Transcription
President Trump this morning, uh, went on Fox, Fox and Friends, and was, uh, kind of giving a lay of the land to his favorite outlet there about where things are. First of all, we'll talk about the Iran war. Turns out, actually, we're in pretty good shape there. And we'll start off with the most important financially thing, uh, aspect of this, which is the Strait of Hormuz, and along with all the oil and gas products that go along with it.
"Good news, Doug. We're in control."
"Doesn't control the Strait. We control the Strait."
"Mr. President, are we right that no merchant ships are getting through right now? Maybe three or four a day when you need about 100."
"The only ones that get through are the ones that we want to get through. They're the only ships that get through. Brian, we have a blockade that's so powerful that nobody can get through."
"Nobody can get through."
Now, Brian Kilme, Doug, in front of the rare times, actually tried to push back a little bit. Turns out he was much more right than we think. When Trump's saying that we're in control of the Strait of Hormuz and we're in good shape, uh, this is from the last few days. This is important not just in the numbers, but where they're passing. Uh, we, we've had information from Kepler and a number of other places to say fewer than 10 ships have passed through the straits since, uh, Sunday. Uh, 25 had just three vessels to 25 July, and then the three days, 22 through 24 July, three vessels per day. But here's the important part. The southern corridor, the one that the United States set up outside of the memorandum of understanding that was not included in that. According to analysts from Winward and Kepler, commercial shipping along the southern route, despite being escorted by US military, has effectively ground to a halt. The northern corridor, a handful of vessels still navigating the straits are mostly utilizing the Iranian shipping lanes. So there's not a whole lot going on then. But President Trump said, "Ours is like this blockade, but some is going out there and nothing is coming out on our side." What do you make of that?
"Well, I don't know what to make of it. That President Trump is not in the business of telling people the truth about events in the Middle East or anywhere else right now. Remember, this is the quintessential salesman. So everything he's connected to is a tremendous success. Everything he talks about is always a winning hand and so forth and so on. The problem is that the rest of the world knows the truth. We don't control the Strait of Hormuz. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. And for him, that, that's a very difficult thing to admit because that means that we have lost our control and influence over the global energy complex. We just don't control it anymore. It, it, by definition. And if you look at what I'm sure you're going to bring up in a few moments, the destruction meted out to the Saudis and others in the Gulf in terms of oil infrastructure and refining becomes very clear that, uh, Iran has absolute control and we are in an unfortunate position of not being able to do anything about it. So I, I understand he doesn't want to admit that. But unfortunately, that's true. And that leads to the discussion of what, what will be openly discussed in this meeting in Washington with Netanyahu."
"And, you know, even before we get on that, I, I want to go down a point you just mentioned there. Um, and this gets back into something we've talked about before, but there's a new manifestation of it. That the, the oil price, uh, has gone down significantly here, uh, since the oil trading opened back up Monday morning. And that's odd because the news out today, you mentioned Saudi Arabia. They admitted that because of some of their, uh, some of the Houthi damage, missile damage to their, uh, their Yanbu and several other, uh, oil reprocessing centers had taken about 4 million barrels a day, uh, at least temporarily offline. And yet the price of oil went down, which by any other normal time that would have caused a spike because that means more oil is not going to get out. Whether the Bab el-Mandeb is open or closed, if you can't refine it, you can't get anything out. What do you make of those two opposite, uh, indicators?"
"Well, we also saw another exercise in shorting oil. So friends of Trump that are on Wall Street, and many of these people are part of the larger Zionist billionaire club, have all made lots of money as a result of his ability to manipulate the market. I, I think we're reaching an end to that. It's going to end. It's going to end very abruptly and badly. But right now, uh, they're willing to play along on the assumption that somehow or another we're going to win, that we will walk away victorious. Because if you go to Wall Street, you talk to the people that work there, they say, 'Oh, well, you know, taking care of the Strait of Hormuz, that's a job for the Navy and the Marines. That's a non-issue. That's all going to work out.' There's no evidence for that. But that's what they believe. That's what they believe because that's what Washington is telling them. And these are traders. These are people who are trading in commodities, making lots of money. These are not people that wore hard hats on a drilling rig. These are not people that have ever seen the oil fields up close and personally in the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. This is a common problem in New York City. People sit behind a desk. They're, they're on Wall Street. They're looking at data and statistics. Those things are easily manipulated, but it's not going to last much longer. And I think that's the, the real message. You know, nothing is leaving the Gulf that Iran doesn't want to get out. And when you look at the oil that's leaving, it's Iranian and it's headed largely to China."
