Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / After the Sign Came Down: Davos, Declining Rules, Rising Force, and the World’s Quiet Exit Plans

Transcript

After the Sign Came Down: Davos, Declining Rules, Rising Force, and the World’s Quiet Exit Plans · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

0:00
Hello, good morning, welcome.
0:03
I'm Samuel Trapp.
0:04
This is International Flavor.
0:06
You are listening to DAM Radio.
0:09
DAM, glad to have you this morning, live
0:11
from the Lake Ozark Real Estate of the
0:13
Art Studio.
0:15
Feel free to phone in.
0:16
I might even answer.
0:19
I don't like to answer, but sometimes I
0:21
do.
0:21
It just depends.
0:23
And it's 573-746-8020.
0:28
And I tell you what, I've been watching
0:31
the Davos with interest, with a great deal
0:37
of interest, in fact, because it's a topic
0:39
that I enjoy.
0:40
It's economics.
0:41
I got my degree from the old University
0:44
of Illinois.
0:44
You remember Tom Cruise in Risky Business when
0:48
he said at the end, looks like University
0:51
of Illinois, when he wasn't going to get
0:53
accepted to Princeton or wherever he was trying
0:55
to get to, Stanford, who knows.
0:57
And he had the party and he just
0:59
said, looks like University of Illinois.
1:02
Well, that's where my economics degree and my
1:06
Russian studies focus is from.
1:11
And so University of Illinois, you know, geez,
1:15
it's a depressing, a depressing debacle when you
1:18
only get a degree from University of Illinois,
1:20
not from Princeton.
1:21
But I'm not Tom Cruise.
1:23
So there you have it.
1:24
And I didn't get to slide in to
1:27
a room to Bob Seger in my undies
1:29
and a shirt, you know.
1:31
Although I did get to wear a flight
1:33
suit on many occasions.
1:35
So there you have it.
1:38
And you know what?
1:39
It really did work.
1:40
Wearing a flight suit and, you know, having
1:43
short hair in the military and flying in
1:45
in a helicopter into Love Field in Dallas.
1:49
Very good for your love life.
1:51
I can tell you that.
1:52
That is very good for your love life.
1:55
And I highly recommend going out and purchasing
1:58
a flight suit, buying your own helicopter and
2:01
going, or the simple version, join the military,
2:05
join up, as they say, and head to
2:09
Love Field in your helicopter like I did
2:11
Friday night.
2:12
I would schedule training for the pilots and
2:15
they would have to train by flying me
2:17
from Fort Hood, Texas to Love Field, Dallas,
2:22
a couple hour flight, helicopter hour, hour and
2:25
a half maybe.
2:26
And then I would have them train on
2:29
Sunday evening and fly to Love Field and
2:33
just happen to hop back in the helicopter
2:35
and get a ride back to, I mean,
2:39
they had to train anyway, right?
2:41
I mean, geez, how are they going to
2:42
be pilots without getting flight hours?
2:44
That's how it worked.
2:46
And since I was in charge of who
2:48
got trips to Love Field, well, that's what
2:54
I did.
2:54
And I spent weekends in Dallas.
2:56
Those were fun times.
2:58
That was a great deal of fun.
3:00
At any rate, that's not the topic for
3:01
today.
3:02
Thievery of military resources, which it really wasn't,
3:07
but there you go.
3:09
We're going to talk about Davos and some
3:13
of the changes that are being signaled there.
3:20
I truly have been watching and I pay
3:24
attention to this stuff because it's of interest
3:26
to me.
3:26
I hope it's of interest to you here
3:28
from the Lake Ozark Real Estate of the
3:30
Art Studio because it should be if it
3:33
isn't.
3:34
The world is a changing and the story
3:38
here in America is only what Donald Trump
3:42
talked about at Davos and how he dominated
3:45
the forum and stuff like that.
3:47
And he spoke.
3:50
I'm going to get into his speech a
3:52
little bit too.
3:52
I'm not going to play any of those
3:53
speeches.
3:54
There's too many, but I'm going to focus
3:56
on five of them.
3:57
It's my last day of the week as
3:58
far as the radio program.
4:01
And I won't be back till Monday and
4:03
7.30 to 9 on damn radio.
4:06
And you can always listen to my shows
4:08
at internationalflavor.com because I save them all
4:11
and upload them all up there.
4:13
But of great interest to me has been
4:15
the speeches, at least the key speakers.
4:18
Donald Trump is a keynote speaker.
4:21
I'm going to focus on several more.
4:23
Yesterday, I told you a little bit about
4:25
if you were with me yesterday morning, you
4:29
already know what I'm talking about.
4:30
We listened to Mark Carney's speech from the
4:33
Canadian guy from Davos, his speech at Davos.
4:37
And whether you like the guy or not,
4:38
whether you agree with me or not, whether
4:40
you agree with his politics or not, he
4:42
did something almost nobody does ever in the
4:46
world.
4:47
He told the truth out loud, no political
4:50
spin, no nothing, no emotion, no ideology, no
4:53
structural.
4:54
You can go out to YouTube and listen
4:55
to his speech directly.
4:57
It was a great speech.
4:58
And for the guy, you know, I've never
5:02
been real impressed with him, not ideological, but
5:04
structural.
5:05
He said the quiet part that nobody ever
5:08
says, he said it very plainly, the rules
5:11
-based alleged international order worked because everybody pretended
5:18
that it worked.
5:20
Everybody knew the rules were applied unevenly, he
5:23
said.
5:24
Everybody knew the strongest U.S., any high
5:29
-level allies exempted themselves from such rules when
5:34
it's convenient.
5:35
But the middle powers, countries like Canada, they
5:37
say they went along to get along.
5:39
They were an integral part of it.
5:43
You know, deep state BS, that they put
5:46
the sign in the window, as he called
5:48
it, complied and hoped that their protection of
5:52
the system would last.
5:53
And Carney said that that bargain was over.
5:55
So today we're not going to relitigate that.
5:58
If you want to hear that, go back
5:59
and listen to his speech on YouTube.
6:01
Mark Carney, YouTube, full speech, Davos.
6:04
Check that out.
6:05
But that's assumed knowledge for today's dive into
6:10
more.
6:11
Today is what happens after, in his allegations,
6:14
you know, we put the sign in the
6:15
window, but that sign was taken down because
6:18
Davos this year didn't show us a new
6:21
world order.
6:22
It shows five views of the reaction of
6:26
the collapse of the old world order.
6:30
And that's what this show is about.
6:32
We're going to walk through what leaders actually
6:34
said in their own words, what they thought
6:36
they were, you know, when they thought they
6:38
were speaking to power, not to voters.
6:40
Because remember, this isn't for the voters.
6:44
This is for big money.
6:46
This is for people who pay attention to
6:48
macroeconomics worldwide, and how the system is going
6:53
to work.
6:53
And Donald Trump was blunt.
6:55
And these other people are, we're, I'll get
6:59
to each one of them.
7:00
First, we're going to hear from China.
7:02
We're going to talk about China, not the
7:04
cartoon version, not the Twitter version, but the
7:07
actual institutional voice of China.
7:10
Calm, restrained, very boring almost, on purpose.
7:15
The Chinese vice premier did not come to
7:19
sell a bricks, you know, let's everybody switch
7:23
to something else.
7:24
He didn't pound the table.
7:26
He didn't threaten anyone.
7:27
The Chinese don't do that.
7:29
He warned quietly what happens when the rules
7:33
die, like we're watching right now.
7:35
And what he didn't say is as important
7:38
as what he did say.
7:40
Okay.
7:41
But we're going to go to Europe also.
7:43
And Europe is very split, very split.
7:46
Emmanuel Macron sounds like a man who finally
7:49
understands that, you know, values won't stop tariffs,
7:52
and speeches don't stop tanks.
7:54
He isn't romantic anymore.
7:56
He isn't pretending openness is protection.
7:59
He is building, hopefully, an armor for the
8:01
French people.
8:02
That's what he's trying to show.
8:03
Ursula von der Leyen is the same idiot
8:05
she always is.
8:06
I mean, she's the same old, everything's great.
8:10
You know, we're the EU and everything is
8:13
fine.
8:14
And, you know, daddy's here.
8:16
You know, she didn't say that, but she
8:17
did.
8:19
I mean, nothing.
8:20
She's talking about deals and celebrating process and
8:23
how it works.
8:24
And now the EU is there.
8:26
She avoided name, avoided Trump, avoided blame, avoided
8:29
power.
8:30
If Macron is talking about surviving, she's talking
8:33
about, oh, geez, you know, we're still powerful.
8:35
She's nuts.
8:36
You know, they're crazy.
8:37
Then when we go to Finland, this is
8:39
reality.
8:40
Okay.
8:40
This is where it gets some interesting.
8:41
Alexander Stubbe is what's happening when you live
8:44
next to real power.
8:46
Okay.
8:46
Real history, real consequences.
8:50
Remember, that area of the world that is
8:53
Europe, especially Eastern Europe, has been overrun for
8:56
centuries.
8:58
They have centuries age old disputes.
9:02
Trust me, Russia didn't forget World War II
9:07
and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, all those places
9:11
that were overrun by both sides as Russia
9:15
defended basically the world and came through and
9:20
kind of sucked in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
9:23
They haven't forgotten.
9:24
And trust me, Russia hasn't forgotten.
9:26
The rest of the world seems to forget
9:28
that Germany was the dominant part in that
9:30
and not Russia.
9:34
You know, that Russia is the enemy and
9:35
they always have been.
9:36
Well, that's true for certain areas of the
9:39
world.
9:40
The Polish Lithuanian Empire, for sure, if you
9:43
know your history and you go back 500,
9:46
600 years, they were always at each other's
9:48
throats.
9:48
They've hated each other for centuries.
9:52
And so Finland is right there in the
9:55
middle of it.
9:55
Now, Finland, well, not in the middle, Latvia,
9:58
Lithuania, Estonia.
9:59
That would have been interesting to find somebody
10:00
from there, but they never showed up.
10:02
You know, they're as dumb as a von
10:04
der Leyen.
10:05
But after all that, all we have to
10:06
hear, restraint, fear, denial, these kind of things
10:09
and realism, do we get to Trump?
10:11
Because Trump makes no sense until you hear
10:14
him last.
10:15
You got to hear him last.
10:16
He's the keynote speaker.
10:18
He spoke an hour and 10 minutes or
10:20
something, maybe longer.
10:22
And it was a good speech.
10:23
It was a decent speech, but all Trump,
10:27
all Trump, all the time.
10:28
He's not wrong about the leverage that he
10:30
levels against the world.
10:33
He's wrong about the consequences.
10:35
What happens next?
10:37
He thinks he's saving the planet.
10:40
I disagree.
10:41
And maybe I'll convince you.
10:43
I don't care if I do or don't.
10:44
Truthfully, it's not my job to convince you.
10:48
It's my job to give you an alternative
10:49
thought process to let you think a different
10:52
way, perhaps.
10:53
Okay.
10:54
That's that we want, you know, this is
10:56
some of the parts that Americans don't generally
10:59
see.
10:59
We see gas prices, which are fantastic in
11:02
our favor.
11:03
We don't see the scaffolding that's cracking underneath
11:05
the very foundation.
11:08
We don't see it.
11:09
And Trump didn't end globalism.
11:11
He's privatizing it.
11:12
He's personalizing it.
11:14
It's Trump's world right now.
11:16
And he's replacing institutions with himself.
11:20
And that works until it no longer works.
11:24
So today we aren't talking about personalities.
11:27
We know Trump's personality.
