Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell is the Senate minority leader. He is a pretty horrible guy. Yesterday,
during Joe Biden's State of the Union, when Joe Biden talked about his job creation record,
McConnell didn't seem to like it. He just looked comatose, almost like he had bad,
had some bad oysters before before the event. He was given the opportunity yesterday to actually
condemn what Donald Trump said about Vladimir Putin calling the invasion of Ukraine genius
and calling the invasion smart. And he didn't do it. McConnell's very willing to say Putin's bad,
but he won't condemn Trump for what he said. Speaker 3: The little girl you've long been
critical of President Vladimir Putin. Was it a mistake for the former president to
praise Putin's very savvy smart, his Speaker 2: Ukraine strategy genius?
What President Putin is,
is a ruthless thug who's just in a rage, invaded another sovereign country and killed thousands of
innocent people. That's what President Putin is. Speaker 1: So, yeah, McConnell sounds very,
very sick. But what he's saying is I'm not going to say anything about Donald Trump when Donald
Trump said Putin savvy genius smart for what he did. Putin's bad. But I'm not going to condemn
Trump, and I almost at this point wonder why? Because Trump regularly attacks Mitch McConnell.
Mitch McConnell did appear on Fox yesterday and blamed Joe Biden for what's happening
in Ukraine, which is another popular one among Speaker 5: the right speech tonight. He goes into
the chamber this evening with a thirty seven percent approval number. What do you think
he needs to do tonight in order to galvanize the United States and to, as you said earlier, make a
big course correction? What did you mean by that? Speaker 2: Well, look, he's doing this kind of
shape because he deserves to be on this kind of show. Raging inflation, uncontrolled border,
in my view, too late to deter Putin and taken some of these steps earlier.
This might not have happened to the president in a tough position because
he deserves to be in a tough position, having Speaker 1: now understand that you really can't
win with these people. Because if Joe Biden and and remember, it's not just the U.S.,
but if Joe Biden and other European allies had started the sanctions and the flight closures in
these things early. These are the Republicans who under Trump are saying we should be getting along
with Putin. There's no reason for unnecessary or extraordinary hostilities with Putin, so
it's a no win because if Biden had started these, these moves earlier, he would have been criticized
for doing too much, too quickly and being overly aggressive. Now he's being criticized for not
moving quickly enough. And these are just bad faith actors. That's that's the reality. I don't
believe Joe Biden's response has been perfect, and I've criticized the response where I felt
that it needs criticism. But these are just bad faith critiques now, just for comparison
again. I don't love the guy, but just as a comparison for a different type of Republican,
here was Mitt Romney asked about Biden's handling, and he gives a much more. More normal response
about Biden has done some things well, it's not Biden's fault that Putin invaded another country.
But you could do better. This is like a more normal Republican response.
Speaker 5: Want to go back in time a little bit? Senator, do you think it was a mistake
for President Biden to rule out U.S. troops on the ground instead of trying to use what's known as
strategic ambiguity to deter Vladimir Putin from invading in the first place? Well, there really
wouldn't have been an ambiguity. We don't have the kind of troop strength and materiel of war in the
region to be to be a serious threat at that point. Look, the the Biden administration has done some
things very well and some things not so well the not so well side as they continued the policy of
prior administrations not to provide the defensive weapons that Ukraine needed. That was the mistake.
The positive thing was sharing our intelligence with our allies and combining our efforts with
our allies. Look, we used to be 40 percent of the world economy today. We're about half of that.
And so for us to have the kind of economic clout we used to have back in the 50s and 60s and 70s,
we really do need to combine with our allies. And that's something President
Biden has done extraordinarily well. Speaker 1: So understand that that's sort of like,
I know it's weird to hear that like to some people that may be like, well, that if you didn't know
who it was, he'd be like, That must be a Democrat. No Republican would say that Joe Biden is actually
doing things that well. There was a point at which more normal Republicans would say, Oh,
OK, hey, you know what? Your criticism of Biden isn't a good one, and here's why. And Joe Biden,
Mitt Romney explained that on some things, Joe Biden has done a really good job. And here are
the things I would have done differently that at one point was actually normal. And for all of our
disagreements with Mitt Romney, if Romney was the worst of the Republican Party, this country would
be far better off than with people like than we are with people like McConnell,
Boebert, Greene, Cawthorn, Gohmert and all of these, you know, Gates and all of these other
lunatics. So it would be great if we could go back in that direction. Republicans aren't incentivized
to do that. And case in point, someone like Mitt Romney is not a celebrity Republican in the sense
that the ones that get attention are the radical crazies, the ones that are willing to do things
like Josh Hawley did on January six, 2021. People like Ted Cruz, etc. It's the cartoons.
And I mean, listen, I'm not giving the Republican Party advice. The country would be better off if
Romney was the worst of the party. Sadly, Romney's the best of the party, not the worst of the party