'Special Report' All-Star Panel on Biden's take on Russia sanctions

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Biden: I never said sanctions would stop Putin

Matthew Continetti, Leslie Marshall, and Guy Benson discuss Biden’s recent comments on the effectiveness of sanctions on Russia on ‘Special Report.’

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," March 24, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO?

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It would -- it would trigger a response in kind. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: President Biden answering questions at this news conference, took about five or six of them, saying a chemical weapons attack by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine would have a similar in kind response. No definitive word from the White House on that.

Meantime, "Wall Street Journal," "NATO estimates steep Russian losses in Ukraine, that Russia has losses as much as one-fifth of its combat forces sent to Ukraine in about a month of fighting. Between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. Up to 40,000 Russian troops in total have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or are missing."

OK, this comes as this discussion about sanctions and how well they are doing. The U.S. sanctions, the NATO sanctions, E.U. sanctions, and whether they were meant to deter Russia from acting in Ukraine. Here's the president and what has been said before that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did not say that in fact sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president believes that sanctions are intended to deter.

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The purpose of the sanctions in the first instance is to try to deter Russia from going to war.

JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: We want them to have a deterrent effect, clearly. And he hasn't invaded yet.

KAMALA HARRIS, (D) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The allied relationship is such that we have agreed that the deterrence effect of these sanctions is still a meaningful one.

DALEEP SINGH, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Sanctions are not an end to themselves. They serve a higher purpose. And that purpose is to deter and prevent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: OK, so they were deterring, they weren't deterring. Today the president said they were never intended to deter. Where are we?

Let's bring in our panel, Matthew Continetti, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Leslie Marshall, Democratic strategist, and Guy Benson, political editor at Townhall.com, host of "The Guy Benson Show" on FOX News Radio. Matthew, pretty stark to hear all of those different soundbites going back after what the president said today about sanctions.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: This is why they give Biden a list of reporters to call on, Bret, a list that Biden had exhausted and he was on his way out of that press conference when he called on Christina Ruffini of CBS who asked that question about deterrence. Biden was caught flat-footed. He was caught trying to reverse engineer history to grant himself foresight. But he was completely wrong.

Look, the sanctions didn't deter because the sanctions weren't imposed. Biden wasn't imposing sanctions prior to the invasion. He was threatening sanctions. And the threat of sanctions wasn't enough to change Vladimir Putin's behavior. To deter someone like Putin, you have to hold at risk something that he values greatly. Putin doesn't care about the economic well-being of Russians. He cares about power. You have to threaten his hold on power. And the only way to do that now, Bret, is to find the way to help Ukrainians defeat him on the ground.

BAIER: Leslie, these sanctions, though, there are critics of them, many critics, saying they are fairly leaky as far as the energy sector specifically. Some of the most stringent sanctions on banks that deal with Russian oil don't go into effect until June. Is this working, and is Russia feeling this?

LESLIE MARSHALL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I would agree with what Matthew just said with regard to Vladimir Putin. He doesn't care about the economy of Russia. But I do think the sanctions are working, and that's one of the reasons that the president said that he wanted to have this meeting. He wanted to make sure that our allies, our NATO allies throughout the world are in this for the long haul, and that this isn't just something that's going to last for a month or two.

If we look at the Russian economy, it is crippled. And it's not just going to be crippled now but for years to come. And the economic impact is definitely affecting Vladimir Putin's ability to access more weapons, to increase his military because he has lost so much of his military they didn't expect to, going into Ukraine and Ukraine pushing back and not getting in and out of there in a couple of days as many people thought would happen.

So I would say this is working. Obviously, there are people that want this over in five minutes. But we and our allies are saying we are not going to make this a World War III. We are not going to escalate this conflict and have our NATO nations with our fighters in the air and our troops on the ground at this point.

BAIER: Guy, the other answer that really raised eyebrows was the respond in kind depending on what the level of use, I'm paraphrasing here, what the president said about a question on Vladimir Putin using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

GUY BENSON, POLITICAL EDITOR, TOWNHALL.COM: I have no idea what he meant by that. Hopefully he will take follow-up questions on that front in the coming days, because the president of the United States talking about a potential military response in kind on the use of chemical weapons that may or may not happen in Ukraine, we shouldn't just be out here speculating. There should be pretty specific parameters put on that. And I think a lot more clarity is something that is needed for the American people.