11:28
I may still talk about it because Jesus,
11:31
it takes over everything for this guy.
11:33
And I don't dislike him.
11:35
Remember that.
11:35
I do not dislike him.
11:38
I might not even dislike some of the
11:40
results that he's getting worldwide, but I disagree
11:45
with his methods.
11:46
So we're not talking personalities.
11:48
We are talking methods.
11:50
And we're talking about outcomes, long-term outcomes,
11:53
macro-level outcomes.
11:55
China is giving warnings.
11:57
Europe is bracing itself one way or the
12:00
other.
12:00
Middle powers are trying to get organized.
12:02
And Trump is pushing hard.
12:06
And alternatives are growing quietly in the background.
12:10
This isn't about left and right.
12:12
It's about whether force produces obedience, temporarily, by
12:18
the way, or creates exit strategies.
12:25
That's Davos after Carney.
12:28
Carney was one of the first speakers.
12:31
And he started the playing field.
12:33
So let's get into it, okay?
12:37
We're going to get into a guy's name,
12:39
and I know I don't pronounce it right,
12:42
but I don't speak Chinese.
12:43
His name is He Le Feng, I think.
12:46
And he was at Davos, okay?
12:48
And he's the vice premier.
12:51
And why China is going first.
12:53
China is opening this sequence because China is
12:56
non-emotional.
12:58
When you listen to Chinese state-run people
13:05
or state, you know, the voice of the
13:09
government, it is always calm.
13:12
It's been calm.
13:13
It's been steady for centuries.
13:19
The Chinese don't come out of their territory.
13:24
They just don't.
13:25
When's the last time you heard about the
13:26
Chinese attacking anything except stuff that we create?
13:30
That, you know, all Jews are going to
13:32
take over Taiwan.
13:33
That's a dispute that we don't need to
13:34
be part of.
13:35
Never should have been.
13:36
We started that.
13:38
And we have been holding Taiwan.
13:40
We have been backing the regime since World
13:43
War II, basically, that is still part of
13:47
China.
13:48
And sometimes it goes back and forth.
13:50
So, China's messaging is not, here's our new
13:53
world order.
13:54
It's saying that if you keep on doing
13:57
this the way you're doing it, there won't
13:59
be one.
14:00
That distinction is important because what He Le
14:05
Feng actually came to do, he did not
14:07
come to.
14:08
He didn't come.
14:09
Let's talk about what he didn't do.
14:11
He didn't come to promote BRICS.
14:14
He did not attack the United States or
14:16
Donald Trump.
14:17
He did not threaten Europe.
14:19
He did not advertise Yuan settlements that are
14:22
growing.
14:23
He did not brag about alternative structures that
14:26
are being created at a record pace.
14:28
He did not talk about Russia, India, what
14:35
do you call it, Ukraine, European deals, right?
14:41
These are omissions that are important.
14:43
He didn't come to say we're taking over
14:46
in the global south.
14:47
Those omissions are deliberate, okay?
14:50
Instead, he came to talk about the moral
14:54
high ground, which is world stability, to sound
14:58
like the last adult in the room, insisting
15:02
that the floor stop shaking before the freaking
15:06
building collapses.
15:07
That is not weakness, friends and neighbors.
15:11
That is positioning, and it's global positioning, okay?
15:16
Here's what he talked about.
15:18
Trade wars, he said this, trade wars are
15:22
not policy disputes.
15:24
They are damage to the system.
15:27
Trade wars hurt everyone.
15:29
This is one of the most important parts
15:31
of his speech.
15:31
He said, he didn't say trade wars hurt
15:33
China.
15:34
He didn't say trade wars are unfair to
15:37
us.
15:37
What he said was trade wars damage the
15:40
foundation of global cooperation.
15:45
He emphasizes that tariffs are no longer exceptions.
15:48
Sanctions are no longer extraordinary.
15:51
Supply chains are now targets, themselves are targets,
15:55
systems, not systems.
15:58
That this is the world that we are
16:00
living in now, that Trump is creating, by
16:02
the way, but he didn't say it.
16:03
He never mentioned Donald Trump.
16:05
He backed it up with institutional language, world
16:08
trade organization rules, predictability, equal treatment.
16:12
Does everybody know what an MFN is?
16:15
MFN means most favored nation, okay?
16:20
And an MFN under the world trade order
16:22
is, if you apply this rule to one
16:25
ally, you need to apply it to all
16:26
the rest, basically, is how that works.
16:28
And everybody wants to get this most favored
16:31
nation status because that's what the world trade
16:33
organization kind of requires, right?
16:35
But Trump is blowing that up, okay?
16:40
The key concept, in plain English, when companies,
16:43
or companies, countries, because Trump treating everything like
16:46
a company, and I'm not against that.
16:48
I mean, the results, you'll see, you'll see
16:50
him for three years, but you won't see
16:52
him forever because people don't like force.
16:54
They don't like what's going on.
16:56
But when countries stop trading under equal rules,
16:59
this is the key concept that he said.
17:01
Well, geez, my phone is going crazy on
17:04
me.
17:05
Sorry about that.
17:06
And I forgot to turn it on.
17:09
Did not disturb.
17:10
But when countries stop trading under equal rules,
17:14
they don't stop trading.
17:15
That doesn't stop the trading.
17:18
It means they reroute, they regionalize, and they
17:22
hedge their bets.
17:23
And that's what everybody's doing.
17:24
That isn't ideology.
17:26
That's survival.
17:27
That's what they do.
17:29
He never mentions the word MFN, a most
17:34
favored nation.
17:35
But that's what he's talking about the whole
17:37
time.
17:39
No countries get special punishment or special privilege
17:42
under the World Trade Organization rules and order,
17:46
unless you're Donald Trump.
17:47
Then you just do whatever you want.
17:50
And people don't like that in the world.
17:53
They like something they can plan upon, that
17:56
they all do the same thing.
17:57
I'm not saying it always went that way.
17:59
I'm saying that's the physical argument that they
18:01
talk about.
18:03
Systems can't function if the strongest ignore the
18:07
constraints that are placed upon them by the
18:09
things.
18:10
So China did not say, and why that
18:12
is the point.
18:14
This is where a lot of Western listeners
18:16
might miss what China is signaling.
18:18
China didn't say, the dollar is finished, bricks
18:21
will replace, we're going to settle everything you
18:23
want, we're building parallel world orders.
18:26
Why?
18:27
Because the forum isn't appropriate for that.
18:31
These are the rich people.
18:33
This is where you don't sell alternatives there.
18:37
You're establishing your own legitimacy, and China wants
18:39
the room to think.
18:41
They sound reasonable.
18:42
They sound patient.
18:43
They sound institutional.
18:45
That makes future divergence look like a necessity,
18:50
right?
18:50
Not a rebellion against the world order.
18:54
They're saying, well, if you treat everybody this
18:58
way, if you target particular people, if you
19:01
weaponize the dollar, if you do all of
19:03
these things, here's the result.
19:08
It's a clinical analysis.
19:10
It's a doctor diagnosing a disease, right?
19:14
They frame multilateralism like plumbing.
19:16
It's boring.
19:17
It's invisible.
19:18
It's essential.
19:19
He didn't romanticize.
19:21
He didn't pretend that it's fair, because it's
19:23
never been fair, but at least you had
19:25
something steady.
19:26
Trump is blowing all that up for a
19:28
lot of reasons.
19:31
He's basically saying, you know, you don't tear
19:33
down the bridge while you're still crossing the
19:35
river.
19:36
Why?
19:37
Because if you name names, that lowers your
19:40
argument.
19:41
China is arguing above the personality layer, above
19:46
what's happening layer.
19:47
They're talking structure.
19:50
They're talking what it's supposed to be.
19:52
Chinese restraint isn't submission.
19:54
They are not submitting.
19:55
They're not saying, well, you know, they're saying
19:57
we're dealing with the world that we're dealt
19:59
with or stuck with, and there's a bunch
20:01
of people saying that.
20:03
We're dealing, but in different ways.
20:05
Some are ignoring it completely, which we'll get
20:07
into.
20:08
But China's calm tone is not because it's
20:11
lacking power.
20:12
It's because China trades with everybody.
20:14
China plans last four decades.
20:18
Remember that.
20:19
They plan decades in advance.
20:21
We can't plan three years.
20:23
When Trump's gone, it all goes back to
20:26
the same old thing, especially if a Democrat
20:28
gets selected.
20:29
Rubio stays in.
20:31
They get somebody like that.
20:32
It's still the same old neocon bullshit.
20:36
That's what it is.
20:38
If a Democrat comes in, it's almost the
20:40
same thing.
20:41
Just a different group of winners, you know,
20:44
the high level winners.
20:45
They switch to Clintons and Obamas for the
20:48
Rubios and Vance's and Trump family of the
20:52
world.
20:52
That's what happens in the Trump allies.
20:55
The allies change.
20:56
The financial allies, because the rest of us
20:59
are nothing.
21:00
We don't mean anything to these guys.
21:02
Never did.
21:03
And to the entire system.
21:05
In fact, the only reasonable people that are
21:09
trying to create a world structure aren't in
21:12
America.
21:13
You know, the structure that they're trying to
21:14
create in America is, hey, we do what
21:16
we say.
21:17
It's always been that way.
21:18
Trump's just saying the quiet part out loud,
21:20
right?
21:21
China is already assuming that diversification is happening.
21:25
Fragmentation is well underway and regional blocks are
21:28
hardening because even Canada is doing it.
21:31
I talked to you about that with Carney
21:32
yesterday.
21:33
So the quiet warning.
21:35
Here's the core.
21:36
If you had to distill the things entire
21:39
speech into one sentence, it'd be if power
21:41
replaces rules completely.
21:45
The rules will be replaced by exits.
21:48
That's it.
21:50
That's that's it.
21:51
If power is gone or replaces the rules,
21:54
if power is all there is, I mean,
21:56
and they replace the rules, then the rules
21:58
are going to be replaced by everybody exiting.
22:01
You know, you're not going to force us.
22:02
You're going to isolate.
22:03
You know, you're going to create not revolution,
22:06
not confrontation, but exit.
22:09
And exits don't announce themselves.
22:11
China's not announcing to the world that they're
22:14
unloading hundreds of billions of U.S. debt
22:18
right now.
22:20
They're doing it slowly because it's not something
22:22
you can do overnight.
22:23
But they've been doing it every quarter to
22:26
the tune of 60 to 100 billion dollars
22:28
of debt.
22:29
And they used to be the largest.
22:31
Pretty soon they're going to be down to
22:33
nothing because they don't trust the structure.
22:35
They trust nothing.
22:36
And trust me, they have options.
22:38
And Trump knows all this, by the way.
22:41
You can, you know, think about this.
22:43
China didn't come to Davos to threaten anybody.
22:45
They came to say, if you keep breaking
22:47
the system, don't be surprised when people stop
22:50
using it.
22:51
And that ain't defiance.
22:53
That's gravity.
22:54
That's that's reality.
22:56
That's clinical, you know.
22:58
And so, you know, that is China.
23:02
OK.
23:03
China's saying preserve the system that there is.
23:06
You know what?
23:07
We know it's not applied equally, but preserve
23:09
it.
23:09
You know, McCarney told us yesterday that, you
23:12
know, we all knew the rules were bent
23:15
to, you know, dependent upon who's who's using
23:18
them.
23:19
And we all knew that.
23:20
And we never said anything.
23:21
He said that.
23:22
I mean, it's a great speech.
23:23
I mean, he spoke the truth.
23:26
You know, you know, Macron is next for
23:29
us.
