Year One: A Political Odyssey (2022) Movie Script

1
It is a stunning moment, Dana.
The disgraced 45th
President of the United States
and First Lady Melania Trump
walking to Marine One
for their last ride.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the President-Elect
of the United States,
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
And Dr. Jill Biden.
There was
huge security issues that day.
Fears after January 6th
and a lot of steps
and precautions
that were being taken.
We couldn't even get
close enough
to drive here on our first day.
So actually,
all of the senior staff
all met at the zoo
and we got on buses,
and we all were watching
the inauguration on our phones.
Please raise your right hand
and repeat after me.
I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.,
do solemnly swear.
I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.,
do solemnly swear.
That I will
faithfully execute...
I was not out on the mall
watching the speeches,
but rather sitting
in the situation room
watching the secure monitors
where we had up on the screen
the command centers
for DHS and FBI,
because we were worried
about the potential
for unrest or violence.
This is America's Day.
This is democracy's day,
a day of history and hope,
of renewal and resolve.
Even in that moment
of joy, of renewal,
people were extremely conscious
of the inheritance we had.
Thinking about the challenges
we were facing at home,
I knew that
as Secretary of State,
I would have to be
in some way explaining that
around the world.
We'll press forward
with speed and urgency,
for we have much to do
in this winter of peril,
and significant possibilities.
Much to repair,
much to restore,
much to heal, much to build,
and much to gain.
Hello, Cathy.
Hello, sir.
Good evening, everyone.
On behalf of
the White House Office
of Presidential Personnel,
I am delighted to welcome you
to the swearing in
of the day one appointees
of the Biden-Harris
administration.
We are joined by hundreds
of White House staff
and hundreds more agency
appointees, all of us here...
There was a nervousness
about COVID,
even among us, and we were
pretty informed people.
So many of our meetings
were done over Zoom.
I'm looking
at all your photographs
and I'm supposed to be
looking straight ahead,
but I want to take a look at you
while I'm talking to you.
You know, this was
not business as usual.
This was not normal.
It was an incredibly
challenging week around here.
Good evening, everyone.
Thank you for joining us
on this historic day.
I was doing a briefing
for the first time that day,
which also was not
typically done.
We just felt it was important
to do a briefing
on that first day
to send a message to the world
we were going to return
to respect for the freedom of
press and that engagement.
President Biden
also officially appointed
a COVID-19 Response Coordinator,
a position and team we had
already previously announced,
but made it official today
to create a unified
national response
to the pandemic.
On day one,
the first full day
of the presidency,
we only had the small core
of a team
here at the White House.
The few of us that
showed up in the building,
and I was one of,
like, four people
on the COVID team
that showed up in the building.
We couldn't even be,
uh, near one another.
We all knew that this was going
to be a race against time.
Hospitals were full.
Only two percent of the public
had been vaccinated.
In December,
as we started to make
the transition,
we kept asking for the plan,
and there wasn't a plan.
So the team came together
and put together a plan.
On that first day,
we knew we were meeting
with the President.
Within a couple of hours,
the President was announcing
the strategy.
And we didn't have the ability
to sign on to our computers.
We had to figure out
where to print.
And then the hardest thing
was the binding.
So, we had a loose-leaf folder,
notebook,
alternative or backup plan,
and at the last minute,
one member of the team
figured out
how to get it bound.
So, just in time, we walked into a
press conference where the President,
you know, rolled out the plan.
Mr. President, how are you?
You're going to be doing
a lot of talking
for the next while.
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to see you.
Good afternoon.
Today, today, I am unveiling
the National Strategy
on COVID-19
and executive actions
to beat this pandemic.
Our plan starts with mounting
an aggressive,
safe, and effective
vaccination campaign
to meet our goal of
administering 100 million shots
in our first 100 days in office.
We're on day one.
I'm going down
to the White House
for the first time
since Biden was elected.
I covered the White House
for years
under the end
of the Clinton administration
and then through the first
six years of George W. Bush.
Then I've been off
for a number of years
working on big
national security projects.
- Good morning.
- How are you?
But I'm coming back to
the White House this year
and doing it mostly to see
how this team come together
to try to pull
the United States
out of the hole
that it finds itself in
around the world.
Today, uh,
the administration announced
a historic new donation
in the global fight
to defeat COVID-19.
This is a period
of such remarkable division
in the country.
From the racial reckoning
that was playing out
in the streets
in the summer of 2020
to President Trump's big lie
that he had been cheated
out of the election
to the rioting and horror
of January 6.
It all played into a Russian
and Chinese narrative
that America was
in terminal decline.
For Biden,
the biggest challenge
is to make clear
that democracy could be
a winning formula
for everybody.
And to do that, he brought back
the people he knew best.
Alright.
His chief of staff, Ron Klain,
has been with him
for years and years,
including as Chief of Staff
when he was vice President.
Here or here. Here?
- He ended up picking as his.
- National Security Adviser
Jake Sullivan, who at 44
was one of the youngest people
ever to be in the job,
but had already been
his National Security Adviser
as Vice President.
Where do you guys want me?
- You're gonna be right here.
- Alright.
His Secretary of State
is Sullivan's predecessor,
Tony Blinken,
who had served for years
as the National
Security Adviser to Biden
while he was in the Senate.
Blinken was also
the Deputy Secretary of State
under John Kerry,
Obama's Secretary of State.
And Biden brought Kerry back
as his climate czar.
Do you mind
taking off your mask?
You know, we've grown
nervous of it today
because we're hearing
about cases.
They put Kerry
in the White House
because putting him
in the State Department
would have been
a little bit uncomfortable.
He would have been reporting
to his former deputy.
Okay. You guys gonna sit?
- Yep.
- Yep.
For his Secretary of Defense,
Biden chose Lloyd Austin,
a retired general
he had known for a decade
and who had been a friend
of Biden's late son Beau.
I, William Burns.
I, William Burns...
And finally,
as his director of the CIA,
Biden chose Bill Burns.
Burns had been ambassador
to Moscow under President Bush,
and there's no one
in the administration
who knew Vladimir Putin better.
I spent the first
decade of my career
as a diplomat
at the end of the Cold War.
I would never underestimate
in dealing with President Putin
over the last couple of decades,
his risk appetite.
...Vladimir Putin!
President Biden has
a history with President Putin.
They had met when President
Biden was Vice President,
a very memorable meeting
that I was part of in the dacha
that, uh, that
President Putin had
just outside of Moscow.
