ISRAEL GETS ITS WAY AGAIN - Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern - THE WORLD THIS WEEK

Welcome to episode 27 of the world this week. Israel gets its way again. This week, Israel wins, the war is back. Did Epstein play a role? And in Ukraine, Zalinski sacks the drone minister. I'm Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consorted News.

When Donald Trump capitulated to Iran in June by agreeing to all of Iran's demands in a memoir of understanding, including allowing Thran to control the straight of Hermuz, remove US troops from the Middle East, push nuclear talks down the road, and especially insisting that Israel stop its war on Lebanon and end its occupation there. Mainstream and some independent media said there had been a fundamental shift in the US Israel relationship. Trump confirmed publicly that he privately told Benjamin Netanyahu, quote, "You're [ __ ] crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me, I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this." JD Vance said Israel couldn't kill its way out of every security problem. It was believed by some even in Israel that Tel Aviv Tel Aviv had lost its leverage over Washington. Netanyahu could not blackmail Trump to keep the war going. Excuse me.

Now, eight days into the US renewed bombing campaign against Iran, Netanyahu and Israel appear to be getting their way after all. Trump's long threatened bombing of bridges and water plants has begun. Iran is retaliating and threatens massive violence across the region if it doesn't stop. The world again is on the brink of economic catastrophe. Speaking on Tuesday this week, significantly in Deona, the site of Israel's nuclear research facility, Netanyahu vowed that if Iran attacks Israel, as if Iran started all this, that Iran shouldn't expect a return of the previous strikes. The response, Netanyahu said, would be quote, a different event, much more powerful. He said, "The days are over when someone strikes us and we don't hit back with a decisive blow." again with Deona in the background. Did Netanyahu blackmail Trump to get him to eat his words and start his war again? A war JD Vance and Marco Rubio said was a mistake. Vance this week said Jeffrey Epstein had ties to both Israeli and US intelligence. Quote, he clearly had connection to the upper the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest level of Israeli intelligence. JD Vance said, "So Trump has restarted the war." The New Republic asks, quote, "Can we lose the same war twice? With Trump, anything's possible."

The Trump administration this week also revived the co-intel pro operation of J. Ed Ghouver of the 1950s to 1970s against what the Trump administration describes as an outofcrol menace of left-wing terrorism threatening American civilization. Though the only civilian infrastructure being blown up recently is by the Trump administration in Iran. Marco Rubio said, "Today we face a new wave of this old evil. Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. Some Homeland Security Advisor Steven Miller said, "Here in the United States, we've taken the necessary and essential action formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our republican form of government. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization." Are they delusional? There have been no left-wing zero terrorist attacks in the United States in 2026. Zero. What they are talking about are hundreds of criminal cases brought against anti-ICE protesters, which the New York Times reports today have been lost or banned by the Trump administration. They've lost them all. In fact, the administration knows how much legitimate anger is they are causing among the American people and they are preparing for a backlash.

Meanwhile, on the Ukraine front, Zalinski caused big news this week by sacking the popular defense minister Mikello Fedorov, who was getting credit perhaps too much for the drone war against Russia. He is 35 years old, is said to be a threat to Zalinski. What is really behind this sacking and what are the consequences? We'll ask our guests who are Scott Ritter, the former US Marine counter intelligence officer, UN weapons inspector, pundit and author, and Ray McGovern, former Soviet CIA analyst and also a commentator and a briefer of US presidents. Ry and Scott, welcome back to the world this week. Uh Ry, let me start with you. The breaking news is that two in I know there's breaking news in Russia too, but the breaking news uh in the Middle East is that two US service personnel were killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan. This might be two American soldiers dead to the Pentagon maybe worth a thousand Iranian school girls. Iran on Iran bay has the wars in your view started again for good.

>> Well, it has started again. Uh, I was on an Arabian U network just 3 hours ago and I was asked about these two uh casualties and would that trigger a violent response on the part of the United States. And I said, well, it could cut two ways that the the president could try to exploit that, but this is really just the last two of some 16 or so already identified deaths. God knows how many others. And the real danger for Trump is that people will start asking what the hell were those airmen doing in Jordan? I mean, were they predict were they preventing a threat from Iran? Well, the intelligence community said there isn't any imminent threat from Iran. So, what the hell were they doing there? I mean, we're really sorry for their families, but uh how many more people are we going to sacrifice for this alleged threat from Iran, which does not exist? And we we can adduce proof that there's no threat from Iran to the United States. There is a threat perceived by Israel from Iran. And that's the whole n of this thing. That's why Trump was misled, was cajjolled by uh the uh Israeli intelligence service Mossad and Netanyahu personally to do this strange thing of attacking a country that will not be submissive to the United States and has the wherewithal to outlast it in fighting back. That's my view.

Scott, are we back to a long-term war again?

>> Well, I mean, the thing about long-term war is um can we sustain a long-term war? I mean, I I I I actually think the answer to that is no. Uh that I mean, if you just take a look at, you know, what's been done to date, um we're making extensive use of um highars uh and attackums missiles. firing from Kuwait and Bahrain and elsewhere um to a degree that you know didn't exist in the um the first goaround the uh the the original 39 day war um and the reason is that we had run out of ammunition long range strike weapons um we had depleted those arsenals now we've replenished them uh to a certain extent but um you know it's a finite quantity and uh we're going to run out of those very very soon and so you know by using highars um the you know ground launched missiles you know we're able to strike you know targets um along the um you know the the coastal region of uh of Iran uh but not you know not much deeper than that um any deep targets will be struck using, you know, whatever long range precision strike munitions, uh, air delivered that, uh, you know, that we still have in the arsenal. But the the bottom line is we are going to run out of ammunition long before Iran runs out of, uh, you know, places on the ground to to to be attacked. And when that happens, then what? This is not a sustainable conflict. Um, you know, the the United States is in desperate need of, you know, Iran. um Iran's resolve to uh to crumble um and it's going to I believe lead to a major escalation in terms of the kinds of targets that we're striking um relatively soon. I think we're we're witnessing that the United States is going to be you know striking energy production facilities uh you know another critical infrastructure that we hadn't struck during the first uh you know goround of this conflict and and the reason is we we have no choice uh if we have to get Iran to break um but I I think the reality is Iran won't break and that uh you know it's inevitable that this this military campaign is going to fail. And so the question, you know, the the real question is what happens in two weeks when we run out of ammunition and Iran hasn't uh capitulated and uh you know, Iran continues to strike back. Um do we suddenly revive theou and say uh oh, we we suddenly we changed our minds. We think it's a good document now, a sound document. We we want to use this to to go forward. Do we negotiate a newou? Um, or what happens when the the Iranians say we we don't want to play ball anymore? I I I think that we're heading into the to a to a the great unknown right now. And uh, you know, it's it's this is a very dangerous game. I I'll leave it with this. You know, we need to start looking beyond simply the military aspect of this conflict and understand that what's happening right now is an unprecedented um you know shakeup of global energy security. Uh and this is going to go beyond just simple um disruption of fuel uh you know fuel production and uh inconveniences long gas lines to the gas station. We are talking about the kind of disruption that leads to um the deaths of tens of millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people. Um to give you an example, fertilizer uh you know the the the the oil production uh the refining uh processes um involved in Middle East oil production are responsible for producing around 25% of the world's uh fertilizers um the sulfur the ammonia um that are used. um these fertilizers aren't reaching market and um we are looking at the potential for massive crop failure in uh parts of the world that can't afford to have crop failure. Um and this is going to lead to societal disruption. Things of that nature. Nobody's thought through. Everybody's just thinking in terms of oh well, we're going to pay $5 a gallon for for gasoline or you know diesel is going to be expensive. the the the real threat comes when society uh societal structures collapse. Um hundreds of millions of of people are face imminent starvation and um we start to see u the mass migration of desperate people um looking for life sustaining food. Um and the real threat comes when what happens when West Africa um decides that they need to move east and uh through the Sahel into North Africa onto Europe um because that's the direction they're going to go. What happens when the you know the stricken populations in West Asia decide that they're going to you know move towards Europe? Europe is at great risk here. um they're already have, you know, severe immigration problems. Uh their societies are already on the edge. Um this conflict, this war of choice that Donald Trump got us into, um you know, has the potential of of killing tens if not hundreds of millions of people. And nobody's talking about that right now.

>> No, they're talking about two dead Americans, at least in the US. Now, Scott, if you recall, the barracks bombing in Lebanon caused Reagan to withdraw troops. Um, but there's been this ethos since the first Gulf War, even before that, maybe that American soldiers are not supposed to die in wars anymore, only the other side. So, two dead soldiers, what how will you think Trump react? The same point that Ry raised. How do you think Trump's going to react to these two dead soldiers?

Um, I don't think these two dead soldiers are going to move the needle at all. Um, it's not enough. Um, you know, sadly more Americans are going to have to die before um the the the population, you know, wakes up. But at some point in time, society is going to be feeling pain from a different vector. Uh, huge pain, giant pain. And um at that point in time, I think people will be willing to sacrifice even more American life in order to make the pain go away. So I I sadly don't think that the the deaths of American soldiers, American service members, um is going to awaken any anti-war sentiment in the United States.

>> But it's already an unpopular war race. So even uh that's another reason maybe why American deaths won't matter. But um Iran, there was a point where Trump when it looked like he wanted this war to end, he said that he was afraid that the global economy would collapse. He understood that if it went to the phase of bombing bridges, bombing water plants in Iran, that the Iranians will retaliate. They vowed to do it. They let they prove they they mean what they say last time and that they could destroy desolinization plants in the Gulf States and basically empty these countries of their population and these states and causing world which Scott was just describing putting hundreds. He understood that he made those statements. Trump what happened Ray? Why is he going ahead and with the bombing of the bridges and the water plants and doing what he threatened to do?

Well, Joe, now you're asking me the impossible. You're asking me to explain Trump in rational terms. The only thing I can conceive of is that the Israelis weighed in really hard and so did the Israeli supporters in the United States. I mean, after all, Joe uh Joe Kent quit, you know, he was had he was pretty much the second in the national intelligence apparatus in the United States. and he quit by saying, "Look, I've I've had a matter of conscience here, and this war was not there was no imminent threat to the United States, and it was done at the behest of Israel and Israel's supporters here in Washington." What could be clearer? Who could have better access to this? What a what a miracle that a person of principle would quit? Well, those were the reasons. And Rubio explained, "Yes, the Israelis said they were going to attack Iran. We had a join." Okay. So, hello. That's not that's a known quantity. And so, that's the only thing I can fall back on. Um, what bothers me most is the prospect of water desalin desalination plants being attacked. Now, uh, if I heard correctly, today two were one on each side, one in Kuwait, I believe, and one in Iran. Um, now there are a lot of them but uh they are critical to life. I mean you can't drink oil uh you can't eat gas and you can go to your merry death grasping gold if you like but you can't have a have a country or a leadership or whatever in the Gulfies. And so what's a mystery to me is that the Gulf monarchs, so to speak, uh couldn't sniff the prevailing wind for God's sake. In other words, after the first round, couldn't they see that the Iranians not only were not going to give up, but they had the wherewithal not to give up and that Trump was in a bind because he needed that straight of Hormus opened. Didn't they have the the presence of mind to say, "Okay, well look, you know, we have to kind of reassess all this. Maybe we ought to look at the map." Yeah, let's look at the map. How far away is the Oh, look at all the way over there in past and you know, a basic basic things. Who who has the most weapons? So Scott has already described that. I mean, but they're so sclerotic, these Gulf monarchies, that they couldn't they couldn't succumb. And so, you still have attacks coming at Iran from them. And that's not going to last very much longer. And what bothers me is once you hit the water desalinization plants, you got a real problem. Uh, you have a real problem with the survivability of people, much less kings and emors and all that kind of stuff. Uh, and so somebody's got to talk some sense into Trump, which is a fool's errand up till now. But his primary problem is getting that damn straight of horm open. He openly said, "That's why I signed theouto voce. The rest of the 14 15 points don't matter. I just want the damn straight open." And that's how he behaved. Now the Iranians are dead serious. They're going to retaliate. Maybe not two for one, but one and a half for one. And bottom line, they have the wherewithal to do that. As Scott has just said, I didn't hear two weeks before, but if we have two weeks more of these fancy missiles to fire at Iran. Surely Iran can take that for two weeks and the straight will remain closed. And what happens then? the kinds of things that Scott has already delineated, including massive hunger in the rest of the world.

