 Wednesday it's 11 o'clock, that can mean only one thing. Time for What Now, America. I'm Tim Alpachele, your host, and today's title is Biden Says Putin Must Go, then he did not. We've had some interesting declarative statements from President Joe Biden in the last week and a half, and two of them that come to mind is number one, that Putin is a war criminal. And the other declarative statement was that Putin must go, can't remain. And the question is were these unintentional comments that were off the cuff or were they planted and were intended to be stated by the President of the United States about Putin? And we're gonna talk about this and other things. And before we move on, I'd like to introduce our guests, Jay Fiedel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Good morning. Jay, going to Biden's comments, and I'm glad he said that Putin's a war criminal. I know it doesn't help in negotiations down the line, but I'm glad he said it. I'm not sure it was the right thing to say about Putin must go because Putin's gonna use those words against him, and certainly to the Russian people against him. What are your thoughts about the two comments that Joe Biden has made, and in your opinion, were they intentional or just off the cuff gaps? First of all, there's no issue whatsoever that Putin is a war criminal. No issue. And in my opinion, I'll say it right here on ThinkDeck, in public, the Putin should go. So I think that's how Joe Biden really feels. I think he was off script, but I think that's how he really feels, and it's how I feel, and I know you guys feel the same way. A lot of people feel the same way. I suppose the argument you can have him about that is it's not diplomatic. But I don't see that diplomacy really bears on this. Putin is killing a lot of people. I would say war is not diplomatic. War is not diplomatic. And what Putin is doing is war crime. It is killing women and children, hospitals, schools, everything. He's destroying the country, and we should talk about that too. But bottom line is it's a true statement, and the bottom line is he should go. He's squashing what little democracy Russia had, he should go. I know that Putin will try to use that against him, but I don't think- Well, let's talk about- I have one more point. Sure. I don't think the press should be complicit in attacking Biden about it. I think we have a leader, we have to follow the leader. He's the best leader we have. Let's not attack him over it. Let's go to the point that the Russians will use this. In what ways will the Russians use, particularly the one where he has to go, that statement. How will they use that against Joe Biden? Well, they'll attack Biden personally, but the fact is that they already do attack Biden personally. I suppose he would love to assassinate Biden. He would love to bring America down, but you know what? He already wants to do that. That's his MO. So it's like this, I've got to tell you the story. This is an alcove in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and it's an exchange of letters by the War Department and the rabbinical organization in 1944. And the rabbinical organization wrote to the War Department, so would you please bomb Auschwitz so they can't kill any more Jews in the ovens there? Now there are lots of letters, and the War Department was dragging its heels, and finally they wrote back. And the War Department said to the rabbis, it said, we're really reluctant to bomb Auschwitz because we think it would make, and I'm quoting, we think it would make Herr Hitler angry. Oh, he wasn't angry until then. He wasn't angry while he was destroying the Western world. This would make him angry. It's the same thing. You know, you can't bend over for a guy like Putin. He's a tyrant, and he's already angry. It doesn't matter if he gets more angry or less angry, he's already a monster. So I don't see anything to quibble about here, to talk about if that's how Joe Biden feels I'm with him. Good point, Jay. You knocked it out of the park. That was a great, great point. Reminds me of Churchill when they were talking about negotiations with Hitler. And Churchill said, I think he said, you know, how can you negotiate when your head's already in the mouth of the tiger? And yeah, who cares if he's angry? Good point, excellent point. Great. Cynthia, so how will Putin, in your mind, use the statement about his, he has to go? Well, he tried to parlay that into, see, we told you they're trying to redo regime change here in Russia. And this is why I'm defending the mother country. In ways, do you imagine that Putin will use Biden's words? I think it's exactly what you just said. He's already been claiming that one of the reasons they have to do this is because NATO has been encroaching, threateningly encroaching on Russian territory. So that's what he's gonna say, but he's been lying from the beginning anyway. So I mean, I'm with Jay. Why are we, and