quaking in his boots. instead, this is what s happening, and it is beginning to be a low-level, lengthy, disruptive period, what can the u.s. do to get putin to knock it off? you want to do two things. one, you want to strengthen ukraine. economic help. cyber defense. make ukraine a less vulnerable target for putin. as the president hinted at yesterday, think about offensive cyber. you want to basically say, if you re going to play this game, two can do it. just say you did some things going after russia s energy industry. by the way, richard, explain. we always talk about what russia does to us or what they tried to do to us. can you explain just how much damage, because we never talk about it. how much damage the united states of america could do to another country if we did get engaged in cyber warfare. oh, we could do enormous damage. we ve been self-deterred because we re worried about a world where it can be vulnerable. i guess what i m saying is, militarily, people don
get to eventually, they decided to all come together and deliver a tough statement to russia, saying you step over the line, we re here and you re going to pay for it. yeah. it is almost disorienting in this day and age to see bipartisan support for this. we see an out party supporting the president of another party. steve rattner, joe is right, you ve got senators menendez and rish working on this deal for sanctions, a bipartisan deal. they ve hit a snag. republicans are working on their own sanctions now. chuck schumer said he d be in support of the sanctions. i guess my question to you is, if they did levy sanctions, putin has shrugged them off in the past. would they have an impact? is that a deterrent for him this time? sanctions are always a deterrent of some sort or another, but the fact is that, as richard eluded to, the russian economy is actually in somewhat better shape today to deal with the sanctions than before. john mccain famously called russia a country masqueraing
saving freedom here in america. there you go. willie s, too. one thing vladimir putin is not, loaded. plead read willie geist s book of the same name. what an obscure reference that is. i love that book, man. i love that book. okay. we need to get the 18th, 19th reprinting, willie. it s a deep cut. thank you, joe. it is a deep cut. richard, we re going to talk about the war here. by the way, i am downloading as we speak here a book that you recommended. oh. audiobook. talk about the audiobook. i am a massive fan of the subject here of this book. audiobook called miracle of wonder, malcolm gladwell, the life and music of paul simon. 5 to 5 1/2 hours. i told you, as good as the beatles documentary was, this is better. paul simon is talking about the creative process, why he did the
jonathan lemire is still with us. joining us now, former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst, steve rattner. president of the counsel on foreign relations, richard haass. the author of the book war of necessity, war of choice. you got a shoutout yesterday from the president yesterday about this war on necessity, war of choice nonsense. not nonsense. world war ii, the war of necessity. what putin is contemplating would be a war of choice. the president was sending messages to the russian people. willie geist, i think the conclusion of all of us around this table is that jon meacham couldn t have helped with the speech yesterday because soul of america was not in the speech. stop. but war of necessity, war of choice was. huh, richard. joe, how do we get our books plugged by the president of the united states? seems everybody else on morning joe gets their books in the presidential speeches.
you and your country. i mean, this is why people who wanted change, who wanted competence, this is why they voted for joe biden. right. an appliance that was deeply strained by joe biden s predecessor. i was in brussels when trump threatened to walk out of nato and blow it up, not giving his firm commitment to it. yes, there has been a rocky start, but president biden has held this coalition together. it seemingly has gotten stronger here. richard, though, to your point about whether perhaps this has already begun, and as much as we re seeing the u.s. try to get out in front of this, right, every piece of information and intelligence they get, they seem to leak it. we know what you re doing, kgb, president putin. teeth are taken out. there had been hope for a bipartisan agreement, republicans and democrats together. now, a strongly worded statement probably has vladimir putin