I think some more clarity actually could be helpful from the Kremlin's perspective. Not that I'm rooting for them in any way. I'm rooting against them. But I think there is such a thing as strategic ambiguity which can be helpful with our adversaries. In this case, this is, I think maybe too ambiguous. It might even, in fact, be provocatively ambiguous. And I hope that this gets it cleaned up and specified a little bit more clearly soon.

BAIER: Yes, and the sanctions, there are really questions about whether Gazprom, the Russian oil company, is making more money now. And we really have to dig in to where these sanctions are hitting or not hitting.

As we go to break, I want you to listen back to our late colleague Charles Krauthammer on responding to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Crimea in 2014. More with the panel after this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Putin can win at a distance, but if he doesn't, he will win hand-to-hand. And what he understands is that he has nothing to fear from the United States.

Forward deploy NATO troops into places like the Baltics or into Poland. We had an understanding at the end of a Cold War we wouldn't do that because that would provoke the Russians. The response is to say you broke the understanding of the end of the Cold War, and now we are going to have NATO troops on your frontier. That's a way to send a message that means something and is not just hot air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAFAEL GROSSI, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY DIRECTOR: The JCPOA that we are going to have to be monitoring now will be more complex than the one that was originally signed in 2015. Now you have an Iran that is enriching uranium at 60 percent, which is in every practical sense almost military level.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Officials with the IAEA talking about the complexity of the new Iran nuclear deal, and there are questions about whether it's as good as the old deal that was scrapped back in 2015. This as it's close, Reuters is reporting that "Iran's foreign minister says the nuclear deal is closer than ever. Following 11 months of negotiations, Iran and the United States are now saying the ball is in the other's court to revive the accord which would curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting tough sanctions on Iran's economy." We should point out critics say it would not curb that and it would provide a runway to a nuclear bomb, that's what they say.

We are back with our panel. Guy, it's really amazing that all of this is happening in this context as Russia is sitting at the table in Vienna, as a deal, we're told and confirming, would include enriched uranium from Iran going to Russia in the middle of a time where Russia is, and we are concerned about Russia using a nuclear weapons in Ukraine and elsewhere. The juxtaposition is really amazing.

BENSON: Yes, totally amazing, astonishing, but this is the current reality. We don't really know precisely what is in this would be deal. It's been kept secret from the American people and the American Congress so far. But what we have learned through leaks and rumors is quite disturbing, that it would, in fact, be weaker than the 2015 Obama-era version. So weak, in fact, that three members of Biden's own negotiating team resigned in protest, quit the process because of the extent of the capitulations that the U.S. was agreeing to.

What we do know is that the man negotiating on our behalf is a Kremlin Putin diplomat because the Iranians won't talk to us directly. So you have the Russians speaking in this context on our behalf to another enemy of the United States, supposedly with our interest at heart, which is insane. And that lead negotiator, that Russian negotiator, recently in an interview said that the Iranians got far more than anyone could have ever expected. He was sort of bragging about that. The Russians would make off like bandits from this as well. And he also thanked the Chinese for their help in these talks. All of that, I would say, adds up to a very alarming picture.

BAIER: Leslie, it's tough to explain this in context. The administration says they need to get to this deal to try to lock in Iran's nukes and to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon. Again, I mentioned critics are really questioning whether that happens, and outside of that, Iran's activities funding terrorist groups, funding the Houthis in Yemen and actually firing missiles at or near our U.S. consulate in Iraq. It's kind of weird timing for this.

LESLIE MARSHALL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I said that before with you, Bret, the timing is a concern. And that's why we see people left and right, Democrat and Republican, who are having issues with this. And to Guy's point, that it would be an even weaker deal than 2015.

Here's the problem, OK, and there are problems on both sides. When you look to Russia, Vladimir Putin could seek to gain $20 billion if he helps to build not one but two nuclear plants for Iran, which this deal could lead to and have a pathway to. And then you have Iran, which we look at since November, which has increased its enrichment of uranium over 12 pounds, just since November. That is very concerning.

But then you even have the political side of this, which is, how do you sell, Democrat or Republican, removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard from the foreign terrorist organization list? And that's going to be a problem to sell to constituents at home left or right.

BAIER: It's not a treaty, Matthew. It doesn't have to go through the Senate. It just has the administration's blessing.

CONTINETTI: You have heard of strategy, Bret. But this by Biden is strategery, and it's going to be a disaster.

BAIER: All right, we'll leave it there. Strong letter to follow. Panel, thank you very much.

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