"That, that's exactly right. And, and just to put a finer point on that, I, this is even, I thought this is the current live price here. $78.60, another 3.95 or 4.7%. Uh, and you can see that, I mean, this is, this is after that Saudi Arabia announced today that they had all those millions of barrels offline while they're going to try and try and repair that stuff. And it just should never happen here. And that just seems to imply that somebody is definitely pulling some financial strings here because otherwise that just doesn't make any sense at all."
"Well, there are two other myths that we need to explode. One is that that's the real price. The price of oil coming off ship that docks with a full load is $140 a barrel, right? That's the paper price. That's Wall Street's, uh, perception. So that's number one. Number two, there are no new oil, uh, pipelines being installed. No new oil infrastructure. I hear people saying, 'Oh, we're already building, uh, ways to get around all this and new pipelines are popping up.' No, they're not. No one is investing in the region. No one will put a dime into the region until the war stops. Come on, wake up. Smell the coffee. What's the point of trying to put a par, trying to put a parallel oil line in anywhere when you know the Iranians will discover it and they can destroy it in a few seconds? What's the point? So there's nothing good happening at all. So when the truth really strikes home, and it's going to in the near future, imagine the shock when you're looking at $150 a barrel or higher. Because if you listen to Jeff Curry and other people who are familiar, Pilington's another one, these people have been in the oil business, trading business forever. They know what's happening. They know where we're headed. It's not where we're looking at that, uh, chart right now."
"Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if you could, I want to go down that path that you just mentioned here because last week, uh, we showed on one of our, one of our, uh, programs that Jesse Waters was bragging about how President Trump had gotten the Prime Minister of Iraq to have all this oil infrastructure and investment from by the United States into Iraq. They were going to build this pipeline that was going to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. There's some other pipelines and so we're going to take all the leverage away from Iran. But I wonder if you could just talk militarily, given this, the capabilities that we know Iran has with all these short, medium, and long-range missiles scattered throughout their country. Even if you make pipelines, unless they're all totally underground and there's nothing above ground, it seems to me that the refineries aren't going anywhere. And whether there's a pipeline or a ship, you can still take that stuff out with the same ease. Is that not correct?"
"Oh, no. That's true. But let, let's stop and ponder the statement for a second. Uh, this is Iraq. Uh, Iraq is Iran's ally. Wake up. The Iraqi government. How many times has the parliament in Iraq voted us out of Iraq? How many times have we been directed to rel, to leave the place and take our forces with them? You know, the Iraqi militias that we talk about all the time that have attacked us and others on, on several occasions, they're all poised to march in and seize control of Kuwait. I mean, what does he, what does he think he's talking to? I mean, this is just complete and utter nonsense. The Iraqis [clears throat] are not going to do anything in any way, shape, or form that could hurt Iran. Iran is their eternal ally at this point. So, I, I don't know what he's talking about. I think he, you know, everybody in DC is inside a bubble, but I think everybody's smoking crack cocaine. Doesn't make any sense."
"Well, I, I guess it makes sense in terms of finances because, um, you can make a deal all day long if you want to. And if it benefits Iran, that's fine. If it's Iraq, that's fine. But that's not going to change the internal dynamics that you talked about that we ushered in with the removal of Saddam Hussein all those years ago with the 2003 war. But I, I digress. Let's stick with the one we got here though, because that's, we have those issues at play right now. The Strait of Hormuz is in control of the Iranian side and there's nothing we have been able to do to stop it. Not the 40 days, not the blockade, not the MOU, and then not this 13-day, I don't know, attempt, a mini offensive that we tried. That didn't make any change either. Now, then there's been what, three or four days now we haven't struck and I think we're trying to figure out what to do. Well, one thing that a lot of people want to do is that let's go back and finish the job. So all kinds of people have been saying that and begging Trump. I showed one over the weekend, Sid Rosenberg on Fox News, literally begging Trump to go in all out, to include a ground formation, invade the country. It's shockingly to do that. Well, President Trump this morning addressed that possibility."
