalate is a fantasy to start with. But it's incredibly dangerous and foolish to think just because they didn't push the nuclear button yet that, oh, it's all fine. And he's just full of it. Thank God there's people like you guys out there because there's so many people that they have Ukraine in the same category of importance and significance as they do climate change. Climate change, which is a real thing, but it's it's a politically divisive alleyway where you're not allowed to veer from the course and even look at any kind of science. It's the same thing with Ukraine. A support from your for Ukraine is undeniable. You must put it in your Twitter bio. And you guys are saying you're not saying don't support Ukraine, but you're saying look where this is going. Do you understand what this is? Because you can't just openly support something you don't understand without a comprehensive view of what the fuck the factors are and how it got to be that way in the first place. And you're not going to hear that in a five minute clip on mainstream news. You're just not going to. It's so important for us to internalize that message. We're not saying we don't we hate Ukraine. We're not saying we don't even support Ukraine. The Ukrainian cause is just we're saying is what about our interests? All the interests that sub supersede Ukraine. If I was Ukrainian, I would do exactly what they were doing. But guess what? Ukraine does not exist without the United States. We provide the vast majority of the military there for the diplomacy perspective. If we cut off military weapons to them tomorrow, that's it. Done. They are literally are forced to the negotiating table. I'm not even saying we should do that. I'm saying what is the end game? And you know, in my neighborhood, there's more Ukraine flags than there are American flags. It's like Ukraine flag, gay pride flag, no American flag. But then it's like, okay, if you go to those people and if we were just say what they said, they say this is disgusting. This is Russian propaganda. It's up to the Ukrainians for when they want to stop. And I said, yeah, I completely agree. But it's also up to us for whatever we stop providing them weapons. We're like, hey, if you want to defend this part of your territory, that's totally fine. That's our end game. My end game is not having a nuclear conflict is making sure that we have peace on the European continent. Vladimir Putin is an opposition to that piece. But Putin and Russia are going to exist. You know, something I think people should take home too is you had Peter Zahan on. He said it really well, which is the first year of every Russian conflict is a total shit show. If you look at Finland, if you look at the first year of Hitler's invasion, even going all the way back to Napoleon and some of the czars campaigns before that, they lose a shit ton of people, looks like a complete mass, they fire a bunch of generals, all of this. And then what do they do? They use their vast rush, the Russian Colossus is known out of that for a reason, because they have a shitload of people, they a lot of military material, they amass it and they throw it at them. And so people are like, you know, Sagar crystal, like what you guys are saying will be valid. But Ukraine is winning. Look, we are barely a year into this one year into the First World War, I could make the easy case that Germany was going to win the First World War, Second World War, I could easily make the case the Nazis were gonna win. If I go back to World War, Civil War, I could easily make a case the Confederates were going to win all three of those, it didn't happen. Why? Because these things go on for a long time. Like you have no idea what it is. And one of the reasons that many of those conflicts first and two went on and ultimately came to the conclusion they were was because a lot millions of lives were lost. And the whole point from those conflicts, if you look at the way the people talked was we have to learn the lesson. We have to learn the lesson, but it's been 75 years. And now this is all a game. This is a tweet that people are saying about Ukraine, but it says real world consequences for people. That's it. That's it exactly. And the total lack of an ability to have a reasoned debate without just being like smeared as a propagandist. Yes. Again, don't read the comments. It is a terrifying moment. And, you know, there's a couple things that do give me some heart, which is number one, even though like I can't really blame the people who are just who can't understand seeing it another way, because the propaganda that is coming from every network, really like almost across the board, is very strong. And it's very hard to avoid that. So I have sympathy for that perspective. But even so, a poll just came out that had from NBC News, they buried this at the very end of their write up of the poll. Publix now 50 50 split on continuing aid to Ukraine. So people are questioning, even though they're being fed so much propaganda. I think that is a credit to the rise of independent media. I think it's also a credit to the fact that they don't fucking trust the mainstream. But because of independent media, the trust is informed, or the lack of trust rather. Right. It's not just it's not just knee jerk. I hope I mean, that's my hope looking at those numbers. I think your hope is 100% correct. I think you're right. I think you guys are very important. Glenn Greenwald, very important. Jimmy Doar, very important. Kyle Kalinsky, very important. People who are real people that actually have done the homework and are going over the details and can inform people, because there's so many people out there, like I talked to Dave Smith about the history of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I was like, what? And he informed me about the coup in 2014. I'm like, oh my god, a lot of backstory. And then we played the video on the Colbert show, the old Colbert show, which is just fucking Gideon something the guy from the times where he was like, what was it? book. He's selling a book and in the book, he's comparing Russia and Ukraine to Batman and Robin. And he's like, Ukraine is Robin and we want to take Robin and bring him over to our side. And it's like this open secret. They're just open links. There were cables from that actually WikiLeaks released, and a friend who's a great journalist, Bronco Marcy teach, who's been looking at the Ukraine conflict with a critical eye. He sorted through these cables. And he found all of these diplomatic cables from the prior era, where you had NATO allies, you had US officials, who were all saying, hey, guys, Russia has red lines here with regard to Ukraine. And floating NATO membership with Ukraine is a real violation of their hard red lines. And we're very fearful. And they laid out exactly the trajectory that we could find ourselves on. Now, that doesn't deny Russia agency or, you know, Putin in the Kremlin agency for invading, no one made them do that. However, it is to say that, you know, there was a time when you were allowed to acknowledge that US policy could lead to this exact event. And now when you even suggest that us, you know, floating NATO membership with Ukraine and saying that they were going to be made apart, that some of these things were exacerbating and they crossed the red line and, you know, created a situation that was incredibly tense, where this is the predictable outcome. Again, that's you're not allowed to talk about that.