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Yeah, I don't think it'll have any effect uh on uh the Russians uh uh in terms of what they do in their war against Ukraine. I think the big question is whether President Trump would be foolish enough to put these secondary sanctions on China and on India. Uh I mean with regard to China, he's had to back off uh with regard to uh tariffs because the Chinese have a lot of leverage over us when it comes to rare earths and rare earth magnets. Uh they really have a lot of coercive leverage on us. So I don't see how he can possibly get tough with the Chinese uh with secondary sanctions of the magnitude that he's talking about. And with regard to India, it's really quite amazing what's happening there. Uh it looked like the United States was going to have very good relations with India with Modi in the driver's seat in India and Trump in the driver's seat here in the United States. They have a history of good relations, but those relations have gone steadily downhill uh since Trump took over. And uh if he were to put secondary sanctions on India, that would just wreck our relations with India. And that is not in America's national interest because the United States and China have a vested interest in working together in terms of dealing with China. Furthermore, if he puts these sanctions on China and India and they actually go into effect, the end result is going to be disastrous for the international economy. So, I think this is all an empty threat and I'm really curious what exactly he's going to do on Saturday uh that he thinks is going to bring the Russians or these other countries to their knees.
Well, that doesn't seem to bother him. I mean, no, he he he thinks that he he's a sovereign who can do pretty much anything he wants. uh you know what I think what's going on here is that since he launched this tariff campaign I think it was on April 2nd of this year um he's gone back and forth but he is definitely levied tariffs on a lot of countries and it has not damaged the American economy so I think he believes and his supporters believe that uh Trump can levy tariffs and get away with it there are no real costs to pay that the consumer uh is not going to have to worry about paying higher costs. But I think most people, and this would include me, believe that at some point the bill is going to come due. And when it does, he's going to be in serious trouble. But for the time being, he's operating on the assumption that tariffs are the magic weapon. They bring everybody to their knees and uh we're not hurt at all. I mean, I think that people like Lindsey Graham and many people in the American foreign policy establishment have no sense of the limits of American power. Whether you're talking about military might or economic might, they think we can just run around the world pushing people around by threatening them. And if the threats don't work, we can use military force against them. Uh maybe you could think that way during the unipolar moment, but those days are in the rear view mirror. We now live in a multipolar world. China's a pure competitor. As I said, it's not plausible to argue that we can put 100% tariffs on China. We've gone down this road in the past few months. We tried to get tough with the Chinese and Trump was forced to back off. Furthermore, he can't do this with India. It would be disastrous uh for American foreign policy. So, I I just don't know what these people are talking about. Uh maybe Trump is crazy enough that he'll try to do it and we'll see what happens. But at some point this is really going to come back and bite him in the high knee.
It's hard to believe that uh he didn't get approval to say that. It's remarkably provocative and foolish statement. Uh, and I find it hard to imagine that a general uh would make a statement of that sort without getting it cleared uh by at least the Pentagon and I would imagine even the president of the United States. But very importantly, it's not the strategic equivalent. That's the key point. When you talk about the Illutian Islands, you're not talking about taking American real estate uh in the context of a war. There's no war over Alaska or Canada or anything like that. We're talking about taking Kinenrad in the context of an almost war between the United States and Russia. I wouldn't even call it a proxy war. I call it an almost war because it's so close to being a war. They've been very close to being fully at war with the Russians for over three years now, right? This is serious business and we've made it clear to the Russians that we're bent on knocking them out of the ranks of the great powers. We want to defeat the Russians. So it's in that context that you have General Donnu talking about American or NATO troops taking Kinenrad. Kinenrad is Russian territory. That's another way of saying it's sacred territory. Yes. Yes. the idea that NATO would even threaten to initiate a campaign that involves invading and conquering Keningrad is almost unthinkable to me. Uh this is in my opinion a reckless statement. Look, if you're the Russians, right, and you know that Kiningrad is exposed, the general is correct that it's exposed Russian territory because it's detached from uh mother Russia and it's surrounded by a handful of NATO states. Uh so it's exposed and he's saying that we can take it very easily and he's intimating that we may take it very easily. Very important to understand that he's basically sending a signal or trying to send a signal to the Russians. We may take Keningrad. This means that in a crisis, the Russians have a powerful incentive to preempt to prevent that from happening. If you get into a crisis with the Russians, you do not want them to have an incentive to preempt. And this is what that does. We would have never done anything like this in the Cold War. If you go back and look at American policym during the cold war, we were much more cautious. Now you can say Russia is not the Soviet Union. The problem with that argument is that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons just like the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons. And yes, Russia is not as powerful as the Soviet Union was, but that probably makes them more scared than the Soviets would have been in an analogous situation. So, you don't want to threaten these people by talking about taking Kinenrad with great ease. It just makes no sense at all. And my I have to I have to tell you, I never heard of it. Where is it and what is it? It's a small piece of territory that used to be part of Germany. It was referred to as East Prussia. Uh and uh basically the Baltic states separated from Bellarus and from Russia. Uh so it is sort of out there by itself. It's uh it's a part of Russia but it's not contiguous to the mainland. That's correct.