excuse my term, why are we pussyfooting around with a man who is slaughtering civilians? Who cares if we make him mad? Why? I agree also that the press has jumped on this thing to make Biden look so bad, like, oh, he's gonna make such a mess of things by saying that as if it's not already a mess, as if there's really any hope of Putin doing anything that he says or promises, that the corridors, the humanitarian corridors, he says, we'll make them, they'll stay safe, then he bombs them. He says he won't bomb children, and then he bombs schools and children's hospitals and orphanages. And so why in the world would anyone look at Joe Biden and think what he said was wrong? I don't understand how anyone could think that it will escalate things, because how can you escalate any further? It's not like he's gonna start going into Poland now. As it is, what he was doing was bombing right near Poland, you know what, for 250 miles away from where Biden was at the moment while he was there. And this is another thing that I don't think people take into context when they realize what he was saying. He had just spent a whole day, more than a day, I think two days there, right? So a whole day of meeting with refugees, hearing story after story after story, horror story after horror story after horror story. And then he says that, can you blame him for thinking that this man is a monster and he has to go? I mean, he is a monster. I think all of us agree that his statements were spot on, even though they may have been unattended, but they were spot on. But that doesn't help President Biden when Anthony Blinken tries to walk back the statement and then Joe Biden himself tries to walk it back. Jay, to your opinion on that point. Yeah, I was starting to see Blinken try to walk it back. It was true to start. It was a statement that Biden should have made. That's the way he felt, let him say it. I don't care about the diplomatic impact, although I don't really think there is any. Cynthia and I agree on that. So the problem is the reaction to it. The press says, oh my God, he just called him a war criminal. Oh my God. He just suggested he should be removed, regime change. Oh my God. But you know, and of course Blinken walking it back is just like the press saying, oh my God, he shouldn't have said that. I don't think that Blinken should have walked it back. I don't think the press should be spending time criticizing Biden for what he said. It was true. Well, to that point though, Jay, to that point, Blinken did walk it back and then President Biden walked it back. So they had a little huddle and somehow convinced the President of the United States that maybe he should walk it back. Because if you recall, Joe Biden said the following. He said, it's a personal opinion. That's how he walked it back. Yeah, I don't think he should have done that either. I said what I said, that's the way I feel. It's a true statement. All those things, he should have stuck with it. Now he looks, I'm sorry, this does have an effect. Now he looks weak. Exactly. And I even heard GOP members of the GOP Congress say he should have just let it stay. Right. So even the GOP thought the statements were correct. And you know what? Let's take a moment and just look at that. Because sometimes you look at the Biden administration and you say, well, he's a reasonable, decent, honest, fair person and all that. And sometimes you look and say, he's weak. You know, he doesn't stick with it. He doesn't speak his mind. He doesn't call a spade a spade. And this is really a problem with his administration. He's got to learn to be more forceful. And I find some of the things his administration has done or not done to be nothing other than weak. So he's got to find a little strength here. Everybody's got him worried that if he says the wrong thing will be in a nuclear war, that's poppycock. That's not gonna happen. So my feeling is that it was really a mistake on his part to join the walk back. He should learn how to be forceful. I wanna focus on the word weak because what you and I say is indecisive and weak. The critics, particularly Fox News and other news agencies are using that as a foil to say that he's not weak. He's feeble and he's not with it. They're mentally and he's saying things that he has no business saying. And I'll mention one, I'll cite one example is that when President Biden was in the room with the soldiers having pizza and he said, you'll see when you get there, you'll see the horrors here, I'm paraphrasing. You'll see the horrors of people trying to throw themselves in front of tanks to stop the Russians. And Fox has jumped on this to say, well, that means US troops are going to invade Ukraine. And so there's another walk back. He said, no, I never said that. I never said that. And if they were, we're talking about Russia, Russia going into Poland. Well, we know that's absurd because that's a NATO country. So what, I