Then-Vice President Biden
was in the study with Putin.
They were very close
to each other.
And Vice President Biden
looked at him and said,
"I'm looking in your eyes,
and I can't say
that I can see your soul."
And Putin laughed and said,
"Good, we understand
each other."
Good afternoon. It's great
to be here with you today.
So first, what happened?
Hackers launched a broad
and indiscriminate effort
to compromise
the network management software
used by both government
and the private sector.
An advanced
persistent threat actor,
likely of Russian origin,
was responsible.
Biden has an immediate
problem with Russia,
one he's going to have
to deal with
in the next few weeks.
And it's called SolarWinds.
The hack of
the federal government
and more than a hundred
American corporations
was the deepest,
most sophisticated hack
of the United States
that's ever been accomplished.
Russians managed to slip in
through this software
that was put out by
this company called SolarWinds.
What was remarkable about this
was its sophistication
and the residency,
the duration of the residency,
of that intrusion
in government systems.
These Russian hackers have been
in these US governments
since March and remain there.
This is an ongoing,
widespread espionage operation.
The alarm, I think,
was quite, um, significant.
It was an alert
that we're entering
into a new chapter
in our relationship
with Russia.
What are we going
to do about it?
Three things.
First, finding
and expelling the adversary.
Second, building back better
to modernize federal defenses
and reduce the risk
of this happening again.
And finally,
potential response options
to the perpetrators.
They're in a tough spot here.
We know that
in the next few weeks,
the United States
is going to begin
a series of sanctions
against Russia.
But Jake Sullivan,
the National Security Adviser,
has made clear sanctions alone
are not enough.
And then the question is,
can they establish
some kind of deterrent,
which so far
has failed completely?
When you think about
the challenge that Biden faces,
he's in the position of being
in adversarial relationships
from the start with the two
other major nuclear superpowers
in the world, Russia and China.
And the only way he's going
to be able to make that work
is if he can organize
the allies with him.
Because of the past four years,
what I heard from my colleagues
was, "Welcome back."
Thank God you're back.
We're so happy to see you.
It was a love fest
my first few weeks
here in New York.
With our fellow democracies
having experienced
the US retreat for four years,
there's a sort of
a sense of, "Okay, phew,
uh, now we can actually build
these alliances again."
But there's also a sense
that democracies need
to, to pull together,
that we need all hands on deck.
We are really
in a global struggle
between democracy
and autocracy.
And in the last decade,
autocracy has been on the rise.
The way we view it,
and the President views it,
is that it is an ongoing fight,
and it will continue to be,
because there will
always be powers
pushing for autocracy.
The problem is
the United States
is in a particularly
weak position
to have that argument.
I mean, in terms of how you want
a political system to run,
there are, there are countries
around the world that would say,
"I might want my country
to run like Germany
or Japan or Canada."
There's no one around the world
that looks at
the United States and says,
"I wish my political system
would run like that."
USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA!
USA! USA!
USA! USA!
Well, thank you very much.
And hello, CPAC, do you
miss me yet? Do you miss me?
President Trump's
behavior this year
as an outgoing President
is certainly unprecedented
and very different
than what the other 44 people
who held this office had done.
Remember how quiet
Obama was
when Trump first came in?
He said, "Look, you know,
he won. This is his time.
I'm not going to be here
criticizing him at every turn."
Trump did no such thing.
Joe Biden has had
the most disastrous first month
of any President
in modern history.
That's true.
When you look at the polls
of Republicans,
you still get
a very substantial number,
nearly a majority,
who believe Biden is not
legitimately elected President
of United States.
I don't know
how you get past that.
This election was rigged.
And the Supreme Court
and other courts
didn't want
to do anything about it.
I will say it's probably
what we expected.
His behavior as President
was unprecedented,
and so there was no reason to
think his post-Presidential behavior
would be unprecedented,
I suppose.
Keep going up.
- Okay.
- Okay.
We made a conscious decision
when the President
came into office
that we didn't want
to make his presidency
a continued campaign
and battle with Donald Trump.
Alright, guys.
The lesson we took
from the American people
was that they wanted to take
the venom out of our politics.
Okay, what are follow-ups?
Follow-up on Abbott, and Mexico,
on the other side of the border.
The migrants
arriving from Texas...
President Biden wanted me
to take the temperature down
in the country.
There's concern
about their treatment.
I don't think we need to,
like, change our posture
because it's not everything.
After years of questioning
the legitimacy of the press,
not having
normal briefings, lying,
I mean, returning
to a version of normal.
I don't think we have
any update on that,
although maybe we can check
and see what the status is.
I think what
people have seen is
after the four years
that predated President Biden
is, um, you know, US...
What US leadership
should look like
and what it looks like
to stand up for democracy.
I'll find an answer for that.
Relations between
the United States and China
will face a new test
as officials from both sides
meet in Alaska.
The discussions are expected
to be frosty,
with Beijing warning
that compromise
is not on the cards.
We went to Anchorage,
myself and
Secretary of State Blinken,
to meet with our counterparts
from the People's
Republic of China
for a multi-hour session
to go through
the full range of issues
in the US-China relationship.
Bitterly cold,
not exactly a shock.
It was Alaska
in the late winter.
On behalf of.
National Security Adviser
Sullivan and myself,
I want to welcome
Director Yang,
State Councilor Wang,
to Alaska.
And thank you very much
for making the journey
to meet with us.
We wanted to be able
to tell them directly
our concerns about some
of the actions
that China has taken recently,
challenging not just
our interests but our values.
Our administration is committed
to leading with diplomacy
to advance the interests
of the United States
and to strengthen the
rules-based international order.
The transition identified
a few basic propositions
about what we expected
from China.
We believe that
the Chinese government
had made a decision
that they were going to attempt
to surpass or displace
the United States
in terms of being
the world's leading economic
and military power.
That this next decade
was a decisive decade,
and that we were going to have
to deal with a more assertive,
more aggressive China
and that we had to tool-up
and be prepared
for this competition.
We've said to them,
you want to play,
you want to be a superpower.
With being a superpower
comes responsibility.
Uh, with that, there are
certain rules of the road
that you have to abide by.
We'll also discuss our deep
concerns with actions by China,
including in Xinjiang,
Hong Kong, Taiwan,
cyber attacks
on the United States,
economic coercion
toward our allies.
We wanted an opportunity
to explain
how we see the world,
what America's interests are.
And I would say that
we actually accomplished
all of those objectives.
Now, there were some
of the public fireworks.
