Gaslit Nation Transcript June 16 2021 “Stop Trying to Make the Russian Reset Happen” https://www.patreon.com/posts/stop-trying-to-52556624 Sarah Kendzior: I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best selling books; The View From Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight. Andrea Chalupa: I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide, famine in Ukraine. Sarah Kendzior: And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world, and that autocracy is on display this week with Joe Biden on his world tour and his summit with Putin, which we believe we will be covering in a special episode later this week. Sarah Kendzior: Joe Biden has proclaimed to our allies that "America is back", but what does “America is back” even mean? Back from being an overt mafia state run by a sociopathic career criminal Kremlin asset? Sure. Removed from the conditions that allowed a sociopathic, career criminal, Kremlin asset to become president in the first place? Not so much. Sarah Kendzior: In case you haven't been paying attention to Trump crime cult accomplice, Merrick Garland, the mafia state is still in place and thriving, and we'll get more into that later. But first, some basic questions about America's position on the world stage. If I were one of our allies, I would not trust the US for shit. Would I be relieved that Trump was out? Of course, but would I believe that the US took the threat of Trump seriously, or that it takes the threat of autocracy seriously and the threat of transnational organized crime seriously? No, not based on the Biden administration's actions so far. Sarah Kendzior: The refusal to enforce accountability for Trump administration crimes is not just a domestic crisis, but a foreign relations crisis. It is a crisis of trust. Think about this from the perspective of a foreign country looking to work with the United States. What message does it send when a government won't investigate an attack on its own Capitol by seditionists who are now again announcing their plans for a sequel, unimpeded. What message does it send when the former president was a known mafia associate who pardoned the criminals who aided him, and those criminals who are deeply immersed in international affairs as well as US affairs are now roaming free? Sarah Kendzior: Who would trust that country? Jake Sullivan, one of Biden's key foreign policy advisors, was asked how Biden would heal the scars of the Trump era, and he had this to say, and I'm quoting him now: "I think our view going into this trip is that actions speak louder than words, and that showing that the United States is capable of turning the corner on the pandemic, showing that the United States is capable of making the dramatic investments that will pull us up and out of this economic recovery and help power global growth, showing the world that we are ultimately capable of making the investments in R&D and infrastructure, innovation and workforce, ultimately setting that foundation for this country will be the most effective way to show the rest of the world that the US has the power and purpose to be able to deliver as the world's leading democracy. So that's what he's going to try to demonstrate. And he, as I said at the outset, feels he goes into this from a position of strength because of the record he's built up over the course of the first four months.” So, that's the end of that quote. However, refusing to enforce accountability is not strength, it is dangerous denial that hurts not only Americans, but anyone who deals with the US. Sarah Kendzior: Yes, it's true that actions speak louder than words, and when it comes to elite criminal impunity and compromised institutions, there has been little action. Do not forget that from 2017 to 2021, Trump and his lackeys treated NATO like a protection racket. They threatened some foreign officials with violence and blackmailed others. They backed the enemies of our allies and the allies of our enemies. They threatened our own democratic stability in the United States in the most blatant of ways, and nearly everyone involved in these crimes has walked free, with the Biden administration showing not even an intent to stop them. Sarah Kendzior: Again, why should any foreign official trust a successor administration that won't enforce accountability? As we've said many times, the Trump administration was a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. A bunch of its lackeys are still in office, as we see most obviously in the DOJ. Others are roaming free with state secrets that can be used to hurt US allies. If I were a foreign leader, I'd ask Biden about that ongoing national security threat. Andrea, what are your thoughts? Andrea Chalupa: Well, I think what we're witnessing here with a summit with the most powerful person in the world—the President of the United States—and a mass murdering, xenophobic dictator who is the head of a sweeping criminal mafia state that is destabilizing not just its region, but the broader world, I think when you have a situation like that, you have to ask yourself, who actually won the Cold War? Andrea Chalupa: I think this is a time for us to reflect as Americans, as people who want to live in stable democracies, as historians. The KGB turned into the FSB and they worked in tangent over many years in weaponizing greed and corruption in the West. Now, Putin is arguably the richest man in the world, especially when you factor in not just his stolen wealth, but the court of Russian oligarchs that he closely controls and keeps an eye on. Andrea Chalupa: So this whole thing reeks of a bit of a hostage situation as though Biden, even if he didn't want to, had to meet with Putin. Obviously, he put some boundaries on that, like not holding a press conference. We had this bleeding under Putin in the US of the cyber warfare. It was sweeping. It wasn't just, of course, Colonial Pipeline. It was going back farther than that. There was Kremlin and Russian hacking of hospitals as the US was struggling with the worst of the pandemic. There's just utter criminal shamelessness of what Putin has been doing to the US, just emboldened by the weakness of our position in countering Putin. This is weakness that we're showing for many years under Obama, just an utter lack of imagination and understanding of how the Kremlin works. Andrea Chalupa: Think of the most ruthless individual possible. Think of someone that would take candy from a baby. Think of that ruthless person who will grab your Super Bowl ring from you and never give it back. That's Putin, and he keeps out playing the West to the point where now he has a summit on the world stage, and what that signals to Biden's European allies—that he needs to convince to come on his side on many issues in terms of countering not just Kremlin aggression, but Chinese aggression—what that signals to the Western Allies is Putin is saying loud and clear, "Look at me, you all have to play ball with me. France has to work with me. Germany has to work with me, Boris Johnson has to work with me. You all have to work with me because I can get a summit with the President of the United States. Andrea Chalupa: That hurts Biden's leverage when he needs to negotiate with his Western allies on anything else because it shows a tendency to fold. Let me tell you something else: the weird line that Jen Psaki and Biden and Biden's team keeps repeating when it comes to Putin is that they are determined to have a predictable relationship with Putin. They are determined to have a predictable relationship with Putin. They keep using that word “predictable”, not understanding that Putin's weapon is chaos. He thrives on chaos. He leverages chaos. Andrea Chalupa: Under Putin, Russian forces deliberately slaughtered civilians in Syria. They deliberately targeted hospitals along with Assad's forces. They did this, in part, not just to weaken the opposition and to prop up their puppet, Assad, so that Russia would have a proxy state on the Mediterranean which it could then use to further pressure the West and its geopolitical interests. They also did this to flood Europe with refugees. At the same time, they were financially propping up all these xenophobic, far-right political Kremlin clown cars across Europe that are running for office trying to break up the EU—the EU being a regulatory body that, in principle, tries to stand for accountability and human rights. In principle. Andrea Chalupa: When you see this summit with Biden and Putin on Wednesday, if you want an indication of how well Putin is playing this hand—this hand that has been in development since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the KGB just changed its initials to the FSB and their dark arts continued and ramped up as they took advantage of globalization by outsourcing their corruption, exporting their corruption, and buying off officials, buying off the journalists, expanding their propaganda networks, expanding their shell companies, expanding their dark money across the West—if you want to see how well Putin is now harvesting those three decades of work, look at how long Putin makes Biden wait for that meeting.