mean, I hate to say, but Joe Biden is walking into some of these snares. And you may be correct, Jay, is that they've got him so super conscious about what he says and doesn't say that he's probably stumbling over some of his sentences. Well, before Cynthia responds, I can see she's ready. Yeah. I just, I want to add this thought. And that is that Fox News and the GOP in general, the right wing, you have to remember at all times that their mission is to bring Biden down. And they will criticize him for whatever they can find, anything, even things that are not worthy of criticism at all. Hey, Jay, it's working. He's at 40%. Yeah, well, it is working. And it's tragic that he's not stronger to deal with it. But I think we always have to remember that Fox News and the right wing are going to criticize him. They just look for things to criticize him. To the extent there was any, what do you call it, bilateralism, bipartisanship in supporting the war on Ukraine, the fickle finger of the media has moved on. And now you get to see, what's behind the mask, bipartisan works as long as it helps them. But when they have a chance, they go back to their default position, which is attack Biden on everything. And we're gonna see, we're gonna see them do that. And us three, we know, we understand. We understand that's their MO. Unfortunately, a lot of the people in this country are affected by Fox News and are affected by the media that attacked Biden and make him look weak. And that's why his popularity is down. Not because he's not a decent, good human being, but because he looks weak. And because both the media and the conservatives are attacking him over looking weak. Okay, Jay, thank you. Hey, before we go on to Cynthia, can we just agree that we should stop referring to Fox News as Fox News and just call it Fox Entertainment? That'd make me feel a whole lot better. Anyway, Cynthia, you wanted to say something. Jay, accurately identified your willingness to speak out on this particular subject. Go ahead. Well, specifically on the gaff about, that you'll see when you get there. He was talking to a group of soldiers, once again, taken out of context, right? He was talking to a group of soldiers that were still on the base in Warsaw and they were about to be going out to the front, I wrote to the border to be helping with the humanitarian efforts. So when he says you're gonna see women and children, that's what he was talking about, of course. Well, hang on now. He said you just see women and children throw themselves in front of tanks. Yeah. That's happening in Ukraine, not in Poland. Well, yes, I agree with that. So it really wasn't taken out of context. I hate to say it, but this was clearly a gaff. Well, the point is if he's walking back things, sorry, I wanted to- Go ahead. If he's walking back things, okay, everybody knows that's disingenuous. Oh, he's walking it back, which means A, he doesn't like what he said before and B, he's really straining the distance himself. And so you get hit on two elements of credibility when you walk back. Correct, why walk it back then, Jay? Why is he walking it back? He shouldn't be, don't ask me, ask him. Well, who's giving them the advice? Is it Blinken or who's giving them the advice to walk it back? Could be Ron Klain, one of his advisors, chief of staff in the White House. But it's not good advice. You ought to learn to be more affirmative about these things and not walk anything back. When you walk it back, you attack what you said in the first place and you also look disingenuous in the second place. It's both points of weakness. And I can see Fox News capitalizing on both. Yeah, and they did. I saw it with my own eyes and I thought, well, they scored one on this one because they really called it on them. So Cynthia, what's your opinion about, how's Joe Biden doing other than a couple of these walkbacks? How's he doing on the messaging about the Ukraine war and his ability to communicate effectively with NATO and get their alliance in top shape? Okay, messaging, which is just a perfect question for me right now. I lose my mind when I listen to Anthony Blinken speak. He's supposed to be a communication representative guy, right? And he says every third word, he says... Well, kind of like me. No, not like you. No, not like you. Not being like you. And it drives me crazy because what happens is he sounds like an idiot that doesn't know what he's talking about. So every time something gets walked back and then he gets questioned, he sounds sort of okay when he's reading a speech. But as soon as he starts to talk to people, he sounds like he's lying and looking for something to say because he's going... And we went over there and then we did... It's like every five seconds and it drives me crazy. So in messaging that, I don't know why someone hasn't sat him down and made him practice to stop saying, if he has to slow down his speech, if he has to do