This is not supposed
to be the way
one should welcome his guests.
We wonder if this is a decision
made by the United States
to try to gain some advantage
in dealing with China.
But certainly
this is miscalculated
and only reflects
the vulnerability and weakness
inside the United States.
I see a confidence level
among my Chinese colleagues
that over the years
I had not seen before.
They have come in with a,
with a sense of power
and a sense of strength.
They came up with this
term "Wolf Warrior"
to describe their diplomats.
When you're talking about
your diplomats as Wolf Warriors,
that says something.
And that's what was
on display in Anchorage.
We hope
that the United States
will do better on human rights.
The challenges facing
the United States
in human rights are deep seated.
They did not just emerge
over the past four years,
such as Black Lives Matter.
It was a kind of classic
whataboutism that we saw
from the Soviet Union
back in the day.
It didn't work then. We don't think
it's going to work for the PRC either.
It was, "You want to talk
to us about human rights.
We're going to tell you about
human rights" kind of thing.
So part of my reaction was,
we've seen this movie before.
Part of my reaction was,
uh, "Man, they're
really going for it."
The United States
has never seen
an adversary like this before.
Biden knew that for ten years,
Washington was trying
to make a pivot to Asia,
but something
always got in the way.
And he was determined that
he was going to execute on it.
Good afternoon.
I'm speaking to you today
from the Roosevelt,
the Treaty Room
in the White House.
I'm now the fourth
United States President
to preside over American
troop presence in Afghanistan.
Two Republicans. Two Democrats.
I will not pass this
responsibility on to a fifth.
We have to focus on the
challenges that are in front of us.
We have to shore up
American competitiveness
to meet the stiff
competition we're facing
from an increasingly
assertive China.
It's time for American troops
to come home.
You go back
to when we came in,
a deal had already been struck
that our forces
were going to be
out of Afghanistan by May.
The Taliban had said,
"Hey, if you're not
out of the country by the,
"by, by, by May 1st,
then we're going
to start attacking you again."
So this really doesn't give
President Biden
a long time to work
through this process.
His choice
is to either increase
our footprint significantly
or he can make a choice
to, uh, decide to leave.
It's time to end
the forever war.
Thank you all for listening.
May God protect our troops.
May God bless all those families
who lost someone
in this endeavor.
If you listen to the speech,
it sounded pretty simple.
We were just going to pick those
forces up and bring them home.
Very popular among Americans,
Democrats and Republicans alike.
But what was important
about that announcement
is what's missing.
There's no plan
for bringing out the people
who had helped
the American troops,
had helped journalists,
had helped contractors,
and who will be targets
of the Taliban.
The pace
of the vaccine rollout
slowly picking up.
The federal government
sending out
an additional
one million doses this week
to 6,500 select pharmacies
across the US.
The main event was vaccinate
more people more quickly,
period, no matter what.
We felt that we were racing
against an enemy.
We quickly deployed
the Defense Production Act,
worked with the
vaccine manufacturers,
helped them get
additional equipment,
raw material.
So we were able to lock in in the
first few weeks of the presidency
enough supply
for all Americans by July.
And then we were able
to accelerate that.
And actually by April 19th,
all Americans
were eligible for the vaccine.
In my first full day in office,
I outlined for you
a comprehensive strategy
to beat this pandemic.
We've spent every day since
attempting to carry it out.
But that wasn't the only
problem. Not just supply.
There weren't
enough vaccinators.
We're mobilizing
thousands of vaccinators
to put the vaccine
in one's arm.
There weren't enough places
for people to get vaccinated.
Calling active duty military,
retired doctors and nurses,
administrators.
We stood up these
big federal FEMA sites.
We created a Web text line
for people
to be able to find a place
to get vaccinated.
Things are slowly changing.
32.8 million Americans
have received
at least one dose.
That's about 10 percent
of the population now.
Nearly 90 million Americans
have received at least
one dose of the vaccine.
The President had set
a goal for us
of 100 million shots
in 100 days.
We did 100 million shots
in 58 days.
President Biden's ability to
get the country vaccinated
and back to work,
that's democracy delivering.
And that is the debate
that we have struggled
to have in recent years,
because we weren't able to do
in the last four or five years
those, those big things.
If we do this together,
by July the 4th,
there's a good chance you,
your families, and friends
will be able to get together
in your backyard
or in your neighborhood
and have a cookout
and a barbecue
and celebrate Independence Day.
When we came in, of course,
the most dominant thing
has been COVID,
and that certainly
changed the way
that, uh, that we were
doing business.
Well, good morning.
Well, good afternoon.
Good evening.
Let me start by thanking China
and Foreign Minister Wong
for initiating
this critical discussion.
COVID has been
an enormous crimp on diplomacy.
Hey, folks.
Diplomacy is always better
person-to-person,
country-to-country like that.
Thank you very much,
President Fernandez,
for your leadership
and thank you for convening
this timely conversation.
Thankfully, we got to the place
where we could start to,
to get out there,
actually see people.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Great, great to see you.
We've had the opportunity
to see each other
and work together
in Brussels at NATO,
but it was mask-to-mask and now
it's finally face-to-face.
So that's really,
really good news. So a lot...
When you think about any
of the challenges that we face,
whether it's COVID,
whether it's climate change...
Lots to talk about. I'm just
grateful for the opportunity
to be able to spend
some time today.
...not a single one of them
can be effectively addressed
by any one country acting alone.
Even the United States.
With Russia, the way
President Biden sees it is this,
it makes the most sense for us
to see if we can have
a stable,
predictable relationship.
Please, have a seat.
On the other hand,
we've also been equally clear
that if the Russian government
chooses to act aggressively
or recklessly
challenging our interests,
challenging our values,
threatening friends or partners,
we'll respond.
In late March,
heading into April,
we began to see indications
of a massive
Russian military buildup
around Ukraine.
The President received
multiple briefings
from his intelligence community,
his military experts.
Our concern
is that nations respect
some measure of a rules-based
international order
where countries
don't arbitrarily attack
other countries
and change the borders.
I mean, we've heard
Putin say before
he thought the fact that
the Soviet empire broke apart
was one of the worst things
that he had ever witnessed
in his lifetime.
So does he have a desire
to, to reconstitute something
that looks like that?
I mean, that could be the case.
We made clear that these
actions are simply unacceptable
and are not going
to go unanswered.
They're not going to be allowed
to happen with impunity.
You saw
the international community
in many countries stand up
and raise concern and alarm
about the buildup of Russian
forces on Ukraine's border.