Scott, in the first Gulf War, which you have played a part in, the United States did everything they could to avoid to stop Israel from participating if I recall, even though Saddam was sending scuds towards Israel. So here we have a situation where we've had now this is the eighth day of US strikes and Israel has not participated and Iran has not struck Israel. Is the same thing going on or can you expect Israel to get involved again?

Well, I fully anticipate that Israel will get involved. Um, look there, you know, Ray, the reason why I said two weeks is, um, you I I just listened to the president of the United States. Um, you know, he he's articulated a a threephased U campaign. He himself said, you know, he expects this war to last 3 weeks. Um, and then he described a three-phase campaign. Phase one, we're wrapping up. This is the willy-nilly targeting of um of anything, the shock and awe. uh designed to, you know, show the Iranians what damage we can do. Uh phase two, which we're rolling into now, will be expanding to take out bridges, to take out um you know, power generation facilities. And then phase three will be to strike um the critical oil production, gas production infrastructure. Um, and when that fails, then you know what what is left for the United States. And I I believe phase four is Israel um to that Israel will then come in and uh expand the um the conflict. Um, so I I fully anticipate that Israel will be part of this u this conflict. Um, from the Iranian perspective, I you know I think there's a a dynamic here that um you know complicates the picture. It's it's not I know Israel I mean I Joe I share you know the the the the assessment of the timeline and the causal uh effect of you know Netanyahu and the head of the MSAD coming over I think was January or February 11th they met in Washington DC with uh with Trump and then Trump uh you know met with his cabinet in February 28th you know we're launching a surprise attack against Israel. Um, but I think there's there's something more at play here than just the the the Israeli dynamic. The, you know, oil and energy security is a is a is a big thing. And I think that there was also a China aspect here. I think that this war was um launched uh by the United States in order to gain control of uh or at least have influence over you know how Iran took its uh oil to market. we had already taken Venezuela off of the uh off of the the the the you know the the Chinese uh supply chain. And I think that the goal here was to do the same thing with uh with Iran and and therefore giving the United States sort of the act, you know, the ability to uh to control Chinese economic growth by saying we control the flow of oil. Therefore, you must do what we want to do in trade negotiations, etc. and Scott Besson sort of has given away the farm with you know the way he has described how he wants to use how he wants to weaponize oil and um and so I think you know one of the goals of the United States here is to um intensify this conflict to the point where um China feels pain. I I I I think that uh it's a race now, not between, you know, what the Iranian people can absorb versus what the United States can absorb, but rather what China can absorb versus what the United States because the goal here is to get China to pressure Iran into making the kind of compromises that will give Donald Trump a face saving way out of this war. The control of the straight hormuz. Um, you know, Donald Trump sort of gave away the farm when he when his opening gambit was uh, you know, shifted away from making people pay to go through the straight hormones is immoral. You can't do that. Not permitted. Oh, yeah. No, but now the United States is going to uh take control. We're the guardians of the straight hormones and we're going to charge 20%. Um, you know, so there's no more argument that uh you can't charge. Trump has said that charging is uh is normal. Now he's moved away from charging into another thing. But you know early on even Donald Trump said as long as America gets a piece of the action. Um, I mean this man's mind works in in criminal fashion I guess. But um I I think that's the key is how do you get Iran to make concessions so that the United States gets a piece of the action? And Iran isn't going to do that in its own valition. So, the the the goal here is to get China to to to chime in, so to speak. I had a fascinating conversation tonight with um somebody who watches Chinese oil and uh it's always good to talk to actual experts, and I'm not one. I'll be the first one to admit that. I what I know about Chinese uh oil is, you know, what I read. I I don't have I don't it does I don't breathe it like I do issues pertaining to Russia. Um, but he he said that the idea that we are going to choke off China's oil supplies is literally China's been preparing for this kind of action for u decades for for this potential threat. They have massive reserves um that are not going to be exhausted anytime soon. So again, this just shows you the superficiality of the Trump approach that they haven't even done their homework um about the reality of China's vulnerability to the kind of squeezing of energy uh that that that you know could be behind this. We're going to lose we're going to lose this uh this war badly. Um Israel will be asked to come in to sustain this conflict. Uh but then Israel is going to feel the pain. I I'm always uh I I chuckle when I hear Trump and Netanyahu talk about how much pain they're going to bring to Iran. You know, they had 39 days to bring pain. Um, and it was them, the United States and Israel that sought out a ceasefire because of the pain that was accured economically, etc. And again, the United States will run out of ammunition. And when that happens, we will have no choice but to to seek um you know an end to the conflict. Uh, you know, it was attributed to Einstein. I don't know you know who actually came up with but you know the the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome. And here the United States is literally doing the same thing and we're expecting a different outcome. It's it's crazy.

>> Can we lose this war twice? Trump Let me comment on that. You know, I'm a sort of a journalist, a current intelligence person. Uh I do think in strategic terms, but not as much as perhaps Scott and others do. But you know, um the man is is crazy and everything I've seen so far is that he he's not capable of having a strategy. Is he capable of deferring to the Israelis uh in a way that no no previous presidents were? Well, yeah, he's demonstrated that. So, all I can say is that I'm willing to learn about Chinese oil. I know less than Scott, but seems to me that they're already drawing on their reserves and they have a terrific reserve in something called Russia that has more more oil that they can deal with and can can already supply the Chinese for for a long time the oil that they need. I think the Chinese look and say, "Well, this guy doesn't really have a strategy. he's going to run out of whatever pizzazz he does in several weeks and he still doesn't have the straight open. What is he going to do then? Now, that's the question seems to me. Uh he's not going to get the straight open. Uh is he going to try to to land those Marines? Uh the 82nd part the part of that 82nd airborne. Is he going to try to seize the What is he going to do? uh he's crazy enough to try anything. And and when I ask other colonelists uh that uh should be generals but aren't. Uh would the generals resist an order to send their troops to be massacred in the country of Iran? I get this answer. Generals. Yeah, generals. No, not a chance. The way you get to be generals is you salute and you say, "Yeah, yeah, yes, sir. How high should I jump? Colonels. Now, colonels would would kind of revolt and say, "This is crazy. I'm responsible for my men and women. I'm not going to send them to instant death." So, we have a bunch of uh u of people who salute smartly. And I wouldn't rule out that Trump would try something in the nation in the nature of some sort of um armed invasion somewhere, hoping that this would change things. All I'm saying is that I look at the the daytoday. I don't see any real strategy. Uh I think one compliments Trump by thinking he's thought this thing out strategically or that uh that Bessant for God's sake has some sort of strategic sense. I think it's more a day-to-day thing. Israel is the main fly in the ointment. That's why he did it. And can he have can he have the the gumption to say finally say no to Israel. The street needs to be opened. Don't interfere anymore. And finally we'll work stuff out once we've had this latest exchange of fire. I don't know. But neither does Trump in my view. So it's a little bit unfair to ask any of us Scott as well to predict what Trump might do.

Right. So, one theory is they're trying to soften up Iran right now, take out their installations along the coast to make as some kind of ground invasion possible. I think it's ludicrous and I think don't think it's going to happen. What do you think, Scott? They're not going to try it.

>> No, I don't I don't believe that we're going to First of all, it's you can't just draw a line on a map and say, you know, we're going to invade. There's a there's a map that's, you know, making its way around social media and everything that, you know, shows a lot of arrows moving in from um the Arab the Gulf Arab countries um into Iran. Um, but as far as I know, we're still limited to two Marine um expeditionary units. That's two battalion landing teams. Um, when you when you go and study, you know, the history of major amphibious uh assaults, you know, whether D-Day or, you know, Eojima or Okinawa, you know, you always you see the, you know, red beach one, red beach two, red beach three. Well, each red beach was a battalion. Um, you know, so if you have, you know, red one, red two, red three, that's three battalions of breast. That's one regiment. Then you got red, green, uh, you know, orange beach. Um, that's, you know, that's three regiments of breast. That's a division. Um, and and then, you know, that's just to get a, you know, basically a foothold ashore. Um, we had two battalion landing teams and we're going to invade Iran with two battalion landing teams. What comes after that? Um, I mean, where's the where's the reserves, you know, the the to advance forward? Do people understand how limited um you know in terms of you know territory that can be uh you know controlled by a by a battalion is? I mean Marines are great but they're not immortal and they're not uh you know godlike in their their capacity uh to do things. Uh there are limits and two battalions can't do very much at all especially if they take any casualties. Where's the where's the third battalion to come in and replace it to work through where's when in 1985 when we planned the um amphibious seizure of Chabahar um in in a scenario that had us responding to a Soviet incursion out of Turkministan and Afghanistan to to seize a a warm water port. You know, we were talking about 60 to 80,000 Marines that would go in and seize Chabahar. Then another 12 to 200,000 uh soldiers who would come in afterwards and you know create the you together with the Marines put you know we're looking you know a little around 200,000 uh ground troops um you know advancing through to block the uh the Soviet advance um we don't have that capacity today how are you going to get the that that that number of troops into the region we we don't have that the 82nd airborne do people do understand that paratroopers um jump in addition to jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. Um they can only bring what they jump with. Um they run out of ammunition rapidly if they're not resupplied. Um we don't have armored divisions ready to go. We don't have the amphibious shipping to bring armored ship uh divisions in. We don't have the logistics built up to do this. Anybody who's talking about a ground invasion of Iran simply doesn't know what they're talking about. Look at the force structures available. We can't do this. The best we'd be able to do is a raid. And I do believe that that is something that Trump is going to do and call it an invasion just because he's he's too stupid to understand. I do believe, you know, one of the standing missions of a Marine Expeditionary Unit is to carry out raids. So, I do believe that we we will see um you know, Marines launch raids against one of these islands. That means we'll go in, we'll blow things up, we'll do whatever need to do, and then we leave. The raid is the only military mission that uh has retreat pre-planned into it. Um we go in, we do our thing, we get out. But the having planned several raids in the Persian Gulf, um all we have to do is take a look at at the lesson of history um you know dip uh in um in in World War II that took place a year before D-Day. Uh it went bad. What do we want what are we trying to accomplish? just to prove that we can put boots on the ground for a period of time so we can thump our chest and say we're never going to be able to prevent the Iranians ability to to project fire um considerable firepower onto wherever the Marines land or the paratroopers um jump into. Um this thing could go bad very fast. This is why I tell people um stop looking at Eoima. I mean, you know, Lindsey Graham liked to talk about Eoima as if it was, you know, if as if we need to build another monument to dead Marines. Um, Cotang Island is what people need to look at. Cotang Island was a battle fought in May of uh in in May of 1975. Um, when the Camir Rouge took over a US merchant ship, the Mayagu. And um we thought that the crew members of the Mayu were being held on a little island off the coast of K Cambodia called Kotang. Uh we sent a marine battalion landing team um to Cotang Island. The initial assault wave was 11 uh helicopters, CH53s, MH53s. Um, of the 11 helicopters that went in, eight were either shot down or so badly damaged that they had to flee and not and they were taken out of the battle. Some were not were were unable to offload their Marines. Others um the Marines died. Uh, a lot of Marines were in the water swimming for their lives. It was an absolute disaster. Uh, Marines were stuck on the island. Um, we had to scramble more helicopters to come in to reinforce them and then to begin an evacuation. And the evacuation finally took place at night under fire. Um, and the Marines left three um, an M60 team behind. Three Marines abandoned, things that just aren't supposed to happen. But we were in a panic situation and those Marines were captured and executed. Um, this is what's going to happen. It's a 100% guarantee that whatever we try to do is going to end up being an abject failure. Um, and we're going to leave scores of bodies on a foreign beach somewhere. Um, and there will be downed helicopters smoking. It's just going to be a it's going to be an embarrassment to the United States. And for what reason? because Donald Trump wanted to say I invaded Iran. Um, people have to stop playing as if this and this is where again the colonels and generals that you spoke of Ray um they they they have to step forward. Sadly they won't. But I'm I'm very fearful of the fact that we're going to try and do something a raid um just so the president can posture that he did something glorious. Um, and we're going to end up with the bodies of Americans abandoned on foreign soil with burned out helicopters around them. And um, and for what? For what?