whatever he has to do to stop looking like an idiot and to stop sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about or that he's lying and making stuff up as he goes. Cause that's the way he comes across. And I'm on their side. And yet still it comes across that way to me. So you can imagine how he comes across to other people too. You wanna see passion. You wanna see commitment, you know? It's like my criminal law professor, Gerhardt O.W. Muller in my first year of law school. He said, the legislature is really missing the boat. When they pass a bill, they should say at the bottom, we mean it. And if they really mean it, they should say at the bottom, no, we're not kidding. We really mean it. It's sort of me in the bill. And so it's the same thing here. You know, I would like to see Tony Blinken mean it. It sounds bureaucratic the way he puts it. And frankly, to some extent, that's the way Biden is too. I'd like to see him raise his voice, the two of them. Yeah. Before I leave this topic, I want you to rate both messaging from Biden, not Blinken. Messaging, not necessary delivery, but messaging, how's Joe Biden doing? Cynthia, give him a score between one and a hundred. I think he's doing about a 75, 80. And I didn't hear him walk it back. I heard him say, I absolute, when he was being interviewed and questioned about it, in a press conference. And he said, no, I absolutely stand by what I said. I stand by what I said. Well, I saw him at the podium, so he knows a personal opinion. But he said, I don't mean it's a policy change that we're changing any policy. I'm just saying that that's what should happen. And I stand by my statement. And so I don't think he did walk it back. And I think everybody around him walked it back and that made him look even more, you know, what's going on? Everybody get on the same page, because it seems like they're not on the same page. And that's what would boost him up to a 90 in my book. All right, Jay, your rating. I'll give him a higher rating than Cynthia because he said it in the first place. I give him a low rating on walking it back and allowing his staff to walk it back. But let me add one other thing. He said, you want to see unanimity in the administration. Now, with Trump, you know, he would force unanimity. He would be all over anybody who disagreed fire. And that was his style. But what we have here, and I don't know if it's on your list of points that cover today, Tim, what we have here is this extraordinary attorney general who is AWOL, who isn't, you know, doing the job. He's not doing the job. And he's getting virtually nothing done in terms of the insurrection. And you find that the arguments by his staff in court, leading to that 34-page opinion the other day that found that Trump had violated, you know, a variety of criminal statues in the insurrection. Those guys are from the Department of Justice, Eric Garland's department. And they had evidence enough to convince a judge of that. So I don't understand why Eric Garland can't do an investigation of it. He has the power, but he hasn't done anything about as far as he got, which was one a month or two ago, is we're going to investigate this no matter where it leads. Well, you could fool me. In terms of messaging, okay, what you get is he's actually pulling the rug out from Biden and he's not doing anything. And his messaging is it's the same thing we got from Bob Mueller, you know, in the Mueller report. It's like, we'll hear about this later. We're involved in this very mysterious process. We can't tell you anything about it. And if you want to have confidence, don't look to us. And I think that's terrible. And I think it does reflect on Biden. And I think Biden should tell the man, get off your ukulele and do something. Right, all right. That leads us to the next topic here. And to you, Jay, you know, Richard Nixon and his secretary, Rosemary Wood, they mysteriously lost 18 minutes of critical transcript, as you know, and that was the talk of the town and it was more than just messaging. It was a lack of messaging, 18 minutes of it. We have a new report that during January 6th for a predominant part of the day, seven hours and 37 minutes, all phone logs from the White House are not available. They're missing, there's nothing. That seems quite odd given the day and they know that Donald Trump spoke to eight individuals in the morning and 12 people in the afternoon. Yet there isn't a single phone record of it. What do we got going here, Jay? Is this another Rosemary Wood doing the Rosemary Wood reach and incidentally erasing 18 minutes or is this just, they weren't using the phones at all. They were using other phones. They were using perhaps potentially burner phones or other phones from other people. What do we have going on here? Wow. Well, everybody who is surprised by this revelation, please fall off your chair right now. I don't see anybody falling off his or