Ex-Navy SEAL Commander On Biden-Putin Meeting: ‘Biden Failed,’ ‘Helped Perpetuate’ Image Putin Wants

CHARLES PAYNE, FOX BUSINESS HOST: Report of Russian military drills that ran close to Hawaii this week and never came up today at this high stakes summit. With me now, retired Navy SEAL commander David Sears. Dave Sears, commander, I guess we should have brought it up because obviously Vladimir Putin would not have. It was so close to Hawaii that they actually had to scramble fighter jets, right?

DAVID SEARS, FORMER NAVY SEAL COMMANDER: Yeah, that’s as I understood it, too. I understand that they didn’t actually have to engage with the Russians or escort them anywhere. They still stayed outside of 300 to 500 miles, somewhere in there. But still, it’s obviously right before this summit. It’s obviously a test and President Biden failed.

PAYNE: And on top of that, in April, there was a even a massive test; 10,000 soldiers, Russian soldiers, 40 warships in Crimea, just sort of this threat, this never ending threat against Ukraine, who desperately keeps seeking our help, and it just, it feels like all of these bad actors have been emboldened and we keep waking up to these sorts of stories. What do you make of that?

SEARS: They are; they’re going to continue to push. So regardless of the administration, as a new administration comes in, these bad actors are going to push around the world. And this is President Putin’s, this is how he does things. So you’re going to see him I think, continue to push in through South America and Venezuela and Nicaragua, he’s going to continue to push in Europe, in the Baltics, and Ukraine. Remember, the last time under this, this President’s watch, the Russians invaded Ukraine. So he, the Russians also see, existentially they see in their national security documents, NATO is a national security threat to them. So they’re positioning themselves to make sure that they can counter that threat. And they’re gonna keep pushing and keep trying to fracture any alliances in Europe and the U.S. and places like that, and they’re succeeding so far.

PAYNE: Commander, a lot of folks believe the next major engagement, confrontation will be in cyberspace. And it’s just, I just want your thoughts on some of the things that President Biden had to say today with respect to giving Vladimir Putin a list of things that maybe he shouldn’t, you know, they shouldn’t have any ransomware against, and also sort of what I thought was a naïve answer about Vladimir Putin being concerned about his image with the rest of the world.

SEARS: Yeah, I mean, Putin is gonna continue on the old mantra of “admit nothing, deny everything and make counter accusations.” So, President Biden giving him a list of do this, don’t do that, there’s no way he’s going to follow it. This is a guy who prides himself on, you know, President Putin, on wrestling bears riding tigers, lassoing the moon, I mean, he’s got this image that’s bigger than thou and he wants that. And President Biden helped perpetuate some of that today, it was bad.

PAYNE: There was one reporter who actually did ask about the ransomware and brought up the use of military; President Biden hesitated for about 20 – 30 seconds, put on his sunglasses and went on to the next question. You know, listen, I can understand maybe he wouldn’t want to speak about something like that, that kind of reaction, but what kind of reaction should and maybe we should also assume maybe we are doing things, but it feels like these cyber attacks, these ransomware attacks are not going to stop, they keep getting worse. And they are going after the key targets, our food supply, oil supply, those are the things that can cripple a nation, what should we be doing to push back?

SEARS: So, there’s lots of things that we can do. So there’s things in the covert realm that can be done, but there’s also things that are going to become visible as well. So we see the visible effects of the assaults on the Colonial Pipeline, the assaults on JBS foods, those become visible to us, regardless of who did them. We can do the same things. We should not be saying when President Putin says, “Hey, take your destroyers out of the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov,” we turn them around at his request. Instead, we should be sending ships there. We should be showing our cyber capabilities, you need to demonstrate quid pro quo with these guys, exactly, what you’re going to do. So if they run an exercise there, we should be running an exercise off of Alaska, right across from Russia. I mean, you need to demonstrate strength, they can sniff out weakness and they will crush you.