"I can knock out the power plants. Within one day, all of their power plants would be gone. And I let him know that, you know, with negotiations, I said, 'Look, people want me to do that. I think I get almost the same thing out of it as doing it. But the problem is they'll never be able to, you know, I think about 91 million people without power, without bridges, would have to live. And it's a very, very delicate balance.'"
"So, I think we have a very strong position right now. They know I'm going to do that. If they don't make a deal, the bridges are going to be gone. I would say in two hours, most of the bridges, the major bridges will all be gone, and the power plants in one day. You know, if I can avoid doing that, I'd like to do that."
"Yeah, he could. I mean, there's, we have the wherewithal. We have the missiles and everything else that can do that, but the Iranian side has already said it's an eye for an eye. If you do that, we're going to hit all the infrastructure there, too. Um, do you think President Trump is not aware of that? That he doesn't believe it, or is all of this just posturing and he's not going to do it? This is the man who said, 'Oh, you know, this, this, uh, war may be over in three or four days. The Iranian regime, you know, may, may just implode quickly. If it doesn't, what are we talking about? Two weeks, three weeks. They can't stand up to us. You know, I, I'm going to make a civilization disappear overnight.' I mean, come on. Why listen to anything the man says, right? The man is going to do what Netanyahu wants him to do. Let's be frank. That's where we're headed. What does Netanyahu want? He wants the war to continue. Zelensky is joined at the hip with Netanyahu. They are part of the same cabal. What does Zelensky want? He wants the war to continue. For it to continue, he needs more missiles, more drones that he can hurl at the Russians. Now, let's, let's get real and and look, look at what is, and it's not possible. Iran's goal in the war, number one, was to survive. They never, they're not deluded. They harbored any illusions about their real power and influence. They understood that the best they could do was to defend themselves. Dan, they've done that. They've proven that they have survived. They realize that they've won. That was the point of the MOU that Trump signed and then walked away from, unsurprisingly, because it effectively said, 'Okay, you get what you want. You won. Uh, we'll go along with it. We'll tolerate it because it's in the interest of the global economy.' Well, that went away. He can't tolerate that. Now, what's goal number two for the Iranians? They need to finish the job. And what does that mean to them? That means that you've got to remove the United States from the region. How do you do that? You smash all the bases beyond repair. You make it patently obvious that any attempt to come back into that region and reestablish yourself on the ground is an impossibility. We are not fighting the war we were fighting just a few weeks ago. Donald Trump is fighting a rear guard action to try and preserve what little is left of our military, political, and economic power and dominance. And there's not that much left anymore. His attack on Iran was an acid test for our military power, our strength. We could have avoided it. We didn't need to do it. It was not required. But Netanyahu and his agents in the United States insisted upon it. Trump owes them whatever. And so he's done it. They're back and they're going to tell him the only way this war ends is with the complete and utter destruction of Iran. I would turn that around and warn everyone that if he indeed does proceed, it's not the end of Iran. It'll finish us in the Gulf. That's absolutely certain. But it will be the end of Israel. And I think that privately Netanyahu is worried about that. But he doesn't know what else to do. And the simple truth is the same for Ukraine. Either we give them more to sustain them for another month or two, or they too will go out of existence. And if we give them something to sustain them for another month or two, half of which will be stolen and end up in private bank accounts, they too will be destroyed. The handwriting, as we say, is on the wall. Ukraine is destroyed. That nation is finished. And oh, by the way, Iran is victorious. And a new order is going to emerge in the Middle East. And I would tell you that over the next few months, it will be obvious that that new order consists of four powerful states: Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey. I predict that Turkey will finally get off the bench and demonstrate that it is part of that axis, and that is the end of us and the finish of Israel in the region."
"Well, that certainly may well be the case, and we'll see how things play out. What seems to propel that forward is if we make some foolish decisions here coming up. I want to point out Gary was showing you those images from just a few minutes ago, I think, in the White House where they're meeting between the two delegations is going on. Um, I want to remind everybody that prior to the start of this war, Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington and he had some intelligence that said he found out that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was going to be in a certain location on a certain day, and that President Trump had to act then. That's when he had to strike. Now, then we... What do you make of that?"
