This is from yesterday. The Spock-looking host is former Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. First here is Col. Doug Macgregor, a Trump advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Then, in a rebuttal is Fox national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. There is no transcript of either of these. You can fact-check my quotes by watching.

Gowdy leads with the question "Why do you think Putin is doing this? What is his end game?

DM: "Putin is carrying through on what he's been warning us about for at least the past 15 years which is that he will not tolerate U.S. forces or their missiles on his borders, much as we would not tolerate Russian troops or missiles in Cuba.1 And we ignored him 2 and he finally acted...The battle in eastern Ukraine is really almost over 3...You have a concentration down in the southeast of 30,000-40,000 [Ukraine troops] and if they don't surrender within the next 24 hours I suspect the Russians will ultimately annihilate them...4 That's why Zelensky is meeting with Putin's representatives right now. The game is over. ...If [Zelensky] opts for neutrality of Ukraine [Biden has said] we'll back him. And I think Vladimir Putin will do that for western Ukraine, that is the Ukraine beyond the Dnieper River.5 But behind it in the east I'm not sure what he has planned there...because historically it has been Russian.6 But the territory west of Ukraine [sic, I think he means Dnieper] has not, he knows that and he's happy to live with that as a neutral state.7

TG: "...If he takes Ukraine and Ukraine abuts Poland then he's going to have a NATO country abutting him. [Macgregor sighs audibly.] So if that's what he wants isn't he going to have to keep going until he runs out of NATO countries?"

DM: "I guess I should say it agayne, he has no interest in crossing the Dnieper 8 [and? in?] the Polish border. [The Dnieper River bifurcates Ukraine, it is not close to the Polish border.] I think you're going to find he is quite willing to neutralize that territory on the Austrian or the Finnish model ...He's not interested in going to war with us 9 and he has an army that's too small for that purpose and he knows it 10. So this is not something that he's looking for. We are imputing to him things that he does not want to do 11 in our usual effort to demonize him and his country.12...I think we need to stay out of it [the war], the American people think we should stay out of it, the Europeans think we should stay out of it and we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.13

TG: "So when you say 'stay out of it' you mean no sanctions, no military aid, just let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take."

DM: "Yes, absolutely...The population there is indistinguishable from their own..."14

There is a segue and then Griffin begins at 5:05.

TG: "...What can you tell us about Putin that allows you to see this, frankly, so clearly from the opposite?"

JG: "...There were so many distortions in what he just said and talking about the West and NATO vilifying Putin and sounding like an apologist for Putin 15 and talking about how far he thinks Putin wants to go ...I don't believe anyone thinks they know how far Putin wants to go 16...and to blame NATO membership for what we've seen Putin unleash, we've seen from Putin's words that he is talking in czarist terms in a 19th century view of imperial Russia. So what he just said is so distorted that I do feel our audience needs to know the truth. In terms of Putin...Vladimir Putin is a former KGB agent and he's been laying the groundwork for this 17...and the kind of appeasement talk 18 that Col. Doug Mcgregor, who should know better because when he was in government he was the one who was advising President Trump to pull all U.S. troops out of Germany, that kind of projection of withdrawal and weakness is what made Putin think that he could actually move into a sovereign country like Ukraine...19

TG: "...I found his take on it stunning and disappointing [Gowdy then shifts to observations by others that Putin is "different" now than in the past.] 

JG: [Talks about what others have seen in Putin and then] "Certainly the kind of battering that the Russian army 20, which is not proving itself to look very modern or equipped or well-trained with those conscripts who seem to not know where they're going 21 and they're taking a beating by the Ukraine military 22...We are witnessing the end of Vladimir Putin 23...I don't know how this ends, I don't think Putin knows how this ends.

TG: "...I did not understand Col. Mcgregor's analysis that if they don't want weapons on their border they're going to keep having weapons on their border if they keep taking countries..."24

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299099588001#sp=show-clips

 

1. That is true.
2. That is true.

 

3. Define "east." Due east are the provinces that have opposed Kyiv since 2014, they are predominantly Russin-speaking; north-east is Kharkiv. Kyiv is right smack in the center of Ukraine on the Dnieper River. Define "almost over." Kharkiv, a day later, is still Ukraine-controlled, but surrounded on three sides. I don't know anyone besides President Zelensky who thinks Ukraine is going to win this war so I would think also that in that sense it is "almost over."
4. The Lone Woman was from a small city in the southeast, Kherson, which surrendered the first day. I haven't read much about the southeast and have no idea of the force levels down there.
5. Macgregor is answering Gowdy's question, "Why do you think Putin is doing this?"

 6. Ditto. I don't know if eastern Ukraine has historically been Russian.
7. I don't know that everything west of the Dnieper River has been non-Russian historically. Macgregor doesn't know if Putin would be happy with a neutral west Ukraine state and on the evidence that's not true. Kyiv straddles the river. The western side is the historic Kyiv; the eastern side is residential sprawl. So Putin doesn't want the seat of government? That's his major focus!
8. Not true. Gowdy misunderstood him, also. See note 24.
9. He is probably correct, I am probably wrong.
10. Macgregor specifically uses "army" rather than armed forces or military. Wikipedia has the U.S. army, active and reserves at 1.26M. The Russian army Wikipedia page has 3M combined active and reserve.
11. Macgregor does not know that, has no way of knowing it. He is biased.
12. Not true.
13. As readers know, I am one who thinks if the outcome is pre-determined that a person or a state is wise to prevent death or complete destruction. Sorry, that is how I feel.
14. Not true and that's racist.They have their own language, for crissakes.

 

-That's what I have on Macgregor. Now Griffin.-

15. Macgregor does sound like an apologist.
16. I think we have an idea, the president has said a rollback of NATO, but I certainly agree that nobody knows and that MacGregor saying Putin doesn't want to cross the Dnieper River when half of Kyiv is west of the river is just ludicrous.
17. I don't think that is true.
18. Yeah, it is. It's wrong for a country to appease for another but, in my view, if a person or country wants to appease for itself, it is wrong for another to say "don't appease." As I understood Macgregor he was objecting to us egging the Ukrainians on.
19. Not true. Logically, if Trump's withdrawal and weakness were the cause of this war Putin should have started it when Trump was in office!
20. I haven't heard that the Russian army is getting "battered." Griffin is in a better place to know but that seems Orwellian to me.
21. I did read that there was some confusion in directions.
22. Not true. The Russian army is not taking a beating; they'd be out of the fucking country by now if that were the case.
23. Oh Lord. I don't believe we are witnessing the end of Putin. Jennifer Griffin is the first person I have seen or read say that.
24. When Macgregor sighed it was in exasperation and he says "I guess I should say it agayne." Gowdy really does misunderstand Macgregor here. Macgregor clearly said, and said it agayne, that western Ukraine was to be neutral, "on the Austrian or the Finnish model", no troops or weaponry by either side in neutral western Ukraine, so NATO troops would not be on Russia's border, it would have western Ukraine as a buffer.