>> Scott, I'm actually speaking to you from uh from Cambodia right now. Maybe I'll go out to Kotang Island. And the US supported the Kame Rouge. On top of that, be Ray, before you u All right, you jump in. I had another question for Scott. Go ahead.

Well, I just wanted to say that we're talking about strategic planning and I don't know if there's been any strategic planning under Trump. Um, there's one real positive aspect that you neglected to mention, Scott, and that was uh the injection of testosterone into our troops. Now, that's a game changer in my view. I mean, I'm over 30. I've applied to re rejoin the the US Army Reserve just so I can get one of those shots. I'm Hello. This is this is the kind of thinking you get in the middle of a a of a god- aful war. So, I I embrace that as a serious indication of how crazy all these guys are. Now I want to sort of in a more serious vein uh mention something down the road. Okay. Uh let's say without with or without a raid or a mini invasion, that's all we're capable of. Let's say the straight stays closed. What's Trump going to do then? Now, uh, John Kennedy in that wonderful speech at the American University said, "The one thing we have to guard against in this new world with major powers is for one major power to threaten the other major power with a choice between humiliating defeat or using nuclear weapons." Now, what am I saying? Iran has the equivalent of a nuclear weapon already. It's the straight of Hormoose. A major power, a nuclear power has been threatened now with humiliating retreat. Not only us, there's another major power, nuclear power called Israel also actually threatened even more with an existential retreat. Okay. So, I I raise this now because I think it needs to be thought about. Uh what's to prevent a person as deranged as our commanderin-chief from ordering the the Army, Navy, Air Force to do crazy things. And then when they fail, say, "All right, well, we have this this ace in the hole." And either threaten or actually use a mini nuclear weapon or allow the Israelis to do the same. That's what down the road that's what bothers me. What do you think the chances of that happening?

Scott, if we had any president besides Donald Trump, I would say zero. Um, and I even with Donald Trump by the according to press reports I you know I'm not the one who you know uh is I'm not the source of this uh information. Um, other people have reported and not me. So I can't sit here and say that the uh the sourcing is uh is 100% correct but it's believable. Um, on two occasions in the previous goround uh Donald Trump instructed the uh Pentagon to um prepare uh nuclear strike options uh for and because we had run into this very same scenario where we lost the conventional military uh power uh we lost the ability to win this war with conventional military power and the um the military chain of command came back and on both occasions according to the reports um and said no uh that's an unconstitutional order. Um, you see the nuclear war is uh there's several things that that that govern it. Number one of which is US policy meaning that there's a reason why we have a nuclear posture review and we have you know nuclear war fighting guidance and things of that nature because it establishes the parameters under which nuclear war can be fought. Our military is bound by the laws of war regardless of what the secretary of war the current testosterone related secretary of war uh does. um the the the the reality is that we are concern and to use a nuclear weapon you know two issues u arise one is proportionality um and it's this is a factor um we are not allowed to use disproportionate force that's by law and you know the international uh court of justice I believe has ruled on the use of nuclear weapons and has said that it would represent a disproportional use of force which makes it inherently unlawful. And that's uh so you're you're a military uh commander and you've been ordered to prepare to do something that is inherently uh in violation of international humanitarian law. It's an unconstitutional order. Uh it's it's an awful one. The other one is um distinction. I think uh we have to be able to distinguish between civilian targets and military targets um and it also plays into u is the military objective worth the collateral damage um you know and in all cases the answer is no it's it's unlawful so I I still believe that the military would continue to adhere to that that nothing had uh unless Iran does something precipitous Um there's nothing that changes that outcome, but you know, it's just a sad state of affairs that we have a commander-in-chief who would uh apparently already has considered the potential use of nuclear weapons. You know, there's a a place in Iran that I think most Americans probably will become familiar with in the coming weeks, and that's a place called Pickaxe Mountain. It is a underground facility uh that is basically invulnerable. you you there's nothing in our conventional military arsenal that can touch it. Um and Donald Trump is probably going to begin. It's it's curious because remember he has said that uh the the nuclear dust that we made the first time we bombed Iran is in isvahans and stuck in tunnels. But now it appears that he's starting to change his uh tune. Somehow it got magically transported from the Islanon tunnels, which continue to be blocked, by the way. Um, and now they're in Pickaxe Mountain, and there's a lot of talk about the only way that we would be able to um get at Pickaxe Mountain would be through the use of a nuclear weapon. And now it becomes you know now it's uh I think the calculus changed a little bit because again um if the intelligence shows that there that this nuclear material is in pickaxe mountain um an assessment could be brought forward that um suddenly becomes it it makes the possibility of using nuclear weapons legal from a constitutional standpoint because now there is a military mission. There is an imminent threat there and some of these these check marks could be done off. I still don't think the military would approve would would agree with this at this juncture, but uh Israel might. I mean, now we're getting to the Israeli equation and and that may be the direction that Trump goes if he gets uh you know um stymied to bring in a uh a billiard's term. if he gets styied by the US military um so that he can't uh use American weapons then he would overcome that obstacle by greenlighting the Israeli use of nuclear weapons against pickaxe mountain. So, you know, Ray, you're 100% we're we're we're getting into uncharted territory. Um, where some horrible things, and again, I I just I apologize for rambling, but this is such a dangerous topic. People need to understand that if we use nuclear weapons, we are disrupting the um the whole calculus of deterrence that has prevented the use of nuclear weapons um you know in the nuclear era since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The notion that nuclear wars cannot be won therefore they will never be fought and that means that we will never use nuclear weapons. And there the five major nuclear powers signed um you know the reaffirmed this statement in February of 2022 um if we use nuclear weapons we just changed that calculus because now what we are saying or if we allow Israel to use is that nuclear wars can be won therefore that's why we fought it and now we have once we say there is a scenario under under a scenario other than responding to a nuclear attack where nuclear weapons can be used. All the other nuclear all the other nuclear weapons states um can no longer allow themselves to be bound by um you know the self-imposed restriction that nuclear wars can't be won. Therefore, they shall never be fought because the United States has broken that. The United States is now saying that nuclear wars can be won and nuclear weapons will be used and we we have used them and this changes everything. I will tell you the Russians will probably not stand by idly. Um they will have to um you know and demonstrate that they too can use nuclear weapons. Maybe China would have to do the same thing. And suddenly now we're looking at a situation where you know the Sergey Karaganov doctrine that he articulated in uh June of 2023 about uh you know Russia striking a European city with a nuclear weapon because they didn't they they believe that the United States would not trade Boston for Posnon. Well, Russia now will will do what they have to they have to demonstrate to the United States that they too can use nuclear because that you have to bring some sort of nuclear deterrent model back into play. Th this is how we end the world. This is how we kill everybody on the planet because nuclear wars cannot be won and therefore they should never be fought and that is the law of the land. And so once we use a nuclear weapon, it begins however slowly at first, the inevitable tit fortat exchange that always in every computer simulation always ends with a fullscale nuclear war with the death of all humanity.

>> Joe, is it okay if I respond with a devil's advocate sort of thing?

>> You're right, Scott. We agree on this, but I'm going to take a devil's advocate thing. The first thing you said was with any other president than Donald Trump. I think that makes the the rest of your rationale um more tentative. In other words, uh guidelines, parameters, distinctions, unlawful aspects. This president does doesn't give a rat's patootuti about any of those things. This president is faced or will be faced with a choice between humiliating defeat or using whatever else he has. Okay. So, I would argue that as the as as people look on from the Kremlin or from Beijing, they're looking at what happens now with Trump, he's being fed lies by the Israelis still. They're going to assassinate you, Mr. Trump. Yep. They're going to assassinate you. What else? Uh well, let's see. Uh well, there are a whole array of things that the Israelis are feeding Trump now. And he's a very gullible guy if he's faced with the choice between humiliating defeat and and heating the Israelis. So, you know, this business about dust, nuclear, I could see the Israelis showing him pictures and saying, "Oh, we got a laptop computer from the Iranians." that they show the nuclear dust is in pickaxe mountain. Now, what's going to happen? Are the generals going to say, "Well, let's look into that." And they go to DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and they say, "Is this stuff in Pickax Mountain?" And the DIA generals say, "Oh, we can't really tell, but the Israelis have never lied before." Ah, okay. So the generals are the generals and you agree you agree with my assessment of the generals. So you know I remember Iraq as you do as well and before Iraq the Israelis lied us into this damn war. Israel was the was the most influential thing with their chalib and their whole stuff from the Pentagon and the ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and 9/11 and and weapons of mass destroy all that crap. Well, we went for it. And that wasn't even a deranged guy. That was just a That was George W. Bush. You used your own adjective for that. So, all I'm saying here is I'm a Russian and I'm

A Chinese and I'm looking on. I say, "My god, what will this guy do in extremists or what will he allow or encourage the Israelis to do?" And I don't know the answer to that. But I think that's the new element because extremist is coming. Humiliating defeat is coming and as you said at in your first sentence, under any other president, this would work out this way. This is a new breed of cat, so to speak. I don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah, the, you know, it's curious. The Russians have just come out and, um, uh, in addition to saying that the United States is agreement incapable, apparently the Kremlin has done some sort of psychological um assessment of this president and they have concluded that, uh, he is emotionally unstable. Um, it's not that he lacks cognitive capacity. This isn't the case of Joe Biden. Um, it's that this this president is emotionally unstable, therefore inherently unpredictable. And that appears to be the official, um, you know, Russian, um, you know, take on on Donald Trump.

So, yeah, um, imagine, I mean, Ray, you're briefing the president of the United States and, uh, you say, you know, um, you know, Mr. Bref, he's emotionally unstable. I can't predict on a day-to-day basis what he's going to do. I mean, how would you, how would an American leader respond when they hear that assessment of a world leader? Uh, because because that that that creates so much uncertainty and no leader wants uncertainty. Every leader wants predictability. Every leader wants to be able to come up with policy that is predictable based upon assurances of, you know, continuity of fact and relevance. But when you're dealing with somebody who's emotionally unstable, that means that the same fact set today that produces result A will produce result B tomorrow with no changes in the fact set. The only difference is how the individual emotionally is responding to it the next day. This is uncharted territory. We're in totally uncharted territory.

>> Yeah, Scott, you took the words right out of my mouth. I've often pictured myself as the president's daily briefer for pooching. And I come in there and he says to me, "All right, what's your assessment of, uh, of Trump?" And I say, "Well, our psychological at a distance, uh, review of his says what you just said, and we have Mary Trump coming in with her own assessment. We have cranked that into their calculus." What's the bottom line? He's entirely volatile, unpredictable, and, uh, capable of anything.

Okay. So, uh, what I'm saying here is that, uh, when this is the situation, um, the Russians need to do a little bit more, in my view, than simply say, "Oh, a land invasion is completely unacceptable." Okay. Two days later, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, said the same thing. Okay. So, what happens if there is a land invasion? I don't think the Russians are going to send troops right in, but I think they're going to give the Iranians even more support. And I keep seeing reports that the Chinese have given Iran, uh, incredibly precision weaponry or ways to make their weaponry very precise. And this this allows for explaining how precision-guided they have been over the last several weeks, if not months. So, you know, there's a, there's a chance that bigger powers will become involved here and, uh, it'll come to a no good end unless somebody sensible reins in Trump and says, "Look, you need the Strait of Hormuz open. This is how you do it. This is how you don't do it."

Now, there's also the role of incompetence here. You're talking, uh, Scott, about invading with two battalions. The first Gulf War and the second took months to build up the troops to invade. Um, I, you don't, I don't think that I don't think you would think that Hexith would be competent enough to do such a a buildup like that and build a coalition in the first Gulf War. So that Trump's looking at a way to compensate that by allowing nuclear weapons to be used by Israel. And Ray, we have to again look at the fact that on Tuesday of this week, Netanyahu was at Deona and said, "There's going to be a powerful response this time at Deona." Chilling.