"Well, I think that makes perfect sense. That is totally in line with everything that we've been discussing. This is the last desperate attempt to keep the war. I don't know what is inside or under Pickaxe Mountain. I don't know what the intelligence services say. I don't think it matters. I mean, our intelligence services have reported pretty consistently over the last several years there was no evidence for a nuclear bomb being developed by Iran for use against anybody. They can say anything they want, and that's what's going to happen. Again, the point is this is it. Trump has got a real problem because we are not simply low in missiles and precision-guided munitions and so forth. Whether it's Tomahawks or JASSMs or any number of these exotic weapons, we are, we're going to scrape the bottom of the barrel. And by the way, the oil situation is not good. What Wall Street believes and what is real are completely distinct from each other. The real world is going to come down on us very hard in the very near future. And that's going to have an impact on the bond market that we've discussed in the past, which Good and Groman and a host of other people, Ray Dalio, have all pointed to and said, you know, Armageddon is on the way. NASA Talib has said it before anybody. It's coming. It's inevitable now because Trump is running what's left of us in the ground. He's doing it because he understands he's fighting a rear guard action. We have lost in Iran. We have lost in Ukraine. When I say we, I'm talking about the United States. Because we put the full faith and credit and power of the United States behind these very stupid, unnecessary wars. All of our allies are on the skids. Everybody's going broke. Nobody has any money. There will be no great mobilization of Europe against Russia. But what's happened in the meantime? China, which has profited enormously from our stupidity, is the rising power in the world. It is de facto the greatest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing parity. Absolutely without question. So then we turn away from China. We look at Russia. Russia is in superb condition because the Russians have husbanded their resources. They have moved cautiously and deliberately, although I think that's about to change and I guess we'll talk about that in a minute. But then you also have to look at Iran. Iran was supposed to have gone under several times. Its population was supposed to have starved and died and begged for mercy several times. The Iranians are not interested in talking to us anymore. No one is calling Trump and asking for talks. He's desperate for them. They're not going to happen. There is only one way out for Donald Trump and Iran, and that is for us to pack up our things and steal away into the night, to disappear quietly. If we don't do that, it will get worse for us. The rest of the global energy structure will be at high risk, much of it in the Gulf region destroyed not just for a year or two, not for three or four years, for a decade or more. And when we leave, it's very obvious what happens. The only power in the world with the wealth, the expertise, and the power to come in there and change anything, make anything right, rebuild anything, is China. And the Turks are watching it. They're seeing who is winning and who is losing. It's only a matter of time. They want to be on the winning team, and they will join. And that'll be the end of it. And this thing we call Israel, which is a product of the Sykes-Picot agreement, will be on the skids. They'll have a choice put to them. Either you live within the broader regional framework that we define on our terms, or you go away."
"Yeah. And of course, with their 200 nuclear weapons, I think that, uh, they can either just burn the whole thing down or they'll fall into line there. But, uh, that's, that's going to be an ugly situation which I think we're headed toward. I don't, I don't disagree with your assessment."
"Large numbers of Israelis are buying up as much of Cyprus as they can. They're moving to Greece. They're moving into Serbia. They're moving into a number of different places. Argentina, obviously. So that tells you something about the fate of the Israelis in their own future."
"Yeah. And one wonders if that's ever going to get through to Netanyahu in time. Uh, before we skip, move on that topic, because I do want to go to the, the Russia-Ukraine portion of that, because they are directly linked. Uh, we showed you the meeting there with Netanyahu that was happening. Uh, one of the other things I'd like your view on here, however that comes out, and we, I think we have a pretty good idea how it's going to come out. That meeting probably going to be something bad for us. But what really irks me just as an American is this statement here by Smotrich, little Smotrich. Uh, this was, this was in actually military.com this morning. Uh, Israeli minister says US-Iran war is best for us without Israeli involvement. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that plainly. What other Israeli leaders have communicated more cautiously. The current US war benefits Israel most when American forces do the fighting and Israel remains outside the direct exchange. This just drives crazy, Doug, because we just talked about how Israel prompted President Trump to forget about America First and go Israel Only and start this war, and then he allowed Iran, Israel just to stay out of it and let our people pay the price in blood. Let our population pay the, the physical cost from this with our tax money and or borrowing and everything else. Uh, how can President Trump let this continue on to let them stay on the sidelines and only allow our people to pay the price for a war we don't need?"