23:30
And wait till you hear what this guy
23:32
says.
23:33
You know, that guy's frightened.
23:35
You know, you listen to his speech.
23:37
He's he's scared.
23:39
And he ought to be.
23:39
You know, Europe, they all ought to be
23:41
scared.
23:41
Von der Leyen's got her head in the
23:43
sand.
23:43
You know, she's her speech is almost worthless.
23:47
I mean, oh, yeah, we're great.
23:50
Uh huh.
23:51
Yeah, I'm sure you feel that, you know,
23:54
Trump's forcing you to do whatever and you
23:55
just come in and go, yeah, we're going
23:57
to do what daddy wants.
23:58
She didn't say that.
23:59
That sure is what she meant.
24:01
But China says preserve the system or lose
24:04
it.
24:04
People aren't going to use it.
24:06
That's what happened.
24:08
OK, so let's go on to France and
24:12
talk about Emmanuel Macron.
24:14
And he did it in English.
24:15
So, you know, the English of Macron, you
24:20
know, he he he speaks reasonably well.
24:23
And he you know, I put him after
24:26
China because he accepts this diagnosis.
24:29
He notices it, too.
24:30
He talks about it.
24:31
He agrees partially with what or maybe he
24:34
agrees totally.
24:36
But he didn't say it.
24:37
Carney was blunt.
24:39
Carney told the truth.
24:42
Emmanuel Macron, he came and he's, you know,
24:46
whining.
24:46
That's what he's doing.
24:47
But that's all France has been doing for
24:49
decades.
24:50
Right.
24:50
And trying to pretend that they're, you know,
24:53
I don't know, some sort of alternative in
24:56
there.
24:56
But Europe is frightened right now and rightly
24:58
so.
25:00
But why?
25:01
You know, what did he say?
25:04
He accepted this diagnosis, you know, the doctor's
25:08
diagnosis, but he rejects the prescription.
25:11
You know, China says preserve the system or
25:13
it collapses.
25:14
And Macron says, yeah, but the system already
25:16
failing to protect us.
25:18
It's not protecting us.
25:20
He isn't.
25:23
Ideological, he's afraid and that, you know, that
25:25
that's why you can say part of what
25:27
he's saying is honest.
25:29
He isn't pretending anymore either.
25:31
This isn't the Macron of five or seven
25:33
years ago.
25:34
He isn't selling globalization as destiny.
25:37
Right.
25:37
He isn't pretending openness.
25:40
You know, he isn't pretending, talking about values,
25:44
democracy as shields, you know, that that save
25:48
you from all the people thinking that, geez,
25:50
why are they doing this so stupidly, so
25:53
unfairly?
25:54
You know, instead, he's like somebody who finally
25:57
understands that the rules haven't helped him.
26:01
They haven't stopped the tariffs, the speeches that
26:04
everybody gives and finger points, everybody.
26:06
They haven't stopped the tanks in Ukraine.
26:09
You know, he you know, good intentions, no
26:12
matter if they're wrong or not.
26:13
You know, the world is full of them,
26:15
but they don't stop Trump from coercing you
26:18
or America from twisting everything in their favor
26:21
and treating you like an evil stepchild.
26:25
You know, Macron did name the problem.
26:28
You know, he kept going to one idea.
26:31
The world is sliding toward the law of
26:34
the strongest.
26:35
Now everybody's talking about it because Trump is
26:38
being open about it.
26:40
If he'd continued what the Biden era, the
26:42
little bombers, the Clintons, what they all knew
26:46
was we're the strongest.
26:48
We've created these structures.
26:50
Trump has blown them up, whether you like
26:52
it or not.
26:53
This has world level effects among your allies.
26:57
OK, and I'm not saying wrong, right and
26:59
different.
26:59
This is reality.
27:01
OK, I'm trying to give you a reality
27:04
check.
27:05
He didn't say it rhetorically.
27:06
He said it like again, like a diagnosis.
27:08
He's admitting that power politics are all we
27:11
got.
27:12
Economic tools are now weapons.
27:15
Security guarantees are absolutely conditional.
27:18
The U.S. didn't join in the NATO
27:21
war games.
27:23
Europe is exposed.
27:26
He is dropping the pretense that post cold
27:28
world world order is still protecting the medium
27:32
powers because it isn't just like Carney said
27:34
yesterday.
27:35
U.S. and China.
27:37
Europe is caught in the middle.
27:38
He did something unusual.
27:40
He put Washington and Beijing in the same
27:43
sentence, not as morality, but as structure.
27:47
His argument isn't China bad, America good.
27:50
It's Europe is being squeezed by both of
27:52
them.
27:53
China wants fair trade.
27:55
America don't want fair trade.
27:56
They want to dictate terms.
27:59
And Trump is doing exactly that.
28:01
U.S. tariffs, industrial policy and using tariffs
28:05
and financial policy and industrial policy as weapons,
28:09
even against Europe, are undercutting European industry.
28:13
Chinese scale.
28:15
They talked about how big and sending their
28:16
excess capacity outside of their own countries.
28:19
And it's hurting the economy.
28:21
So will you build that?
28:22
You help build that because the U.S.
28:24
wanted you to.
28:25
And now when the U.S. is pulling
28:27
the rug out from under you, you know,
28:29
you can say that China's scale of power
28:33
and output are threatening to overwhelm open markets.
28:39
And so you can't have open market anymore.
28:43
Everybody's closing their markets or making alternatives.
28:47
This isn't anti-American.
28:49
It's getting rid of the naivete and claiming
28:53
that the U.S. is always going to
28:54
protect us.
28:55
Now, things go back to normal in three
28:56
years.
28:57
Normal for these people, not normal for the
29:00
world, you know, but normal for these people,
29:02
the globalist elitists.
29:03
Hang on a second.
29:04
Coffee time.
29:08
That's good coffee.
29:10
Remember Andy Griffith?
29:12
I forget what his real name was, but
29:14
Andy Griffith.
29:15
That's who he was.
29:17
So, you know, this is where Macron did
29:21
cross a line, the Ursula von der Leyen,
29:24
who hasn't said a word of truth.
29:27
Except, you know, we made a deal with
29:29
Trump because, you know, we had to.
29:32
She's trying, oh, that's what we're supposed to
29:33
do.
29:34
This is the global order.
29:35
You know, she's still got her head buried
29:37
in the sand.
29:39
And, you know, this is what Brussels still
29:41
avoids.
29:41
But even Macron said it.
29:43
And Macron's one of those, one of those
29:46
head EU people.
29:49
He openly argued that protection does not equal
29:52
protectionism.
29:55
That reciprocity isn't hostility.
30:00
Strategic autonomy is survival, not ideology.
30:05
He's talking survival.
30:07
How is France and how was Europe going
30:10
to survive the attacks from both China and
30:13
the U.S.? He's scared.
30:15
He talks about European preferences that they've had
30:18
forever under the U.S. system.
30:21
Carney talked about it yesterday, that they grew
30:24
because they're right next to the United States
30:26
and they could always bank on the U
30:29
.S. providing their defenses and so they didn't
30:31
have to put any money into their own
30:33
defense.
30:34
And they got to use it to create,
30:36
you know, liberal policies in Canada.
30:39
You know, trade isn't, you know, defense.
30:43
Anti-coercion tools he talked about.
30:47
Industrial sovereignty.
30:48
Think about that.
30:50
Industrial sovereignty in France.
30:52
They outsource to everywhere else in the EU,
30:56
in the U.S., in China, everywhere.
30:59
They're saying, he's saying quite plainly, if Europe
31:02
stays open, open markets, while others are weaponizing
31:07
trade, including the big players, the biggest players,
31:11
like the U.S. and China, we're stuck
31:14
in the middle and Europe dies slowly and
31:17
politely.
31:18
That isn't a radical thought.
31:19
It's a late thought, you know, that, you
31:22
know, it should have known this years ago.
31:24
It's been the same for a while now.
31:26
And so, you know, I find that rather
31:29
interesting.
31:30
Okay.
31:32
He still wants to claim the moral high
31:34
ground though.
31:35
And here's where you, you know, there wasn't
31:37
any talk about what's really funny, very little
31:40
talk about Ukraine.
31:41
Nothing about Ukraine.
31:42
This was all Trump.
31:43
And then even quietly, they were talking about
31:46
big powers.
31:47
They were, they never, nobody, this is an
31:49
economic forum, by the way.
31:51
This is for the global elites, polite society.
31:54
You heard them clap at the Carney thing
31:56
yesterday, if you paid attention.
31:58
And Carney was blunt for Canada.
32:04
Canada is going, hey, this is not the
32:07
U.S. we used to know.
32:09
And we can no longer bank on the
32:11
U.S. spreading the wealth because they're not.
32:16
Trump is weaponizing it.
32:18
Why?
32:18
Because Trump, no, he didn't say this.
32:20
I'm saying this.
32:21
Trump is also scared that the America power,
32:25
the America is the only story in town,
32:28
the only game in town.
32:29
He's still trying to sell that crap because
32:32
he sees the writing on the wall to
32:34
India and China that very quiet.
32:36
Nobody talked about India except Ursula von der
32:39
Leyen.
32:40
And very little about that.
32:42
I didn't have time to look for, I
32:44
was focusing on Europe because I wanted to
32:46
hear about Ukraine.
32:46
I wanted to hear about Greenland.
32:48
I wanted to hear about all of that.
32:49
And, and Macron ignored it.
32:52
China didn't say a word about it.
32:53
This is an economic forum.
32:55
They're polite.
32:56
They are talking about what everybody was coming
32:59
to talk about, not about what Trump talked
33:01
about.
33:02
Trump talked about, I'm taking over the planet,
33:04
live with it, period.
33:06
You know, but nobody brought up the moral
33:09
anchor, very few anyway.
33:11
Macron tried.
33:13
He anchors his worldview into Ukraine because why?
33:17
Ukraine is proving his thesis.
33:20
He says international law was violated only by
33:24
Russia.
33:25
He didn't say anything about, you know, expansion
33:28
of NATO eastward after we promised we wouldn't.
33:31
He said guarantees failed.
33:33
You know, the guarantee that the US would
33:35
be there to help prop up Ukraine like
33:39
it was under Biden and hundreds of billions
33:41
of dollars.
33:41
And Trump's figured all that.
33:43
And Europe is now having to rearm itself
33:45
after the fact, including NATO.
33:47
And Ukraine is evidence.
33:49
And by the way, Ukraine didn't even show
33:51
up.
33:52
Zelensky was on the thing, but he's dealing
33:53
with serious problems at home.
33:55
There is no power in Kiev.
33:57
None.
33:58
They're evacuating Kiev, friends and neighbors.
34:02
I don't care if you believe that or
34:03
not.
34:04
Read it yourself.
34:05
Go out to Telegram.
34:06
Go out and watch what's happening.
34:08
They're freezing their nuts off.
34:10
That's what's happening.
34:11
But Macron still wants to live with, oh,
34:13
geez, we're defending Ukraine, right?
34:15
He didn't mention it.
34:16
He didn't spend a lot of time on
34:18
this.
34:18
And, you know, in the absence of discussion
34:20
about Ukraine is probably why the Z man
34:23
didn't show up.
34:24
He wasn't going to get any money.
34:25
He knows he's on his last legs politically.
34:28
He's got 90 billion he's waiting to get
34:30
this year.
34:30
And they're trying to figure out how to
34:32
divvy it up.
34:32
And all the head all the oligarchs leave
34:34
town.
34:36
Ukraine's done.
34:37
You know, it's over.
34:38
And, you know, he knows that he's he's
34:42
talking survival and not only economic, he's talking
34:46
whether he's going to survive.