>> Yeah. And the Iranians have actually, well, actually some of their missiles have hit close to the moon, if I'm not mistaken. So,

>> That's kind of a warning, too. So, yeah, this is, I wish I could be more, uh, be more up on the effect of testosterone and all this, but I don't have it. I haven't tried it myself and I can't vouch for it. Okay. Uh, we got to ask about Epstein, Ray, and we've discussed this before. We've mentioned it, anyway, that there was always the chance that if Trump went off the Israeli reservation, that Mr. Netanyahu had a way of reminding him what information they had about him and that they wouldn't be willing to reveal that to the public. And then it looked like when Trump cursed out Netanyahu and ended the war and signed the MRU, that, no, Epstein files, it's all [ __ ] that the Israeli doesn't have it, they can't use it. And now we're back to war again in a week in which JD Vance tells Joe Rogan that yes, Epstein had very high, very high-level US and Israeli intelligence contacts. He goes on the record, vice president, saying that. What do you say, Ray, about that?

>> Well, you had Ari Ben Menashi on your program, Joe.

>> He was a former Mossad agent. He worked with

>> No, not Mossad. Military intelligence.

>> Military intelligence. But he knows about how Mossad worked with

>> with Jezelain's father. What was his name again? Howard

>> His father?

>> Robert Maxwell. Robert Maxwell.

>> Yeah. Maxwell. Okay. So, I mean, when he says that, look, they had, they were really in in together on all this and that the Israelis certainly had this blackmail material. Well, you know, they raised it. Joe, I'm just going to say that I have taken the trouble to look at some of the testimony of these women. I got physically sick. There was one woman named Mary. I wrote her testimony, 20 minutes. I got physically sick. And the reason I mention this is simply that I'm a father of three girls. I'm a grandfather of six girls. Everyone has a daughter or a sister or a granddaughter. My god. Uh, the fact that this could be true and is being suppressed and is being successfully suppressed by the same Justice Department that works for one of the possible perpetrators is is beyond me. And, uh, the thought I had, take it for what it's worth, everyone can identify with this kind of heinous behavior. Uh, if you can't get rid of a president because he starts war or that he doesn't have any respect for immigrants or whatever, you should be able to raise this thing. And that's the thing that bothers me most. I suggest everyone read the testimony of, I forget Mary's last name. It is available. There are citizens from Mary. It's a, it's kind of a, a group. Read it and see if you don't think that every grandfather, father, and every every person who cares about how young girls are exploited at the age of 13, 12, and 14, my god, what have we come to? So, if if there's nothing else that can get us angry, well, surely that can if any of us have a moral fiber left in our being. Sorry for the little sermon here, but I got really physically sick reading that testimony.

>> Right? And there's every possibility Trump was involved in this kind of behavior and that's what they could hold over him. Uh, let's, before we move on to Ukraine, I want to ask, uh, we don't normally talk about domestic US issues, but there's one that I do want to raise, the one I did, uh, in the introduction, and that is this this announcement this week that there's a major left-wing terrorist, uh, operations going on in the United States, and it it's got to be stopped to preserve American civilization and the republic. And and I, so I looked up the statistics and there have been zero attacks. There have been many hundreds of prosecutions of people, uh, taking action against ICE. This is about ICE and, uh, the New York Times, by coincidence, just this morning, uh, on Saturday in the US, said that hundreds of those cases have been lost or abandoned. They're all, it's all rubbish. And we have ICE killing now in the last week, three more innocent people. Bra, what do you think of, what is this all about? This left-wing terrorist, uh, uh, announcement they made. They're going to interrupt network best spoke and Rubio. They're going to interrupt their their international networks of financing and propaganda, you know, and they've invited the head of al-Qaeda in Syria to the White House. Incidentally, what do you say about this? Ray?

>> You're asking me. Okay. Well, there's a

>> There's a communist under every bed. U you know,

>> We're back to that, are we?

>> I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old during McCarthy. I used to hear this stuff in my living room with my father and his associates, you know. I mean, it was crazy then. I mean, for for Trump to talk about the the major communist menace, my god, it's it's crazy. So, it fits in with what else we're seeing. Uh, but the real, the real effort here is not something to laugh at. Okay. The real effort here is to enable ICE to hunt down anybody who sounds like they might be left-wing. Like Joe Glory, I got some suggestion. I got some suspicions about you and and you too, Scott. You know, you've said some things. We've got it on record. You know, we're going to send some ICE to your doorstep and maybe your kids will be around to let us in. And so, in other words, it's an intimidation thing and we have the, we have the, uh, the elections coming up in November, the midterms. Um, I've been saying for a while that, uh, some of Trump's behavior, like picking a fight with the Pope, for God's sake, uh, betrays a nonchalant attitude toward the elections. Uh, in my view, Trump has other plans for the elections. He's got counsel from various people, some of which who have come out openly to fix the the situation so the elections will be coming out right. And so it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me at all that he would prep be preparing ICE, preparing the the people now in the months before to tolerate ICE and the National Guard when he can get them and maybe if he asks Hexith for active duty military people, Hexath will say, oh yeah, I'll send a battalion from Quantico or whatever. Okay, so that's my my fear. I think the midterms are, uh, are in danger and that would be interesting for our 250th year anniversary, wouldn't it be? Uh, the republic would be in real dire straits right then. So that's why I think this is all about left wings, communists. It's really us that they're after. I don't know if they call us left wings, but they're after us and they got ICE to enforce it.

>> Yeah. And they're going to go after nonprofits, too. Bessant said, "It's as if, uh, the ghost of Jed Ghouver is rising out of the congressional cemetery and infecting minds again in Washington." Do you have any thoughts on this, Scott?

>> Well, I mean, I just, I'll echo Ray's um concerns. I, you know, the the the midterm elections are a major driver here. Let's just be straight up. Trump understands the consequences of losing these elections. Um, even though he's not on the ballot, it's all about him. Um, if he loses the House, uh, he will spend the next two years, um, fighting articles of impeachment, uh, non-stop. The Democrats will never stop. We will, you know, it it'll just be a paralysis of procedure. Um, if he loses the Senate by, you know, any margin, you know, margin, um, now he has a chance of conviction and this will be the end of Donald Trump. I mean, if he's convicted, um, you know, he not only will be removed from office, but, um, the Trump legacy will be, uh, it will come crashing down. Um, you know, the Democrats, unfortunately, I don't believe are behaving rationally either. I think there's so much revenge built into their modus operandi that we are going to see, you know, down the road, just this cyclical political violence that's going to be played out. Um, you know, uh, right versus left and who knows where it leads. But some of the foreign policy decisions, national security decisions that Donald Trump is making vis-à-vis the Middle East, um, are such that the consequences would normally precipitate a negative result at the polls. He no longer seems to be fearful of a negative result at the polls, which means that logically speaking, he has a plan, um, to, um, nullify any potential negative result of the polls. So, I, I, I too believe that ICE has become an existential threat to the constitutional republic that it, uh, that much of what we've seen Trump do, um, this year in terms of, you know, surging ICE forces into cities like Minneapolis and, um, you know, stressing the bounds of normalcy and law in terms of behavior of ICE agents, is just a precursor for, um, using ICE as a way of suppressing, um, the American electorate come, uh, come midterms. And, um, I'm not happy about this at all. I, I mean, literally, this is, I just have to be careful what I say because, um, I believe in the Constitution. I believe in protecting the Constitution, defending the Constitution. Um, and I, I feel the Constitution, um, is very much at risk right now.

Uh, Joe, let me, let me add a note of hope here from the past. Not many people know about a successful operation run by a Catholic priest and other people in Camden, New Jersey against the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, 1971. They raided the FBI office during the playing on TV with everybody fixed on a major boxing match. Okay. And they got documents and they went off to the hinterlands around Philadelphia. They read the documents and there was one thing that came through. Counterintel Pro. Was it? What's the word? What's the word?

>> Cointelpro.

>> Cointelpro. Yeah. What does this mean? Cointelpro. And they went through the documents and they revealed what the whole, what the Cointelpro was all about. Okay. Now, they did that in an amateurish way. They were, of course, arrested and tried and when they gave their testimony and showed what these documents contained, the judge said, "You did a public service. You're free to go." Uh, now I cite that because there's a wonderful, wonderful movie that records all that. It's called basically 1971, 1971. Johanna Hamilton directed it and it shows these people. It goes through the play-by-play. It's a wonderful movie. If you want to have some hope here, if you want to think that what can we citizens do? Well, that was done then and it revealed the whole thing originally. It was the first Cointelpro that appeared in major documents. They leaked it to the press and they got some press to to pursue it and just four, four years later, you had the Church Committee and all this other stuff looking into Cointelpro. So, stay at it, men and women. We got, we got agency as citizens of this great republic. We're going to, you need to do what's necessary to protect it. And these are the crucial, in my view at least, crucial four or five months left before the midterms. I fear the worst. And I think it's up to us to make sure we hit it off. I think there are citizens who take action.

But the surprising part of that story, Ray, is the judge agreeing that they had done something in the defense of, in the public interest. Where was that judge for Julian Assange, for example? Where is that judge for Palestine action in Britain right now? These judges, that's an unusual judge. And I think without one, uh, it's hard to imagine this happening again. But this Cointelpro 2.0 Zero is the title of the article we republished this morning from Caitlin Johnstone in which she's explaining this nonsensical left-wing terrorism outcry coming from an administration that had invited the former head of al-Qaeda, who's now the president of Syria, into the White House. They're the ones who are concerned about terrorism. Joe, let me just say that as soon as I saw your article this morning that was published on Cointelpro, I sent a quick email to Johanna, um, Hamilton, the director of this 1971 movie and said, "John, now is the time. We need to have some hope. Show what citizens can do. Resurrect the movie and get it around and about." And I hope she's able to do that. I haven't heard back from her yet.

Well, I've not seen it and I will. Maybe we can invite her on the show to talk about that. That's an important story right now. So, I think it's time to move on to Ukraine. Uh, let me start with you, Scott. What is the significance of the sacking of Mika Fedorov, the defense minister everybody's praising as like the greatest thing since, you know, I don't know, since George Washington? So, uh, tell me, what is the, why did it happen and what are the consequences, real, real world consequences on the battlefield, by the way?

