Col Douglas Macgregor: The Problem Facing Putin Right Now

Vladimir Putin took time out of his schedule today to actually have a conversation, not just to answer questions, but to give an actual very detailed description of the battlefront as he sees it in the Ukraine war. There's been a lot of news here of late that Zalinsky has offered some new terms that he wants to limit the fighting only to the four oblasts that are that are part of what the the Russians said a couple years ago they want instead of the I think there's about seven or eight different ones where there's some fighting going on now. And kind of have a sort of semi ceasefire. President Putin first of all just dismissed that, but then he went into some detail about how he sees each of the areas of the battlefield, the key ones, especially. The question is, is he just giving a good spin on things or are things really going as well for the Russians as he seems to think on the battlefront? There is literally nobody better we can try to have to assess the truth of this. And Colonel Douglas McGregor, uh, defense and foreign policy analyst specialist, uh, also a former, uh, Secretary of Defense expert or adviser and highly decorated combat veteran. Doug, welcome back to the show.

>> Yeah, happy to be here.

>> Well, well, listen, let's uh let's just get right into the the first one here because Putin's going to go and really he talked about a number of things, but there are three main areas he's talked about. One up in Sumi in the north, uh one in Coupons in the northeast, uh and then there's also the the kind of the center, the the the big part of the entire eastern front is in the Slavian chromatours uh elomeration where they have kind of a fortress cities, and so we're going to take a look at each one of those. Here's what he said first of all about the Sunumi area in the north: let us start from the north, namely with the north grouping. Let me remind you that the goal for Russian troops in the sunumi and vchan Hansk directions is to create a security zone along our borders. This task was set after the AFU invasion of Korsk region and the continuing attacks on our border areas. The Ukrainian regime will pay for its crimes on Korsk soil with the loss of territory that we need to create a security zone in the border areas. A small city, in my opinion, more than 30,000 buildings, about 10.5 km remain to the city of Sunumi.

>> Now, this this one here sounds as much punitive as it does tactical in that he wants a security zone because it sounds like it's punishment for what happened in the Korsk region over about a seven or eight-month period, uh starting I think in 2024, 2025. Uh how important is that for the the conduct of the war overall for Russia?

>> Actually, I would argue it's more strategic. Uh there's a an understanding that's begun to set in with President Putin. I think that the territory has to be sufficient that there is no threat to Russian soil. So he's got to press further to the west and and further towards Kief. And effectively, that's what he's doing in Sunumi. So, it's not a question of, well, we're going to punish you by taking your territory away. No, we're going to guarantee our security by holding this territory and preventing you from using it as you wish. If you go back and remember that particular incident, the area into which the Ukrainians attacked was really devoid of people. You know, you had vast stretches of forest and woodland, very few villages, and almost no military strength whatsoever. So, it was a it was a great choice if you were trying to make a splash, which is what the Ukrainians have been doing now for the last three years, and try to create the illusion that somehow another you're winning something. There really wasn't much for them to win, and they expended a lot of manpower and capability for nothing. But the lesson was taken on board by the Russians. If we're going to get out of this war with what we fought for to begin with, we're going to have to secure it. And that means we're going to have to secure it with more territory than originally anticipated.

>> And G, if you can bring up that uh that map of the the Sunumi area. You see that Sumi kind of in the center in the golden area in the lower left and corner of it. But you see all the red stuff. That's what Russia has taken. Initially they took a lot of that in the short time after they drove the Ukraine side out of the coup out of the Korsk oblast in Russia. Then they started moving in. Then they kind of went, I don't know if they went to ground, but it didn't go very far. Now it seems that they're pushing again. Is this because Russia couldn't go further before or was it a decision that they made and now they're going to try to push further?

>> Well, I think you're talking about moving large numbers of forces around over a very very large area. I mean, this is sort of like a front that stretches from, you know, Ohio all the way to the Atlantic coast. And you're making decisions about where you want to concentrate and how much force you want to apply in what area. At the same time, you want to rotate forces. You want to keep them fresh, well equipped. You want to replace losses and you also want to return to duty any wounded. Dan, when you go through this, this this is a major war in a scale that we haven't seen since 1945. This may not be as large as the uh Nazi Soviet war, but you have many of the same problems which really amount to distance, infrastructure, logistical support, uh surveillance, security, all of those things play into this. So, I I would not read this, as I said before, as punitive. I would see this as a strategically necessary move. And this is uh not the end by any stretch of the imagination, as I think we'll find as we go through the rest of these.

