Dan Hoffman, former CIA Moscow station chief, discusses President Biden feeding into the Putin’s narrative of nuclear war and allowing the longtime Russian President to fearmonger. Hoffman says the does not think it will "influence Ukraine's will to fight. And we saw that the Nazis do that, you know, to the UK, and it didn't alter their will to fight either, and I think Putin knows that.” The retired spy comments that Putin is "trying to play to his own ultra-nationalist base that is wondering why this special military operation that Putin claimed would would topple Kyiv's government in days hasn't succeeded.” Hoffman says that Putin is using an idea called "historical placement, meaning, when you look at a leader, for example, George Herbert Walker Bush fought in the Second World War and looked at Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, in terms of that war and said, we're not going to appease Saddam, just as you know, we failed when we appeased Hitler. And in the case of President Biden, Putin looked at Biden said, here's a guy who was just about 20 years old during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm going to play on the President's fear of what President Biden has said, World War Three Armageddon, that's giving Putin kind of adding throwaway to Putin's rhetorical brinkmanship.” Hoffman says if he were giving advice to the White House, he say "please, Mr. President, message discipline, don't do that, talk about it privately, but don't act like this is something you're concerned about publicly, because you're gonna give Vladimir Putin what he wants and we just need to tell the Russians that if they would have launched a tactical nuclear weapon, we would respond forcefully, that's Article Five, using a nuclear weapon on European soil. But we don't need to, to kind of subject ourselves to the fear mongering, you know, that Putin is, is trying to impose upon us."
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