Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) joined Dana Perino and Trace Gallagher on America’s Newsroom to discuss the mixed messaging from the Biden administration’s, its impact on national security, and the relationship between Russia and China.
Click here to watch the full interview, or read highlights from the conversation below.
On the Biden administration’s mixed messaging:
“Remember, the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser for over a month said the sanctions on Russia were intended to deter. And then the President went out there and said, ‘No, sanctions never deter’. So which is it? What is our goal? What are we trying to do with sanctions? We’re sending enormously confusing messages at the same time we’re dealing with a dangerous confrontation with a nuclear armed adversary. So it’s time for the President to exert leadership over his own team and over his own message discipline in order to put Ukrainians in the strongest possible position to force Putin to remove himself from the Donbas, and allow Ukraine to exist as a free country going forward.”
On the Pentagon’s strategy of integrated deterrence:
“The fact that the Administration is now at war with itself over its messaging really does not suggest that they have a coherent, long term strategy. In fact, we still don’t have a National Security Strategy. At the same time, the Biden Pentagon is bragging about the success of its national defense strategy, something they’re calling integrated deterrence. This ignores the fact that deterrence failed in Ukraine. And until we grapple with that unpleasant fact and back up our threats with actual American hard power, I fear we will see further deterrence failures.”
On the state of Russia and China’s relationship:
“I think the relationship between Russia and China remains strong, though they’ve encountered a temporary setback in Ukraine. These are countries that have outmaneuvered the West for the last 15 years. They’re led by hard men for whom human life is very cheap. Xi Jinping recently invoked Mao saying that he would not hesitate to ruin the country…in order to rebuild it anew, which suggests to me both Putin and Xi are prepared to absorb enormous pain and certainly subject their own citizens to enormous pain, in pursuit of the goal of destroying the West. That’s who we’re dealing with. We need to wake up, we need to invest in our defense before it’s too late. And the latest Biden defense budget does the opposite. It doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. And that’s what worries me.”