>> Well, Fedorov was brought in, I mean, you know, first of all, we, we need to understand that Ukraine is, uh, extraordinarily corrupt. Uh, the corruption is rampant and, uh, it's led to a loss of confidence on the part of the, um, Ukrainian people towards, um, you know, the defense ministry, um, in general. Fedorov was brought in, um, to shake things up. Um, he was somebody who was working with the West, with Western intelligence, uh, services, uh, to breathe life into, um, what we're seeing today, this massive drone campaign. Fedorov had basically sold, uh, Ukraine on the the new strategy of long-range sanctions, our medium and long-range attacks that, uh, that Zelensky talks about to bring the pain to Russia, as a way of, you know, reminding the Russians that, you know, there are consequences for this war that can only be brought to an end by, you know, Russia coming to the negotiating table. Um, it was a very assertive approach, that was that was taken. Now, it's, it's a very expensive approach. I understand that, uh, significant amount of resources were diverted into, you know, this, this, this drone campaign. But this was his thing, that, you know, we're not going to have cemeteries full of dead Ukrainian boys anymore. We're going to come in and fill up Russian cemeteries with dead Russians using drones and AI, AI, AI. You know, artificial intelligence is going to solve everything. It's the new way. And and then the West and Ukraine launched this massive, massive information warfare operation about drones. And we see it playing out today. Just look at the domination of, you know, of of reports about, you know, how the Ukrainian drones are blowing up, you know, oil refining capacity and they blow up a Wildberries warehouse and they blew up and there's flames and there's smoke and the Russians are being defeated and they've shut down Kherson and Crimea is in disaster and the drones are winning the war. Drones aren't winning the war. It's all crap. Yes, places are burning, but trust me, it's not having any impact on Russia's ability to prosecute this war. And that reality is coming out because Russia is not responding in a way. Um, you know, Lindsey Graham led them to the Skyfall factory, which no longer exists. Uh, there's other factories that no longer exist. There are stockpiles of weapons that no longer exist. There are drone operators that no longer exist. Russia's killing 80 to 100 Ukrainian drone operators a day. Um, the drone war is over. It's finished there. It'll peter out, you know, but the, it didn't achieve what it was supposed to achieve. And so Fedorov is saying, "I need to double down. We need to, we need to continue this fight, this struggle." Meanwhile, there's General Syrsky, the head of the the Ukrainian armed forces, uh, running, you know, the a traditional war of attrition against Russia, and he's losing. The the Ukrainians are losing across the board on the front line and meat grinder operations, etc. He needs more brigades. That's the thing he's been telling, you know, Zelensky, I need more brigades and all of these resources that you're diverting to this Fedorov drone war, uh, is denying me the brigades I need to stabilize the front. And it's getting to the point right now where the front is literally on the verge of collapse. And Syrsky has said, "I need these resources." Fedorov said, "No, I need these resources." And it became a power struggle. And, um, Zelensky, you know, looks at the facts and he sided with Syrsky. He's saying that we need to divert these resources to create more brigades for you. Um, but there's a political component because the Ukrainian people are just tired of the meat grinder and Syrsky is nothing but a meat grinder guy. Um, and so they've come up and and and and rallied around the concept of Fedorov. Look, let's just be clear. Fedorov, you know, I'm sure he has, uh, his qualities. He's a corrupt Ukrainian official. You know, everybody knows who he is. Everybody knows what he's done. Everybody knows, uh, that that he's not the, you know, the salvation that everybody thinks is, but perceptions create their own realities. And of course, with an information campaign, they've created the notion that Fedorov is this, uh, this gallant warrior with a new approach that will save lives. He's just this, you know, typical corrupt, um, incompetent person. Um, this drone campaign was empty to begin with. It was never going to succeed. Syrsky is never going to get enough brigades. Ukraine will never win this war. This is the reality. But the West has committed so much resources, so much political capital into this Ukraine conflict that they can't admit failure right now. Um, you know, we're going to see this kind of full-court press going up through September 20th. That's a very important date. That's, um, the State Duma elections in Russia where the West is, um, posturing that United Russia, um, you know, the the party that is in power today in the Duma, major supporter of Putin, even though he's not a member of the party, that United Russia is going to get swept out of the Duma and this is, uh, the precursor for Moscow Maidan that will sweep Putin out of power. This is the fantasy that's, uh, being played out in the West right now. And that's what's behind the the Fedorov thing because the drone campaign was supposed to be the effort that broke the Russian spirit, that broke the Russian will to resist. And, and the Ukrainians had bought into that hope. But, um, again, I, I, I've just got back from Russia and I've, I've been speaking, not that, um, United Russia is going to do bad because of these drone strikes. Anybody who believes that, they just don't know Russia and they don't know how Russia operates. If you think that the Russian people are going to abandon their leadership in war, um, you don't know the Russian people.

>> Well, why did, uh, Zelensky sack the guy right now? What precipitated that? Do you know?

>> Uh, a battle of resources. Syrsky said, "I need these resources. Uh, without brigades, I can't hold Sloviansk and, um, and Kramatorsk and, uh, and we're going to lose the urban defensive belt. I need brigades now. I need brigades now." And Fedorov went, "No, no, no. We need to continue investing these resources from the West into the drone operation." And it came down to, it's a battle of resources.

>> I see. So, it's not about Zelensky being afraid of this young rival who could challenge him for the presidency or something like that. That's all being read into this thing.

>> Well, I mean, I'm sure there, it's Ukraine and you've got these, you know, these, you know, political machinations in there, but the thing that precipitated was the, uh, struggle between Syrsky and Fedorov over resources.

>> Right. Trump. Go ahead, Trump.

>> Yeah. I would just add that PV is not as corrupt as the others, but he's only 35. I mean, give him a little time. That's the only reason he's not as corrupt as the others. I mean, um, um, there is a new element here, it seems to me. Um, and that is that, uh, that the Russians, including Putin, are lumping the US together with the Europeans as being the real fly in the ointment here. It's getting pretty tough, the rhetoric, and I do think that Putin is under increasing pressure to have some sort of forceful response. Now, I think that's been exaggerated in the past, but I think, you know, I'm very impressionable. And just two hours ago, I was watching some, uh, some video of the blowing up of the equivalent of the Amazon warehouse in Moscow. And man, look at those clouds. And and where there's smoke, there's fire. And this was fired from Ukraine. And so what I'm thinking now is simply that Arshnik is ready. Uh, I say that Putin is probably under increasing pressure to do something more demonstrative than he's been doing. I think there's an equal chance that he'll send an Arshnik to the decision-making centers in Kiev. He's already demonstrated the Arshnik outside of Kiev and he said they sent monitors in there, little drones to measure how much damage was done here and there so he can destroy these things and not not create a lot of collateral damage and of course no radiation. So, um, I think that he's under increasing pressure. Uh, I think it's just like a 50/50 thing. Uh, he has said when his, this has been raised and he said with some pique, you know, some embarrassment, he said, "Look, drones, drones, what are you telling me? There was a drone in Romania. Now they're saying it's a Russian drone. Why are they saying that? Oh, from the lion said that. All right, good source there." But he's, he's agitated about these drones, okay? And what he said is, "Look, these drones, yeah, they're happening, but they're pinpricks. In equivalent, what he says is, they have no effect on the battle on the battlefield against Ukraine. They're not going to have any effect on the war." Quote, "This is the main point." End quote. In addition to that, you have the development, and Scott will know more about this than I, of the equivalent of a Starlink system, which increases the precision of the Russian missiles and drones. And and you also have, uh, other other technical things that are increasing the Russian ability to to move against these things. So, what I'm saying here is that, uh, I think Putin will be able to weather this thing out, but there is increasing pressure on him. Uh, I don't know how many Russians see what I saw on this western thing a couple of hours ago about their Amazon mammoth warehouse being blown up. But I think that does have some, some, uh, some effect on how Putin will react. And all I'm saying is, now, now today, I do not rule out one Arshnik strategically placed to hit a decision-making center in Kiev. And that's where I think the main, uh, response will come. The Russians have free reign in Kiev. My God, there are no patriots there, no other kind of missiles to to restrain the Russians. So that's where the impact will come. Will the Russians do something more dramatic? Yeah, I think they may. But it doesn't, quoting Putin, it won't have any impact on the conduct of the war. That is the main thing. End quote.

>> Scott, you follow up?

>> Look, um, as Ray knows, I'm, um, somebody who, you know, cut my teeth on the argument that, uh, Russia needed to expand this conflict into Europe. I'm, I, I was a, I mean, I'm the guy that gave the "shoot the dog" speech at, uh, St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, uh, telling a panel of Russian diplomats that Europe is a rabid beast and Russia needs to assume the role of Atticus Finch and shooting the dog. And yet I've changed my position because I listened to Vladimir Putin speak at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, um, at the plenary session, which is one of the major foreign policy speeches of the year. Everybody waits for this moment to see what the president will say. And, uh, when I first heard his words, I was very disappointed because he didn't mention the Ukrainian conflict once. And this speech was given on June 5th. On June 3rd, the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, um, over 90 some odd drones were fired, um, through the Baltic states, by the way, um, into St. Petersburg. Um, the Russians know where these drones came from. These drones did strike targets in Kronstadt and, uh, and all this. This comes again three weeks after, um, or less than three weeks after the start of Bell's slaughter of 21, um, innocent children. It was an act of murder. There was no doubting that this was a college. This was specifically picked out by the Ukrainians to commit murder, an act of intimidation, the beginning of this drone campaign. And I was under the impression that Vladimir Putin had to do something. Had to do something. He had no choice but to do something. And instead, he gave a speech and said he will do nothing, nothing to escalate this war because he will not allow this war to define Russia's future. Instead, he focused on economic stability. He focused on creating a sound investment environment. Um, and he was successful because 130 nations participated in the St. Petersburg International Forum. Um, and, uh, 20,000 people showed up, the largest, doubled the size from last year. And $84 billion of foreign investment were injected into the Russian economy. $84 billion because Putin said, "I believe in stability. Stability is what's going to push us forward." Now, in this question and answer period, of course, he, uh, answered questions about the war and he gave his Stalin-esque response to the generals ordering him to go to the front, just like the Great Patriotic War. Then he finished with "Robot emlat, keep working, brothers," which just sent the shivers up my spine because at that moment I knew that he would never abandon the Russian soldier either. Vladimir Putin knows what the hell he's doing. Nobody else knows what anything. The the Russians are not in panic. The Wildberries factory being blown up, it's something. But the, the, the lesson I took away from Vladimir Putin's presentation is, if you're going to talk about escalation, the first question has to be answered is, then what? Because right now, Putin's response is, we're doing nothing and we're winning. We're not going to escalate because we're winning. We're winning on every single front. There is no pressure on Vladimir Putin right now. There's pressure on, uh, Russian, um, look, the Russians have TV talk shows just like we do. People need to understand in Russia that, um, you know, this talk show makes money off of viewership. The Russians aren't immune to this. So, how do you get viewers? Controversy. And so, there's a lot of controversy going on right now. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fanning the, you know, fanning the flames, so to speak, of passions to get clicks here, clicks there. Vladimir Putin doesn't give a damn about any of this. There is no pressure on Vladimir Putin to do anything because Russia is, when I keep hearing stories about how Gerasimov and the Russian General Staff is pressuring him for what? They're winning. They're winning. They're not losing. They're winning. You can't tell the president to do something different when he's winning. $84 billion invested because he has decided not to escalate. Because when you escalate, you change the investment atmosphere. People will not invest in a country that's getting ready to go to war with Europe. There's no reason to go to war with Europe. There's no reason to escalate. They will continue to do what they're doing. Arshnik. It's an, the three missiles that were fired were experimental missiles. He hasn't fired an operational Arshnik yet. He saw a Chrono the last time. U, he has fired last night, 30 seconds into Kiev, killing everything it hits. The the the Ukrainians, the decision-making centers, you know, they're hunting down the drone commander, Muyar. They almost got him the other day in Kherson. He's going to die soon. All of the Ukrainians are going to die. They're all being hunted down. They don't stand a snowball's chance in hell. This is the reality. Now, we have people in the West that are promoting a different, uh, atmosphere because they talk to taxi drivers and they talk to, uh, movers and they talk to old people on the hill. But the reality in Russia is Vladimir Putin's under no internal pressure whatsoever. And you're seeing ridiculous games being played right now by, uh, the the remnants of the of the, uh, old elite establishment. I call them liberal elites, but the oligarchs, for instance, and I'm, I'm, I'm wrestling with how I still have to get some answers, but this whole, you know, the oligarch that wrote the open letter to, uh, to The Economist, um, you know, saying, "Please, West, don't hurt us. You don't want to bring down Russia." Um, there's a game being played here. It's mental warfare. It's an information warfare operation that's being played right now to create the impression that there is pressure on Putin, that Putin is being pressured to do something, etc. My assessment is that there is no viable pressure. There is no real pressure on Putin. Putin, there's no one can identify what the pressure point is. If you're going to tell me that there's pressure being put on Putin, what is it? Because he just proved that he has a viable investment environment because of his policies, $84 billion injected, uh, at a time of international sanctions. Gerasimov is winning the war. So what's Gerasimov going to ask for? Because everything you want Putin to do, all these people who say escalate will only cause Russia's position to get worse. Russia's winning right now. The last thing you want to do is do something that solidifies Ukrainian resolve that, uh, that injects, you know, meaningful Western military and economic intervention. The West is in disarray. Ankura proved that. Ankura was a joke. An absolute joke. What's the big story that came out of Ankura? Licensed production of the Patriot. You understand how empty that is? There will never be a single Patriot missile assembled in Ukraine ever in the history of Ukraine. It will never happen. But and yet that's the headline. That's the hope. You want Putin to do what? Change something that changes the fact that the West is collapsing as we speak. I mean, so no, there's just no pressure under Put on Putin right now. This is a Western fabrication and it's getting echoed and echoed and echoed and echoed in hopes that it can be projected into Russia so that people in Russia start to ask questions. But again, just, I'll leave it with this. St. Petersburg and Moscow are two regions that have been relatively untouched when it comes to this war. Yes, you get black smoke and yes, you get a thing, but you know, they've avoided the massive mobilization efforts. You know, because they just don't want, you know, dead bodies coming back to these places. At St. Petersburg, after the drone attacks, tens of thousands of St. Petersburg men are lining up to volunteer to go to the front. Anybody who thought that they were going to break the spirit of the Russians, that the Russians were going to, you know, suddenly get cold feet and not want to do this war, tens of thousands of St. Petersburg military-age men are going and signing contracts to go to the front to end this war, to bring it to an end, to that's Russia and that's the reality. And this is why Putin's not going to do anything to escalate this war because he's winning this war on all fronts.