"Well, you will remember when, uh, we were in Saudi Arabia in 1990 and 1991 that the [clears throat] Saudi government, its spokespersons, its ruling elites openly referred to the United States Army on the ground in Saudi Arabia as their white slave army that had been purchased and equipped to defend Arabia. And that's why they were there. And that when they'd done their job, they would leave because of course Arabia is holy Islamic territory. Uh, now you're hearing effectively the same thing from the Israelis, and I think he's telling you the truth. Uh, you know, there's been an effort to create the illusion that what we do and what the Israelis do militarily in the region are disconnected. That one is disengaged from the other. Well, if that were true, there would be no reason for the meeting in Washington right now involving Mr. Netanyahu with President Trump. People aren't stupid. People in the region know that. And it's, uh, it's interesting that the arrogance has reached the level that it has. I think this is a level of Israeli Zionist arrogance that perhaps we've only seldom seen. Certainly not since '45 on this scale. And he's telling you the truth. Uh, and he expects this to happen. And President Trump is obedient. And given the fact that he is evidently under duress, he will comply."
"Oh, that's, uh, I mean, it's, I, I'm going to argue with you, but I can't. I mean, when we see that in the midst of all this, we are at least in the seal, in the process, the House already voted on this, you know, tying the US military together. Apparently, the Senate is soon to vote on the NDAA that's going to tie the intelligence to it as well. It just doesn't make any national sense at all. And yet, it just continues on even with all this information out there. If, if in 1939, the United States Congress had voted on similar legislation that linked us to Great Britain, there would have been open rebellion in the United States. Americans would have been in the streets. Americans were violently opposed to the Second World War. Too many of them had been involved in the First World War. Yeah. Which in retrospect, they decided was a complete waste of time. Should never have happened. We fought the wrong people in the wrong place for the wrong reason. We helped the two great imperial powers to survive. We helped to establish communism in Russia. People said, 'Forget it. We want nothing to do with this.' Imagine today what would happen if people were Americans again? And I asked myself this, 'Where are the Americans?' The Americans need to stand up and say, 'What? Our intelligence, our technical development, our technology, all of these things are now to be shared unquestioningly and routinely with this little state of Israel, which is just a, a beachhead for international Zionist finance and power.' Who, who did this? In 1939, people that advocated that sort of thing would have been called traitors and risked being hanged. Today, what do we say? Everyone's asleep. I, I hear nothing. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Well, things are about to matter, just as the price of oil matters."
"Yep. I, there's no doubt about that. Uh, and, and I wish that were the only issue that of similar category, but there is this other one, and that is with the fact that Zelensky is also meeting with President Trump today, and he's also going to be asking for yet more support from President Trump. And remember, just last month, we had Secretary of State Marco Rubio say, 'We picked a side. We're no longer trying to be even pretending to be a mediator. We picked a side, and it's Ukraine.' Uh, I don't know why you would want to pick a side this late in the process when it's very clear that the Ukraine side has already lost, and it's just a matter of how big that loss is going to be. But I don't know. We'll see what's going to happen. But let me show you what Zelensky is doing because more than just asking..."
"If Iran from the first year of the war gave new pace, new technology to Russia, it was Shahed drones. And they gave thousands of these drones the first year of the war. Then they gave licenses. What did they do? Did they attack us? I think yes. So they already did it. But we have to be honest. Iranians and North Koreans already attacked us."
"And of course, the Ukrainians just attacked an Iranian ship. The Iranian foreign minister said that that will not go without warning. So it seems like he's trying to physically expand the scope of the war to again tie the United States in together with the Israeli war and also this war here. How do you see this? What do you see as intent here?"