And in the weeks after that,
we saw Russia pull back
many of its forces
and much of the equipment.
Not all. It still represents
a real concern.
I think at that point
the Russians were surprised
at how quickly,
now that we were actually
talking to our allies again,
we were able to pull together
a more united response.
But they sometimes
tactically de-escalate.
It doesn't mean that they
strategically de-escalate.
I think it remains to be seen.
This is the second stop
on a very carefully
choreographed
first foreign trip
for President Biden.
The Group of Seven meeting
that just took place
in Western England
was really about demonstrating
that the alliance is back.
The meeting here in NATO
is to play the anti-Trump.
To say that our obligations
to our NATO allies
to come to their aid,
is what Biden has called
a sacred obligation
of the United States.
The change is obvious.
After four years
of an administration
which had shaped
the foreign policy of the US
in a way which made
the functioning of alliances
quite challenging,
it has created
positive expectations.
I want America to be
the leading nation
in the world.
But the Biden
administration faced
a potentially
very large challenge.
Allies were looking
at them very warily.
Even among
the European leaders.
You're hearing
this set of doubts
about whether or not Joe Biden,
who they're delighted
to meet here in Europe,
is actually the blip,
not the change.
But each of these officials
have their own dynamics
that are keeping them
from fully signing on
to the Biden agenda.
They're willing
to stand up to China,
but not so willing
that they're going to cut off
all their trade
in luxury German cars.
Yeah, they're willing to go
stand up to Vladimir Putin,
but not so willing that
they will cut off the pipeline
that's bringing them
natural gas
direct from Russia
and routing around Ukraine.
So everybody's engaging in
their own hedging strategies.
And meanwhile,
President Biden wants
to show up at Putin's doorstep
and basically say,
"You're outnumbered."
Tonight,
President Biden in Geneva,
just hours before that critical
face-to-face meeting
with Vladimir Putin.
A major test
for President Biden
who requested this summit.
It's important to recognize
how this summit
came into being.
President Biden called
President Putin
and said, "I'm going to impose
a series of sanctions on you
"for what you've done
with SolarWinds
"and what you've done
with election interference.
But I want to sit down
and talk."
So they arrive
at this beautiful estate
where the conference
was to be held.
They have this stiff greeting
at the entrance way.
And then there was this scrum
of Russian reporters
pushing American reporters
as they tried
to get into the room.
- Everyone, take a step back!
- We're not going in!
One of my colleagues telling me
that one of the Russians
put his hand
right up to his throat
to get him up out of the way.
So, I would say that
the press corps behavior
wasn't all that different
from the national behavior.
It was a calm,
determined atmosphere
on both sides
of the table in Geneva.
There was a sense in the room
of we're going to have harsh,
in some cases,
unrelenting differences
on various issues.
But this is a channel
where we can talk plainly
to one another and come
to some understandings.
I would say that the two men
had a depth of familiarity
with one another.
Kind of understood
where the other was coming from
in terms of their perspective,
even though they disagreed
vigorously on things.
Now, those understandings
could be,
"You're going to do X,
and I'm going to respond,"
or they could be,
"We can work through this."
But that's really
what you felt in the room.
Donald Trump could not get
his head around the idea
that Ukraine was
an independent state.
Biden and all of his team
come in and reaffirm
the traditional threat
of the
US-Ukrainian relationship.
We have visits by the Secretary
of Defense General Austin.
We have more exercises going on
between Ukraine
and NATO forces.
For Putin, this is not
just an affront,
but it's a bit of a shock.
Did you commit in these meetings
to stop threatening Ukraine?
From the Russians' perspective,
Ukraine may not end up in NATO,
but NATO is ending up
in Ukraine.
And that becomes
impermissible for Putin.
I communicated the United
States' unwavering commitment
to the sovereignty
and territorial integrity
of Ukraine.
I did what I came to do,
communicate directly, directly,
that the United States
will respond to actions
that impair our vital interests
or those of our allies.
Now, here's
the interesting question:
Did Putin believe him?
Putin might think
that the United States,
at the end of the day,
is going to come
to the conclusion
that it can't risk
getting on an escalation ladder
that it can't control.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the President
of the United States.
As we moved to summer,
we had gone
from hundreds of thousands
of cases a day
to 10,000 cases a day.
We'd gone from thousands
and thousands of deaths
down to 200 deaths a day.
We were doing four million
vaccinations in a day.
Variants were emerging
in other countries,
but there seemed to be
a reasonable case
that we would have
a limited amount
of case growth come back,
and it would be isolated and
targeted in regions of the country.
Just think back to where
this nation was a year ago.
Think back to where
you were a year ago
and think about
how far we've come.
We'd seen cases go down.
We had vaccines available
for everybody in the country.
We had a lot of resources,
um, to fight the pandemic.
Today, all across this nation,
we can say with confidence,
America is coming back together.
But we didn't have
a sense clearly
of, uh, the impact
of new variants.
Residents and officials here
are confused about an outbreak
that is stemming from large
July 4th celebrations
that happened here
just a couple weeks ago.
Out on the Cape,
an uptick in COVID cases
serving as a reminder
that while the vaccines
are highly effective,
they're still not
100 percent protective.
It became clear that we
were going to be dealing
with much higher case counts
than we thought.
The Delta variant
is now taking hold in the US.
Ten percent of new cases now
and doubling every two weeks.
It took this sort of
very clean story
of vaccinated and unvaccinated,
um, and it said, you know what,
it's vaccinated, yes,
but with an asterisk.
There was a wall
we were hitting
of people willing
to get vaccinated,
and that's when we started
to get concerned.
Some states are pushing back,
blocking health officials
from promoting the vaccine.
COVID had been
a politically divisive issue
around the issue of masks
before we got here.
But I believed that
when you had a vaccine
that President Trump had boasted
that he had developed,
that the FDA
under his leadership
had approved the vaccine,
the idea that his supporters
would refuse to take a vaccine
that was developed
on his watch,
that was approved on his watch,
was something
that I did not expect
in the numbers
that we have seen.
Good afternoon.
Earlier today, I was briefed
by our senior military
and national security leaders
on the status
of the drawdown of US forces
and Allied forces
in Afghanistan.
When I announced
our drawdown in April,
I said we would be out
by September,
and we're on track
to meet that target.
Excuse me.
Our military mission...
The assessment
across the government
was that even
in worst-case scenarios,
as our forces withdrew
from Afghanistan,
that the Afghanistan government,
the Afghanistan security forces,
would hold well into
the following year.
