On the menu today: Florida governor Ron DeSantis significantly revises and extends his previous remarks on Ukraine, suddenly sounding much more critical of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s territorial claims and much more supportive of the Ukrainian cause. If DeSantis were a referee, we would call that a “make-up call”; House progressives affirm my assessment that the new White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is steering the administration in a different direction; and getting a sense of just how much “wokeness” played a role in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
DeSantis’s Revised Ukraine Remarks
Hey, remember how so many folks — left, right, and center — spent so much of last week arguing about Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his answers to Tucker Carlson’s questions about Russia and Ukraine?
This was a big, meaty topic of debate here at NR. Mark Wright had serious questions about the ramifications of how DeSantis perceived the Russian invasion and its consequences. Dan McLaughlin said DeSantis was trying to have it both ways. Noah Rothman concluded that DeSantis had “staked out a position he will struggle to defend and, should he emerge as the GOP nominee next year, potentially represents a significant liability for his campaign.” Jay Nordlinger said that DeSantis’s characterization of the war as a “territorial dispute” “betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of something very important to understand.” Michael Brendan Dougherty said the criticism of DeSantis from the hawks was unpersuasive and illegitimate, and an inaccurate reinterpretation of Ronald Reagan’s true record.
Earlier this week, Ramesh observed that, “Ron DeSantis’s remarks about Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine have now sustained more scrutiny than some treaties,” and concluded, “Americans should want both moral clarity and prudence in our foreign policy. Florida’s Republican governor is showing too little of the first, and many of his critics too little of the second.”
Now, as Emily Litella would say, “Never mind.”
For some reason, the man who is one of the two most likely Republican nominees in the upcoming presidential cycle, and probably one of the four figures most likely to take the presidential oath of office on January 20, 2025, chose to elaborate on his foreign-policy views on Piers Morgan Uncensored. (So much for “America first.” Clearly DeSantis is internationalist in his press outreach.)
Morgan lays out DeSantis’s revised and extended remarks on Ukraine in today’s New York Post:
Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has branded Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and demanded he be “held accountable” for his barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
Taking a tougher tone from his statement last week appearing to dismiss the year-long war as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis now says Russia was WRONG to invade Ukraine and was WRONG to invade and take over Crimea in 2014, and won’t win the war.
And he’s made his strongest attack yet on Russia’s dictator, calling him a loser who is “basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons. . . .”
When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase “territorial dispute,” DeSantis replied, “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.
“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) — that’s nonsense. . . .”
“I think they have the right to that territory,” he replied. “If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100 percent. But the reality is what is America’s involvement in terms of escalating with more weapons, and certainly ground troops I think would be a mistake. So, that was the point I was trying to make but Russia was wrong to invade. They were wrong to take Crimea.
“Russia did not have the right to go into Crimea or to go in February of 2022 and that should be clear. . . .”
“I think those regions in the (eastern) border, and Crimea, are likely to be a stalemate for quite some time, and unfortunately a lot of people will end up dying if that’s the case. But I do not think it’s going to end with Putin being victorious. I do not think the Ukrainian Government is going to be toppled by him and I think that’s a good thing.”
Many hawks will see this as the most stirring and appealing walk-back since Michael Jackson moonwalked.
So, does this mean that as DeSantis and his team were crafting that written response to Tucker Carlson, they just forgot to characterize Putin as a war criminal who must be held accountable? Did he just absentmindedly overlook a need to mention that the Russian invasion is wrong and that Russia’s territorial claims are nonsense?
Or were those, as I had described, remarks that were tailor-made for the Tucker Carlson audience, and now DeSantis is realizing he has some repair work to do with the parts of the GOP that aren’t in the Tucker Carlson audience?
I like DeSantis’s answer to Piers Morgan more than his answer to Tucker Carlson, but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend that the governor has handled this all smoothly or deftly with his sudden back-and-forth. The two sets of statements may not directly contradict, but they certainly have sharply different areas of emphasis. It’s as if DeSantis had a full page of thoughts on the proper U.S. response to the Russian invasion, and tore the page in half, offering the top half to Carlson and the bottom half to Morgan. The top featured the criticism of the so-called “blank check” for Ukraine, the denial of any military aid that could be used beyond Ukraine’s borders, and the argument that Ukraine is a distraction from the rising threat of China. The second half included the denunciation of Putin, the dismissal of Russia’s territorial claims, and praise for the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause.
It’s okay to have nuanced and complicated views on how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a nuanced and complicated global crisis! I want the Biden administration to send the Ukrainians the weapons systems they say they need when they say they need them, instead of hemming and hawing for six months and then sending them a half-year later. I also am wary about sending combat air patrols to escort surveillance drones in international air space near Ukraine, because that seems likely to lead to U.S. and Russian fighter jets confronting each other and perhaps firing at each other, leading to a shooting war between the U.S. and Russia. Naturally, I’m too hawkish for the doves and too dovish for the hawks.
But when you’re asking for the job of commander in chief, at least in the old days, you were expected to have a coherent and well-defined foreign policy that you could articulate in a clear and direct manner. Now, a Republican former president can just boast, “I will prevent — and very easily — World War III, very easily before I even arrive at the Oval Office. I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled and it will take me no longer than one day,” and the audience applauds. Apparently, large swaths of the GOP believe in magic wands and wishing wells.
She Blinded Me with Zients
I wrote on the Corner on March 13:
These are all signs that President Biden intends to move towards the center now that he’s expected to run for another term. But this also indicates that former White House chief of staff Ron Klain — nicknamed “the prime minister” in some circles for how central he was to Biden’s decision-making — was a force pushing Biden to the left. Klains’ successor Jeff Zients, who took over February 8, is either less instinctively liberal or less interested in fulfilling the progressive wish list in Biden’s third or fourth year in office.
When Zients took over, progressive groups scowled about his ascension. It looks like they knew with him running the show, they would get their way less often.
Less than two months into his role as top White House aide, Jeff Zients faces frustration among progressives who see his influence behind Biden’s recent tack toward the center.
House Democrats are still stewing over Biden’s about-face on a D.C. crime bill that blindsided them, and left vulnerable lawmakers to deal with the political fallout. And within a wider circle of White House allies, Zients’ arrival has sparked complaints that they are cut out of the loop after enjoying direct West Wing access through his predecessor, Ron Klain.
“There’s a transition going on in the administration,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We were looking forward to developing a good relationship with Jeff Zients, but at this point, we’re not in that place yet. So we’re still working on it.”
ADDENDUM: Kenin M. Spivak, the founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank, writes today at NR that it’s a misleading oversimplification that “wokeness” led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Wokeness, by itself, did not prompt the bank to not keep enough liquidity in reserve. But there is legitimate criticism of how the bank’s political and social agenda affected its priorities:
SVB collapsed because instead of focusing on the unglamorous, unforgiving business of banking, its management and board wanted to be part of the “in crowd. . . .”
In this hip, virtue-signaling, social-justice, progressive-wannabe miasma, SVB lost track of the gritty, unglamorous nuts and bolts of banking. In 2021, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco cited the bank for liquidity risks and in 2023 initiated a review of its risk management. During this period, as SVB’s communications consistently featured its parties, contributions, and chief DEI officer, for eight months, it had no chief risk officer. Nothing could more clearly illustrate SVB’s misplaced priorities.