establishment wing. balking over finalizing the very rules mccarthy conceded last week to hard liners to become the house speaker. is this normal? plus, president biden s upcoming meeting with the president of mexico after visiting the border. where critics say the true scope of the humanitarian crisis was hidden from his view. and prince harry dropping bombs, accusing his stepmother of leaking stories to help her image. what does the royal family have to say about all of this? welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start in our politics lead with the first test of newly elected speaker of the house, kevin mccarthy. in just a few hours, the house is going to vote on its new rules package. this will include one of the biggest concessions mccarthy made to the hard line rebels to get the gavel. that one-person motion to vacate rule. this means just one member of congress can now force to remove mccarthy as speaker. he also made other concessions including allowing more fre
taking hostages, that s what they essentially did, is they took mccarthy hostage last week, i ve seen donald trump take the defense bill hostage three years ago. so we had to override a veto over an issue unrelated to arms services. we have to worry about whether or not that s going to happen, but we have to try to work together as we have for gosh the last four years and see where it goes. so the speaker s battle was worrisome. we got to put it behind us and work together going forward. condoleezza rice and robert gates wrote a joint opinion piece in the washington post titled time is not on ukraine s side. they write quote eight years separated russia s seizure of crimea. count on putin to be patient to achieve his destiny. under current circumstances, any negotiated cease fire would leave russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they re ready. that is unacceptable, unquote. do you think the biden administration agrees this is a
have turned into an aggressor nation. it s syria. it s chechnya. it s georgia. it s 2014 seizure of crimea. now this massive military assault on a sovereign nation of ukraine. putin, unbounded, has become a threat to western europe and certainly to u.s. national interests. the biden team, lloyd austin, tony blinken, treasury, cia, have actually done a remarkable job pulling together a coherent strategy. they have resourced it. they brought together 40 contact nations. they have done a great job. the russians are now at check, not checkmate. i think there s another major offensive coming, probably in the spring, in which putin is strongarming belarus in
including strike aircraft, long-range artillery. a small deployment of 1,000 personnel and a handful of aircraft and shifts nato is sending to the region could be counterproductive in the face of 120,000 russians posed to invade ukraine. so deployment, you want to change the game and cause putin to change his calculus has to demonstrate we have the stomach for a fight. david ignatius, you have been writing about the moods and moves of vladimir putin for two decades now. so my question to you is what happens in moscow when the body bags start returning there? you know, mike, that s really the essential question in calculating how this is going to turn out. i m told that in russian there s a phrase that was used during the 2014 seizure of crimea and battle in eastern ukraine for those body bags, they called them cargo 200. cargo 200 was arriving, which
russian president vladimir putin announced the successful construction of a bridge and train connecting cry imea to russia. it connects the port to moscow. the eu and much of the international community did doh not recognize russia s seizure of crimea. they have claimed over 10,000 civilian casualties in this internationally displaced nearly 1.5 million people. and staying here on russia, yesterday secretary of state mike pompeo tweeted a photo of the new u.s. ambassador to russia, john sullivan, swearing in to take that up critical role. ambassador sullivan was previously the u.s. department secretary of state and has also served as a lawyer in past republican administrations. the pick comes as president trump has been impeached by the house for withholding military aid to ukraine which, of course, has been fighting a war with russia. let s take a quick break and switch gears for a moment and