>> And so the the first real question, can the Ukraine side prevent Russia from moving all the way up and taking Sunumi, which he said I think is about uh 10 or 12 kilometers still further?

>> No, of course not. That, you know, you'll hear these silly... Well, listen, we should talk a little bit more about this later on, but whenever you see the chorus of globalist voices, academic, political, uh military, whatever they happen to be in the west, that that begin to come on with the nonsense, well, Ukraine is winning and this is now a golden opportunity to throw back the Russians, well, you know, the situation is actually quite hopeless. And the reason they've all been sent out there to say this nonsense is to hopefully convince Donald Trump to send $90 billion to Ukraine. And the real tragedy here is that I think Trump is being more easily beguiled by the Europeans and this nonsense than he should be. This thing is over. The only thing that keeps it going, and it's like handing somebody uh sort of cups of gasoline to put enough into the engine to keep it idling, and it's not going to idle much longer. I mean, that's effectively the truth. But you know, you've got plenty of people in academia, people like Slot Cotkin and Ferguson and others who are only too happy to talk about, oh, the Ukrainians are winning. Or bring back Dave Petraeus, now the uh the newly anointed expert on drones and unmanned systems and how these...

>> Self anointed, I'll say.

>> Well, whatever. You know, and of course, all these people are in this together. They're all benefiting from it financially and have been for several years. That's all. Uh, and they're lying, to be blunt.

>> So, so let me how do you uh explain people like uh and we'll we'll say General Ben Hodes, and you you actually sent me a video the other day. I wish I had thought to cut it and put it in here, but he's like really going all out and saying, Mo, we have turned the tide. I mean, there has been a change of of inflection point and now things are going in Ukraine side and they're going to take back Crimea. What do you account for that? Uh, the Confederacy is marching on Gettysburg and will soon be on its way into Philadelphia. I mean, that's that's about it. Uh, I think it's ridiculous nonsense. Here's the problem that Putin confronts. It's a huge problem, and I think he's finally beginning to come to terms with it. He should have much much earlier. And, you know, I I think very highly of the Russian leadership, but I think this is a serious problem. If you tell people the truth and say, "Look, there's no massive movement of Ukrainians anywhere. They're not regaining anything. They're taking terrible losses. The place is on its last legs. It's on the verge of collapse, and the Russians are advancing." Then they say, "Well, why haven't they just marched west at high speed?" Well, the president of Russia really doesn't want to conquer that territory. He doesn't want to administer it. Uh he he's only interested in those areas that are historically Russian and are populated by Russians. Well, I don't believe that. I mean, if he had the ability to do this, he'd have done it. And because he hasn't done it, he doesn't have the capability. Now, stop and think about that. That's really the argument. It's like a lot of people standing on the on the ridge line, you know, uh yelling and screaming at people down in the valley. You you people down there have no guts at all. If you have any guts at all, come on up and get us. And at some point people in the valley say, "We've had enough of these idiots. We're going to go up there and get them." But it hasn't happened yet. At least we don't think it has. So that's really the Hajes argument. That's the Petraeus argument. You know, that's the Lindsey Graham argument. If they could have done it, they would have. If they haven't done it, they can't. Well, that's not true.

>> And And why isn't that true? Because that is I I hear that a lot in Washington DC among even some people who are otherwise kind of balanced in their view. They say that exact same thing because they say you said a year ago talking about was something that I said that the that the Ukraine army could finally just collapse and yet it never did and Russia never has moved on there. Ergo they can't. Why do you say that's not accurate?

