Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed The Epoch Times contributor Dominick Sansone in-studio to weigh in on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view of American Wokeness, the economic consequences on the USA, and the domestic future outlook.
Leahy: It is February 24, 2022, the day on which Russia has invaded Ukraine. We have an expert on Eastern Europe in-studio with us – Dominick Sansone, who writes for The Epoch Times on these topics. How bad is this, Dominick?
Sansone: I think it’s pretty bad. As your previous guy mentioned about that.
Leahy: That was Congressman Scott Desjarlais.
Sansone: About Putin trying to kind of re-establish a Russian empire or the Soviet empire, I think there’s definitely some truth to that. And that may be a long-term goal, but even kind of the fear-mongering over Putin as an unhinged leader, he has certainly acted strategically to secure limited objectives.
I think that’s kind of why you’ve seen this uproar about former President Trump saying that Putin is a genius. And in a lot of ways he has been a genius as far as the current situation is concerned, with the U.S. president right now, sort of reading that situation very well.
And again, as a former KGB agent and we hear all the time about Russia’s involvement in U.S. domestic politics, he’s very aware of the domestic situation in the United States. He’s aware of the midterms coming up and of President Biden’s plummeting approval ratings. I think he definitely knows that. I think he knows that there’s a trucker convoy approaching Washington that thinks or that perceives authoritarianism in their own country as we spout off about Ukrainian democracy.
He sees all of that. And he also knows that the sanctions that the United States is going to put on Russia are going to hurt the United States equally, if not more than they’re going to hurt Russia.
Brent crude is already around $100 a barrel. That’s going to go even higher. Inflation is certainly going to probably surpass 10 percent. Whereas Russia is quite used to an oscillating economic environment, the United States populist is not. And again, I think he’s banking on that to sort of mute whatever President Biden’s response would be.
Leahy: And Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for president, didn’t make it past anything, got less than one half of one percent of the votes.
Tulsa Gabbard is going to be speaking at CPAC on this. And frankly, everything you’re saying about sanctions hurting Americans economically as much as it’s going to hurt Russians, she said as well. So she agrees with your assessment.
Sansone: Yes. I really think that that’s going to be the case. Putin is quite culturally savvy as well. Again, if you watch Russian media, he has commented directly on U.S. Wokeness. He said basically that the Bolsheviks in Russia were the first, kind of, to enforce this type of cancel culture and that the United States is going down the same road as a Soviet empire heading for the same kind of end.
And he’s also commented on the transgender movement in the United States. He’s basically said that biological men will never compete in women’s sports in Russia. He has said kind of specifically, a man is a man. A woman is a woman, a mother is a mother, a father is a father. Many thought that was maybe in response to the United States State Department to replace mother and father with the terms parent one and parent two.
He’s very aware of these things. He’s aware of the divide in American society, of the national divorce. And I think he knows that any type of rally-around-the-flag effect that U.S. actions may have against Russia if anything were to escalate, would certainly be muted by the divisions that exist in society.
And again, just with Biden as sort of a deteriorating man, visible for everybody, I think he knows that he would not be able to sort of rally the public support that he would need. I can’t see fireside chats by President Biden sort of rallying the populace.
Leahy: Fireside sleeps is what they would be like.
Sansone: Exactly.
Leahy: We would watch him fall asleep. So the other part about this that I think is very interesting – he actually has been messaging by hitting on the Wokeness of the American military. He’s taunting the American military for its weakness at present because it’s obsessed with Wokeness. Right?
Sansone: That’s right. And where the foreign policy establishment, again, always like to spout off about the United States deteriorating global position or image when President Trump was in office, that may have been true as far as those sitting in Brussels and their friends at the World Economic Forum. But when it comes to America’s enemies like China and Russia, that was not the case.
And when they see Biden, I think they do feel emboldened not just by something like the terrible optics of the Afghanistan withdrawal, but again, by his general demeanor, by his status. Earlier in the Biden administration, when Biden said that Putin was a killer, when Putin was asked for a response for that, if you remember, he kind of looked into the camera and gave a very trolling … “be healthy,” he said to him.
So, I mean, he’s very aware of Biden’s situation. He’s aware of what’s going on in this country, and he’s a savvy political leader. And unfortunately, calling a spade a spade, as it is in the international scene, equates you to a Putin apologist, apparently. Or you agree with his domestic policy, whatever that means.
Leahy: But let’s just look at this from a common-sense perspective. And regardless of whether you think he’s a good guy or a bad guy – most of us would say he’s a bad guy – he understands power. He’s got the forces.
There’s weakness in the West. And there’s zero desire to stop him. Anybody other than Ukraine to stop them from taking over Ukraine.
This is a done deal, it seems to me. And if you’re Putin and you’re looking around and you’re saying, okay, you’re going to put economic sanctions on us. Who cares, right?
Sansone: I agree. Exactly. That’s right.
Leahy: That’s his attitude.
Sansone: 100 percent. And that’s why I do believe that he’s not going to go any further beyond Ukraine, certainly not at least into any NATO country. There is certainly a rally-around-the-flag effect in Russia.
Russia has been really a demoralized country since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the people there do like to feel like they are a great power.
Again, Putin certainly gives them that exhilaration, so I think that he’s banking on that. Certainly rallying domestic support. Inflation is hitting Russia as well as it is the rest of the world.
But again, the Russian people are a little bit more used to economic hardship. That’s not to say that they will be indefinitely. But right now, certainly more so than us.
Leahy: And I guess, is there anything that you can tell us that Americans can do to stop this inevitable decline of American power and the usurpations on the international stage of Vladimir Putin, given the fact that we have an incompetent and somnambulant commander in chief and a vice president who is even worse?
Sansone: In the near term, it’s definitely difficult, but I think everything sort of is interrelated. And I do believe that what you’re seeing, sort of with school boards, with parents standing up for what their children are being taught, is where this is going to start.
America has been essentially demoralized culturally. We have no faith, basically, in our founding. We have no faith in the values that we stand for.
And I think that when, again, you see a truck or convoy of people who recognize authoritarianism in their own country, and then they’re told that we should be concerned with democracy in Ukraine, which, by the way, is not a healthy democracy at all. Many would say it’s just as bad as the status of democracy in Russia.
Leahy: Really?
Sansone: Yes, definitely.
Leahy: Just give us more details on that.
Sansone: The current Ukrainian administration, they have jailed political opposition. There are certainly real nationalist, far-right elements that support the Ukrainian government that sort of are working over there. I think that the status of democracy is not well there.
When you look at sort of, and this was kind of, again, what it comes down to as well, the Putin regime does not see the Kievan government as legitimate. Basically, when there was a Euromaidan movement in 2013, 2014 that ousted the pro-Russia president, what was seen was that a State Department puppet was put in place.
Leahy: Last question on this topic: One year from today, look into your crystal ball. Will the world situation be better or worse than it is today?
Sansone: I think it’s going to be worse. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about that. I think that Putin will have consolidated his position in Ukraine and that basically we’ll be in the same position we are domestically.
Leahy: I agree with you, unfortunately.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Dominick Sansone” by Epoch Times.
Editor’s note: The views expressed by Epoch Times’ contributor Dominick Sansone are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