Is around that view. I think there's no question that there are increasing numbers of people every week who were saying this is a genocide or if it's not a genocide, it is a war crime and that Israel needs to be punished and everything needs to be done to stop this genocide uh in Gaza. There's no question about that. And you see that um with regard to countries like Britain, France, uh Canada, and now Portugal talking about recognizing a Palestinian state and even punishing Israel in certain ways. Uh I think it's so clear at this point in time what the Israelis are up to that it's inevitable that this tide will only grow with the passage of time. It's even worse than that. Uh, it's hard to find words to describe Netanyahu and especially what he just said there. I mean, it's patently obvious that the Israelis are engaged in genocide or if that word is too strong for you, mass murder. Uh, it's patently obvious that they're starving the population. Uh they're creating a giant concentration camp now. Uh and it's all aimed at pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza. This is it's just so obvious. A and the Lieutenant Colonel who just talked to Tucker made this clear. And by the way, Judge, this is one of the reasons the Israelis don't want to let journalists and other observers into Gaza. They don't want those observers to see what's happening and then report back uh to people in the west. Uh but some people get in like this lieutenant colonel and they tell you the truth and it's consistent with everything you hear from UN UN workers uh from aid workers, from doctors who are in there and so forth and so on. This is a genocide. The Israelis are committing what is the greatest crime against humanity. I'm not sure exactly what it means. Uh it probably means uh the famous saying from Ellie Wiselle that uh Jews are never the perpetrator, they're always the victim. Or to put it in slightly different terms, they're never uh the victimizer, they're always the victim. never make that claim a long time ago because what's going on in Gaza is just a continuation of a long story that started uh in the early 20th century. Uh so they have not always been the victim. If you go to Nazi Germany and what happened during the Holocaust, of course the Jews were the victims. They were not the victimizers. Nobody in their right mind would make that argument. But if you go to the Middle East, if you go to what was once Palestine and is now Israel, it's impossible to make the argument that the Israelis were the victims and not the victimizer. They were the victimizer. uh they went into an area where there were hardly any Jews and the land and the villages and the people were Palestinians and they stole their land and they created this state of Israel and to do that you had to commit crimes. You had to be the victimizer. There is no way the Zionists could have created the state of Israel without being victimizers. and the principal victims were the Palestinians, as I like to say. And this is an argument that will strike most people as being uh on the extreme side, but it really is not. What the Zionists and now the Israelis have done to the Palestinians over time is one of the great crimes of modern history. By the way, empirical empirical evidence. Exactly. You took the words right out of my mouth. People may think John is making this up. this is just him putting the facts together uh to suit his own views. No, I learned this from reading books and reading articles that were written by Israelis and Western Jews. There is a huge amount of evidence to support the argument that the Israelis were the victimizers and the Palestinians were the victims in the context of the Middle East. There's just no question about this. And anybody who's interested and wants to study this issue will find plenty of supporting evidence for the point that I'm making.
How well I don't think Israel is going to disappear from the map. Uh I think the Israeli state is going to remain intact. But the question you have to ask yourself is what is that Israeli state going to look like uh when all of this is done? Uh, I think that what Benjamin Netanyahu has done is he has exacerbated serious tensions inside the body politic that were already there that are going to continue well after he leaves office. He's also gotten Israel involved in conflicts in places like Syria, uh Lebanon, uh and uh uh and and with Iran in in ways that are going to linger for a long time and cause really serious damage on the Israeli home front. I'm a firm believer that a thoroughly militarized state that is fighting wars all the time is undermining basic liberal values, basic decency on the home front. And you see this in spades inside of Israel when you look at the body populace's attitude towards what's going on in Gaza. Right? Furthermore, he's got Israel stuck back in Gaza. The Israelis got out of Gaza in 2005. And they got out of Gaza in 2005 under the leadership of Ariel Chiron, who was no pussycat. And Chiron got out because Chiron understood full well that that place is a hornets's nest. Well, they're back in there and they've been unable to expel the Palestinians. And the question you have to ask yourself is, how does this all end? And it's very hard to tell a happy story. The final point I'd make to you is that Israel is in a position where it is extremely dependent on the United States. Israel and the United States fight these wars together. They execute the genocide together. Israel is no longer the independent state that it once thought it was. So I think for all of these different reasons, Israel is a country that is in serious trouble and that situation does not improve with time. If anything, it gets worse.
This Donald I think it's quite clear that the balance of power in that relationship clearly favors Benjamin Netanyahu and I constantly wonder what's going on with Trump because if you look around the world almost every leader and here we're talking mainly about the West almost every leader in the West is beginning to bend on what is happening inside of Gaza. You see this with the French. You see this with the British, the Canadians, right? They're all beginning to move in a way uh that is antagonistic towards Israel. Not completely. But Trump doesn't move at all. It's really quite amazing. And it's hard to believe that this is in the American national interest, that he thinks it's in our interest to support Israel no matter what. we are getting he is getting a huge amount of uh criticism for this but he's not bending at all and I sometimes wonder why that's the case and I wouldn't be surprised if behind closed doors he's been threatened in ways that make it clear that he better not show any criticism of Israel or he'll be punished for All right.