>> Let me go back to another analogy. Uh in 1943 uh people said well the Soviets have gone as far as they can get. They can't go any further. In fact, the senior leadership in the German armed forces kept insisting that they just didn't have the logistical support, the mobility, and and so these various offensives exhaust themselves over this great territory. Then we can attack, regain control of it, but they neglected to point to something and that was American lend lease. We had provided billions and billions of lend lease in in enormous quantities, all sorts of metals, locomotives, but most important hundreds of thousands of trucks and jeeps and so forth. In fact, when the Germans reached Stalenrad in 1942, they were shocked to see all this American military equipment sitting around that the Russians had ridden in to Stalenrad on. The Russians at the time, the Soviets carefully edited all the film to ensure that none of the American equipment was ever shown to any of the audiences inside the Soviet Union. But the truth is it was very important. It took a while for the Germans to come to terms with reality. And I think that Putin has made a terrible mistake. Let's put it put it very bluntly. He has held back too long in the hopes of a negotiated settlement. He needs to realize there will be no negotiated settlement. That means he needs to advance. And any anytime you read any of the Russian newspapers, read the Russian media, listen to the Russian military experts, they all say the same thing. We have all the forces we need. We have all the equipment we need. We have all the ammunition we need. That we can do this. Let's do it. Get this over with. President Putin has not yet decided to do that. And he is still in command. And until he does, uh, you're going to see these incremental advances, but nothing spectacular. And unfortunately, it's the spectacular breakthrough and advance that is required to wake people in the West up.

>> Yeah. And and we're going to get to that next part there because there's two other areas that he's talking about on the along the line of contact that are really important to controlling the whatever happens next in Ukraine. What do you think about this theory that I've seen proper on some uh pro-Russian channels that that Putin has been aware of this from the beginning and he knew what needed to happen, but because he fears that it could eventually spawn a US I'm sorry, a NATO Russia war that they wanted to wait and build up over a period of a year and a half or so huge stockpiles of all different kinds of missiles, armaments, artillery, uh air defense missiles, all kinds of things and obviously drones. So that when they did make this big push, then all of a sudden NATO would be drained because they would have less stuff, and so that's what he's been playing for. That's obviously I can't prove any of that, but that is one of the theories out there. What do you think?

>> No, I think that's always been the case with him. He's always been concerned about it and talking to people that have recently returned from Russia. They all make the point that people there are convinced of an inevitable war with Europe. And this, of course, is based on the vacuous statements by the buffoons who currently govern Western Europe. The average Russian doesn't understand that NATO is an empty facade. The average Russian is unaware that no one in their right mind in Germany or France or England is interested under any circumstances in marching east to fight the Russians in Ukraine. It's nonsense. What they hear, they tend to believe. It's it's similar to what we were just discussing about people in the West. Well, if you have all this military power and you can crush your opponent, why don't you do it? The flip side of the coin is all these Europeans that have nothing to talk about. You know, you ever hear that you're a Texan or ever hear the old expression, uh, big hat, no cattle. Uh, that's what you're that's what you're talking about in Western Europe, big hats, no cattle. But the Russians are making the mistake of saying, "Uh, we need to be cautious and careful." Now, I think that's waning. In other words, I do think that's losing currency in Russia, if for no other reason, because there's a great deal of anger over these strikes that have managed to penetrate Russian air and and missile defense uh defenses in Russia. So, I think there's a great deal of anger. There's now a lot of pressure that wasn't there. I do not know though. I, you know, wish I were on receipt of uh the notes from the last general staff meeting in Moscow, what they said in the Stavka. I don't know what they're discussing, but my impression is also from the few sources I have that the general officer leadership of the Russian military is very very frustrated. They are very anxious to to launch major offenses and crush this once and for all. Well, that certainly is in a lot of their uh uh military journals that been able to get translated online through Google Translate. We'll see what's going to happen there. Let's move to the next area though because in the northeast corner in Coupons, uh that has been a big issue, too. About a year ago, Russians all but captured the city and then a series of counterattacks pushed Russia back. And at the time, every time they do one, the West and and Zalinsky specifically say, "Oh, we've got the Russians back on the run." But then after the headlines fade, they stop looking around and then Russia starts moving back up. Putin addressed that and said what they're going to do next: The West grouping, it has a large area of responsibility. I will begin with the city of Kian against the backdrop of whose rear representatives of the Kief regime like to arrange photo sessions. Our troops are at a distance of 2.5 to 4 to 5 km from the western edge of the city. The enemy has already undertaken a number of counterattacks. It had no success. The settlement of Ruptin, the next direction, the Rupov direction on the left bank of the Starry Oscll River. We have in fact practically blocked a mixed enemy grouping numbering about 5,000 people. It is pressed against the river. The first tank army of the Russian armed forces is advancing and pressing the enemy from the north. The third motor rifle division is pressing from the east and the 144th division from the south and until complete encirclement. Everything there is under fire control until full final encirclement about 2 kilometers remain. And Gary, if you could put that Kian's map up there, you can see what he's talking about physically portrayed here where there is movement on the Russian side on the north side, uh on directly on the east side, and most of Kian is now in the red area, and then in the south where there's additional movement here into some new gray zones, but it's it hasn't been a whole lot different from that at least in the last couple of months. Is this another area where we expect to see some actual movement coming up in the in the rest of the summer? Well, he pointed out that uh the areas that are to the west of Kian that you go back to that map and just look at that sort of uh it looks like South America in outline. Uh that that's under fire control and this this addresses Russian military tactics. He's interested has always been interested in and remains interested in minimizing Russian losses and casualties. We keep exaggerating them out of all proportional reality. They aren't heavy. But what he wants to do is that he wants to bring an area under control of fire. That means that anything that moves out there is going to be taken under immediate fire, uh and accurate devastating firepower will kill it or destroy it or neutralize it. That's in preparation for movement across it. So I think yeah, he's talking about uh we've got all that we need there under control. Will build up and at the right point in time we'll move.