Is the Taliban takeover
of Afghanistan now inevitable?
No.
I believed strongly that
we were going to have
a robust embassy,
an embassy presence
in, in Kabul,
certainly through the year,
well into the next year.
There's going to be
no circumstance for you
to see people being lifted off
the roof of a embassy
in the, of the United States,
from Afghanistan.
Everything that we planned
and did
was based on that assumption.
To Afghanistan,
the Taliban seizing control
of more and more territory.
Taliban militants
blast their way into Kunduz.
The Taliban
has captured the capital
of Baghlan province.
It's the eighth province now
to fall in
a short number of days.
On Wednesday, August 11th,
the President convened us
in The Situation Room
for an update.
Some of the outlying
provincial capitals
had begun to fall,
and he was
increasingly concerned
about what might happen
in Kabul.
The President posed
a series of direct questions
to his national security team
about whether
we had to activate
the contingency planning
that we had put in place
over the course
of several months.
The Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs
and the Secretary of Defense
recommended to him
that we put the forces
that we had already
set in place,
that we put them
on what's called
a "prepare to deploy" order.
Afghanistan was the first
big international issue
that dominated the airwaves
and was on everybody's minds.
Okay. A lot going on today.
We are closely watching the
deteriorating security conditions
in parts of the country, uh,
but no particular outcome,
in our view, is inevitable.
- Jen.
- Jen.
We were playing catch-up
from the moment
the President took office.
Middle of the night
on Wednesday night,
or in the early hours
of Thursday morning,
I was woken up by a phone call
from Chairman Milley,
the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs.
He informed me that the Taliban
had taken a city called Ghazni,
which is on
the highway approach to Kabul.
And he said,
"It's now my judgment
"that it's gone past 'prepare
to deploy.' We need to deploy.
And that would be my
recommendation to the President."
To the other breaking news,
President Biden announcing
he is sending additional troops
into Afghanistan
to help evacuate
US embassy personnel
and Afghan visa applicants.
Biden defending the drawdown
in a statement writing,
"One more year
or five more years
"of US military presence
"would not have made
a difference
"if the Afghan military cannot
or will not hold
its own country."
You keep changing the subject
to whether or not
we should be there forever.
And I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about whether or not
this exit was done properly.
Taking out
all the service members,
and then you have
to send people back in.
That's the definition of,
oh, we shouldn't have taken
those troops out
because now we have to send
twice as many back in.
The thing that we were up
against in that time period
was a very basic tension.
And it was a tension
between moving fast
to fly people out
before instability
had really set in,
thus potentially triggering
that instability,
triggering panic,
um, or standing by
the government
who was asking us
not to do that.
We were
in intense conversations
with the Afghan government
throughout this period
of August and, and into
the middle of the month
to help organize
a peaceful transfer of power.
And President Ghani said to me
on the phone that Saturday,
"If the Taliban doesn't agree
and engage in good faith,
then I will stay
and fight to the death."
That was Saturday.
He fled the country
the next day on Sunday.
- No notice?
- No notice.
We begin with Afghanistan
and the dramatic fall
of the capital.
Helicopters and black smoke,
visible American diplomats,
including the ambassador,
evacuated to the airport.
At least 500 staff
leaving the country so far.
The embassy shuttered.
The flag coming down.
My God. Not only were people
pulled out of the embassy,
we were pulling people
off of the tarmac.
Chaos at the airport
as thousands of Afghans
desperate to get out.
Afghan civilians desperately
fleeing the airport.
Packed commercial flights
fully booked.
Many who work for the US forces
searching for visas to get out.
One former translator pleading
for Americans to help.
Tonight, the worst predictions
for Afghanistan's future
coming true.
This country now
under Taliban rule.
It's an embarrassment.
It's a stain
on our national reputation.
Imagine if there were hundreds
or even thousands
of effective American hostages
that are trapped in Afghanistan
because of Joe Biden's chaotic,
disorganized, ill-planned
evacuation from that country.
Let me lay out
the current mission
in Afghanistan.
I was asked to authorize,
and I did, 6,000 US troops
to deploy to Afghanistan
for the purpose of assisting
in the departure of US
and Allied civilian personnel
from Afghanistan.
Operation Allies Refugee
has already moved 2,000 Afghans
who are eligible
for special immigration visas
and their families
to the United States.
In the coming days,
the US military
will provide assistance
to move more
SIV eligible Afghans
and their families
out of Afghanistan.
We were executing
this incredibly complex,
incredibly difficult,
historic evacuation
of civilians from Afghanistan.
He's a friend.
It had gone beyond,
I think, anyone's expectations
in terms of the size and scope.
US. US.
The thing
we thought about every day
was would Americans
wind up giving their lives
in the service of that mission?
We knew it was a risk. The President
knew it was a risk every single day.
We knew there were terrorists
in Kabul.
We knew there were terrorists
trying to kill Americans.
To try and ensure
that the Taliban
weren't going to in any way
obstruct the evacuation
that was underway,
the President asked me
to go to Kabul
to meet with Mullah Baradar
and some of the other
Taliban leadership.
We met at the old
civilian terminal
at Kabul International Airport.
The setting was quite tense
around the room
in which we were meeting
over a couple of hours.
You know, we had both of our
security detachments outside
kind of eyeing
each other very warily.
Mullah Baradar reaffirmed that
the Taliban were not going
to obstruct
the evacuation effort.
Certainly shared the concern
about ISIS threats
in that period.
They were seeing much
the same threat stream
that we were seeing.
We had incredible intelligence
about attacks by ISIS-K
that were in the offing.
Of course, we didn't have
the specificity,
but honestly, this was like
a, a slow-motion nightmare.
You know it's happening, but
you can't do anything about it.
- A couple of days after,
- I was in The Situation Room
with the other principals
getting ready
for a National
Security Council meeting
with the President.
General McKenzie,
the commander of CENTCOM,
was on the video screen
from his headquarters
and mentioned just before
the meeting began
that he had just gotten handed
a report about an attack
at Abbey Gate
at Kabul International Airport.
President came into the room
shortly thereafter,
and at that point,
General McKenzie informed him.
You know, we didn't have, uh,
all the facts all at once.
They kept coming in,
and we heard...
the casualty count
go up through the course
of the meeting.
We have just
learned from the Pentagon.
This is their statement.
"We can confirm that a number
"of US service members
were killed
"at the Kabul Airport.
