But there s something else here that white house is starting to slowly talk about behind closed doors for a few days. now, we had the president say out loud yesterday, what happens next? president biden at a fundraiser outside of d.c. last night talked about the state of the war. i ll quote this now. he said that putin is a very calculating man, and the problem the president now worries about is that the russian leader, quote, doesn t have a way out right now. and i m trying to figure out what we do about that. this is that idea that is the perplexing problem of what is the off-ramp here? what is the way they can get putin to call off this assault without, of course, givingvicto. we know the ukrainians aren t inclined to give an inch of territory. this is the question, how to get putin to stop. what sort of off-ramp, way out can you give him? yeah, it s been this question for weeks now when it became clear russia wasn t going to have an easy time with ukraine.
the white house, certainly, as we reported, didn t believe putin could escalate the war on victory day. there was no way to do so. officials i spoke to yesterday took note of his rather subdued appearance there in red square. i think there are a couple things at play here. as the white house tries to keep their foot on the gas to help ukraine, to make sure russia can t revive any part of their assault here. as ed mentioned, the president signed that lend-lease act yesterday. also, importantly, yesterday the president announced his support for decoupling this massive ukraine aid package from the covid relief funds. we can set aside the wisdom of delaying covid relief funds at a time when cases are surging again and the white house says there could be 100 million new cases by fall. but to the least, this is to expedite this process. house democrats even adding to the amount of money they want to send to ukraine to continue to help them with military equipment, humanitarian aid, and beg