Okay. Well, that's Putin, is it not? And that very deliberative uh approach and methodical approach is something that has been cultivated inside the Russian armed forces. You got to remember if you go back to the beginning of this whole thing, the Russians were criticized by observers for being not as well organized and coordinated as they needed to be, of taking losses uh that they shouldn't have and so forth. Well, those days are over and he's not going to waste manpower at this point or resources unnecessarily. Now, again, does he have in the back of his mind this NATO threat, Dan? I'm sure he probably still does, even though I don't see any evidence for it in reality. Having said that, he was talking about the Oscll and Starry Rivers. I've seen some reports of a lot of mercenaries, in other words, non-Ukrainians in Ukrainian uniform operating in those areas. Saw a report recently there could be as many as 50,000 or more uh non-Ukrainians in uniform fighting inside the Ukrainian army on the ground. And this is not surprising. The Ukrainians are running out of manpower. It's easier to let MI6 and CIA pay the foreigners to come in and fight for Ukraine, which is what's happened. So, I think that too is is not lost on the Russians. And they made it very clear if you're in Ukrainian uniform and you are a mercenary, you are going to be treated as the worst form of life on the planet, which means you're probably going to be executed.

>> And and you know, I I just got to ask a question on that, Doug. Why in the world would anybody I don't care how much money you put, when nobody can be uh disabused about how big the casualties are on the Ukraine side and how just meat grinderish the front line especially is. Why do you think you at where do you get 50,000 if that's the number or any number of thousand willing to go into this for money when there's not much prospect they're going to be able to spend it?

>> Well, I you know Dan I don't have the answer because I'm not somebody like that and I'm not in that position. So I don't have an easy answer for it. The point is they continue to find people that will do it. And if you wave enough money in somebody's face and you arrange to have that money sent somewhere potentially back to somebody's family or to some, you know, numbered bank account, that may be enough. I I don't know.

>> Well, yeah, I'm not one of them either. I I just it's puzzles me. But u Okay. Well, let's move on to the bigger because the biggest area not not just Sunumi, not Kyansk as important as they are, although the Sunumi is pretty important because of its location and that would be near the Russian army to to Kiev. So that put more pressure, but really the the anchor of the entire eastern front is in the Slavian promistors elomeration and that Putin gave a lot of interest to that one: The third army of the south grouping is moving toward the city of Slavansk at good pace. It entered the settlement of Nikolai about 8 to 9 kilometers remain to Slavansk itself. The offensive is proceeding successfully in 15 sectors. Every day our troops are advancing in this direction.

>> Now, what do you make, Gary, if you could put that map up as well, the the Slavian chromator map. Uh what do you make of of the fact that Putin is going through and given this very detailed and by the way, I don't know if you noticed, but he doesn't he's not given from any kind of uh notes or anything else. It's all extemporaneous and he has a lot of detail to include what units are where, uh which villages they're at. I mean that this was actually pretty impressive to me that he has that level of knowledge of detail. But the fact that he's coming out now, this is to my knowledge maybe it's happened before but I've never seen him come out and give this kind of detail on a on a section by section of the front and focus it right here on the Slavian chromatours. Uh first of all can you tell us why this area is so important? Well, these three cities that are in that area that's shaded in yellow are the so-called fortress cities of Ukraine. This is the in in theory the last line of serious defense for the Ukrainian state against uh the Russians. They've been working to build this area up for 15, 14, 15, 16 years. Now, the the other thing I would call everybody's attention to is to go down to the lower right hand corner and you see this infamous place called Bachmoot. And some of your viewers will remember what a terribly bloody battle that was. And that was an important turning point because once the Russians did seize it at cost, uh they opened up the way to go to where they are now. This is the last major hurdle as far as Russian general staff is concerned. Once these fortress cities fall, there is really no logistical infrastructure north, south, east, west, nothing is going to survive. Uh, you know, on the Ukrainian side. In other words, this is a what's the right I don't want to say center of gravity. It's very clouds of more than that. It's more than just a center of gravity. It's a serious open wound. It's not going to happen immediately, but I can only begin to imagine the firepower that will be poured into that place to utterly obliterate it before the Russian forces move into it.