34:48
And that's what I think.
34:49
Right.
34:49
And you don't have to believe me on
34:51
that either.
34:51
You know, you don't.
34:52
I got plenty of research on it, but
34:54
you don't have to believe that he's talking
34:56
about Europe is now having to rearm to
35:00
face the Russian threat that they created with
35:04
the help of America.
35:05
They created this threat by ostracizing Russia since
35:10
the 90s by treating it like, you know,
35:13
some sort of resource grab, just like the
35:16
U.S. is doing.
35:17
You know, they lost the U.S. lost
35:19
that that war.
35:20
Cold War long term is headed the other
35:23
direction.
35:24
You know, you may think you won.
35:27
Russia is stronger after all this talked about
35:30
that.
35:31
I talk about that frequently because this is
35:33
mistaken policy.
35:34
Nobody thinks long term.
35:36
That's the biggest problem, you know, American.
35:38
And it doesn't matter.
35:39
Trump, you know, this year and, you know,
35:41
three years from now, whoever, you know, it
35:44
doesn't matter.
35:45
It's all going to be the same.
35:46
We'll go right back to it.
35:48
Maybe it'll be a little quieter, quieter, less
35:50
confrontational.
35:51
Who knows?
35:52
He talked about multilateralism, though.
35:55
He did talk about alternatives.
35:57
He talked about, you know, multilateralism being rewritten.
36:03
This is talk about bricks.
36:04
OK, he's talking about it being effective, not
36:08
romantic.
36:09
He doesn't reject multilateral policies like Trump does.
36:13
Trump's going.
36:14
We're still the only game in town.
36:15
Screw you guys.
36:16
Get on board or, you know, we're going
36:18
to drive over you, period.
36:20
I'm in charge until he's not.
36:24
There's a three year, a three year victory
36:26
lap for Donald Trump.
36:28
Well, four, but one year is already gone.
36:31
This this all this is is he's he's
36:34
he's still living in the fact that he
36:37
lost 2020 election and didn't get a proceed
36:42
with what he's doing.
36:43
So he's blowing up the world order, period.
36:47
It's Donald Trump.
36:48
Why?
36:49
Because I'm bigger, better, better than all you
36:51
assholes.
36:52
That's what he's doing.
36:54
And, you know, there's that means America benefits
36:57
greatly right now, you know, no matter like
37:00
it, dislike it, whatever we're benefiting.
37:03
But he's also creating exit strategies all over
37:06
the place that they're they're running for the
37:09
exits.
37:09
Get out of here.
37:11
Wait till we get to Alexander Stube.
37:13
Sorry about that.
37:13
I need to keep moving.
37:14
I want to make sure I get through
37:15
this today.
37:16
And there's a lot to talk about because
37:18
we still have von der Leyen and Stube
37:19
before we get to the old Trumpster.
37:22
So Macron argued for fewer illusions, kind of
37:28
like Carney yesterday, but not so open about
37:30
it, not so blunt.
37:31
Carney was blunt, truthful, and I loved it.
37:34
I thought it was great.
37:35
That's why I played the whole thing for
37:36
you yesterday.
37:37
And because all these hadn't come out yet.
37:39
You know, I made sure to listen to
37:41
all these.
37:41
These were good and most some of them
37:43
in English.
37:43
Macron, his was in English, von der Leyen,
37:46
English.
37:48
Stube, he was a little hard to find,
37:50
but he did an interview in English.
37:52
That was nice.
37:53
And it was a couple of hours and
37:54
he didn't he didn't give a least he
37:56
hadn't yet given a full speech of his
37:59
own.
38:00
Trump hour and 15 minutes all on his
38:02
own and brutal.
38:04
I hope J.R. plays the whole thing
38:06
for you.
38:07
Or you should go out and listen to
38:08
it yourself.
38:08
You know, I know J.R. will be
38:10
spending little time on it today, at least
38:12
I hope he does.
38:13
I'm pretty sure he will.
38:14
This is about the biggest game in town
38:16
right now.
38:17
So I assume he will.
38:19
But he's arguing for fewer illusions.
38:22
Macron is more enforcement.
38:24
How come we can't go back to the
38:26
way it was?
38:27
You know, he wants the results as they
38:30
used to be.
38:31
You know, he doesn't want to talk about
38:33
multilateralism.
38:34
He's talking about multilateralism is gaining muscle.
38:38
What are we going to do?
38:40
He's afraid he's stuck in the middle of
38:43
two hegemons and he hasn't done anything to
38:45
diversify like Canada openly talked about yesterday.
38:49
There's no diversification.
38:50
These people are saying, well, what the hell
38:53
are we going to do?
38:54
Because he hasn't done anything.
38:56
He's always a puppet, you know, for the
38:58
for the big boys.
38:59
You know, we can ride on the coattails
39:01
of America.
39:01
Why?
39:02
Because we're Europe.
39:03
We're the same.
39:04
We're white folk.
39:06
You know, we're white European.
39:07
We've been together for centuries.
39:09
Well, it's it's done, at least for now,
39:12
until somebody else comes in.
39:15
By the time you blow it all up,
39:16
it's going to be real hard to rebuild
39:18
real hard because people are remembering this.
39:22
OK, so what's the subtext for Macron?
39:27
Europe is being is preparing for not being
39:30
prepared.
39:30
They are preparing for they recognized the writing
39:34
on the wall.
39:35
We're being abandoned.
39:37
The US is no longer going to carry
39:40
us.
39:42
Europe is rearming itself.
39:45
Europe is reshoring itself.
39:48
Europe is diversifying or trying to post the
39:52
requirement that they buy all their liquid natural
39:54
gas at double the price from America.
39:57
They're diversifying.
39:59
Europe is hedging on their alliances and creating
40:02
alliances with China, too.
40:04
Why?
40:05
Because the Europe no longer assumes that the
40:09
US is reliable because we're not.
40:12
It's a power grab.
40:14
And it's always been that way.
40:15
And everybody talked about, you know.
40:19
Well, gee, here's here.
40:21
But what if they start to use it
40:22
as a weapon like Trump is doing?
40:24
What if we get another lunatic like him?
40:26
This is what they're thinking.
40:27
So I'm saying they're diversifying.
40:29
So these what Trump is doing has consequences.
40:33
You can talk about victory all you want.
40:36
And, you know, I tend to agree with
40:37
you, but this is going to have, excuse
40:41
me, the long term effect.
40:44
Europe is shoring itself up.
40:45
They're diversifying or trying on their energy and
40:49
they're hedging their alliances, hedging their bets because
40:52
the US isn't reliable.
40:54
It's not the institutional protection field that it
40:57
used to be.
40:58
And it doesn't mean that they're automatically involved
41:03
in some sort of solidarity between similar interests
41:07
because US is focused on America first.
41:11
Right.
41:12
Scratchy in the throat.
41:13
More coffee.
41:14
Sorry.
41:19
That's good coffee.
41:20
Um, anyway, Macron's speech is a contingency plan
41:25
spoken out loud.
41:27
You know, he's going, geez, what are we
41:30
going to do?
41:31
He's wringing his hands.
41:32
And what's the core difference between him and
41:34
China?
41:35
Right.
41:35
And this contrast does matter.
41:37
Right.
41:38
China believes that rules can still restrain power
41:41
if the rules are defended.
41:43
They didn't talk about, geez, we need to
41:45
move into bricks even though they have.
41:47
They didn't say we got to create regional
41:49
powers even though they have.
41:52
They didn't talk about the Shanghai cooperation organization.
41:55
And, you know, they didn't talk about these
41:57
alternative payment structures.
41:59
They didn't talk about all the stuff is
42:01
going.
42:02
Macron believes this, too.
42:04
And he said it a little more than
42:06
China.
42:06
China is saying, stop this before it's too
42:09
late, because everybody will be gone.
42:11
And Macron is saying it might already be
42:14
too late.
42:14
Everybody better prepare anyway, because these are realists.
42:18
These are rich people.
42:19
These are heads of retirement plans from Canada
42:24
and U.S. and huge money.
42:27
Where are we going to put it?
42:28
How are we going to do it?
42:29
Macron's saying it's too late already.
42:32
Prepare anyway.
42:33
Neither one is crazy.
42:35
China's not crazy.
42:36
Macron's not crazy.
42:37
They're just standing from a different perspective in
42:40
different places on the map.
42:42
So, Macron, China is warning the system might
42:48
collapse.
42:48
Macron is acting like the system already failed,
42:51
at least for him.
42:52
And the difference is, you know, between theories,
42:55
which China is evoking, and memory, you know,
43:01
what's actually happened.
43:02
Okay.
43:03
And so, Macron is talking about institutional contradictions,
43:08
you know, because they exist, just like Carney,
43:10
but not as far.
43:12
He was still trying to politicize, be political
43:15
about it.
43:17
Economically, Carney was blunt.
43:20
That was a great and powerful speech.
43:22
It was a good one.
43:23
And I played it all for you yesterday.
43:25
Go back to yesterday's show, and you can
43:27
hear all of Carney.
43:28
I'm not including Macron because he, you know,
43:30
he was pandering, and he's worried, just like
43:34
all the other ones.
43:34
But I included him here because he represents
43:37
at least half of Europe.
43:40
Okay.
43:41
They're all frightened.
43:42
What about Ukraine?
43:44
Nobody's talking about it anymore.
43:46
Okay.
43:47
Let's talk about the EU itself.
43:49
Now, talk about the idiot bureaucrats at the
43:52
top.
43:53
And I apologize for calling idiots, calling names,
43:55
but these people are not bright.
43:57
Okay.
43:58
They're living in some fantasy land world where
44:02
everybody, you know, I don't know what is
44:04
wearing rainbow colors or something.
44:06
I don't know.
44:07
Ursula von der Leyen at Davos was, you
44:11
know, I put her in the middle intentionally,
44:13
because we talked about China's restraint.
44:16
Yesterday, we talked about Carney's reality for being
44:21
right next to the United States.
44:23
Okay.
44:23
Now, we're talking China, other side of the
44:26
world, opposing matter.
44:28
Then Macron and our alleged allies who were
44:31
just frightened.
44:32
And von der Leyen sounds like, you know,
44:35
the standard bureaucratic institutional inertia.
44:42
This isn't malice toward her, and she wasn't
44:44
talking about malice toward the system.
44:46
And although I sometimes say she's an idiot,
44:49
you know, she's not stupid.
44:52
She's talking, she's still stuck in bureaucratic process.
44:57
Well, the process is still working.
44:59
The process, I mean, her whole thing was
45:01
self-congratulatory.
45:03
Not as bad as Trump, but she was
45:05
congratulating herself, right?
45:06
She's, you know, institution, the institutions are still
45:09
working.
45:10
Macron, Carney, she didn't say anything.
45:14
Her speech was empty, except, and I'll listen
45:17
to this, okay?
45:18
She talks about the mother of all deals.
45:21
With who?
45:23
India?
45:25
That's her allegation, right?
45:27
This is the mother of all deals.
45:28
And it's an important deal, okay?
45:30
You know, the EU, we're starting to work
45:33
with India.
45:34
Yeah, but with whose infrastructure?
45:37
I mean, she doesn't even mention that, that
45:39
they don't have the infrastructure to do all
45:41
this, that, you know, we're no longer exchanging.
45:44
You know, there's even between Europe, India, China,
45:48
there's a lot that isn't done in the
45:50
old financial markets.
45:52
It's not happening.
45:54
It is collapsing as we are watching it.
45:59
Most of us aren't watching it, but it's
46:02
collapsing, okay?