"Well, it's [clears throat] from the standpoint of Netanyahu and Zelensky. This makes perfect sense. Netanyahu and Zelensky are both two peas in a pod. There's not very much difference between the two. Uh, and Zelensky is effectively saying something that my friend Marty Se likes to remind people. You know, Raymond Aron, he's a famous, uh, French political scientist, used to say, 'Large states do what they want, small states do what they must.' Well, sometimes small states make large states do what they want. And right now, Israel has us under control and is committing us, our resources, our interests, our armed forces, everything against Iran. Now, Zelensky has stepped up and says, 'I too want to commit all the resources of the United States, its armed forces, and the interests of the American people to my war against Russia, which is effectively tied to my friend and comrade Netanyahu's war against Iran.' So, absolutely, he wants to expand the war. It's his last best chance in his overwrought mind because Russia is crushing what is left of the Ukrainians on the battlefield. It's getting ready to crush what is left of the Ukrainian state on the west side of the Dnipro. We've already seen that in Odessa. Odessa is effectively shut down, and the foreign forces and officers that have been caught in this have been killed, even though nobody at NATO will admit it. It's a tragic situation. So the triumvirate right now, Zelensky, Netanyahu, Trump, is meeting with the goal of trying to figure out how they can rescue strategic defeat and turn it into a victory. And the only way they can possibly do that is for us to join them. The problem is that President Trump knows he doesn't have the means or the resources to do it. We've already exhausted ourselves. Our problems at home are far more serious, and our position financially and economically is not strong. All this nonsense about our fundamentals are great, we're, we're productive, we're doing better than ever, we're better than all of that is just bluster and nonsense. And he's going to keep it up until he can't. The question is, can he stand up to these two and say no? I say he can't. He won't because he's under duress. Because the same cabal of billionaires, the same people backing the war against Iran are backing the war with Russia. The hatred for Russia in the cabal against Iran is, is almost as bad as the hatred for Iran that Netanyahu has. It's almost as bad. We have no interest in any of this, Dan. We don't hate any of these people. There's no reason for us to. But this is where our government is. And it's very important for what you, for you to mention what you did about the Congress who has stood up and and registered any opposition to this insanity. What Massie, Ro Khanna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's now out, Massie, who soon will be. What does it tell you about Washington D.C.?"
"Yep."
"It is a planet unto itself. You know, uh, the rest of the planet is orbiting Washington and being told what to do by Washington without regard to the interests of the people that live on the damn planet, us. Yeah. And that's, that's one of the things that obviously, as I pointed out a second ago, that's just what irks me a lot. And, and in this situation as well, because there are consequences to action. It's one thing if it just makes us mad and why are you prioritizing the interest of another country, but there's a message being sent to Moscow and to also. And by the way, I don't know if any of our audience has heard, they have a few nuclear weapons, the biggest stockpile on the planet, and we seem to be ignoring that. But President Putin is not ignoring what we're saying. And he made this comment here. This has been a couple of statements he's made here in the last couple of days, I think, uh, have gotten too little knowledge in the anywhere in the West, certainly not on mainstream media. But I wanted to get your view on a couple of things. First of all, we're going to look at what he says, uh, about the future of Ukraine based on all of these things because, according to him, it's not going to end up the way it is right now."
"Among other things, there is the western part of Ukraine, a gift from Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin to Ukraine after the war. Stalin gave these lands to Ukraine, but he gave them as part of a single state. Apparently, it never occurred to him that a situation like today's could arise. By the way, I am sure that sooner or later, Ukraine will lose these western lands and what belonged to Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Sooner or later, not tomorrow, perhaps not the day after, a year, two, 10, or 15, but historically, everything will fall into place. There was only one guarantor of Ukraine's territorial integrity, and that was Russia. But they deemed it necessary, possible, and good for themselves to declare Russia their enemy, and to declare Russians in Ukraine a non-titular nation, which is complete nonsense, an absolute rubbish."
"I mean, that's kind of literally what you just said there about that we are making Russia an enemy that we don't need to make an enemy. But I want to, I want to circle back to the first of that, because one of the things, two of the things he said there, I think to western ears are just like, well, that's obviously crazy, that's never going to happen because he said that the lands in the Polish, which is in the yellow on the far left here, and Romania and Hungary, which is in the brown area there to the far left, uh, the, the Romanian part, those two blue areas are things that are, are historically Romanian, have a lot of ethnic Romanians in there. He's saying that eventually those, not just that the red area on the right, which is where ethnic Russians are, are going to, that's basically no Russia, are going to end up in Russian control, but he says those other ones may end up in Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian control. Uh, is he just being crazy, or is there something to that? I can't hear you, Doug."