>> And what do you think psychologically what what would they especially as you point out they've had this from uh this a lot of this goes back to the 2014 civil war that began after that where some of these construction start and certainly during the mint periods forward uh this was turned into these fortress cities. If the Ukraine side lost them, what impact might that have on the remainder of the Ukrainian army?

>> Well, the Ukrainian arm is in pretty bad shape as it is. I'm sure that'll crush morale and there will be a mass flight to the west. Uh I don't know of any other defensive lines that are out there that are going to present much resistance. So, we'll have to wait and see. I mean, you know, the tough thing on this battlefield is that once you've been identified and you're targeted, you have a choice. You can either die where you are or you can get up and try to run away and die. In other words, it's a per it's a terrible situation. There's no escape. And that's that's what you want if you're attacking. And that's the position the Russians are in right now. So the people that are down in those fortress cities, they've had it. Their lives are uh you know going to run out very shortly. Now having said all that, this is important question. You say well what's the larger impact? In 1917 towards the end, when the when the government changed hands, Kinsky was pushed out and in came the Boleviks. The Bolsheviks then decided they wanted to negotiate with the Imperial German general staff. And so the German general staff met with them in a town called Brelatk in what used to be eastern Poland or very very western Russia. Anyway, Preslatk was a site, and the Boleviks tried to tried to negotiate for time. In other words, they weren't terribly serious at the time. A General Hofflan who was in charge called Ludenorf who was the chief of staff and said, you know, these these criminals were talking to, which is what they were, murderers, boleviks, and so forth. Uh they're wasting our time, and we we need to get this over with. And Ludenorf said fine. And then he sent 400,000 troops in the direction of Moscow. All of a sudden, Lenin sends Trosky to breast Latasque, tells Trosky to sign whatever the Germans put in front of him and stop the war because he knew he would not survive and neither would the Bolevik revolution if the Germans moved on Moscow. Now, I think that's something that that Putin needs to learn from. He needs to understand the value of what the Germans did in 1918 in January. Uh because remember those 400,000 troops were ultimately moved to the west. As it turned out, they couldn't tip the balance in Germany's favor because of us. We entered the war late. We came in in 1918. The rest is history. But he needs to understand the value of saying being serious to say, "Okay, enough's enough. March on Kief. Head for Kief. Be done with this." Now, if he wants to go to Odessa instead, that's fine. Caroff, it it's a non-entity. You can keep it under observation, but you've got to get to the jugular. You've got to demonstrate that you can do it. And that is really the message that he should be getting from everybody in the West who's essentially say, "See, you're not strong. See, you can't do anything. You're you're failing. All we have to do is keep supplying these uh you know Ukrainian gangsters with whatever they want. You're never coming." Well, he's got to change that perception. He's got to do do now what the Germans did in January 1918. If he does, he'll win. If he doesn't, this will drag on. Now, it it could be that some of that message is getting through at least to the Ukrainian side because there have been reports out mainly leaked uh by President Putin himself that Zalinsky has profered a couple of new opportunities says hey how's about this? What if we just we can keep the war going in these four blasts that you say you're going to annex and all that kind of stuff, but then we'll stop shooting long range at you. You'll stop shooting long range at us and we'll stop fighting in the sunumi and the karkov and the depot patrol scaras all that, so we'll just keep it on those four. What do you say? And of course the Russians mocked that just like they did when the request for unconditional ceasefire was offered about two years ago. They said no, we're not going to do that. And then uh Dmitri Pescov in an interview this morning addressed the bigger issue of where the Russians are on the negotiations.

