Name: Dave Talks About Putin and Ukraine With Condoleezza Rice and John McCain | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-02-27T16:40:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Talks About Putin and Ukraine With Condoleezza Rice and John McCain | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Talks About Putin and Ukraine With Condoleezza Rice and John McCain | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-27. Transcript available.

you worked for his father is that i did i worked for president george h.w bush
well i was the
white house soviet specialist at the end of the cold war and it really doesn't
get better than
that so i was there for the fall of the berlin wall um i was there as eastern
europe was liberated
it was really quite an exciting time well for somebody who is a soviet
specialist what what
better experience in the world in time in the universe absolutely i never
thought i'd see what
what do you make of the of russia now and the the remains or what have become
the independent
countries of the soviet union well i'm saddened by what's recently happened in
russia i really thought
that perhaps the democratic institutions would start to mature in russia after
the collapse of
the soviet union but vladimir putin's decision to come back to the presidency
with really not even an
inkling that they care much about the process for doing that is a kind of sad
step backward for russia
i remember there was a moment when your former boss george w bush hw's son had
an exchange with putin and
he said he looked him in the eyes he looked what was that well he said that he
looked him in the eyes
he saw his soul and you know it was one of those awkward moments because the
president was asked do
you trust him it's their first meeting if you say no that's not a very good way
to get off to a good
start and he said uh well i looked into his eyes and i knew right that moment
some have said i stiffened
about it but uh putin was a very different person in those first two years you
know russia was extremely
helpful to us in afghanistan early on very helpful in the war on terror it
really is as authoritarianism
started to take hold at home and as they got more nervous about their periphery
georgia ukraine
places independent countries now that had been a part of the russian empire
that we ran is it a
mistake to think that russia ever wants to see things go our way oh i think
there are times when
our interests are in common they have no desire to see terrorists succeed they
have a terrorism problem of
their own uh they have no desire to see a nuclear armed iran because iran makes
all kinds of trouble
for russia in the south of that country so there are some times when our
interests come together they
usually uh diverge when we talk about countries like ukraine or georgia where russia
thinks that it
still has uh special privileges do you know vladimir putin have you met vladimir
yes i have
what's your impression of the guy uh the fact is that he is an old kgb colonel
that believes that
he wants to restore the russian empire and that's what this is all about and
that's why ukraine is the
key uh country uh somebody once said and it's been repeated many times russia
with ukraine is an empire
russia without ukraine is a country by the way i predicted that this would
happen because he wasn't
going to give up this naval base in crimea called sovestopoul which by the way
wars have been fought over
because that's its access to the mediterranean and uh the moral of the story is
we just have to
understand who he is and what he is he's not a guy that's interested in
democracy he's got a he's a
oil and gas companies uh that's part of a country he wants to expand the russia
through whether it
be in moldova where they've got russian troops georgia where they've got russian
troops the baltics
and other uh countries in the region and um we just have to understand him for
what he is
the president of the ukraine yanukovych yep uh flees and had a nice billion
dollar uh
a hundred million dollar home nice man of the big yeah and he goes to russia so
he's hiding out and
now was that all orchestrated by the russians no he was forced out he was
forced out by the ukrainian
people right but then then so then he went to russia who sees this as a reason
then to go into
to crimea saying well you have no valid elected leader so it's it's up for
grabs exactly do they they
want to annex the crimean peninsula or they take the entire ukraine that's the
question i predicted he
would take crimea because of sevastopol now i think the question is is does he
try to kind of have a de
facto partition of eastern ukraine and i don't know the answer to that but
there are many things we could
do including sanctions on these these corrupt people around them uh that makes
it hard for them to do
business with the west their kids go to school in london we could make their
life very unpleasant for
them and there's a lot of other things we can do we're still the most powerful
nation in the world
now will he hide behind this notion of a referendum in crimea trick that the
hitler used to use that
march into some place have a have a referendum uh the referendum they're going
to have and i think it's
this sunday won't be quite like the north korean election but i can assure you
what the outcome is
going to be i promise you because it's a heavy concentration of russian
citizens because they'll
rig the election a lot of the a lot of the ukraine even though they're pro-russian
they don't want
to be part of russia they look to to europe and see what life is like there and
they look at russia and
they see what it's like there you're president of the united states this
happens what what do you do
other than the sanctions nothing else to be done say we're going to start
missile defense again in
poland and czech republic uh have nato maneuvers in the baltic countries say we'll
accelerate moldova
and georgia into the uh into nato um there's so many things that we could do
kick them out of the g8
putin loves to strut on the world stage throw them out don't don't let him play
that uh key role
i i heard a story from george bush george bush was in uh when putin was in washington
and little
barney remember little barney comes out putin looks at him then george bush is
in st petersburg out comes
this wolfhound russian wolfhound and putin says see he's big and strong not
like barney now is that
weird or what i mean i mean really i mean this guy is a megalomaniac and i
think we just have to and i'm not
talking about cold war or anything like that but you just have to understand
him for what he is
and not think that you can do business with him like you do with other uh world
leaders his impression
of the united states now is uh that we are that we are we are weak in in fact
you you believe that
that's where all of this is coming from he feels like a lot of the time to be i
think when the president
of the united states said if they use chemical weapons in syria it'll cross a
red line and we'll
have to attack and then didn't i think that sent a message around the world
within six months i think
there's going to be a confrontation in the south china sea between japan and
china all of these people
are encouraged but again the strongest nation in the world still the best
country in the world and i think
we can get through it and uh we first need to make sure that that putin pays a
price for what he's
already done and we don't want him to do anything more uh was it strange that
right after the olympics where
he's uh very pleased and proud to show the world what they've accomplished that
this takes place or does this
indicate that he just is not concerned with what people think of him i think
both uh it was
interesting that some of the troops that were protecting so she moved right
into crimea same same
people um and we just need to again understand that we are in a world where mr
putin wants to expand his
his empire i heard that he was at his treatise at the in the kgb school that he
went to was how
russia will restore its greatness he said many times the worst disaster of the
20th century
was the breakup of the of the soviet union so we just have to understand him
and treat him
accordingly you were in the ukraine not so long ago 300 000 people in a square
take a look at this
there's 200 000 people in that square in the freezing cold and all they want is
to be like europe they
they don't want to be like russia and they are marvelous and wonderful people
and a number of those people
were died in the crackdown that that came after that
Thank you.