crimes he was arrested for? the lead starts right now. a mere few hours after he was arrested and arraigned, donald trump told donors this i hadn t had a chance to go through all the boxes. it is a long tedious job. takes a long time. which i was prepared to do, but i have a very busy life. can prosecutors use this admission against him? plus, an up close look at front lines of ukraine s counteroffensive. we had to evacuate to the shelter now because apparently the guys fear there could be aviation bombs coming in fairly soon. you can see the situation here is still very kinetic, a lot of shelling is still going on. the items ukrainian troops say are key to defeating the russians. and if inflation is supposedly easing, why does it seem every trip to the grocery store is getting more expensive? welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start with our law and justice lead. despite donald trump launching a growing number of baseless attacks on special counsel jack s
china, it is important he has a conversation, but he lets them know that we re going to be firm in protecting our allies and our assets. china has been watching russia s invasion of ukraine as a potential playbook as china threatens its independent neighbor taiwan. both putin and president xi see any western military aid as a provocation. how does the u.s. bolster taiwan s military defenses without igniting a larger conflict? at you alluded earlier, i spent 20 years in the military, five years at war. i fought in two wars. i want to do everything we can to prevent another war. and a big part of that is getting ahead of it. one of the things i think we re seeing or learning from the ukrainian conflict is the ukrainians, as strong as they are to fend off these the russian aggression, it would have been a lot better if we would have given them the tools they needed to be successful ahead of the invasion. so i think that s part of what we can do is ensure that taiwan has a the resour
peace. we better just buckle our seat belts because this is going to get worse before it gets better. josh, you have a really interesting piece in the washington post that suggests while vladimir putin fumbles the invasion of ukraine, someone else is watching. someone else is president xi in china and he is watching and he s learning from putin s mistakes in case he ever decides to invade in taiwan. of course, he would deny that he has any plans, but explain that a little bit. explain your theory. right. well, vladimir putin denied he had plans to attack ukraine until he attacked ukraine. we re seeing a similar scenario play out in china where the leader is preaching to his people about historical grievances with the west, and using that to menace his democratic neighbor taiwan. the terrible part for the taiwanese is that vladimir putin had to go first. so he made a lot of mistakes. xi jinping is learning from those mistakes. and according to u.s. officials i talked to, xi jinpin
be much better at it. in other words, he s going to be quicker and more brutal and more devastating and make sure that he gets that capital city before they have a chance to rally the international community to defend them. and he s going to know what our economic playbook is and he s going to fight the information war better than putin did. what that should tell us in view of u.s. officials i talk to, we should learn from the ukraine war as well when we think about how to defend taiwan. we should give them things they re going to need to fight a s ukraine-style uinsurgency ad invasion. all those things are being poured into ukraine which makes it really hard for the taiwanese to get their hands on them. do you think, josh, these historic sanctions against russia will give president xi pause? i mean, is that something that could be a potential deterrent from an invasion of taiwan? well, it s definitely causing him to think about how to insulate china from that type of sanctions and
doing. he s not pausing. he s speeding up his plans. what we see now is the head of the chinese government meeting with all of the international banks to make sure they know if china attacks taiwan, they re not going to stand for those kinds of sanctions. it s going to be a lot more difficult. the chinese economy is a lot bigger than the russian economy. it s more intertwined with our economy than russia s is. it s going to be harder to bring sanctions on china than on russia. i don t think it gives him pause. it speeds up his plans actually. joshua, a fascinating analysis. everyone should check it out on the washington post website. thanks so much. coming up, with the tight republican in the senate says about a national abortion ban. and president biden s new messaging for the midterms. the words he s using to tatarge the gop. the world is full of make or break moments.