her chair, do I? So you're gonna try to tell me in a minute that it is entirely possible that Donald Trump is lying about the... Okay, well, let's go to our friend, Marilyn Garland, the attorney general of the United States. Surely this will catch his attention. Well, it's a dark hole. What are you gonna do about the 18 minutes? Well, that's Nixon, but I'm talking about the seven hours and 37 minutes. What are you gonna do about it? You don't have it. You can't make it up. It strikes me that he was destroying records. Well, isn't that against the law to destroy evidence and certainly the presidential records act and a number of things. We can also tag team on all the stuff that he hauled off to Mar-a-Lago that belonged in the archives. Yep. Have you heard of peep from Merrick about that? Not a peep. And that's an open and shut slam dunk. There's lots of open and shut slam dunks, including the, as I said before, the evidence that was submitted to that judge who wrote the 34-page opinion finding that Trump had violated criminal law in a number of ways. So what I'm saying is, and I think we agree, is that this should be, could be handled, investigated, prosecuted. He can call a grand jury. He can start it up. It's going to take a long time anyway. There'll be a lot of, as you know, a lot of machinations that Trump will interpose and try to stop him, but he's not doing anything as far as I can see. So yes, there's the eight hours of phone logs are gone. They're probably not coming back, but it's clear that Trump has violated the law yet again. And it's up to our Department of Justice to make a case out of that. And regrettably, they're not. Let me go one step further. This has a huge effect on the country because both sides of the aisle can and are saying these guys are ineffective. They can't tie their own shoelaces. This is obvious violations of law here and they haven't done anything. They've done the small potatoes. You know, the guys who were in the insurrection and they gave them misdemeanor charges and put them on probation or something, peanuts. Peanuts, they haven't gone any higher than that. And it's been 16 months now. We haven't heard a word peep. And all these other things are coming out. They're coming out. The newspaper reporters are doing Merrick Garland's investigation for him. They're handing him the stuff on a platter and he's doing nothing. So I think we have a real problem. As I said before, Biden wants to take the bull by the horns and say, Merrick, you gotta do something. Get down, get your body down in my office now. I'm not gonna tell you exactly, you know, what decisions to make, but we need action and we need it right now or the public is going to lose. Well, didn't Biden say early on in his presidency that the AGs was hands off? Yeah, but that doesn't mean he can't say I want some action. Yeah. I'm not gonna give you the specifics of what to do. I'm just telling you, I want you to, you know, probably he said to Merrick Garland, I want you to tell them that you're investigating right up to the top and Merrick Garland did that. And that was really not effective. That was not strong messaging at all. Then nothing happened before or after that little comment that Merrick Garland made. So yeah, I mean, you can take the position. You don't wanna talk to your AG and that's very nice of you, but it's not appropriate right now, in my opinion. He should be telling him, do something, man. The whole world is waiting on you. Don't be a Bob Mueller here. Cynthia, your thoughts about whether this almost eight hours is a nothing burger or as serious as the 18 minutes was in the Nixon Watergate investigation? Oh, it is so much more significant than those 18 minutes. And hopefully they're going to be able to backfill with other people because they've got the phone records of the people that he talked to. So if they know, they can go backwards from the other person and find out that it did go into the White House phone or did it go to another cell phone? They can trace it from the other side, I think. So I don't think it means there's a stone wall there because you got Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows and all these other Bob Brooks, all these other people calling Trump during that time. So they know they've got those outgoing calls. There's a way to find out where they went. Well, I suspect that's how this whole thing came to light is they know they have the transcripts from Kevin McCarthy. They know that Tommy Tuberville from Alabama and Mike Lee from Utah, Mike Pence. So yes, they know these things. Well, the way they got him was in the bunch of stuff that Trump was fighting to try to not get released. And then when he lost and it did get released, it showed up with these missing seven hours. And so they're working now to try to do that backfilling thing. At least that's what Adam Schiff was saying in an interview last night. But, you know, as far