46:03
And she wants to talk about processes if
46:06
it still works, but the power has already
46:10
moved on, and everybody knows it.
46:12
So, this contrast, you know, her speaking as
46:15
if the system still works, it's annoying.
46:18
You know, she's, this is an assumption, she's
46:20
using assumptions that are no longer true.
46:23
The US is still going to protect us.
46:25
She didn't say that, but she's assuming things
46:28
that aren't, you know, facts not in evidence
46:30
is what you call that as a lawyer.
46:33
Objection, judge, assuming facts not in evidence.
46:35
How in the hell are you going to
46:36
base that on something that you haven't even
46:38
talked about or that the fact doesn't exist?
46:41
Nonsense.
46:42
She speaks as if the system is still
46:45
working, and it isn't working.
46:47
Her language is full of what?
46:49
Partnerships, new partnerships, new frameworks, new action plans.
46:54
She's got her new checklist, right?
46:55
She's got her new bureaucratic checklist.
46:57
She's talking about the roadmaps and deals that
46:59
are concluded that took 25 years.
47:02
There were 25 years in the making.
47:05
If we keep on doing it this way,
47:07
the system will stabilize.
47:08
What she's saying is hopefully we can make
47:11
it three years till Donald Trump's no longer
47:13
in office because he's blowing up the world,
47:16
at least the system we're used to.
47:18
The world is frightened of Donald Trump, okay?
47:22
Maybe rightly so, you know, you can believe
47:24
any way you want to on that, but
47:25
this is reality, folks.
47:27
This is reality, and what the U.S.
47:29
is doing is nothing but a power grab,
47:31
and wait till I get to him.
47:34
I got to make, you know what, I
47:35
got to cruise or I'm not going to
47:36
get there, and I don't have time to
47:39
stay later, and the show would quit recording
47:42
if I did, you know?
47:44
I would like to do that.
47:45
Maybe I can figure out how to keep
47:47
recording if I go over it for a
47:50
little bit today, but I'm going to try
47:51
not to.
47:52
I want to see if I can get
47:53
this in by the 9 o'clock.
47:54
So anyway, her language is full of partnership,
47:56
framework, action plans, checklists, roadmaps, deals that are
48:01
concluded and deals that are underway.
48:03
We've been working on this for 25 years,
48:05
yeah, because you've had U.S., you know,
48:08
backing and a lot of stuff, and now
48:09
you got to do it on your own.
48:13
The problem is none of these, it's not
48:15
that these things are false, right?
48:17
What she's saying, these are not false.
48:19
She's still trying to keep the functioning, globally
48:24
elite, skewed system that Carney talked about where
48:29
the powerful quietly apply the rules differently depending
48:34
on who you're applying the rules to, where
48:38
we beat up on Russia and China without
48:41
saying it out loud, and now we're saying
48:44
it out loud, and Trump is now screw
48:47
everybody, screw all of you guys.
48:50
I might want to play that song A,
48:52
B, C, D, E, F, U for you
48:54
at the end.
48:55
I'll see if I can find it because
48:56
that'll be the Trump signal to all of
48:59
us, and I will do that.
49:01
I'll try to find that, and I'll play
49:03
it for you.
49:05
But anyway, the deal count is not a
49:09
strategy.
49:10
You know, how many deals you made, okay,
49:12
that's strategy, right?
49:14
Trump's making deals.
49:16
People will bail on him as soon as
49:17
he's out of office.
49:18
You know, they'll restructure them or do whatever.
49:20
He's doing some valuable things.
49:23
You know, you focus on the gas prices
49:25
in America.
49:26
Hell, just that most Americans will forgive and
49:29
say, well, you know, whatever he's doing, keep
49:31
doing it.
49:32
Keep on trucking, Donald Duck.
49:35
Keep on going because it's great for us,
49:39
and frankly, you know, it is.
49:43
However, you're blowing up a system that you
49:46
probably shouldn't be blowing up, and there are
49:48
long-term consequences to this type of behavior.
49:52
Saying what you say about Greenland, BS, okay?
49:55
Doing what you did in Venezuela, BS.
49:58
Blowing up boats in the ocean with not
50:01
even, you know, no trial, no nothing.
50:05
Blaming it falsely on narco-terrorism is just
50:09
the same as weapons of mass destruction that
50:11
didn't exist in Iraq, okay?
50:14
And everybody knew it, by the way, that
50:16
was up at the top of the power.
50:18
The same old lies.
50:20
It's just, Trump is telling you the lies,
50:24
you know.
50:25
But he did, what do you call it,
50:28
change tack immediately after he did.
50:32
We'll get a little bit into that, you
50:33
know.
50:33
Right afterward, he goes, well, we forced them,
50:36
and then they agreed.
50:38
Well, a force is not an agreement, and
50:41
they will resist, especially after you leave.
50:44
And that doesn't mean that the problems of
50:46
Venezuela are all solved because he's stealing the
50:49
oil, you know.
50:50
Anyway, and Greenland, you know, you can't just
50:53
go and take over Greenland, you know.
50:57
And Macron is asking, who's protecting us when
51:01
deals we've made in the past no longer
51:03
do?
51:04
Von der Leyen is saying, look how many
51:06
deals we have, though.
51:08
Look, we still got these deals.
51:10
Those are totally different conversations.
51:11
She didn't say anything.
51:13
She never said, I mean, her speech was
51:15
empty.
51:16
All platitudes, all bureaucracy.
51:19
One of the most telling parts about her
51:21
remarks is what she refused to name, what
51:24
she did not do.
51:26
She did not call out U.S. trade
51:28
coercion.
51:30
She's one of the first to jump on
51:31
board with it and get coerced, because she
51:34
knows she has to.
51:35
She didn't address the tariffs directly.
51:37
She didn't even talk about them.
51:39
She didn't talk about sanctions being used as
51:42
weapons, like Trump is planning to with tariffs.
51:45
Those are basically sanctions against people that don't
51:47
let him have Greenland.
51:48
It's the exact same thing.
51:50
She didn't acknowledge or say a word about
51:53
Greenland or Venezuela.
51:55
And she didn't speak about force as a
51:58
policy tool.
51:59
She didn't talk about it.
52:00
Instead, she talked about the resilience of the
52:03
Europeans.
52:05
They don't have any resilience anymore.
52:07
Their industrial capacity is gone.
52:09
She talks about competitiveness, de-risk, sustainability, that
52:14
language, the safe language of a bureaucrat.
52:17
She talked about de-risk without saying who
52:19
was taking the risk.
52:21
Von der Leyen uses the term de-risking
52:23
about China.
52:24
But she avoids obvious follow-up question.
52:27
De-risking from what?
52:29
From tariffs?
52:30
From sanctions?
52:31
From unilateral policy shifts that happen by the
52:34
powerful?
52:35
From alliance volatility, especially when you don't like
52:38
the guy on the top, or the top
52:40
guy isn't doing what you thought he would
52:42
do?
52:43
By refusing to talk about these things, she
52:45
turns real concern into bureaucratic abstraction.
52:50
She's nothing but a bureaucrat.
52:51
That's all she is.
52:52
Macron named the risk.
52:54
Carney told you, hey, man, we see it,
52:56
we identify it, and we're diversifying.
52:59
Macron's like, what are we going to do?
53:01
China warns about the damage that comes from
53:04
this type of behavior.
53:05
And von der Leyen is shuffling paper.
53:09
She's going, well, we bureaucrats are still here.
53:12
We're still safe.
53:13
And why are we talking about this?
53:15
She talked a little bit about Ukraine.
53:18
She talked about the morality, the same old
53:20
crap she's been spouting forever.
53:22
Unity, values, a commitment to our allies.
53:26
They're not allies.
53:28
They are not allies.
53:31
But unlike Macron, she doesn't draw the structural
53:34
lesson.
53:35
Law failed because power overruled the law.
53:39
Power ignored the law.
53:42
Instead, Ukraine is what she calls a test
53:45
of resolve.
53:47
We got to fight that big, bad Putin.
53:49
Putin is still the bad guy.
53:51
Only now we have other bad guys on
53:53
the planet that we just don't mention, right?
53:56
So this is where Brussels and Paris diverge
54:00
most clearly.
54:01
Europe is, you know, she's calling Europe the
54:04
norm setter in a world that nobody gives
54:06
a crap about that anymore.
54:08
They just don't.
54:09
Von der Leyen repeatedly framed Europe as the
54:11
standard, the setter, a regulatory superpower.
54:16
Bureaucracy, a model for everybody else.
54:19
Bureaucracy will save you.
54:21
It's like the show Hitchhiker's Guide to the
54:26
Galaxy.
54:27
Do you remember the bureaucrats?
54:28
That's a beautiful movie of bureaucracy.
54:31
Ursula von der Leyen would be that big
54:33
old bureaucrat in the ship, you know.
54:35
I forget what they called them.
54:37
But you should go watch that movie because
54:39
it'll explain what's going on in Ursula von
54:41
der Leyen's mind right now.
54:42
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
54:44
You should read all those books.
54:45
They're a pretty good restaurant at the end
54:47
of the universe, I think, is the last
54:49
one.
54:49
It's all pretty good stuff.
54:50
Anyway, science fiction.
54:52
But science fiction based upon reality of Europe
54:55
and Ursula von der Leyen.
54:57
Her vision made sense in a world, a
55:00
prior world, where access to Europe required compliance
55:03
with the United States and NATO.
55:05
Where rules, alleged rules, carried penalties, but only
55:09
for some.
55:10
Where markets, you know, disciplined who got access
55:15
to.
55:16
But in a world of parallel supply chains,
55:19
sanctions blocks and coercive trade that we've seen
55:23
over the last, certainly under Trump, both admins,
55:28
and certainly under Biden, the ungifted or maybe
55:34
senile, who knows?
55:35
But probably.
55:38
But in a world of parallel supply chain
55:40
sanctions and coercion, norms don't travel.
55:43
Bureaucracy doesn't work.
55:45
They need leverage.
55:46
And the core problem is that she's governing
55:48
yesterday's world.
55:50
She's governing as if power is neutralized by
55:53
process, by bureaucracy.
55:56
Conflict is absorbed by these institutions.
55:59
It isn't.
56:00
Ukrainians are still dying for values that they
56:03
don't share.
56:05
And coercion is managed without confrontation.
56:07
That's not true anymore.
56:09
Davos itself is disproving that, if you listen
56:12
to Davos.
56:13
But I like economic discussion.
56:15
Macron came armored.
56:17
You know, he's like, you know, we've got
56:19
to do something.
56:20
He doesn't have a plan, but he knows
56:21
he's got to do something.
56:23
China is restrained, as usual, and they're focused,
56:26
and they're going to do the same thing
56:27
because they have 10-year, 30-year, 50
56:29
-year, 100-year plans that they follow.
56:32
And they really do.
56:33
You know, I'm not making that up.
56:36
Stubb is realistic.
56:37
This is who we're going to get to
56:38
next.
56:38
And Trump, standard Trump aggression.
56:41
And von der Leyen is, you know, all
56:43
about procedure.
56:45
Just follow this paperwork, fill out form A,
56:48
B, C, and the world will still work.
56:50
You know, Macron sounds like a man preparing
56:52
for, you know, impact.
56:54
He's prepared for, you know, missiles being launched
56:57
against him.
56:58
Von der Leyen's talking about missiles don't even
57:00
exist.
57:02
And we have institutions.
57:04
What are you talking about?
57:05
Missiles.
57:06
You know, that's the difference between power thought
57:09
and process thought.
57:11
All she talks about is processing.