>> Our position has not changed. It was set out two years ago by our head of state in a speech at the Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs before its senior staff. It is well known to the Kiev regime and it is well known to the US negotiators. It is quite consistent. It it's those terms, Doug, that you and I have been talking about since June 2024. The June 2024 lines, which has never changed, which is the four Oblasts, demilitarization, denazification, and uh the the Russians get protections for their people inside there, etc. Um, and they said it hadn't changed. And so, if we get all of that stuff we're asking for, you withdraw from all those areas is fine. So, if the Russians haven't changed in all that time, does that tell you that they're a little bit more confident about what may be coming next? I can't say. I would hope so. But I think the the bottom line for the Russians is that this government in Kief, which is not legitimate, not popularly elected, is more oppressive than Stalin's government, more vicious, and more destructive. This government in Kief is not going to cooperate, accommodate anything that the Russians want unless they think they could go out of existence. And I go back to my example of Lenon. Why did Lenin throw caution to the wind, say sign whatever they want, and effectively give up a third of European Russia to the Germans and Austrians? Well, very clearly it was either do that or the Germans were going to come and exterminate him. It's a tragedy for the world that he didn't do that. Tragedy for Russia that he didn't do that. But the bottom line is that's Putin's lesson that he has to draw from history. They don't feel threatened. You know, I mean, what difference does it make to them how many of their countrymen die? What difference does it make to them how many people the CIA and the MI6 can round up, recruit, and pay for? What difference does it make to him? Uh, you know, what the what the human trafficking tragedy is in Ukraine? What difference does it make to them, Silinski and his friends? How many people leave the country? Uh, you know, come to terms with the reality. You you're dealing with all the worst things you can imagine in Kief. So expecting them to take seriously anything you say short of either sign give it up or we will crush you is foolish. It's just foolish. And I hope that President Putin takes this on board. He needs to understand in 1918 the Germans were right and uh they got what they wanted as a settlement. That's what he needs to do. Same thing. You're not going to get there by sitting quietly and telling everybody, uh, well, we've got everything we need. We're ready to go, but we're concerned about a potential war with NATO. We don't want to risk that. Well, if you don't want a war with NATO, how about demonstrating that anybody that goes to war with Russia is insane. The best way to do that is to march west. You know, and ironically, Doug, it's not that I'm for Russia, but the this dithering that we've done and this allowing it to drag on all this time just has a profoundly higher death toll of Ukrainians, of Ukrainian citizens, and it's just destroying the country. And for their sake, that's one of the reasons why I do wish this could get over uh by whatever means as soon as possible. Well, if it were possible to resurrect Ulissiz Srant and put him in Russian uniform, uh, I would recommend that Putin look into that because that would be Grant's answer, you know, unconditional surrender. Stop the nonsense or we're going to crush you. That's how we won the Civil War. People don't realize that, but the last year the Civil War was terrible. Very, very brutal. Had to be. And it wasn't because you Grant wanted it to be that way. He didn't particularly hate Southerners and he was a slave owner. Nobody knows this stuff. But he knew the war had to end.

>> You know, that's what he understood. So maybe it's time to channel US Grant in Moscow.

>> Well, we may find out pretty soon. We'll see what happens next. Uh before I let you go today though, uh I want to just kind of touch on one of the one development in the uh US Iran US Israel Iran war, uh and that is President Trump's attempt to get a settlement. He said on true social yesterday that Iran had asked for a meeting in Qatar. So he's since Steve Whit and and Jared Kushner over there. The Iranians said yeah actually I did not request it to a meeting and we don't have a meeting planned with you. We're going to Qar to talk about getting our money released but whatever. Uh the Qatari said that today there was no meeting between the US and that, but Trump keeps talking about it. That was the Qatari foreign minister, uh right there making that statement there. So there's not really any talking going on at least not between the two parties. But the whole thing, Doug, I think that if you can have one fulcrum to where this whole war rest, it's on Israel and Lebanon because that's literally point one of theou. Uh and we've had lots of issues where President Trump said I told him what to do and they can't fight, and then uh the Israeli sides ignore that. And then we had this weird dynamic where the vice president advance is trying to get theou signed which has point number one that Israel has to end the fighting in Lebanon. And then you had Secretary of State Rubio go out sign a different deal with Lebanon, the government of Lebanon not Hezbollah, Israel and the US, which has a complete different set of things and works the contrary to that. But here's the big problem. As of there was a a a video released today by the uh by Benjamin Netanyahu where he's addressing some of his soldiers in Lebanon. And he makes clear here he has no intention of ever leaving Lebanon. For you. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. I I don't know if you can read all that down there, but he's telling them all, listen, the most important thing is our security zone in Lebanon. Said, we've killed a bunch of them, but not all of them. And just like we did in Gaza, we created a whole security zone. And we're going to do that there. Not in our country, but in in Lebanon. We're going to clear this stuff out and we are going to keep it. Can we reach an agreement, whether it's Rubio's version or JD Vance's version, if we don't get Israel to leave?

