the union. mom and baby are doing great and both are gorgeous. our coverage continues with wolf blitzer in the situation room. happening now, donald trump and nikki haley are making final appeals in new hampshire with the republican presidential race now a two-person showdown. and the first primary votes just hours away. we re following the candidates and the contest that could effectively decide the gop nomination. plus, a cnn exclusive interview with vice president kamala harris. she is speaking out about the biden campaign, throats democracy and whether she s personally worried about a repeat of violence on january 6th. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. first, the countdown to the high stakes new hampshire primary. the granite state now holding extraordinary power to speed or slow donald trump s march to the republican presidential nomination. cnn s jeff zeleny has more from salem, new
Bret good evening. Im bret baier. Shooting of chechen immigrant we first brought you last night. We will add advance the story tonight. Take you to the epicenter of the border crisis where some migrants wait hours before ever encountering Border Patrol agents. And additional women accuse Sean Diddy Combs of sexual violence. Bret but, first, the push for third party voters is on. Libertarians are getting a real taste of the 2024 president ial campaign this weekend. Presumptive republican nominee former President Donald Trump addresses the National Connection in d. C. Tomorrow. Today independent candidate robert f. Kennedy jr. Tried to convince the audience that he is a viable contender if he got the libertarian nod. R. F. K. Jr. Could quickly qualify for all ballots. Senior National Correspondent rich edson starts us off tonight. Good evening, rich. Rich hi, good evening, bret. Well, those two president ial candidates are addressing the Libertarian National convention this weekend to tr
economic relationships skpr ties. those are the things that will have seismic effects on the geopolitical landscape. everything needs to be done to avoid this. we re at the tipping point. it should be a full-court press on the pressure track. the pressure track includes weapons that probably won t be militarily deterministic but will start to affect the calculus. very potent, powerful sanctions. this bill that signals u.s. support, bipartisan support from democrats and republicans led by the executive branch and president biden, all that brought to bear might still have an effect on putin s calculus. but we should remember that we have over 100,000 troops on ukraine s border. the last really elements to support a full-scale military offense are going into place to add weight to a northern vector of attack that goes to the
forces near ukraine s border. the first american shipment of lethal aid arrived in ukraine saturday, the u.s. embassy says the shipment included close to 200,000 pounds of lethal aid, including ammunition for the front line defenders of ukraine. u.s. is considering tougher sanctions, financial sanctions on russia. on wednesday, president biden said in a news conference that america would consider, quote, restricting the country s ability to convert rubles for dollars and other foreign currencies if putin orders troops into ukraine. it is clear we re past the point of guessing and the united states needs to prepare for the worst possible situation, a russian invasion of ukraine. former nfc staffer, retired lieutenant colonel alexander vindman predicting it will be the largest military offense there since world war ii. lieutenant colonel vindman joins me now. colonel, good to see you. thank you for being with us. let me start with the whole british intelligence thing.
the imminence of invasion, which, in fact, plays into putin s hands, because the more ununited, disunited the opposition to him, the more victory he has, even if there is no actual military offense there. so, do you think the decision to send u.s. troops to the ukrainian border is, in fact, a bad one? what would happen if they decided not to do that? well, i mean, i can t say that, that it s a decision, because first of all, as americans have been very careful to say, the troops are not going to participate in ukrainian military preparation and so on and so forth, but what happens, i think, with this decision is that putin then is confirmed in his in his idea that the west is really breathing down his neck, and therefore, he has to arm more and more and more, and