57:13
Well, we built all these systems.
57:14
How come nobody's using them?
57:16
She's the bureaucrat.
57:18
So European states are rearming.
57:22
China's warning quietly.
57:24
Well, who's talking about realism?
57:27
And I found a guy, and I like
57:30
this guy.
57:31
Trump likes him too.
57:32
They're buddies now.
57:33
Now they're golf buddies.
57:34
And this is Alexander Stubb from Finland.
57:37
Okay.
57:37
And he was at Davos.
57:38
He didn't have a speech yet, but he
57:40
had an interview that was about an hour
57:41
long.
57:42
And I paid attention to that.
57:44
And he, why does he matter?
57:48
You know, Finland's a small power, but they
57:51
border Russia.
57:52
They've lived next to this.
57:53
Just like Canada on the United States side.
57:56
I filled in for you yesterday with Carney.
57:58
Stubb is in Finland and he's, you know,
58:01
working with Russia.
58:02
He's on the Arctic Circle, you know, and
58:04
he talks about some of this.
58:06
And what he speaks is, you know, Finland
58:08
isn't theorizing about power.
58:11
They're talking about the world that they live
58:15
in, which they're living next to a great
58:19
power of Russia.
58:20
They closed their borders after they became a
58:23
NATO thing, and they didn't need them for
58:24
years.
58:25
Hell, they had dual signs in Finland for
58:28
decades that were both Russian and Finnish.
58:33
There were so many Russians in Finland, and
58:35
they've kind of stopped that.
58:36
And they've hurt themselves by doing it.
58:39
You know, they're the most European, but they
58:40
all got along fine.
58:41
They lived without borders.
58:42
They lived without armies confronting each other, fist
58:46
held, you know, against each other.
58:49
But all that's changed when they convinced them
58:51
that Ukraine was, you know, so valuable.
58:55
And all the lies that we've been put
58:57
up, they quickly jumped into NATO because they
59:00
believed the bullshit that nobody should believe because
59:04
it's very clear now what happened.
59:06
Okay, they're talking about, he's speaking as someone
59:10
who understands at the base level, what exactly
59:14
happened when rules failed, guarantees are no longer
59:19
available, or they wobble, and geography, geography, and
59:25
geography doesn't give you the luxury of engaging
59:30
in von der Leyen's moral theater.
59:33
You know, he's calm.
59:34
He doesn't evade.
59:35
He's not a sales guy.
59:37
He's not bombastic.
59:38
He's calm.
59:39
Because panic isn't something that Finland's ever been
59:44
able to do.
59:46
You know, they've lived next to Russia.
59:49
And if you believe that Russia is somebody
59:51
that's trying to take over Finland, Russia could
59:53
take over Finland.
59:55
Russia didn't want to take over Ukraine.
59:57
That's still the argument, okay?
59:58
They didn't want to.
1:00:00
We forced that upon them.
1:00:02
We forced an existential threat.
1:00:05
And then we failed because we didn't realize
1:00:08
that Russia is still the same old Russia,
1:00:11
that they don't put up with that.
1:00:12
It'd be like coming into the Ozarks and
1:00:14
saying, geez, you know, we're going to Californiaize
1:00:17
you.
1:00:17
That didn't work during COVID, and it wouldn't
1:00:20
work physically.
1:00:21
It just wouldn't.
1:00:23
He doesn't argue about strength.
1:00:24
He's arguing about misapplied strength, okay?
1:00:27
The way he frames it, security comes from
1:00:30
world predictability.
1:00:32
That's kind of Chinese, right?
1:00:35
Predictability.
1:00:36
Stability comes from the consent of the governed.
1:00:40
The consent of them.
1:00:41
That's stability, okay?
1:00:43
Deterrence comes from being credible.
1:00:46
Credibility.
1:00:48
Not creating spectacles.
1:00:50
He's saying things to Trump that people aren't
1:00:54
listening to.
1:00:55
This is a direct, quiet rebuke of Trump's
1:00:59
style and his leverage politics.
1:01:03
His businessman one-upsmanship, his art of the
1:01:08
deal that everybody thinks of so positively isn't
1:01:12
so positive.
1:01:14
This is why his speech is so important
1:01:16
to add a voice like his.
1:01:20
It's important to add.
1:01:21
He's not, you know, wringing his hands.
1:01:24
He's saying, you know, it would be more
1:01:26
effective if we all weren't so emotional.
1:01:30
Including old Trumpster, by the way, because Trump
1:01:32
is definitely living in the past.
1:01:35
The past.
1:01:36
The personal past.
1:01:38
Not the structural past.
1:01:41
The personal past.
1:01:42
And that's why he's doing what he's doing.
1:01:44
I'm God now, and you folks are in
1:01:47
trouble.
1:01:47
I'm taking you down.
1:01:49
That's what's happening.
1:01:50
So, where Trump frames Greenland as a strategic
1:01:54
asset, already of the U.S., a transaction,
1:01:58
another transaction, or a problem to be solved
1:02:01
by his unique brand of pressure and his
1:02:04
brilliance, self-aware brilliance.
1:02:07
You know, he is brilliant, and he tells
1:02:09
everybody, I did that.
1:02:11
Everybody else, a bunch of idiots, and I
1:02:13
did it.
1:02:15
Stubb is reframing this correctly.
1:02:18
It's a sovereignty and a security question, not
1:02:22
a real estate negotiation.
1:02:23
He's talking about Greenland.
1:02:26
He's making the obvious but rarely stated point.
1:02:31
You do not strengthen alliances by threatening their
1:02:34
members.
1:02:36
In Stubb's framing, Greenland isn't about ownership.
1:02:39
It's about NATO cohesion, Arctic stability, most importantly,
1:02:46
consent of the population, and respect for existing
1:02:51
legal frameworks.
1:02:53
Because this, well, it matters.
1:02:55
This does matter.
1:02:56
And folks, it really does matter.
1:02:58
It matters because once you normalize coercion and
1:03:02
theft of resources, like we did in Venezuela,
1:03:06
and we'll get to Trump here in a
1:03:08
minute, because he, you know, he just, well,
1:03:10
yep, we did it.
1:03:11
And after we took over, they made a
1:03:14
deal, more people should do that.
1:03:17
More people should understand, I'm going to blow
1:03:19
you up and kidnap your president, you know,
1:03:23
do what I say, or else.
1:03:25
That's his, you want his speech in a
1:03:27
nutshell, that's it.
1:03:28
But let me get through Stubb first, because,
1:03:31
you know, once you normalize coercion, you know,
1:03:34
once Trump and Trump normalized it, alliances are
1:03:37
no longer alliances.
1:03:39
They're a holding pattern until they exit, till
1:03:42
people get out, like Canada, where they create
1:03:45
something else, where they wring their hands like
1:03:47
Macron, and who won't make a decision, somebody,
1:03:50
they'll get rid of him.
1:03:51
He's had too many governments.
1:03:53
I can't imagine that he'll be, well, French
1:03:55
are not too bright.
1:03:57
And the systems aren't so smooth either.
1:03:59
You know, they're corrupt.
1:04:01
Just like here, you know, ours is too,
1:04:03
in America.
1:04:05
Stubb is very visibly concerned, though, the headline
1:04:07
grabbing power plays, Greenland, Venezuela, trade threats, performative
1:04:14
dominance.
1:04:15
He's afraid that, you know, this is crowding
1:04:19
out the voice of Ukraine.
1:04:24
How come, how come our Z monster isn't
1:04:27
here?
1:04:28
He doesn't accuse Trump.
1:04:30
He's warning everybody.
1:04:32
His message is pretty simple.
1:04:33
When attention is transactions, commitment is conditional.
1:04:38
You know, commitment, you know, all we care
1:04:41
about is today's transaction.
1:04:42
There ain't no commitment tomorrow.
1:04:44
Trust me, that's gone.
1:04:46
Ukraine for Stubb isn't just a moral cause.
1:04:48
It's test case for whether international law has
1:04:52
any teeth.
1:04:55
And international law in Ukraine has no teeth.
1:04:59
It certainly doesn't have any teeth in Greenland.
1:05:03
Remember that.
1:05:04
Remember I said that.
1:05:06
Security guarantees do not mean anything in Ukraine
1:05:10
or in Greenland.
1:05:12
And whether the West can focus on what
1:05:16
it feels important, democracy, the global world system,
1:05:22
he's talking reality.
1:05:23
And it's almost a parental sort of lecture.
1:05:27
He sounds less like a politician and more
1:05:30
like somebody reminding the room of consequences.
1:05:36
Nobody's talking about consequences with Trump.
1:05:39
Nobody.
1:05:41
Stubb did a little bit.
1:05:43
He's talking about NATO law, the danger of
1:05:45
improvising on the law.
1:05:47
He repeatedly returns to process, but not in
1:05:50
the Brussels.
1:05:50
For him, NATO process is not a bureaucracy
1:05:53
like von der Leyen says.
1:05:54
Law is not a virtue signaling.
1:05:56
Law is the law.
1:05:58
You know, he's more of a realist.
1:06:00
I like listening to him.
1:06:01
Procedure is how small and medium powers survive
1:06:05
living next to giants.
1:06:07
The same.
1:06:08
You have to be able to rely on
1:06:10
the system.
1:06:11
And nobody relies on the system.
1:06:13
And the system is departing quickly.
1:06:16
Von der Leyen treats process as comfort.
1:06:19
That's comfort food for her.
1:06:20
Stubb treats process as what saves you.
1:06:23
You know, what's supposed to save us is
1:06:25
process.
1:06:26
But the process doesn't exist.
1:06:28
Von der Leyen says the process is still
1:06:29
there.
1:06:30
Stubb says it's not working.
1:06:31
Macron says, oh, geez, what are we going
1:06:34
to do?
1:06:35
It's already collapsed.
1:06:37
Improvisation for Finland isn't bold.
1:06:39
It's dangerous.
1:06:40
You know, it's dangerous.
1:06:40
We live next to these to Russia.
1:06:42
If you think Russia is taking over the
1:06:44
world, U.S., you're not helping us in
1:06:46
Greenland.
1:06:47
This isn't helping us.
1:06:48
So why Stubb is the anti-Trump without
1:06:51
saying anything anti-Trump?
1:06:52
He doesn't insult Trump.
1:06:54
He doesn't mock him.
1:06:55
He doesn't even question his legitimacy.
1:06:57
Instead, he does something even more devastating.
1:07:00
He shows that there are ways to be
1:07:02
strong without being imperial, without being colonial.
1:07:08
His worldview says that you can deter against
1:07:11
things without humiliation, without takeover, without threat.
1:07:16
You can protect interests without forcing obedience upon
1:07:21
the rest of the world.
1:07:22
That's not weakness.
1:07:23
That's maturity.
1:07:24
That's kind of like I'm talking about.
1:07:26
I don't believe this will work long term.
1:07:28
What Trump is doing long term, this is
1:07:30
horrible.
1:07:31
This is not good.
1:07:33
Okay.
1:07:33
This is maturity.
1:07:35
You know, Finland is maturity.
1:07:37
They're talking about, hey, reality does exist.
1:07:40
And we live right next to it.
1:07:42
And we have had to deal with each
1:07:44
other.
1:07:44
And we've had a nice, friendly relationship.
1:07:46
And U.S., you're going to blow this
1:07:48
crap up even further.
1:07:49
He's lecturing without naming Trump specific.
1:07:53
He never says it out loud.
1:07:54
If the U.S. starts behaving like every
1:07:56
other great colonial power in history, those in
1:08:02
the middle, the smaller allies are going to
1:08:04
plan accordingly like Canada is doing.