>> Oh, of course not. U let's understand a couple of things. Fortress Israel now has to live in a state of permanent conflict and war. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Look carefully at the audience to whom he was addressing himself. I mean that that picture is worth a million words. I've never seen a more entropic, unenergetic, exhausted and depressed group of men in uniform.

>> It it looks like one of these NTC afteraction...

>> Right.

>> ...to one of the worst battalions that has ever been through the NTC. Uh the only thing that's missing, well I guess it's not really missing is that after you they're all there. They know this is a catastrophe. They know they've lost and then said, "No, you guys really have done a good job here. I don't want you to leave here feeling that you failed." Well, they have failed. Uh this has been a complete failure. It's not going to change. So I think the Israelis are now caught up in this permanent conflict. Uh we and the Israeli government have bribed and bullied uh people in the the new Lebanese government to do whatever we want. It's meaningless. The new government is a treasonous organization that is selling out the country that effectively consigned everything south of the Latani River and probably more to the Israelis. So they they have no legitimacy. Uh I I think we need to understand something. This is not a peace agreement. It was never meant to be a peace agreement. Theou was structured to address points that everybody agreed were at least in theory achievable. Well, they're not. And even though we have been defeated militarily in the Gulf, I don't see much evidence that President Trump is comfortable with that outcome. And I think what you have is a situation where whenever it suits us to undermine, attack or destroy something that belongs to Iran, we will do it. And I think the Iranians, uh, you know, need to come to terms with that. Uh we have to understand that President Trump is masterful with regard to how he manipulates markets. And you saw that, uh the attacks he launched were launched after the business day on Friday in New York City closed and the market was closed, and the Iranians foolishly responded to that attack before Monday. They shouldn't have. They should have waited till Monday or Tuesday where it would have had a direct impact on the markets. President Trump is very sensitive to the markets. It's not just because of the fall elections. He needs some measure of hope and balance in the marketplace to hold this faltering economy together. I mean, we we actually had in the first quarter of uh 2025 negative growth, uh on in terms of GDP. We're we're going to see more of that in the future. We we've got real problems here at home. Now, what does all of this mean to the Iranians? Well, the Iranians are not they have won in the Gulf, although they're going to be continually under fire, at least until the UAE, if it wants to exist, and and cuts the deals that are being discussed behind the scenes with Iran to include sending billions of dollars to the Iranians. That really is their money. We we refuse to give it up. So, the UAE and I think Bahrain have both said to Iran, we'll we'll get you the money. And they're filtering that money to the Iranians. If they can make that work and they can get the Saudis to abandon any dumb ideas of continuing cooperation with us, then I think they might achieve some degree of stability in the Gulf region. But the war and the center of gravity in the war has now shifted northward that that now focuses on both Lebanon and Syria. And this this is important because you know who is sitting right on the on the edge, the Turks. And the Turks remain the 800 pound gorilla. The Turks are taking measures to ready themselves for a potential conflict with the Israelis. Now, the Turks have been bribed and they've taken the bribes. They've gone along with what we wanted them to in order to satisfy the Israeli need, but they're reaching the end point. And I think everybody in the region who's been bribed or bullied by us or the Israelis to cooperate with the Israelis are all in the same boat more or less. I don't I don't know what the tipping point is. I don't know when you get to it, but I don't think it's that far off. And I think we have to keep in mind that Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett and Benavir and others have very cavalerely attacked the Turks and threatened them and openly stated that they are quote unquote next on the menu. Well, Israel has not swallowed the Iranian meal. It's not going to. And if they keep this up, they could easily have Turks on the menu in ways that they would rather not see. It is us. We're the key to protecting Israel from this imminent disaster. And the real question now is, can we do that? Because we can't defeat Iran in the south over the Gulf. Are we now shifting our emphasis to the north where we're going to work with the Israelis, the Kurds, or anybody else we can find who is trying to destroy Iran? I suspect we're going to do that. The real question is how long does everybody else up there wait until they say enough's enough and they join in the fight? I I don't know, but I think it's coming.

