Episode 1012: Inside the Ukraine War – Drones, Diplomacy, and the Risk of Escalation
Newt's World
Gingrich 360
4.6 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
The Ukraine war has now outlasted World War I — and there's no clear end in sight. Former CIA Russia analysis director George Beebe joins Newt for a sobering assessment of where things stand. They dig into how AI-guided drones costing $17,500 apiece are reshaping the battlefield and challenging a century of military doctrine, why Ukraine's deep strikes on Russian oil infrastructure are more effective than previous campaigns but still can't win the war alone, and what it would actually take to get Putin to the negotiating table. Beebe argues the conflict is not just a bilateral Russia-Ukraine dispute — it's a larger confrontation over the foundations of European security that requires the United States at the table, not just as mediator. He also warns that the window for a negotiated compromise may be closing, and that the escalatory risks — including nuclear — are higher than most people realize.
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:08.1 | Welcome to News World Podcast on the I-Heart Podcast Network. |
| 0:12.3 | This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held one of the most consequential confirmation hearings I've watched in years, |
| 0:19.4 | and it didn't get nearly the attention it deserved |
| 0:21.7 | outside Washington. Todd Blanche, nominated to be the permanent attorney general after Pam Bondi's |
| 0:29.0 | departure, sat for hours of questioning on Wednesday. Ranking member, Derek Durbin, pressed him |
| 0:35.5 | hard on the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files. |
| 0:40.0 | On the administration's proposed $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund and on the IRS settlement |
| 0:47.3 | tied to leaked tax filings, the committee heard directly from Danny Ebenski, an Epstein survivor, and from Elizabeth Hoyer, |
| 0:57.0 | the former DOJ partner attorney Blanche himself fired. |
| 1:01.5 | Durbin demanded Blanche commit, on the record, to meeting with 10 of Epstein's victims within 30 days. |
| 1:08.9 | That's not a routine confirmation hearing. That's a justice department |
| 1:13.4 | being asked in public to prove it still has credibility on one of the most sensitive files |
| 1:19.5 | in the entire building. Here's the detail that stopped me, though, and it's one I can't get past. |
| 1:26.4 | Because of Lindsey Graham's death, Judiciary Committee |
| 1:30.1 | Republicans now have exactly one vote to lose in this nomination. One, a seat that a friend of mine |
| 1:37.3 | held for years, a seat that mattered enormously to how that committee has functioned for over a decade, is now an empty chair |
| 1:46.1 | changing the math on one of the most contested confirmations of the year. I said last week |
| 1:52.5 | that losing Lindsay wasn't just personal, it was consequential. And here it is, playing out in |
| 1:59.4 | real time in a committee room on a rule-call vote. |
| 2:04.0 | Layer on top of that, Jay Clayton's confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence, |
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