1:08:06
It doesn't mean that he's rebelling.
1:08:08
It means that he's hedging.
1:08:10
And hedging is the beginning of fragmentation.
1:08:12
Fragmentation, that's already going on because the rules
1:08:16
never apply.
1:08:18
The rules don't apply because you are the
1:08:20
power.
1:08:21
And it's always been that way.
1:08:22
Only Trump is far more obvious about it.
1:08:25
He's gone.
1:08:25
Well, sorry, I'm the king.
1:08:27
And the king doesn't have to do any
1:08:28
dishes.
1:08:29
You know, that's for the rest of you
1:08:30
schlubs.
1:08:31
Get out there and do it.
1:08:32
Or the rest of you stubs, as the
1:08:34
case may be.
1:08:36
So, this gets us to the pivot point,
1:08:38
right?
1:08:39
Alexander Stubb doesn't talk like a man that's
1:08:40
trying to win.
1:08:41
He's talking like a man trying to survive
1:08:43
to get to the next to the, you
1:08:45
know, from being next to power without, you
1:08:49
know, offending the other big power.
1:08:53
And that might be the most realistic voice
1:08:55
at Davos this year, except for Carney, who
1:08:59
we talked about yesterday.
1:09:01
So, you just heard the voices of restraint,
1:09:04
of fear, of denial, and a realist.
1:09:07
And then there came Donald Trump.
1:09:12
This is, you know, this is important, okay?
1:09:15
I'm not asking you, you know, I'm wanting
1:09:19
to be consistent with what I always talk
1:09:24
about.
1:09:24
Security realism.
1:09:26
I don't want to be radical.
1:09:27
I want to talk about the same logic
1:09:30
that governed arms control throughout the Cold War
1:09:34
and post-Cold War.
1:09:36
My core premises, if you listen to me
1:09:38
regularly, you know that Russia was explicitly told
1:09:41
NATO would not expand eastward on many occasions.
1:09:46
Those assurances were political, not contractual, which is
1:09:49
exactly the problem.
1:09:51
NATO expansion ignored Russia's stated security doctrines repeatedly
1:09:57
and publicly claimed by Russia.
1:10:01
Ukraine is the tripwire.
1:10:03
They aren't the cause of this.
1:10:05
It's not, it's not, they're just the tripwire.
1:10:08
They're the result of all of this, of
1:10:10
the bad 30 to 50 years of past
1:10:14
U.S. idiocy, and Western completely.
1:10:18
War is the tragedy of it all, but
1:10:21
causation does matter.
1:10:23
If you're in Russia, causation is the game
1:10:25
in town.
1:10:26
But in saying Russia bad without discussing NATO
1:10:30
expansion is, you know, that's malpractice in reality,
1:10:34
you know.
1:10:35
That's false narrative.
1:10:37
It's bullshit, you know.
1:10:39
I speak from a position of realism, true
1:10:42
facts, not made-up crap, you know, of
1:10:46
democracy in Ukraine, you know.
1:10:49
I'm a realist, you know.
1:10:50
It's the most corrupt country in the world,
1:10:55
period.
1:10:57
End of sentence.
1:10:59
And, you know, it's uncomfortable to say if
1:11:03
you're in the West.
1:11:04
Trump is saying it now.
1:11:06
Ukraine is not winning.
1:11:09
Western casualty narratives are always selective and nobody
1:11:12
talks about it.
1:11:14
So, you know, they're here.
1:11:17
You know, Stubb doesn't blame Russia.
1:11:20
He avoids history of NATO.
1:11:22
He's speaking from Finland being right next to
1:11:26
Russia and how well they've gotten along in
1:11:30
the past in how NATO has forced them
1:11:33
to do other things, but they chose a
1:11:35
side, right?
1:11:36
And now there's no longer any sides because
1:11:38
the U.S. is blowing all that up.
1:11:40
Nobody can count on the U.S. anymore
1:11:42
because of Donald Trump, okay?
1:11:46
Russia has been very clear since the 90s
1:11:49
about what NATO expansion would mean.
1:11:53
They've been very clear and we ignored it.
1:11:56
And we, I mean the West, it wasn't
1:11:58
me, you know.
1:11:59
It wasn't us listeners in this show.
1:12:02
It's the West.
1:12:03
We made assurances, not guarantees, and then we
1:12:06
go, what?
1:12:06
We didn't have a contract.
1:12:08
We got what?
1:12:09
German reunification.
1:12:10
Then we kept moving eastward anyway.
1:12:12
We lied repeatedly.
1:12:14
That doesn't justify war, but it does explain
1:12:16
it.
1:12:17
You know, it makes sense.
1:12:19
I mean, pretending that Russia has failed and
1:12:22
everybody keeps talking, oh, Russia's failed and everything
1:12:24
they tried to do.
1:12:25
My ass.
1:12:26
Go to Ukraine and tell me that Russia's
1:12:28
failing.
1:12:29
Go there.
1:12:30
I mean, I'm not there, but I'm telling
1:12:32
you, watch Telegram for a while, okay?
1:12:35
Go pick even Ukrainian channels in Telegram.
1:12:38
You get some realism there.
1:12:40
The propaganda machine is slowing down, you know,
1:12:45
and more truth is coming out because why?
1:12:47
The collapse is imminent.
1:12:49
They're trying to figure out who's getting the
1:12:51
last 90 billion and how they're going to
1:12:52
divvy it up.
1:12:53
That's what's happening, period.
1:12:55
And how they walk away.
1:12:57
You know, who walks away and, you know,
1:12:59
the poor just end up under a different,
1:13:01
you know, the masses like the rest of
1:13:04
us end up under a different deal, right?
1:13:07
Trump doesn't care anymore.
1:13:08
He's on to something else and he blames
1:13:12
the Z monster anyway.
1:13:15
So let's get to Trump because I only
1:13:17
got about 18 minutes left and not quite
1:13:20
enough time.
1:13:22
And I want to get to Trump because
1:13:25
it's important.
1:13:27
Trump, you know, after Stubb, let's stop for
1:13:32
a minute because we've heard very four different
1:13:34
reactions.
1:13:35
China, Macron, Ursula, and Stubb.
1:13:39
Yesterday we heard Carney do something none of
1:13:42
them quite did the same.
1:13:45
You know, he admitted that the rules-based
1:13:47
order worked only because everybody pretended it did.
1:13:51
And that once the strong stop pretending, U
1:13:54
.S., the system is gone.
1:13:56
So at this point, we aren't arguing about
1:13:58
whether the old world order is under stress.
1:14:00
Everybody at Davos has agreed upon that, even
1:14:03
if they don't say it the same way.
1:14:05
The real question is how power behaves when
1:14:07
rules are gone.
1:14:09
Which brings us to Donald Trump because he's
1:14:12
the first American president in decades who didn't
1:14:15
just bend the rules or selectively apply them.
1:14:18
He openly treats force as the policy.
1:14:22
This isn't accidental.
1:14:23
It's not rhetorical.
1:14:25
It is the new system.
1:14:28
I'm the power.
1:14:30
Get in line.
1:14:31
Okay?
1:14:32
And now it's this is absolutely true and
1:14:36
why Trump had to come last.
1:14:39
And I'll have to get through this somewhat
1:14:41
quickly.
1:14:42
But his speech was the longest.
1:14:47
If I started with him, the rest of
1:14:49
it sounds, you know, I don't know.
1:14:52
He's the consequence of all these other things.
1:14:54
Trump isn't reacting to the collapse of the
1:14:57
old world order.
1:14:58
He's accelerating it.
1:15:00
He's privatizing it.
1:15:03
So Trump's core world view.
1:15:05
Let's get to that.
1:15:06
Trump's world view is he doesn't speak the
1:15:10
language of systems.
1:15:11
He's talking the language of leverage, of real
1:15:15
estate transactions.
1:15:17
Everything flows through him.
1:15:20
Period.
1:15:21
Success of the world?
1:15:22
That's personal.
1:15:24
Failure belongs to everybody else.
1:15:26
Compliance?
1:15:27
You do what I say.
1:15:29
That's proof of your strength.
1:15:33
You realize that I'm God.
1:15:35
Resistance is disobedience.
1:15:38
And disobedience isn't going to work for you.
1:15:41
You know, that's what they did by not
1:15:42
showing up to NATO exercises this month.
1:15:45
Institutions don't constrain behavior.
1:15:48
They are obstacles in his path.
1:15:51
Treaties aren't stability mechanisms.
1:15:53
Those are bad deals other people made that
1:15:55
I can ignore.
1:15:56
Allies are not partners.
1:15:58
They are dependents upon you.
1:16:00
Okay.
1:16:01
That's the way Trump frames it.
1:16:03
This isn't a misunderstanding of diplomacy as it
1:16:06
existed for the last 50 years.
1:16:08
It's rejection.
1:16:09
Right?
1:16:11
Trump repeatedly frames global relations as a series
1:16:15
of transactions.
1:16:17
That's all it is.
1:16:18
These are transactions to him.
1:16:20
He's winning.
1:16:21
He's art of the dealing.
1:16:22
He's who wants to be a millionaire.
1:16:25
That's it.
1:16:26
Tariffs are punishment.
1:16:28
Access to our market is a reward.
1:16:30
It's a carrot for you.
1:16:32
Threats, that's the way he negotiates.
1:16:35
That's his negotiating bullshit, by the way, negotiating
1:16:38
style.
1:16:40
This is the position-based bargaining I talked
1:16:42
about yesterday.
1:16:43
This isn't in America's interest.
1:16:45
I talk about interest-based bargaining.
1:16:47
This is not it.
1:16:49
Okay.
1:16:50
And he is not, he's a positional bargainer,
1:16:53
period.
1:16:54
He sets a position 10 steps ahead knowing
1:16:57
he'll accept something less.
1:16:59
Carney warned about this yesterday.
1:17:01
When economic tools or weapons cooperation is contingency
1:17:04
planning, Trump treats contingency as success.
1:17:09
Venezuela, the problem of precedent.
1:17:13
Trump's Venezuela rhetoric matters a great deal.
1:17:17
Okay.
1:17:18
Far more than most Americans realize, in fact.
1:17:24
He's framing it as enforcement, discipline, and victory.
1:17:30
Nobody else could do what we did.
1:17:31
Why is it that nobody else can ever
1:17:33
do what we did?
1:17:35
That's nonsense.
1:17:38
People could.
1:17:39
And he's talking about enforcement, discipline, victory plans,
1:17:44
but the world hears something else.
1:17:46
If you don't comply, we're going to take
1:17:48
what we need anyway and justify it later.
1:17:51
That just doesn't apply to adversaries.
1:17:54
That applies to everybody.
1:17:55
This is where Trump isn't weakening the alternatives.
1:17:59
He is validating them, making them valid.
1:18:03
Greenland has gone from an alliance to an
1:18:06
asset.
1:18:06
Greenland's the cleanest example of his worldview that
1:18:09
collides with reality.
1:18:11
He said, Greenland's a strategic necessity for the
1:18:15
United States.
1:18:16
Rest of you guys are idiots.
1:18:17
The only guy who could do this is
1:18:18
me.
1:18:19
This is my economic plan.
1:18:23
Comply.
1:18:24
You don't own that anyway.
1:18:25
We should have never given it back.
1:18:29
The way he talks, it's like, who the
1:18:32
hell is this guy?
1:18:33
He's nuts.
1:18:35
Nuts in a good way, but frigging nuts.
1:18:39
Everything is because of Donald Trump.
1:18:41
You want success?
1:18:42
Donald Trump.