"There we go. Got you now. Okay. Uh, no, there's nothing crazy about it. He's invoking something that we in the United States categorically reject out of hand: historical truth. And if you go back through not just to the World War, but over the last 500 years, he's [clears throat] describing a reality. All of those borders have shifted back and forth and changed from time to time, leaving various groups of people on one side or another of the border. And what he's suggesting is that at the end of the Second World War, Stalin set up Europe for future wars. Uh, he took all of these lands away from the Germans, gave them to the Poles, and a little bit of it called East Prussia to Russia, and then, uh, he, you know, the other areas that he pointed out there ended up in, inside this new construct called Ukraine. Now, that doesn't mean there were never any Ukrainians. There was always a region known as Ukraina, the Ukraine. Uh, they, they've always been a little different in terms of their language, and the further west you go, the more different they become genetically. But the point is, everything he said is accurate. And the only way to really settle this war in any way that makes us, makes sense, is to bring in the countries that border Ukraine and Russia. In other words, you come to the table, and you have the Russians at the table, and we could host this if we were even remotely objective, but we're not. But the Germans could probably do it if they got rid of Mats and put in a real German government. And then you have Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, especially Lithuania, that borders, borders, uh, Ukraine, White Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, all of those states should sign up for whatever solution we create. And what he's suggesting is that these are historical areas that the people who live there, uh, would like to have back. You know, these areas were Hungarian for centuries. The other areas were part of Poland for a place called Galicia, and the people that lived on the edge of that were called Ruthenians. These are the western Ukrainians. And then, of course, you have the Romanians. But the point is, he's right. Unfortunately, he's speaking to the wrong audience. The West, the people in France, people in Paris, London, Berlin, less so in Berlin, but certainly in Paris and London and Washington, they don't know anything about this. They didn't know anything about it at Versailles in 1990, which is one of the reasons that Versailles created these bastardized solutions, a crazy solution such as Czechoslovakia. Two groups of people that hate each other and never wanted to live in the same country. But we made it happen. You know, we did that to Yugoslavia, forcing groups of people into one country and one state that never wanted to be there. These things were always going to break apart. They were going to fall apart when the external forces that created them were no longer present. We're finished in Iran. We should finish up and get out of Europe. These matters do not concern us. They are meaningless to us. And this little minority right now that is controlling American defense and foreign policy, as well as, I would argue, the financial future of our country, as well as the media, and many other aspects of our society, including what our children study in school. All of these things need to end. We need to go back to being Americans. It's not just a question of American, America First. It is a question of our priorities. And our priorities are here at home. They always have been. And Americans, if you go back over the polling data for many, many years, have never wanted war with anybody. And that was true before World War I. It was true before World War II. It was true before and during the Korean War, and it was certainly true after Vietnam. And we have not learned the lesson. Instead, we found workarounds. We abandoned the gold standard so that we could print as much money as we'd like, and we could pay for whatever we wanted to do in, in a way that we thought could be concealed from the American people because there were no war taxes. In other words, there were no consequences, you point out, for our actions. And we also did it so that we could field what they call a volunteer force. And if you listen to what Smotrich said, and then you listen to what some of the political figures inside the United States routinely say about the Americans in uniform is, 'Oh, well, they volunteered. It's their problem. You know, uh, sorry, you volunteered. That's the way it is.' In other words, whose skin is in the game? That's what Nasim Talib always likes to ask. Whose skin is in the game? Your skin, my skin, but not their skin. And who is their skin? The people that are driving these wars in both Ukraine and Iran. These are people controlling Donald Trump and our Congress."
"Yeah, that was, I actually did a show on Sunday with Sid Rosenberg, conservative radio talk show host, was featured on Fox News on set, and he made that very argument. He said, 'Yeah, I think President Trump needs to go in on the ground in Iran with boots on the ground. That's why these guys signed up. We don't have a draft. They signed up for this, etc.' Just drove me crazy. Sorry, that's kind of an aside."
"Well, we need to ask the question, who is Sid Rosenberg? Why does Sid Rosenberg take these positions? To whom is he connected? Sid Rosenberg is part of the, the larger cabal. You know, think of the cabal as an octopus with tentacles reaching out to many different people in all walks of American life, whether it's finance or, uh, Hollywood, media, any of these other things. And, and they're reporting back and responding to the same stimuli that Donald Trump is and Congress is. Uh, I doubt, I don't know Sid Rosenberg. I wouldn't know him if I fell over the man. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But the question that has to be asked is, uh, how did you arrive at this conclusion that the wealth and power and influence of the United States should be put at risk in a war with Iran and the Iranian nation? Who made that decision? How did we get here?"