>> And you know the I don't I just don't understand what the it seems to me better question is that the White House seems to be paralyzed not knowing what to do. I mean, you you got JD Vance going one way, Marco Rubio going another way. President Trump literally just just talking nonsense about, oh yeah, they're begging a meeting and oh well, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is staying in in in Lebanon. So, that is going to prevent anything from being worked out. That has big negative consequences for the United States because the longer we don't get that trade open on a full basis, and right now it's only partially open, that's going to have negative economic implications for us. Is you had uh uh you showed us a chart here. I wonder if you could explain what that danger is.

>> Well, we'll get to the chart in a second. I think we have to understand that President Trump's excursions into fiction and fantasy land have worked. Have to understand that. In other words, he says, uh, we're we're going to have a peace deal. And everybody says, great, we're going to have a peace deal. The markets, you know, rebound, the cost of oil goes down. Everybody says, you know, peace is coming. Interest rates stabilize. I don't know how much longer he can do that, but he's been very successful thus far, and that's all he really cares about. Everything else he says is irrelevant. Don't pay any attention to it. None of it's true. Uh the big mistake you can make is to follow him from day to day to day. Uh...

>> Which we do.

>> ...sort of a a roller coaster ride to nowhere. Uh he's not interested in any lasting or enduring relationship with anybody in the region other than Israel, and that's all financial and economic as far as he's concerned, and he sees his own future tied to that and he likes to think that ours is. Well, I agree with you. We our strategic interests are not served by any of this, but it doesn't matter what I think, doesn't matter what most Americans think. Look at the polls. We don't count. The only people that count are the people sitting on the hill that are being well paid for their Israeli report, and of course the White House. And uh you've got plenty of senior officers in the in the military who are quite anxious to be Israel firsters so they too can be promoted. So let let's be frank, that's where we are right now. I don't see any of that changing immediately. However, there is something else going on that nobody's paying attention to. And the chart that you mentioned, if you want to put it up, look at what this thing says. Treasury rollover risk now runs into the trillions. Privately held marketable US Treasury debt maturing within one year. Within one year, trillions of dollars. Look at the bottom. 1980, 2020, 2021, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Uh how do you how do you suppress interest rates? We don't really control interest rates anymore. They are rising and they are continuing to rise. It's already 4% for a one-year Treasury. In our inabil given our inability to sell treasuries at the 10-year and above maturity levels, we're trying to have rapid turnover of treasuries. This is the Scott Bessent uh model for avoiding consequences. I don't think it's going to happen much longer. So I I don't I'm not an economist, but I do take comfort in John Kenneth Goldber's famous remark that economic forecasting exists to make astrologers look respectable. So I don't believe anything that the economists say, but I do believe charts like this, and I don't think we're going to escape the consequences of our foolish actions over many, many years now. This more than anything else may change the complexion of everything we do because at some point you have to park all the ships in harbor. At some point you have to bring the forces back. At some point you can't just spend spend spend which is what we've been doing. And this $1.5 trillion defense budget which will include a $350 million plus up from pork. I don't see that happening. I it'll all collapse. But I've been wrong before, so we'll see.

>> We'll see. But the those, like you say, the the numbers are what they are, and they're definitely I mean, you see that chart from 1980 all the way up through just going higher and higher. It there is a li there is a limit at some point. You you have to have a collapse from all that weight. Um it hadn't happened yet and who knows how much longer it can go and Trent can ride this, but uh we're rolling and with a gamble of our own financial security as a result. We'll have to see how it works out, but we always appreciate you coming on and giving us this no kidding analysis that you see, Doug. Thank you.

>> Thank you, Dan.

>> And we appreciate you guys, too. As you see, I'm on on the road again. I'm in Amsterdam right now, uh here in support of my wife who's doing some uh some diplomatic training, as a matter of fact. Uh so, I'll be here most of the week. Um one place or another, but the show will go on. We're going to continue to have this uh this show because there's too many things going on in the world and we just can't take the take the time off. So, look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Daniel Davis deep dive. You know, I don't try to talk you into buying gold or tell you how to run your stock portfolio, but there is a way you can help us. Subscribe, hit that like button, and share this with somebody you love.