ukraine was a territorial dispute, not in america s vital interests. desantis um, it gave another interview in which he declared putin a war criminal and said that putin should be held accountable. what did you make of that? i think he s listening to the criticism. i mean, his position is not a mainstream position in america. today republicans and democrats in my state still support ukraine because they do believe there s a connection between fighting. the russians and protecting ukrainian democracy and protecting our own democracy . so it could be that desantis realized he got way out of step with where the broad american electorate is, and he s you know, trying to make up the difference. um the problem is that it s not just ron desantis . it s not just donald trump. there s a growing number of republicans in the house of representatives who are saying the same things and ultimately, at some point this year, we re going to have to authorize additional assistance.
especially if this offensive shows some signs of promise, and it s going to be a little bit harder this year with the desantis and trump wing of the republican party being in control of the house to get that bipartisan support for ukraine aid that we had in the last year . let s talk about the two day meeting this week between autocrats vladimir putin and xi jinping. um it s clear that wasn t that that there s no peace plan that came out of that meeting, even though no meaningful one anyway, even though there was talk of that peace plan for russia and ukraine, and it s also clear that wasn t really their focus. they really talked more about how they can help each other in other ways. um at the same time , i should note china continues to not promise publicly any lethal aid to russia to defeat ukraine. um what did you make of that? well i listen, i think it s um it s a sign of the