President Trump waives new Russia sanctions citing 'national interests'

I'm joined by retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel and global security expert, Hal Kempfer. Hal, thanks for being here. And tell us, please, what exactly happened here? Well, what happened was Lindsey Graham sanctions bill, which was to basically aim against Russia and Iran, was set to have a number of sanctions kick in. A lot of this was aimed at some key oligarchs, but also to stop financial transactions from happening with Russia. And it was coming up to the deadline uh that thing had been signed on september 18th by the president so it was coming up for that one month deadline that these things happen and the president waived those sanctions and it's causing a lot of bipartisan controversy uh pushback in congress although congress is off right now so there's not really much they can do about it till after the midterms when they come back in session but it is it has caused a great deal of angst and concern because that was such a an overwhelming popular bill uh 89 senators of the 100 senators 89 voted for that it was 89 11 and it also got a huge vote in the house of representatives so it was was something that had a lot of bipartisan support overall and uh it kind of expresses some frustration by members of congress about what's been happening with some of the rhetorical back and forth uh the president has had with President Zelensky, not the least of which is saying that President Zelensky shouldn't be president of Ukraine. And of course, the diesel agreement with Russia to buy diesel, which would appear to be not only in contravention with what this bill was about, but also in contravention of a 2022 bill that was signed by President Biden, which prohibits basically buying oil from Russia. Let's break that down a little bit, Hal. Will it help, in theory, diesel prices here at home? It might, to some extent. 300,000 tons of diesel is basically one day's usage here. Now, this could go up to a million by the end of the year. That's theoretical. Sweden's prime minister came out right after this was said and said he didn't see how it's even going to happen because uh russia's diesel production capability had been so debilitated by the ukrainian airstrikes that sometime back putin had stopped all diesel exports just to meet domestic demand so it's a it's a little bit of a head scratcher as to where the diesel will actually come from to fulfill on this and certainly when you look at you know to from the agreement to getting the diesel into some place where they could ship it to the united states and then get the United States, it seems unlikely that it's going to have much of a dent on the market before the midterms. All right. What about the war in Ukraine and the war with Iran? What are the possible impacts there? Well, obviously, Ukraine's feeling, and President Zelensky has articulated this, is this putting money right into Putin's pocketbook, so to speak, the money that he's going to use to pay for the war. And they're looking at a very tough winter. President Trump asking ukraine to refrain on attacking refineries uh has has not gone over well although with that said when president trump announced that ceasefire which uh really caught ukraine off guard and i think it caught russia off guard because they didn't respond well they did respond they they hit a and they they hit an energy site immediately after the ceasefire and energy sites which i guess is a russian response but ukraine basically held off hitting any energy facilities or refineries for three days finally they're just watching uh russia basically hit all their energy facilities and they said we're gonna have to go back to targeting so uh as far as ukraine's concerned this is putting money into the uh war chest of russia to continue the war and most experts across the board don't think it's gonna push anybody to any negotiating table you know ukraine's been very open to uh sitting down at the table with negotiations for some time russia's been the one that's been recalcitrant on this and certainly russia has not made any concessions uh in these uh discussions so this will is emboldening uh putin across the board it also appears to be indirectly emboldening the iranian regime whom we're essentially at war with and emboldening china uh by uh by second or third order effects so uh that's kind of the big big picture of what it's doing. It's it is a bit of a head scratcher. I mean, I understand the desire to get diesel prices down because that affects the price of everything. The question is, does this really do that much and does it do it in a timely manner? And also how I mean, do we consider Russia an adversary anymore or not? Well, we always have. That's you know, we use the term CRINK which is uh china russia uh iran and north korea uh they're kind of a global block which is anti-us anti-west uh russia is the number one backer supporter ally of iran they're uh they're also tied in with china we're definitely in a not a war but we're definitely in a strategic confrontation with china particularly in the west pacific in the south china sea so uh it really does kind of make a lot of strategists out there, experts kind of wonder what exactly is the pivot here? Why is the pivot? It's going to alienate our European allies. It's going to bring question into the minds of all of our other allies around the world, which is whether they can rely on us. So it's really whatever marginal gain we get is kind of offset by the other side, which is how much are we losing by going down this path? I guess in theory, even if diesel prices come down just a little bit president trump can claim some sort of victory i think he'll try uh i think that's the idea is that if he can see any drop and even if the diesel doesn't come directly to america or to the u.s right away but it goes somewhere else and that drops the worldwide price of diesel and that's somehow reflected at the pumps uh that would be a uh certainly a claim for victory that this is working but uh but we're getting diesel from Russia and uh what this is going to do is prolong the war with Ukraine it's going to increase the threat against European countries particularly the Baltic states because Russia is going to have not only more money but they've also felt very emboldened by this so it's uh there's a there's a lot of strategic questions as to why this is doing and the other thing is a little bit of the semantics has caused some concern uh right this this came right at the tail end of a phone call that President Trump had with Putin and uh immediately after that he says you know Russia has taken we talked about the diesel deal Russia holds 30% of Ukraine Russia has never held 30% of Ukraine uh Russia holds about 20% and if you look at where things go on the battlefield it's actually going against uh Russia the gains being made by the Ukrainians so i found that to be not an insignificant mix-up in terms of uh of how much territory the Russians hold, that's really overestimating what they hold by 50%. That was pretty significant. And that sounds like something that Putin would say. And that's got a lot of people concerned, particularly on both sides of the aisle in Congress, which is they're hearing the president saying the same sort of thing that Putin says. And frankly, that's just Russian disinformation. A head scratcher, just like you said. And who knows where we go from here? Any predictions? Well, I think where we're going to go from here is Congress is going to come back in session in November uh I think once the midterms are done uh you know there's a couple of different ways I mean it could be a as they say a blue sweep it could be a lot of uh a lot of Democrats that take control of uh potentially both houses of Congress that would be a big change and if that happens you're going to have about a two-month period where you have the same Congress now uh that's in that's that's there but they're not but they're not going to be there for long They're going to be leaving in early January. And so I would say all bets are off on which way they go. I mean, if I was a member of the House and I felt that this did something, a Republican member of the House, I felt this did something that cost me my seat. I might be inclined to join congressional action to push back on this. So, you know, we saw the Lindsey Graham bill vote. It was overwhelming, tremendous support, particularly in the Senate. And I think that's something that the White House needs to heed. Never a dull moment, that's for sure. Hal Kemper, thank you for joining us tonight. Appreciate your time. Thanks, Brian.