"A number
of Afghans fell victim
to this heinous attack."
It causes you to stop
and reflect for a minute
and, and think about,
you know, what you just heard.
I felt it intensely because
the men and women
of my department
had been at those
very same gates
for almost two weeks,
helping to pull people
to safety.
I remember
the President just paused for,
you know,
at least 30 seconds or so
and put his head down
because he was absorbing,
you know, the, um,
you know, the sadness
of the moment
and the, and the sense
of loss as well.
This is not surprising
to this White House
and to the Biden administration
because they've been
warning publicly for days
that it could happen.
But regardless,
a nightmare scenario.
Something they've been
very sensitive
to the possibility of.
And it has now happened.
Unquestionably, that day
was the hardest day
of the first year,
no question about it.
And, uh, you know...
he is the President
of the United States.
He is the Commander-in-Chief.
He is also a father and someone
who sent one of his sons
to go serve in the Middle East.
I believe...
this is the right decision,
a wise decision
and the best decision
for America.
We're engaged in a serious
competition with China.
We're dealing
with the challenges
on multiple fronts with Russia.
The world is changing.
I've known Biden's cabinet,
most of them for many years.
These are not stupid people.
They're experienced people.
They're smart people.
And they got this really wrong.
Suddenly, they're seen
to be incompetent.
Had Biden, after he made
the decision in April
to pull out of Afghanistan,
immediately begun
speeding up the withdrawal
of the Afghans
who had helped Americans,
then I think August could have
played out very differently.
Instead, by the end
of the summer,
there was a sense that things
were really falling apart.
Delta was raging.
- In April, almost.
- 70 percent of voters
said they approved of the
President's performance on COVID.
That number has fallen
to 53 percent.
The disapproval
has risen to 44 percent.
A dramatic change.
The number of
new COVID cases
is higher now than
during last summer's peak.
Weekly hospital admissions
are up more than 40 percent.
We had an opportunity,
and I really do think
it was an opportunity,
to show that we, too, could
sacrifice for one another.
And I think the question
that I most underestimated was,
would we be willing to say
that none of us
are more important
than all of us?
Or would we fall
into the pattern
that most people
would have thought
we would have fallen into,
which is to say
that, no, we each individually
are more important.
And I think it's one of the
reasons we've suffered so greatly.
700,000 Americans now have
lost their lives to COVID.
One person
is dying in America
every 43 seconds.
One in 500 Americans
are dead now.
Biden's first year
could be defined more
by COVID than anything else.
Remember, Biden is the guy
that said by 4th of July,
if you just stick with me
and wear the masks,
we're going to, we won't have
to do that anymore.
And that's just not the case.
World leaders
gathering in Scotland
this morning
following G20 sit-downs
in Italy over the weekend.
The summit is being billed
as the world's last best chance
to curb the climate crisis.
More than 100 heads of state
have been arriving
in Glasgow this morning.
But in addition
to world leaders,
dozens of corporate CEOs,
fund managers,
and venture capital firms
will be here
over the two weeks.
Noticeably absent will be
China's President Xi
and Russia's President Putin.
There's a lot at stake here.
In 2018,
the IPCC scientists told us
that we really have 12 years
within which we must make
and implement
the key decisions to avoid
the worst consequences
of the climate crisis.
And, unfortunately,
we lost three years
during the Trump administration
where we pulled out
of the Paris Agreement.
I do believe that this is
our last, best chance
not to solve it all
in one blow here,
but to get on the track
where we keep 1.5 degrees alive
as the limit of the raising
of temperature
on the planet.
Hello, Senator.
Good to see
you've made it out, sir.
How are you doing?
Do you think
we'll be successful?
I do indeed. Yes, I do.
Keep your fingers
crossed then, eh?
Yes, sir. Thank you.
By and large,
the Biden administration
has been highly disciplined,
highly coordinated.
I love it, I love the accent.
- I loved that. I love that.
- "Keep your fingers crossed."
But John Kerry is
a former Secretary of State,
a former presidential
nominee himself.
This is the last big job
of his career.
And he felt like he could say
what he wanted to go say.
And so on China,
they were not at times
on the same page.
I think it's been a big mistake,
quite frankly, for China,
with respect to China
not showing up.
The rest of the world are going
to look to China and say,
"What value added
are they providing?"
It came as a surprise
that Biden offered
really strong criticism to Xi
for not coming himself
to Glasgow
because the Kerry strategy
on China
was largely to work
behind closed doors,
avoid sort of
any open conflicts.
I have to imagine
it was strategic.
What we know now is that
they were brokering
this sort of last-minute
US-China pacts
the last days of Glasgow.
And so one has to assume
there was some pause,
rift, something
in the discussions
that would have led
this administration
to think this will help.
The US and China have struck
a deal on climate change.
The announcement came during
the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
The United States and China have
no shortage of differences,
but on climate...
And climate cooperation is
the only way to get
this job done.
This US-China announcement
is both huge
and kind of small.
You know, it's small
in the sense
that none of this stuff
is truly groundbreaking.
But I think in that moment,
just the two of them
coming out publicly
and saying, we're going to work
together, we're committed,
it was a big deal.
The Biden
administration came in
as the Trump administration
went out,
with a clear focus on China.
China is definitely
in that old Cold War terms
of a system challenge,
saying that its system
is better than ours.
But Russia's saying, "Hey,
it's not just about China.
"We're here and we matter,
and you'd better
pay attention to us."
In the fall,
we began to pick up
a variety of indications
that the Russians
were conducting a significant...
Significant would be
an understatement...
Massive military buildup
around Ukraine.
They have so much
forward firepower
that they are assembling.
Um, it's on a level
that is not comparable
to what they did in April.
The President decided
that we would begin
down a dual track
of deterrence on the one hand
and diplomacy on the other.
So we asked Bill Burns
to go to Moscow quietly.
The President asked me
to go to Moscow
to convey to President Putin
and some of his most
senior advisers
our serious concern
about what we were seeing.
This was in the midst
of the fourth big wave
of the COVID
pandemic in Russia.
So Moscow was locked down.
President Putin
was in isolation
in Sochi at that point.
I found President Putin
to be quite measured
but unapologetic
about Russian concerns
about Ukraine.
I think over time
his confidence has grown.
In some ways, his appetite
for risk has grown.
I think his sense
of personal legacy
has probably deepened over time.
I conveyed
on the President's behalf
a message
of serious consequences
that would flow
from a Russian decision
to renew military aggression
against Ukraine.
