Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) joined Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy to discuss the failures of President Biden’s deterrence strategy in Ukraine, what it means for Taiwan, and the insanity of allowing Russia to mediate the new Iran deal.

Watch the full interview here, or read highlights of the conversation below.

On deterring an invasion of Taiwan:

“I fear that China will be emboldened by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, because when the dust settles, despite the very real bravery on display by the Ukrainian people, deterrence failed. The Biden administration thought sanctions and tweets would be enough to deter, but they failed to apply the kind of hard power that would have deterred Putin from launching his war in the first place…And if the Biden administration remains wedded to this strategy called integrated deterrence, which is just liberal code for cutting hard power, I fear deterrence will fail again in an even bigger stage, which is the conflict over Taiwan. And the lesson we need to learn now, the lesson we needed to learn yesterday, is that our best opportunity to deter China is by arming Taiwan and arming ourselves now, before they think about launching an invasion.”

On Biden’s lie that he would turn Putin into a pariah:

“Here’s the hard truth: President Biden stood in front of the American people after the Russian invasion and he promised to turn Vladimir Putin into a pariah. Well, because we continue to rely on the Russians to negotiate with Iran, it turns out, that was a lie. We have sent our negotiating squad to Vienna to negotiate the Iran deal through the Russians, and the Russians are demanding that their flow of weapons, commodities, and trade with Iran be exempted from any US sanctions. Russia will get a massive win with this deal.”

On the insanity of allowing Russia to mediate a nuclear deal:

“Think about it: people forget that one of the craziest parts of the 2015 Iran deal is that we depended so heavily on Russia to take enriched uranium from Iran. The same thing could happen in this deal. In fact, we’ve heard reports that they’re going to ship Iranian uranium to Russia. And then if we pull out of the deal in the future, they’ll ship it back or they’ll just say ‘game on.’…It’s like giving Putin the pistol to point at our heads to hold us hostage. It makes absolutely no sense.”

Print Friendly, PDF & Email