as Merrick Garland goes, we know he is rooted in the Federalist Society. He is Mr. Conservative. Conservatives move slowly. He's also an academic. Academics like to move slowly and talk about everything and work at it from every side and then move forward. So he got those two things that make him be a slow mover, right? And then he goes when he came out and he said, I'm doing investigations. He also in that same day said, I'm not going to comment on them. So he's already made it clear. He's not gonna tell us anything about what's going on. Now, is he using that as cover to not really do anything? Or is he really doing stuff behind the scenes? I don't know. And I don't trust him because of where his background is from. Well, that might be to Jay's point. Let's see what you're doing or don't show us what you're doing, but just give us an update on what's going on. I think Jay's well-founded to say it appears nothing's going on. So, hey, we've run out of time. Let's go around the table and just get last, last, last words, Jay, with you. Okay, I think there's a lot here and here's my track of it. We've established today that there were problems in Mudville, Washington. We've established that the guys on the right side of the Congress are going to attack Biden no matter what he does. And he looks bad and his approval rating is down. At the same time, although it doesn't have to be in my opinion, at the same time, Biden is out there dealing with Ukraine and Eastern Europe and NATO and trying to get those guys into a firm, long-lasting, sustainable coalition that will help keep the peace after Ukraine, whatever that is. And also, to make sure that these talks to the extent they go anywhere and that's another show, isn't it? My PS on that is they're not gonna go anywhere. There's pathology involved, but not in sincerity. The Russians will never make a legitimate deal. Sorry, they're pathological, Putin is pathological. But anyway, so you have these very difficult issues in Europe and in Istanbul and he's gotta be strong for that. He's gotta be strong to hold the coalition together, to hold NATO together, to have them actually make believable threats to Russia, to face down Putin in every way possible, to continue the sanctions, make more sanctions and to insist on any settlement process that should be legitimate and not just manipulative. So the problem is, and this is my point, what happens in the US to undermine Biden's reputation, his popularity, what happens with Biden when he doesn't do strong things, when he walks things back, undermines what he's doing in Europe, with NATO and the EU and with the people in Ukraine and so forth. And the picture is beginning to draw now as we see this go forward over a month now. It's easy, he can only go so far. He's only willing to go so far and he only has so much clout with the Europeans. And what I worry about is that if he has a hard time in the 2024 election, or for that matter, if the Democrats have a hard time in the 2022 election, coming up in six months, that further pulls the rug out from under Biden. He's less influential in Europe and the world. He's less influential with Putin and we are going to see a real effect from that. And this country is not gonna be able to pull it off if we run our own president down. All right, Cynthia, you get the last word today. Okay, my biggest fear right now because Merrick Garland has been just dragging his feet, that it's gonna get too close to the 22 election. And so he's gonna say, I can't do anything right now because it's too close to the 22 election, right? Like we've seen in the past when they don't, they say, well, we're not gonna do something because it's too close to the election. But then hopefully somebody will remind him of what James Comey did, Hillary Clinton eight days before the election. So, you know, but that's what the Republicans like to do. They like to say, oh, it's too close to the election. And they don't want that information to come out. So I'm afraid that the Republicans are gonna start crying for, oh, it's too close, too close, too close. And Merrick Garland will go, okay, and he'll back off. And then all of these important things that need to come out the truth of what happened on January 6th won't come out at all because once, if the American people don't get to see it before the 22 election and the Republicans take over, nobody's gonna see anything. And that's what scares me the most. Excellent point, Cynthia. That's an excellent point. Yeah, that's why maybe the select committee needs to publish their findings by no later than mid-May. I agree. Okay, we have run out of time. I wanna thank Jay Fidel, Cynthia Leeson-Claire for joining us on What Now, America. Please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock. And until then, I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and we hope to see ya. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.