We wanted to communicate that
if Putin moved on Ukraine,
there would be
severe consequences
from the United States
and our allies.
If Putin wanted to go down
the diplomatic road,
the United States was prepared
to travel that road with him.
President Biden holding
a high-stakes virtual meeting
with Russian President
Vladimir Putin right now.
The two leaders speaking
via videoconference today
as a potential
geopolitical crisis
is currently unfolding.
Hello.
Good to see you again.
I, unfortunately, we didn't get
to see one another at the G20.
I hope next time we meet,
we do it in person.
The buildup
that Russia was engaged in
was continuing.
We had to have, and we did have,
deep, deep concern.
Like all the conversations between
President Biden and President Putin,
there have now been several
in person in Geneva,
by video conference
on the phone,
they're very direct,
they're not polemical.
There's not a lot
of wasted time.
And President Biden made
very clear to President Putin
that if Russia
committed renewed acts
of aggression against Ukraine,
there would be
significant costs.
Biden is confronting
the question
of how does the United States
support Ukraine
without getting its troops
directly into an old-time
border conflict
in defense of a country
that isn't even a NATO ally?
And when Biden had
his teleconference with Putin,
the two men knew one thing:
Whatever Putin did next,
whether he rolled
his troops or not,
the US was not going
to put its own military
into harm's way
to defend Ukraine.
They never were on the table.
And are you ready to send
American troops into war
and go into Ukraine to fight
Russians on the battlefield?
Look, here's the deal.
I've made it absolutely clear
to President Putin,
it's the last thing I'll say,
that if he moves on Ukraine,
the economic consequences
for his economy
are going to be devastating.
Devastating.
We have proceeded
very deliberately
but also,
in some cases, quietly.
For example, in December,
the President approved
$200 million
for additional defense
equipment to Ukraine.
We didn't advertise it
at the time.
We just went forward
with doing it
because one of the plays
in the Russian playbook
is to create, invent,
point to some
kind of provocation,
and to use that
as justification
for something
they'd been planning all along.
And we did not want
to play into that,
at least not in any overt way.
The question haunting
the White House
is whether this is enough.
Because if Ukraine falls,
Russia will, for the first time
since the collapse
of the Soviet Union,
be redrawing the map of Europe.
And more importantly,
it will be showing
that it believes
it can push back on a world
that was dominated
by the United States
from the Soviet
collapse forward.
On this January 6th,
solemn ceremonies
at the US Capitol
replaced the violent scenes
of rioters
ransacking the building
one year ago.
There is still
a political divide
that's very apparent
and even with today's
ceremonies as well.
Among my many reactions
on January 6th
was just mortification
at how we appear
to the rest of the world.
This day is a reminder
that Trumpism
is very much with us
and that our democracy remains
very much at risk.
Let us acknowledge today
our fallen heroes of that day.
I ask all members to rise
for a moment of silence
in their memory.
What else are Democrats
going to talk about?
They gonna talk about
30-year-high inflation.
They gonna talk
about the fact crime is up
in every major urban area.
They gonna talk
about 1.7 million
illegal immigrants coming
into this country.
They gonna talk about the
attacks on the First Amendment.
Um, what are they going
to talk about?
Oh, so, January 6th.
That today there are
members of Congress
trying to act like
that wasn't a big deal,
we should just move on,
I find hard
to be reconciled with.
And there's not much
more we can say,
but we'll keep background names
off the record,
any reporters...
We started discussing
in the fall
what that day would look like
and what that should mean
for the President
and what he should have
to say on that day.
We all agreed that it was
an important moment for him
to be more direct
about what that day meant,
what former
President Trump's role
in that day meant for history,
and why we need to prevent it
from ever happening again.
Alright, guys, um,
we will catch up with you soon.
Thank you, thank you,
thank you for all your stuff.
Uh, big day.
We saw with our own eyes
rioters menace these halls.
What did we not see?
We didn't see a former President
who had just rallied
the mob to attack.
Sitting in
the private dining room
off the Oval Office
in the White House,
watching it all on television
and doing nothing for hours.
It didn't mean that it was
the start of every day.
President Biden
was going to go out
and talk about Donald Trump.
But that day felt like
it uniquely required.
President Biden to go out
and really be direct
and call out the former
President for his role.
Those who stormed this Capitol
and those who called
on them to do so
held a dagger
at the throat of America.
Make no mistake about it.
We're living at
an inflection point in history.
We're engaged
anew in a struggle
between democracy
and autocracy,
from China, to Russia,
and beyond.
They're betting that
democracy's days are numbered.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Very good to see folks here.
And to those
I haven't had a chance
to say this to, Happy New Year.
Um, this morning, NATO's
North Atlantic Council
met to discuss
our coordinated response
to Russia's military buildup
along the Ukraine border
and its increasingly
sharp threats
and inflammatory rhetoric.
No one should be surprised
if Russia instigates
a provocation or incident,
then tries to use it to justify
military intervention,
hoping that by the time
the world realizes the ruse,
it'll be too late.
We were working overtime
to organize
allies and partners
throughout Europe.
They also wanted to make sure
that we were proceeding
in a deliberate way
and not being perceived
as fueling a fire in any way.
Vladimir Putin didn't
pick Ukraine for nothing.
He knew that it wasn't
a member of NATO.
And I think
deep down he thought
the NATO alliance
would be splintered
on the question of
whether or not
to gather together
to push him back.
When he went into Crimea
in 2014,
it took about a year
for the allies to get together
and decide on some sanctions.
And by that time, the sanctions
were so weakened
they had basically no effect.
Eight years later,
Putin was still in Crimea.
Biden wasn't going to make
that mistake again.
Blinken sure as hell wasn't
going to make that mistake again
because he remembered it
vividly from the time
that he was
in the Obama administration.
So when they first saw
this massing of troops,
they made
a very important decision,
which was to declassify
their intelligence
as quickly as they could
and publish it.
We have information
that indicates Russia
has already pre-positioned
a group of operatives
to conduct a false flag
operation in Eastern Ukraine.
Sometimes they went out
and announced it.
Sometimes they leaked it to us.
- The US National.
- Security Adviser says
more details will be revealed
within the next 24 hours.
In a few cases,
they called a few of us in
and did show some sources
and methods
just so that we understood
they weren't making it up.
They knew it would take a while
to convince the Europeans
that this was no bluff.
By mid to late January,
not only was Russia
still building up forces
to the east and the south,
but it was engaged
in a buildup to the north,
particularly sending
30,000 forces to Belarus
under the guise of exercises
that gave it the option
to really hit Ukraine
virtually from all sides.