>> Uh, Joe, may I respond?

>> Yeah, Scott.

>> I've always said precisely what you've just said. The question is how you define escalate. Now, in the past, as as you suggested, many people have been saying that Putin is under pressure to escalate against the Europeans. In other words, to hit a member of NATO. I never thought that would be a sensible thing to do and I never thought Putin would allow that. A matter of fact, when the Latvians said that they were going to make five firing spots available to the Ukrainians to shoot drones into Russia, Putin himself said that's not going to happen. That's never going to happen. And indeed, the Latvians never did allow the Ukrainians to do that. So, it's not a matter of escalating into Europe. It's a matter of escalating in Ukraine and I think we're already seeing that, the the attacks over the last six nights and all I'm saying is that Arshnik is ready now. Um, if and I do think there's a little pressure on on on Putin to show that he's that he's up to this thing and that he can retaliate against the Ukrainians, not against the rest of the Europeans. Uh, I think it's possible that he'll use Arshnik if if this pressure that I think is real comes to the point where he wants to do something demonstrative. It's easily done. It's going to be limited in its collateral damage. It's kind of an exemplar of a as clean a devastating weapon as you can get. So all I'm saying is that I see an even possibility that in response to this pressure, he'll respond within Ukraine and I would expect to use Arshnik within the next couple of months before the Duma elections in September. But you know, that's just speculation on my part. I think the pressure is real, but he'll respond by limiting it by limiting the escalation to within Ukraine. And as I say, there's no air defense in Ukraine anymore. So, you know, if you want to talk about a cakewalk for missiles and bombers and fighters and all that kind of stuff, that's what the Russians have now in Ukraine.

Let me just say this on the, you know, the the the pressure that the West is trying to create is the pressure that says we need to bring this war to an end because it's just gone on for too long and it's too bloody and too costly and and all that. But as you have rightly pointed out, um, Putin has escalated. But you understand that the escalation he's done means that this war is going to drag out a lot longer. Putin has said Odessa is a Russian city. Putin has said Sumy is a Russian city. Putin has said Kharkiv is a Russian city. Uh, so this war doesn't end when Russia liberates the totality of the Donbas, the totality of Zaporizhzhia, the totality of Kherson. This war ends when Russia creates the buffer zone required, which means Russia will absorb new cities into its new territories. This war ends, and Putin made this point with denazification. Denazification. Um, this is the total eradication of everything the West has built in Ukraine. There will be nothing left. It will all be gone. This war doesn't end tomorrow. There is no pressure on Putin in this war this, uh, quickly. This war ends when all root causes of the conflict are resolved and that means the total eradication of Banderist ideology and everybody who has embraced that. I think we talked about this last time. Putin, they are taking names. Ray, you know, they're taking names. The names go on a little list and the little list goes to people and those people will go out and root these bastards down and kill them all. This is the mood in Russia today. There that when when I was there, you know, two years ago and I went to the special military operation, there was genuine, genuine, um, goodwill towards the Ukrainian people. Genuine goodwill. I mean, these were our cousins. These were our brothers. These were this. You hear this now and again in Russia, but what you hear more often is, "Kill them all." They're tired of these Ukrainians. They're tired of these people who tolerate, um, you know, cuz he's not just now, he he brought Andriy Melnyk and reburied him. He's now bringing the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and he's going to rebury them. Zelensky is a Nazi, a living, breathing Nazi. And it's a Nazi regime. The commanders that he is conferring with right now are Nazis. Every single one of them. They are hardcore, tattoo-wearing, swastika sons of [ __ ]. This is the reality of Ukraine. And the Russians are no longer, I mean, you can hear it in again, in the Western liberal sympathetic circles, they're not all Nazis. They they're not all, they're not all bad. You go to mainstream Russia and they're, "Kill them all." They the concept that there's going to be good relations between the Russian people and their Ukrainian brothers. No, there Ukraine has, the West has created a Nazi state in Ukraine. A literal Nazi state. A literal Nazi state. And Russia is just not going to tolerate it. One of the important things about Russian national identity as it currently is manifested is the history of Russia. You hear Putin speak about this all the time. "We must protect our history." This is why he takes umbrage when morons like Donald Trump want to say that the United States won the war, that Russia played a minor part. You were there at Victory Day, Ray. You know how important that history resonates with the Russian people and this, you know, so people need to understand that the resurrection of a Nazi state in Ukraine cannot be tolerated by Russia at all and will not be tolerated by Russia. This is truly existential because this gets into the very essence of what Russia is, who the Russians are. Um, they have to defend their history and they will defend their history and they are defending their history and and in the West we don't understand it. We we sit here and we mock them. Oh, you know, the they're living in their past glory. No, that's what defines who they are today. The Great Patriotic War, the sacrifice of 27 million defines who they are today. It's an essential core element, a core value of the national ethos of the Russian people. And the notion that Ukraine is going to be allowed to remain intact when it has literally transformed itself into the modern-day living manifestation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists who allied themselves with the Nazis who slaughtered Jews, who slaughtered Poles. It's not. Go to Russia. Ray, I know you have, but I'm just telling people, go to Russia. See for yourself this crap we're seeing in in in the West about, you know, the loss of will to fight. The the the Russian people are tired. They're tired. They're tired of Nazis. And it's real. And, uh, I, I, I just, I, I think that Putin is, this war is not going to end anytime soon. Uh, this war is going to, um, precipitate not just a total termination of what we call the Ukrainian national state today. Uh, but the root cause of this conflict is also in Europe and, um, I think that Putin has also made a strategic decision that, um, that Europe needs to collapse as well. It won't be done by Russia's hand. But again, you know, to escalate into Europe creates a, uh, a reason for Merch to continue to exist.

>> Right?

>> But Russia wins when Merch goes away.

>> Right?

>> Uh, Russia wins when Marine Le Pen becomes president of, of, uh, of France. Russia wins when England goes, the United Kingdom goes to whatever cesspool they're going to go into after Keir Starmer. Um, and so Russia has a winning hand right now. The West created this, this Ukrainian engine that was supposed to be driving a machine that was going to bring Russia down. Russia's converted the Ukrainian engine into the machine that's going to bring Europe down. And, um, I, I just see this war going on for a couple more years. I see the Russians, um, you know, being very deliberate in their, uh, in their approach and it, this ends with the total destruction of the Ukrainian state.

>> Scott, I, I want to ask you, when you say you hear people in Russia saying, "Kill all the Ukrainians," are they talking about the leadership or all Ukrainian people?

>> Well, mainly the leadership, but the the the point of of the sensibility of, um, you know, we don't, we, we, you know, we, we, the Russians viewing the Ukrainian people as innocent players. They don't view them as innocent players anymore. You have to understand the brainwashing that has taken place in Ukraine over the course of the past several decades. Uh, the Ukrainian children today, um, are taught that the Russians are inferior. Um, that, you know, the the the the brotherhood, the the the sense of common national identity, you know, we're we're all Slavic people. The Ukrainian people don't believe that. The the, especially in Western Ukraine, they believe that the Muscovites, they are, you know, orcs, they are inferior. They are this. And it's playing out on the battlefield. See how Russians are treated by the Ukrainians, the Ukrainian soldiers, uh, the average Ukrainian soldiers. You

Know, nobody talks about Kursk and what happened when the Ukrainian forces went into Kursk, the the villages on the on on the on the on the border area where they couldn't get the elderly people out and the young people out. You know, hundreds of Russian civilians were slaughtered by the Ukrainians who went in there and butchered them and raped them. They filmed it. The Russians have this all on video because these criminals that went in there, they filmed it on their cell phones and they went in and they got killed. And the Russians have the cell phones and they've cataloged everything.

Um, the the the the the murder of these 21 students at Stardabilk. Straight up murder. They watched, they had thermal cameras on these drones knowing they hit a dormitory, knowing the girls were going downstairs. They could see them with their thermal images as they dove their drones in to murder them. The Russians understand this. They see this all. They have all the evidence they need right now. So the the idea that the Russians are, you know, are saying, "Oh, there's the bad Ukrainian leadership, but then there's the good Ukrainian people." I think that the mood is shifting that the there is no good Ukrainian people anymore.

>> Yeah. But uh, first of all, there are some Ukrainians who oppose the war. They don't want to be drafted. We see those films of them being press-ganged. But if you talk about killing all Ukrainian people, that's genocidal talk. I don't care how >> again the regime. >> No, I'm not talking about killing all the Ukrainian people. I'm talking about heard Russians say that. Russians say >> they're not saying kill all the Ukrainian people. They're saying that it's time to bring >> that the day of the gloves off of the gloves on, you know, oh, you're soft and tender and we No, the the Russians are starting to view Ukraine as an enemy state. >> That's the difference. Not a brother state gone bad, not misguided people. It's not genocidal talk. This is just me being tired. It's very late here and I've uh, you know, my brain isn't working and you know, no, there's no genocidal talk. There's no genocidal talk. It's just that the mood, the mood that existed two years ago where they viewed the Ukrainians as, you know, innocents trapped by bad leaders. I don't think they view the Ukrainians as innocents anymore. They Yes, you're right. There are people, you know, but you know, the people that are fighting, let's get this straight here, the people that are fighting the the the the forceful conscription, they're not fighting because they're against the war with they're just against the war. But they're not sitting there going, "Oh, but the Russians are good people and that's why we don't want to go." They don't want to go to war because they're going to die.

Um, the the but there's a a a very big anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine today. And it and and that's the reality. And the Russians sense it. So they're the the idea that Ukraine is going to get this preferential treatment, this this nice Slavic treatment. I think that's moving away. I think Ukraine is being viewed as an enemy state. And that's the difference. It's not genocidal talk. I apologize for rejecting those those words into >> that that that anti-Russian talk goes way back. And certainly in 2014, I was looking at an article by Bob Perry in which he was writing about how the Russians were being called insects by uh Ukrainians. And then uh the idea that uh there may have been genocide in Dombas, you know, was considered to be absolute Russian propaganda. But then when you think about them calling them insects, you have to wonder about whether whether in fact one of the uh the international court of justice has allowed that case to go forward about whether Russia uh Russia's claimed that Ukraine may be committing committed genocide in Dubat back in 2014 to 2022.

Ray, you've been sitting there. Let's hear what you have to say about all this, please. >> I'm sorry, Joe. What did you say? >> Great. You've been sitting there listening, so I'd like to hear what you have to say. >> No, I really don't have anything to add here. I think we're all on the same page. Um, it's uh, you know, it's kind of the main thing that I would inject here is the Russian view of the potential US role in making sure that their core interests are respected in any final outcome of this. uh for the nuns uh the Russians come around to the view that forget about it, we can't depend on anything from Trump. Uh but at the same time, I think their their strategy and and Russians do have strategies is that they're going to need the United States in the at the final outcome uh to make sure that uh that the folks in what's left of NATO uh don't resist the notion of keeping Ukraine completely out of NATO and keeping it neutral. And for that they'll need at least they've indicated they think they need the cooperation of someone like Trump who is less murial but can see the need to have a situation calm down there in Europe and with the disappearance of Nats and Mong and whoever there's they have there in England right now this should be easier.