1:18:43
You want failure?
1:18:44
Go talk to Joe Biden.
1:18:46
And he still brings him up.
1:18:48
Stubb told you the truth about why this
1:18:50
logic fails, because alliances are built on consent
1:18:55
to the governed.
1:18:57
What about that?
1:18:59
What about Venezuela?
1:19:01
That was coercion.
1:19:02
Security is supposed to be collective.
1:19:04
It isn't.
1:19:05
Coercion inside alliances destroys trust.
1:19:09
So they're still trying to say, look, we
1:19:10
have these alliances, and you're ignoring them completely.
1:19:13
What are you going to do when Article
1:19:15
5 has to be used in Greenland?
1:19:17
They're not going to do it anyway.
1:19:18
Screw them.
1:19:19
That's Trump.
1:19:20
And Trump boasts about he personally lowered the
1:19:24
gas prices.
1:19:25
And Americans, we feel that immediately.
1:19:27
We see that.
1:19:28
And you know what?
1:19:29
I grant him that success.
1:19:31
When you steal 50 billion barrels of gas,
1:19:34
trust me, you can push the gas prices
1:19:36
down in America.
1:19:37
But that's a short-term win.
1:19:40
And it doesn't replace long-term trust of
1:19:43
the United States.
1:19:44
Doesn't do it.
1:19:46
Energy leverage doesn't replace energy stability.
1:19:50
What we have done, which I believe we
1:19:53
are deeply involved in and blowing up Nord
1:19:55
Stream 2, as America, has never been rectified,
1:19:59
nor will it be.
1:20:00
Instead, we're forcing more.
1:20:02
You're going to buy LNG from us to
1:20:04
hell with going through Turk Stream through Greece
1:20:09
or anywhere else.
1:20:10
To hell with everything, shutting down those pipelines
1:20:14
through Ukraine.
1:20:16
Because now you're buying from us at double
1:20:18
the cost.
1:20:19
This is good for us.
1:20:20
Screw you.
1:20:21
That's Trump.
1:20:22
This is good for us.
1:20:23
Screw you.
1:20:24
This isn't sustainable leadership.
1:20:26
It's not.
1:20:27
It's consumptive leadership.
1:20:29
That's what it is.
1:20:30
He's abandoning treaties.
1:20:32
He's inviting the very exit.
1:20:35
He's telling you you can't.
1:20:36
His abandonment of arms control agreements, trade frameworks,
1:20:40
international organization is not neutrality.
1:20:44
It's a signal to adversaries, build your own
1:20:47
systems.
1:20:48
To allies, protect yourselves.
1:20:50
To middle powers, hedge now, Canada.
1:20:54
Go to China, make some deals.
1:20:56
China heard this.
1:20:57
Europe hears this.
1:20:59
Canada hears this.
1:21:00
Finland is hearing this.
1:21:01
This is why alternatives are accelerating under Trump.
1:21:06
They're not doing it despite Trump.
1:21:08
They're doing it because of Trump.
1:21:12
And that's the problem with narcissism as the
1:21:15
governing model.
1:21:18
His self-congratulation isn't a personality quirk.
1:21:22
It's the way he governs.
1:21:25
When all success is personal, when all failure
1:21:29
is external, when any resistance is betrayal, then
1:21:35
policy is improvised.
1:21:37
It's not a strategy.
1:21:39
This is what Carney meant by rupture of
1:21:41
the system.
1:21:43
This is what Stubb fears.
1:21:45
This is what China has been preparing for,
1:21:48
for decades.
1:21:51
At least, well, certainly since Trump won and
1:21:54
absolutely since Trump too, all through Biden, they
1:21:58
did.
1:21:59
China's quiet about it, but trust me, they're
1:22:02
prepared.
1:22:03
And this is what Europe is attempting to
1:22:06
hedge against and what Macron is hand-wringing
1:22:09
about.
1:22:10
Trump isn't ending globalism.
1:22:12
He's fragmenting faster.
1:22:16
He's privatizing it.
1:22:19
He's privatizing globalism.
1:22:22
The new world order is Trump.
1:22:26
He's privatizing it, he's personalizing it, and he's
1:22:30
making all the exit strategies rational.
1:22:34
That isn't anti-American.
1:22:36
It's not even anti-Trump.
1:22:38
It's an analysis of systems.
1:22:41
When systems no longer exist, Trump is making
1:22:44
no bones about it.
1:22:46
Screw your systems.
1:22:47
I ain't working on it.
1:22:48
I ain't doing it.
1:22:49
Hell with you guys.
1:22:50
I'm God, not you.
1:22:52
And he's blunt.
1:22:53
I mean, his speech, I listened to it
1:22:55
all, every word of it.
1:22:58
Interesting.
1:22:59
Interesting.
1:23:00
I would like some different commentary, but Trump
1:23:05
believes force produces obedience.
1:23:08
That's what he says.
1:23:09
It's what he said about, certainly about Venezuela.
1:23:13
He's talking about it now.
1:23:15
You're going to comply or I'm just stealing
1:23:18
it.
1:23:19
It's mine anyway.
1:23:20
He's already justifying it.
1:23:22
It's already mine anyway.
1:23:24
Screw you guys.
1:23:25
Get your dog sleds out of there.
1:23:27
I own that.
1:23:28
That's mine.
1:23:29
We never should have given it to you
1:23:30
anyway.
1:23:31
Everybody before me, every president before me is
1:23:34
a moron.
1:23:34
Every president before me is stupid.
1:23:36
We should have taken Greenland ages ago.
1:23:41
I mean, what kind of arrogance is that?
1:23:44
Mine, mine, mine.
1:23:47
That's it.
1:23:48
He's the biggest bully in the, in the,
1:23:50
uh, in the, uh, what do you call
1:23:53
it?
1:23:53
Daycare.
1:23:54
He's the biggest bully in the daycare.
1:23:56
My toy, my toy, my this.
1:23:58
He's still talking.
1:23:59
He who dies with the most toys wins.
1:24:02
That applies to him.
1:24:03
That's what it should be on the back
1:24:04
of his boat.
1:24:05
I saw that on the back of the
1:24:06
boat, uh, back of a boat, I think
1:24:08
here at the Lake, uh, years ago, uh,
1:24:12
he, who dies with the most toys wins
1:24:15
that that could sum up Trump for you.
1:24:18
And before he dies, he wants to win.
1:24:22
He wants to control the risk board.
1:24:26
That's what, that's all he's doing.
1:24:28
He's controlling, you know, America.
1:24:30
I'm going to make America great again.
1:24:33
And how do we make America great again?
1:24:35
We roll over you, not with tanks.
1:24:40
We roll over you from space.
1:24:42
We shut off your access to everything.
1:24:45
Screw all of you.
1:24:46
You either become our vassals.
1:24:49
You become our colonies.
1:24:52
You support the head, screw the rest.
1:24:56
Don't make alternative stuff.
1:24:58
We'll punish you.
1:25:00
And the punishment ain't working.
1:25:02
So what's he doing?
1:25:03
He's consolidating his power into the Western hemisphere.
1:25:07
Just like the risk board.
1:25:08
All he's doing is playing a game of
1:25:10
risk.
1:25:11
That's what's going on friends and neighbors.
1:25:13
And I am offended somewhat by it.
1:25:19
I think it's short term.
1:25:21
Um, and it's going to create a many
1:25:25
of the things that we're frightened of frightened
1:25:29
isn't the right word.
1:25:30
Many of the things that we're concerned about,
1:25:32
uh, they're, they're being created even now, uh,
1:25:37
by all of these, these people are not
1:25:40
inconsequential people that were speaking at this economic
1:25:45
forum.
1:25:46
This is the power of money that people
1:25:49
were talking about.
1:25:50
This is an important meeting in Davos.
1:25:55
The notable absence of Ukraine and talking about
1:26:00
Ukraine, the backroom deals with Kirill Dmitriev and,
1:26:05
uh, the, uh, negotiators that have nothing to
1:26:08
do with Ukraine.
1:26:10
There's no Ukraine that now, um, Volodymyr Zelensky
1:26:15
was supposed to be there.
1:26:16
And last I heard he bailed that he
1:26:19
didn't come because Kiev is under serious problems.
1:26:22
It's a freezing cold over there and, uh,
1:26:25
there's no gas, there's no electricity.
1:26:29
And, uh, Russia has, uh, knocked out all
1:26:34
of their power grids.
1:26:36
It's not good.
1:26:37
And he, for the first time didn't travel
1:26:41
to, uh, get a word in with Trump
1:26:43
because it doesn't do any good anymore.
1:26:46
Trump wants him and Trump's team is saying,
1:26:48
look, capitulate you little prick, capitulate, do something.
1:26:53
You have lost.
1:26:55
Not my war.
1:26:56
Joe Biden's war would have never happened if
1:26:58
I wasn't president.
1:27:00
I disagree with that.
1:27:02
As long as everything was, if all other
1:27:04
things were equal, Trump would have still stood
1:27:06
up out of Trump.
1:27:07
Putin would have still stood up.
1:27:09
It'd just be a different, you know, Trump
1:27:13
is a much more brutal about it.
1:27:16
So Trump is the gravitational mass of all
1:27:20
of this right now.
1:27:21
And at Davos, he was not subtle a
1:27:23
bit.
1:27:24
He was not restrained and he is no
1:27:26
longer pretending that some sort of rules based
1:27:32
system works.
1:27:33
He's saying, I am the rules follow my
1:27:37
new rules because this is what I created.
1:27:40
Right.
1:27:40
And so this is it.
1:27:44
Trump unchained.
1:27:45
We're talking about Trump unchained and, uh, Trump
1:27:52
believes force produces obedience and the world has
1:27:56
learned that it's producing exit strategies.
1:27:59
And Davos this year was not a debate.
1:28:01
It was a warning to everyone and Trump
1:28:06
spoke it loudest of everyone.
1:28:10
So I've compared all of these speeches.
1:28:13
I've explained why alternative structures and pathways are
1:28:18
growing so fast under this coercion.
1:28:21
And, uh, this is strong stuff.
1:28:26
China warning, Macron bringing its hands.
1:28:29
These are bad deals for them.
1:28:31
Very bad.
1:28:32
Mark Carney.
1:28:33
I still say you should go listen to
1:28:35
him.
1:28:35
Trump didn't cause the collapse of the old
1:28:37
world order, but he's accelerating it into a
1:28:41
force force as policy leverage as entitlement and
1:28:45
obedience as a proof of strength that will
1:28:48
work in the short term.
1:28:49
It always does, but it won't build loyalty,
1:28:52
stability, or permanence force produces compliance, but it
1:28:56
also produces exit strategies.
1:28:58
And I hope you Americans see that this
1:29:01
isn't left versus right.
1:29:02
It's not about Trump versus Biden.
1:29:04
It's not about loving or hating America.
1:29:07
It's about whether power understands its own limits
1:29:10
and every great power that forgets that lessons
1:29:14
event lesson eventually will relearn it often the
1:29:17
hard way Davos this year, didn't give us
1:29:20
a new world order.
1:29:21
It shows us that other people understand that
1:29:23
the old one is gone and that a
1:29:26
replacement is inevitable.
1:29:28
That's what we talked about today.
1:29:30
As always, I question everything.
1:29:33
I am Samuel trap.
1:29:34
I will be here Monday with more excitement
1:29:37
for you on international flavor and damn radio.
1:29:41
Listen to all my other shows at international
1:29:44
flavor.com.
1:29:46
I truly hope you do and enjoy your
1:29:49
Thursday and your weekend, and I will see
1:29:51
you Monday.