It was becoming so clear,
including to allies
and partners,
that this was happening.
Our view is this is an
extremely dangerous situation.
We're now at a stage
where Russia could at any point
launch an attack in Ukraine.
We said that one of the
purposes of our foreign policy
was to defend this
rules-based order,
because it comes
with certain principles,
certain norms,
certain expectations
that grew out of
two World Wars.
If you let an aggression
against those rules
go forward with impunity,
then you open a Pandora's box.
And you're going to see
potentially conflict
and war everywhere.
And that's one way or another
going to draw us in.
You've seen
country after country
coming together, standing up.
I think it has been
a reassertion
of American engagement,
American leadership...
and a recommitment
by many countries
to defend this
rules-based order.
The discussion today
with Mr. Lavrov
was frank and substantive.
We've made it clear
to the Russians
that not only would there be
severe economic
and financial consequences,
but they would also see
more support
to build up NATO's
defensive capacities.
As we've continued to see
the accumulation of combat power
and as we have now seen
that, so far anyway,
Mr. Putin has not elected
to de-escalate,
all that combined has
led us to want to contribute
more capabilities
to the Ukrainian armed forces
and be ready to contribute more
capabilities to our NATO allies.
Who knows what's going on
in Putin's mind.
Whether or not he believes
that the international community
will carry through is one issue,
uh, but what I believe is that
our President is very serious.
I believe that other leaders
in the region are very serious.
I believe that the world
will take this
as a, as a very,
very serious issue
if he invades Ukraine.
We just hope that he makes
the right decisions.
And, uh,
and I'll leave it at that.
As Putin was
building up his forces,
he went off to the opening
of the Beijing Olympics.
The very fact that he was
going there was remarkable
because he'd been
in complete isolation.
When Bill Burns went over,
he made Burns go over
to a Russian government office
and call Putin on the phone.
But he was willing
to go see Xi Jinping
and the day that they met,
the two countries turned out
this extraordinarily
long document
describing their
common interests,
their dedication to working
together in the future,
their joint pushback
on an America
that sets the rules,
on a West
that expands its influence.
A lot of people speculated
that Putin would not
begin the invasion
while the Olympics were on
because he wouldn't want
to anger the Chinese
by interrupting their big event.
And he held true to that.
It was unprovoked,
but Russian President
Vladimir Putin
unleashed on Ukraine.
We have heard air raid sirens,
loud sirens here in Lviv.
This is in the west
of the country.
Wednesday night was
a really pivotal night for us
as we were looking at what
was happening on the ground,
and we were talking
a lot internally about
when would we call it
an invasion?
When was it the right time
to send the President out?
When was it the right time
to do a written statement?
The President spoke
with President Zelenskyy,
who basically asked him
to condemn what was happening
and to keep rallying the world.
I mean, those were
his primary asks,
and that's exactly what
he went out
the next day and did.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
Good afternoon.
The Russian military
has begun a brutal assault
on the people of Ukraine.
Without provocation,
without justification,
without necessity.
This is a premeditated attack.
Vladimir Putin has been
planning this for months,
as we've been saying all along.
The Biden administration
learned a lot of lessons
from the mistakes
they made in Afghanistan.
By the time that
the Ukraine crisis came along,
they had a better-oiled machine,
and they responded
by getting out ahead of events
instead of being behind them.
For weeks, for weeks,
we have been warning
that this would happen,
and now it's unfolding
largely as we predicted.
It will be difficult for
any intelligence agency
to predict the outcome
of this war
or how the Russian army
or the Ukrainians
will ultimately perform.
But on the timing
of the invasion,
they got everything right.
As murky as they were
about how quickly
the Taliban would
take over Afghanistan,
they had the Ukraine thing
dead on.
I want to be clear.
The United States
is not doing this alone.
For months, we've been building
a coalition of partners
representing well more
than half the global economy.
The German chancellor,
Olaf Scholz, says
that he is suspending
the Nord Stream 2
pipeline project with Russia.
The European Union
remain resolutely united
as it takes the next step
in close coordination
with its partners.
You know,
for the first half of the year,
we heard Biden talking about
reestablishing old alliances,
listening to people,
building up what Donald Trump
had tried to shatter.
And, you know, I think
to most of the country,
that sounded like
diplomatic gobbledygook,
like, yeah, sure, it's nice
to get along with allies.
But Biden knew something,
which was the moment would come
when you would need
that alliance.
It came with Ukraine.
The United States
and our allies and partners
will continue to respond
to Russia's actions with unity,
with clarity,
and with conviction.
How many White House
staffers does it take...
To open a package of gum?
Don't tell Dr. Fauci how many
pieces of gum I've swallowed.
This last week,
because of the confluence
of a number of events
that in many ways
were unrelated...
- Hi!
- Hi there. How are you?
...it was a wild, crazy,
exhausting week here.
One of the more
challenging weeks,
uh, since we started.
Madam Speaker,
the President
of the United States.
Six days ago,
Russia's Vladimir Putin
sought to shake
the very foundations
of the free world,
thinking it could make it bend
to his menacing ways.
But he badly miscalculated.
He thought he could roll
into Ukraine,
and the world would roll over.
Instead, he met
with a wall of strength
he never anticipated
or imagined.
He met the Ukrainian people.
He thought he could divide us
in Europe as well.
But Putin was wrong.
We are ready.
We are united.
And that's what we did.
We stayed united.
Hang on. I was
just about to call you.
I'm just disentangling
my headphones.
Hang on just a second.
What's the biggest thought
that we're
taking away from this?
So when Biden first raised,
you know,
autocracy and democracy
at his first press conference
a year, a year ago,
uh, this wasn't, this wasn't
the battle he had in mind.
- Yeah.
- Right.
Ukraine is going to be
a constant diplomatic
and military effort.
It will haunt the next three
years of his presidency.
What do you do
if this ambitious,
deadly gambit by Putin succeeds
and no one really knows
what the world will look like
5 or 10 or 15 years from now.
Will this stick?
Now is the hour.
Our moment of responsibility,
our test of resolve
and conscience,
of history itself.
We'll meet the test,
protect freedom and liberty,
and we will save democracy.
Others are watching.
Others are listening.
Others want to see
how we're responding
to this challenge,
including China.
And so
the potential repercussions
go well beyond Ukraine,
well beyond Europe.
That's why this is important.
That's why it matters.