The thing that I would point out that we have not discussed is that Melz is asking the German people to go back on the benefits of their social democracy. Uh if you're a German now, MZ wants you not to be able to retire until you're 70. I mean I mean you guys don't know what 70 is. I do. Okay. But 70 I'm gonna be seven zero next month. But go on. >> It's a long time. All right. And there are other social benefits that the the the I know the Germans they they take this as a matter of what's due them and it is due them in any humane society. And so when Matt wants to raise a hundred billion euros to fight in Ukraine or to give you or or build up against a non-existent threat, well maybe this time around, maybe this time around the R the the Germans will be smarter enough to say, "Well, wait a second. Tell us more about this Russian threat threat. Tell us more." And maybe they'll see that look this is all all for the benefit of the people that mounts used to work for okay the military intelligence complex and we're not going to buy it. We want to be able to retire as usual at a much earlier age and uh so I think there's going to be a lot of resistance in in Europe to all these kinds of guys and I think play puchin is playing the waiting game doesn't need to hurry and is suffering the kinds of casualties in Ukraine that are tolerable for now and is unlikely to escalate except for the dominance that the Russians have in the air with their missiles and with their drones.

>> Well, I'm glad you haven't retired. Even though you're beyond 70, you're not retiring anytime soon. Yes. Scott, >> I just wanted to say, you know, just speaking of insanity, did you see the former German defense minister talking about um that not just Crimea will be returned to Ukraine, but that Keningrad would be returned to the Germans? >> Yeah. I mean this is now this is now part of the uh it just these people are going insane and now we have the Lithuanians who are now jumping on board saying yes Kenigrad must be uh taken back that we cannot allow this uh Russian enclave to survive. It's time to I mean this is the kind of insanity that's coming out of u of of Europe today. This is uh if people don't understand I'm I'm going to Kenigrad in September. Um, >> I've been invited to uh to go there and uh and do a very thorough report on Keningrad because it's becoming the one of you know it's going to become a center of um of friction between Russia and uh this European mass and decline. Um, but as Ry knows and Joe you know this too. I mean, things that seem to be insane now when uh when you're when the system is devolving um become become possible and you've got we've got to be aware of the fact that there are some sick forces in Germany who think that um they should get Keningrad back and uh and and the Bolts it we're living in some very dangerous times because Kenrad is Russia uh and it's populated by Russians. It's a Russian uh enclave, a Russ, you know, a Russian city. Uh and Russia's not going to give it up. And um and these are, you know, these are the kind of things that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend. Um, so it's um just frightening times. That's all. It's >> a very useful statement from that general, however, because now we really know what the intentions are amongst some at least some part of the German leadership. They want they we're being revengeist. They want to go back. They want to overthrow Putin. This is an aggressive offensive action by Germany. I think it's good that we hear them say that. Yes. Ray. So Ray, I I want to ask you too, Scott, about something. I know Sih seems to be going more and more off the deep end recently in terms of what he's writing about Russia. We all know him personally and we understand the greater work he's done. Now, uh, he wrote his last piece. He he's of course explaining that the drones are destroying Russia and Russia's going to lose the war and all of that. He's quoting all of his US intelligence sources, but he has something curious in here that I want to ask you about because I didn't know anything about this. I don't know if you guys have that he said that he has learned in interviews in Washington that Ukraine's growing military success I'm reading uh for him directly has renewed regretful talk in Washington about a Ukrainian concession in late 2025 that had Putin accepted it would have put an end to the war peace seemed to be at hand when it was not. Zencins's concession would have given Russia control of some of the land Putin's troops have won in the years of fighting in two battleground provinces in eastern Ukraine. The immediate reaction in Washington to Putin's rebuff of Zalinsk's offer to trade land for peace was anger and a sense that the negotiating team had misread Putin's interest in a settlement. The thought now about what seemed to be Putin's duplicity is more nuanced and even sympathetic that the Russian leader may have understood the lesson Nikita Kruev learned after he chose to withdraw his ships during the Cuban missile crisis. That failure and an economic crisis that followed put Kruev out of office within two years and a quiet retirement to a Dacha outside of Moscow. Scott, do you know anything about this 2025 um concession that Ukraine made that Russia rejected?

>> Well, I mean the I don't have access to these sources. Um, so I I I I don't um I I I I what I will say is this that from the Russian perspective, which is understand that there's a a cause and effect relationship between um information that comes out of Washington DC um and um reality uh meaning that Washington DC has been Vladimir Putin has come out and acknowledged that in um in August of uh 2025. Um in um in Alaska, uh Russia made some very very um sensitive concessions to the United States in order to um bring an end to this conflict. And uh the Russian concessions were that um that they insisted they get the totality of the Donbass, that Ukraine would have to leave the Donbass. there was no negotiations, but that Russia would be willing to freeze the line of contact um where it stands in Zaporosia and Keron. Um in effect that Russia would be willing to consider cessation of hostilities with Ukraine holding on to parts of Keron in Zaporosia. So, uh, from what I understand, uh, Seymour Hirs's sources are trying to flip the script on this, saying that, uh, that, you know, that Zalinsky was making concessions or something of that nature and that Russia rejected the concessions. That's not the way it it it it the R but, you know, Rubio and company won't won't talk about this. U, you know, Rubio has said there were no concessions made, that there was no agreements made. Um, from the Russian perspective, they there there was uh that the the Russians came in and they accepted and this is a shocker to me because at the time I I was somebody who said that, you know, constitutionally, you know, this is impossible for Putin to do. Um, but Putin had made these concessions in in August in an effort to bring an end to this conflict. What we have now is that um there's a growing recognition that uh Russia actually was bending over backwards to bring this war to an end and that um and that it was you know Zalinsk's refusal to u to accept these concessions. Um and so I I think what you're seeing is spin where people are coming out trying to um you know shift the blame away from Zalinsky on to Putin and that that appears to be the um the gist of uh of um the narrative that are being promoted by um the sources that um Seymour is relying upon for this uh story. But um um I'm I'm currently in France right now at a function that Seymour Hersh is here. And so um you know S and I are good >> S and I are good friends and we will um you know maybe we'll have the time to sit down tomorrow and uh and hash this out. Um I don't know.

>> Okay. >> Yeah. Well, you know, uh what I would say is that uh Sai has been talking to uh trusted sources for a very long time now. Some of them are probably as old as I am. Uh I don't know what kind of yarns they're spinning. Um, but I think a lot of it just doesn't parse. Doesn't make any sense. And uh in in a word, you can tell Sai as I have told him personally that he's talking to the wrong people. He's being misled. Now uh on the business about u uh whether or not there was an agreement at u uh in Alaska on the 15th of August last year. This is a a really important point and uh it shows to me that this is a very volatile issue within the Russian leadership. Here we have Rubio saying what Scott said he said there was no agreement. Now there was no agreement. Okay. But then you have Lavough two days later the foreign minister saying wait a second. The Russians came with this, the the Americans came with this proposal which had been given to us by Witkov and we went through every one of those little things and uh and we made some concessions in in response and that that certainly is an understanding, is it not? Of course there was that understanding. Three days later, Putin. Now, the Americans are right. There was no understanding there in in Alaska. I can't figure that out. I think Putin's in charge. But, you know, it's very very difficult to figure out why Lavough can say that kind of thing. then Putin can countermand him as Putin has done on ev and other key issues and not have some sort of friction at the top that I have not seen before in this particular regime in Russia. So whether or not there was an agreement in Alaska in my view of course there was Lav is right. Why is Putin saying well no the Americans are right? Well, Putin does sort of defer, you know, does let's keep talking to these guys. One last point I was reviewing, actually I was filing filing some old statements from Putin and more than a year ago, he was talking to submariners way up in the north part of Russia and it was sort of an informal thing. And among the other things he says is, you know, we we're working now. the the US is really helping us with Ukraine. We're working on sort of some kind of a understanding and quote, I hope I'm not being too trustful of the United States. End quote. But I I think we can we can have their help here. And well, holy Moses. I mean, for those in the Soviet leadership, Russian leadership had been saying, "Look, you're far more trusting than you should be. Think about Minsk, think about Eastble, think about all the all the times they took it to the cleaners." Putin for him to say with these submariners off the off the Yeah, I hope I'm not being too distrusting of the Americans. All I'm saying here is this is a live issue among the among the Soviet leadership and Putin on the one hand seems relaxed enough to say well I hope I'm not being naive or too trusting and yet a lot of people are saying well yeah that's what you are Vlad Vladimir Vladimir stop it in other words it's a wrankle that came out of my filing process and I thought it was really really interesting in retrospect effect of the last several months of what's happened with respect to Ukraine, the US and Russia.

Now, the maybe the most important word we discussed tonight was humiliation in the context of uh nuclear war and not humiliating your opponent as Ry pointed out from Kennedy's speech in the context of the Middle East. But this applies also, I think, to the Ukraine war because I remember the the day of Russia's intervention in the civil war, February 2022. I had this sinking feeling this was going to go on for a long time and that the West was not going to back down and Russia was not going to back down, that both sides were not going to allow themselves to lose this war or to be humiliated. Now, Scott, you're saying, and we've seen that that's what's happened. And there was a period where Macron and Schultz met with Zalinski in Paris and told him to give up and that he'd have to make peace with Russia. Uh they losing the war that Germany and France had fought so many wars and now their friends. I don't know if you guys recall that Wall Street Journal reported that two years ago. So that the French and the Germans concluded that Ukraine had lost the war and they better give up. And now with these drones, they think they're going to win again. Well, whether they are or not is another question. So I'm asking you Scott, you you think that only the victory by Le Pen and maybe AFD in Germany is the German the German and French voters particularly can end this war alone by putting that kind of government in power or otherwise how long can this war go on? Uh and how much uh will they avoid humiliation on both sides? Because now the the German general to talk and the British talking about war against direct war with Russia by 2030. They are planning to continue this war. What could stop it?

I the only thing that will stop it. I I come back to what I said. The European dog needs to be shot. Um the Europe is a fundamentally sick society. uh it's a non-existent uh there there is no eur I'm in France right now surrounded by French people who are asked like what is Europe um and then they're increasingly have to ask the question what is France uh because in order to be Europe you have to forget being French they talk about Bastile Day and the humiliation that took place to the French nation because you know you required a QR code to uh to attend Bastile Day and um you know in the past the French the the French people would come to watch the Bastile Day celebrations, but instead now the French government is, you know, is is saying that they can pick who they want to go. This is what's happening with all of Europe where this this this vision of what Europe is that's being dictated by these unelected technocrats um is you know this war will go on so long as Europe believes that in this in in the Ukraine mission uh it this is all about the Ukraine mission. The Ukraine mission has become literally the only thing that um that that makes the continuation of this European experiment um viable. If you eliminate Ukraine, Europe will collapse on its own incompetence, its own um you know inability to sustain a a non-existent vision of what Europe is. Um, Marine Le Pen, I mean, you know, she, you know, on the one hand, she says that, you know, she wouldn't continue this war. On the other hand, she, uh, is, you know, speaks of continuing the, you know, the European Union and buying into this, uh, notion. Um, so that could be some false hope there. I mean, that, you know, I think Europe is broken. I think Europe is fundamentally broken. what used to be a collection of sovereign states has become this morass of illdefined um incompetence. I mean Germany it's uh 70 years old when I I lived in Germany when uh you know they had the best retirement program in the world. The German workers were the best workers in the world. I mean German vacations were the best vacations in the world. And now if you take a look at what's happening in Germany today, they're talking about you're going to have to keep working till you're 70. Um I mean this is the collapse of society and this is what's happening throughout Europe as we as we speak. So I I think that you know there's there's going to be no shortcut to this victory. Um humiliation only happens you're you're humiliated only if you're alive. Um, and again, I'm not talking about genocidal death, but I am I I am saying that the humiliation of Europe ceases when Europe ceases to exist as this dysfunctional union that they've they've crafted together and Europe reemerges as a collection of sovereign states. Um, you know, and in and France becomes France and Germany becomes Germany and Italy becomes Italy and uh and so on and so forth. Um that I think is the direction that we're heading. Um, you know, there's too many issues that that they try to make you know commonality with. Immigration is a huge problem right now in Europe. A huge problem. Um, and there is no unified solution. There's no you know solution that's agreed upon by the by the European collective. And so that alone is going to create fractures. uh the the economy um you know the the the the the difference between the Parisian approach to uh to economic union and the uh Berlin approach are you know are irreconcilable. Um Europe is dysfunctional and the only thing that keeps Europe talking in any cohesive fashion is this Ukrainian engine. Um, and I think once Russia resolves the Ukrainian engine, turns it off, turn shuts down the ignition, it's not about the humiliation of Europe. It means that Europe will no longer exist and um it'll have to reconstitute itself in something. And this is where the United States comes in. Um, you know, it's still it's something I'm still struggling with because I can't fully explain it. It's not rational. Um, as Rey said, you know, President Putin continues to, uh, you know, hold out some sort of deference to the United States. Um, you have Kuril Dmitri continuing to, uh, articulate tunnel diplomacy. I mean, this this, you know, he continues to talk about how we're going to make everything great by building a tunnel. Um, nobody believes in this tunnel thing, but it it it it's a vector that allows for the potential of Russian-American cooperation. And I think the Russians are unwilling to shut the door on America because they are going to need American help to deal with the problem of European dysfunction.

>> Let me add a word about Germany. Um I too lived in Germany during those times Scott for five years. Uh the notion that foragen is laying off 100,000 workers and that the rest of them will be working on building tanks for God's sake and not to mention the curtailment of social benefits. Well, you know, uh it's not too long ago and I was alive during World War II where uh the Germans were faced with these kinds of decisions uh namely do they expand seek le attack Russia and they reacted with what the Germans now call me okay sheepish submissiveness. It's hard harder to say in English. Okay. So, will they do that this time? Well, the Russians have a a saying. It goes back to the 18th 17th century. It's called Pit Revolut. Okay. It's what just short of 200 years. Uh that we had 1848. Uh if memory serves, there was a lot of awful lot of revolution going on in Europe in 1848. I think we may be just years away from the same kind of revolution. Hopefully not so gory and not so violent. But these guys who have been ruling Europe are going to be a fixture of the past. What will come in the AF day? Well, uh there's good and bad about the day, but they'll be changed for sure. So maybe the Russians in their more optimistic moments say revolutier in Western Europe and Europe in general. Uh it smells like revolution for God's sake. Let's not let's not screw it up. Let's let them self implode, self-imulate, if you will. And if we play a waiting game and keep Ukraine out of NATO, well, that's something we can build on that in future years. I think that's probably the way the more sanguin and sensible Russian leaders look at the situation.

Okay, let me end with this. Um Scott, you wrote a piece this week in which you refuted the arguments that Russia is losing the war, that the drone war has changed the entire game. Uh and you said, for example, one example you gave was that uh people are saying now that the Russia had to stop the export of diesel because of a shortage of diesel within Russia caused by these Russian Europeanmade drones. we should make it clear that Europe is running this war as using the territory of Ukraine to fight Russia, their drones being fired from Ukraine. So, uh you refuted those arguments and you because you said that that had happened a year or two before and they recovered from that. They'd also cut off diesel. Now that argue that article was a response to a piece by Gilbert Doctoro, an analyst based in Brussels who said that uh he's pushing pretty much the same line is that the Russia's losing the war because of these drones. He thinks Russia should hit Europe uh which you have changed your position on that to take out the German uh facilities making these drones that are hitting Russia. doesn't go into any discussion about what that means about article 5 about direct war between Russia. Doesn't mention that at all. Uh which of course is the main issue about whether Russia should hit Germany or not. But uh I wanted to ask you uh I did ask Gilbert to come on the show to debate you. I did mention that last week. He refused and he said he wouldn't bait debate someone who made personal attacks on him. So, I wanted you to respond to one thing in particular last week, and I do need you to help me understand this. You said last week that he was an MI6 operative. I was wondering if you had any evidence to back that up, Scott.

>> Well, evidence that uh is is is usable in a court of law. No, of course not. I could not convict Gilbert Doctor of being an MI6 operative. Um, but um I I will say this, and I'd be more than happy to walk Gilbert through it. Um, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's a freaking duck. Um, Gilbert Doctoro is literally playing the MI6 misinformation game. Every talking point he puts out there is literally a mirror image of um what's coming out of London station uh in terms of this this war of perceptions. Um, you know, so if did Gilbert Do come at this independently? Um, you know, perhaps, but again, we can if we want to, and I have spent a lot of time doing this, going through his past, uh, going through, you know, his time in Russia, going through the circles that he operated in. Um, you know, he operated in Russia in a time when, you know, MI6 and the CIA and other Western services co-opted the the Russian liberal elite circles that he um operated in that that he I'm not saying that he was a I'm saying that the Russians uh that that circle was heavily co-opted by Western intelligence to achieve the purpose of bringing Russia down and the Gil Elbert's doctor over the years has mirror image the um the the the the argument um that's put out by the west about Russia, what Russia is, etc. He claims that he was supportive of Putin, but that he changed his mind, but he can't you know that the moment when he changed his mind is when MI6 changed their mind. uh when you so I would I would just say that um I can make a extraordinarily strong circumstantial case that Gilbert Doctoro's message mirror images the message coming out of uh out of um you know Voxhole um but but let me just say this uh you know the reason why Gilbert doesn't want to debate me and because I I read his his his counter you know you can't sit here and tell me that Russia that that that um that that Ukraine is winning the war, that Russia's losing the drone war and cite as evidence two German drone programs because he did he cited two specific German drone programs. He cited one from the secret factory in Munich and the other one was the ones that are blowing up the he said Germanmade drones with AI. These are his words. These programs don't exist. So, how can Gilbert do have any credibility when he's going to make an argument that Russia's losing a drone war to two non-existent German drone programs? And I pointed this out point by point by point by point, how ignorant he is about this. This is one of the problems, too, is that the the whole thing about drone wars is is is is a fiction. They're they're creating this fiction about Ukrainian capabilities that don't exist. the drones that Gilbert Doctoro is is, you know, spoke of, the Ukrainian military themselves have rejected those drones because those drones don't work. Why doesn't Gilbert do know this? Why is why does he feel, you know, the superficiality of his approach to read a New York Times uh article, misquote it, misrepresented, and hype it up to be something that it isn't. Um, this shows a a lack of seriousness. This shows a lack of of of discipline, of due diligence, of intellectual capacity to be honest. I mean, and then you have to say to yourself, somebody who has a PhD from what? Colombia, uh, and in in Harvard background, this is deliberate. So now I come back again, he is deliberately propagating propaganda. Um, this is not well-reasoned thought from a Harvard educated, Colombia educated intellectual. Um, no intellectual would would propagate the crap that he just propagated. This is a man who went through a Colombia PhD program. He's supposed to understand his geography. He's supposed to understand research. He supposedly has navigated his way through it. Hell, I read his thesis. Uh, he's navigates his way through archives. He knows how to do research and accumulate data. And he failed on the most basic points and he published it. So again, he's not an intellectual. He's putting out propaganda that mirrors the MI6 um, you know, messaging. So either he's one of the most inherently incompetent people in the world or he's an MI6 operative. It's one or the other, Joe.

>> Yeah, I have no I invite you to challenge him on the facts. That's great. But we have to just draw the lines when you make any kind of personal attack against him and call him an agent without having any fact. He's saying he's mirroring that what MI6 saying. That sounds fine to me. I just want to make it clear that we have some rules here about attacking.

>> But but Joe, I Joe, let me just let me put it this way and Rey can jump in. You know, I've been in the intelligence business for an awful long time. Okay, agent is a is a is a strange word um because, you know, it's it's often misused. What I will say is he's I don't believe is an MI6 officer. So I don't think he's in the employee of MI6. Now agents, you can be a knowing agent, you can be an unwitting agent. And the intelligence services are very good at going out and bringing in people and and using them to echo chambers, especially in the information warfare spectrum. So when I imply that Gilbert Doctr is mirroring this uh if he's doing it unwitting meaning that he is not knowingly cooperating or collaborating with MI6 that does not preclude the possibility that Gilbert Doctro is in fact operating as an agent of the in MI6 information operation because he is be part of the echo chamber whether he's a paid asset like half of the uh British media establishment or he's just somebody who is susceptible to inputs that he then echoes unwittingly. But I won't back away from the fact that his his messaging mirrors that of the of of being put out by MI6 today.

>> Okay. Well, thank you, Scott. Ray, you want to have a final word?

>> Let me Yeah, let me interject here. Um, I disagree with Scott on this. Uh, I think we need to make a 100 flowers bloom. Like Maetong said, I think we have an honest difference of opinion on this. I don't find any evidence that Gil DTO is working with intentionally or unintentionally. uh some of his views apparently coincide with what the British are putting out but but I would just say that uh we need to be respectful about other people's opinions and uh and I would also say that uh Gil worked as a a corporate manager in Russia for I think two or three decades after he got out of Colombia. So his experience is not just academic. It's uh from a very very intimate uh familiarity with Russia at that time and Russia now. And the only other thing I'll say is that I never heard of Gil Dtoro until the preeminent Soviet specialist Steven Cohen took me by the shoulder and said, "Ray, this is about 12 years ago. You're going to Russia, huh?" "Oh, you're going to a conference that Gil Toro is going to be there. I want you to meet him. I'll I'll write him an email because he's the best around. He knows Russia. He knows it in and out. He's got experience you can't you can't uh match and I want you to meet him and u you know see what he's got to offer for you and you know I think it would be really good for you to be in touch. Well, I did go to that meeting. I did meet Gil. I was impressed by him. He's a very knowledgeable guy and uh he's he's taken some of his lines of reasoning far too far for me. But that doesn't mean that I can't say well you know let me think about that and maybe Putin is under more pressure and as I said before I think he is. Uh so you don't have to agree with everything somebody says, but the notion that uh that he's saying something that some intelligence operatives are also saying, I don't agree with that. And so I'll respectfully disagree and hopefully not get into any uh any arguments with with my friend Scott over this. But yeah, I I not only disagree, I strongly disagree.

But Re, you're you're an intelligence professional, >> right? >> Okay. I know you are and I respect you and I respect the the the uh the trade craft of the CIA.

>> This is a Colombia educated historian, >> right? >> Who didn't do his due diligence. What does this tell you? I mean, you just told me this is a man of great intellect who knows Russia better than anybody else. He published something where his every fact was wrong. How do you deal with that?

>> Well, Scott, he was wrong on these uh specifics that you mentioned and you pointed that out and that was really good. Maybe he learned from that. But, you know, I have to confess I've been wrong and so have you. Even Joe Lori.

>> No, no, no, no, no. I have never been that wrong, Rey. I actually do my due diligence and when I, you know, I I have never made crap up. Okay. He committed to an article that says Russia has lost the war exclamation mark. And the major points to prove it were the drone activity and he manufactured two things that don't exist. Ray, this is not how a Colombia educated PhD person operates. You know this. I know that. And we can't sweep this under the rug.

>> Well, he got it from the New York Times. He got it from some respected. He didn't make it up for God's sake. So he was on those particulars, but give him a little slack. No, >> Ray. Ray, people are dying. Ray, people are dying. I don't give anybody slack. He's promoting >> He's promoting a line of thinking. He's promoting a line of thinking that could be extraordinarily dangerous. Extraordinarily dangerous. and uh he needs to be careful. He needs to be very careful with what he's doing. That's my take.

>> Okay, gentlemen, thank you very much for more than two and a half hours of wide range of discussion >> and >> I think it was enlightening on many points. So, I want to say uh goodbye and thank our audience for joining us. Kathy Boen, our producer, Ray McGovern in North Carolina, Scott Ritter somewhere in France, Joe Lori here in Cambodia saying goodbye. Please subscribe to the channel, donate to us on our during our summer fun drive, and we'll see you next Saturday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern time on the world this week. Goodbye. Get out your notebook. There's more.

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